The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - The Bible is Here!

Episode Date: August 31, 2018

The Great Adventure Catholic Bible implements the Catholic understanding of salvation history into its very pages with actual timelines, maps, charts, and articles. This Bible not only provides a faithful translation of Scripture (using the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition), it also walks with the reader through the epic journey that the Bible recounts and that is so often lost amid all the individual stories. After decades of teaching The Bible Timeline to hundreds of thousands of Great Adventure study participants, Jeff is confident that The Great Adventure Catholic Bible will help spread the amazing story of salvation to Catholics with a desire to grow closer to God through the Scriptures. Get your copy now!

You're listening to The Jeff Kaven Show, episode 79. The Bible is here. Hey, I'm Jeff Kavins. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven Show. Hey, I want to welcome you to the show this week. This is a really exciting week for me. If you have been to Ascension Press website, you probably know why, and that is that the Great Adventure Bible is here. And I got my copy in the mail this last week. And in fact, on my Facebook page, I do a little unveil where I open it up for the first time, because I've never seen it before.

And I've seen pages of the Great Adventure Bible that just was released by Ascension, but I didn't actually touch it. And now I have, and this show is dedicated to telling you about that Bible and how that Bible is going to absolutely change your life. I'm really excited about this. I can't tell you how excited I am. And I'm actually in a place I've never been before. You wouldn't believe it, but I'm sitting in the CEO's office of a Harley Davidson dealer in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. My motorcycle is getting its checkup, you know, it's oil change and everything after we did that. epic 5,000-mile trip and went to the churches and spoke to various churches in Colorado and Santa Faye and we were on into Idaho Falls, Montana. But anyway, they took longer than I thought to deal

with the bike today. So I went to the CEO and said, I need a place to do my show and he put me in the corner office. So if you hear a little rumbling in the background, those are called Harley Davidson motorcycles, okay? I'm not creating that sound here. But I want to talk to you today about the Bible because I want to share it with you. This is really an epic moment for me in my life to see the Great Adventure Studies system, the color-coded system actually be put into a Bible. And I want to talk to you about what that means and go over some of the details of this Bible. It's quite a team effort, to be honest with you.

John Hardin over at Ascension Press has been the one to really bring all of this together over the last, over a year now. We've been working on this, and he has been working, and I've been working with some of the best scholars in the field today, like Dr. Mary Healey, out at Sacred Heart in Detroit, and she is on the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and along with her is Dr. Peter Williamson, who is an absolutely precious brother in Christ. I mean, really a great, great brother in Christ. And he did his dissertation on interpreting scripture, and we brought that into the Great Adventure Bible. Along with Dr. Andrew Swofford, who is out at Benedictine in Atchison, Kansas. What a team. I mean, seriously, what a team. And then Archbishop

Michael Burns has done the forward to the Bible. We're going to talk about it today. You're going to hear an awful lot about it in the future because it is a Bible that is, of course, I didn't write the Bible. Nobody here wrote the Bible. We just used the text, and the text is the RSV Catholic Edition, and it is the second Catholic edition, which is just a great translation, and it's a RSV Catholic edition is the translation that the Catechism of the Catholic Church uses. And so some of the things, I'm going to take some pictures, I'm going to put them up in the show notes for you, some of the things that I'm pointing out. And if you are currently not getting show notes, all you have to do is give me an email at

the Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com, and then just in the subject line, just put it that I want to get, I want to get in touch with the show notes, and then we'll put you on the list, and we'll send them to you every single week. And it is a treat to be with you. All right. So I'm holding in my hands. I'm holding the box, which I have never seen a box so beautiful for a Bible, literally in my life. And I've got to tell you, for some of you that don't know my story, I was a Catholic, left the Catholic

church, and then became a Protestant pastor, and then studied my way back into the Catholic church. And during those years, when I was away from the church, of course, the Bible was so big, you know, in our churches, and that was the center of our faith. And so we kind of became connoisseurs of of Bibles and what kind of a Bible would be good as far as, you know, the fonts and the margins and maps and all of that. And over the last, I'd say, maybe 35 to 4, 35 years at least, I have been taking notes as to what I think the ultimate Bible would be, you know, to study. And that's what we put into the great adventure. So I just opened it up and I'll put a picture of the the cover of the Bible in the show notes because, I mean, they even made the cover fantastic.

They really did. It's the best-looking cover I've ever seen. Not as good as the content, which is God's word, but it is a fantastic box. Now, starting right off, and I'm holding this right now, is an alpha leather cover, which is so beautiful. It is a color that is like a deep, deep blue, which reminds us of our lady, and the alpha leather is a leather, kind of a synthetic leather that feels actually even better than regular leather. And it is just beautiful. And then it has two ribbons to mark the Old and the New Testament. It has sort of a maroon ribbon, and then it has a gold ribbon that you can use to mark your pages. Now, the thing that really stands out about this Bible, is that it takes the color-coded system of the Great Adventure and actually incorporates it into the Bible.

This is not an annotated Bible, per se. It is a Bible that helps you understand the big picture and to read it as a story. And so we have a wonderful foreword by Archbishop Michael Burns, and then I do an introduction to the Great Adventure Catholic Bible and the Catholic Bible reading system. that has now reached hundreds and hundreds of thousands of, I think, millions now of people. And then we have, it's full color. If you see it in the Bible timeline, it's in the Bible. We have a narrative and supplemental books chart, the Bible timeline reading plan. In other words, we teach you how to read the Bible in three months as far as the narrative goes. Let me back up just a minute.

If I'm talking fast, it's because I'm talking fast, because I'm really, really excited. But if you take the Bible, most people don't know how to read it. You know, they don't know how to go through it. They start in Genesis. They end in revelation. But by the time they go through it, they really don't have any understanding at all of the basic story of salvation history. And the reason is because the Bible is not laid out as a narrative.

You have to be taught how to read it. And that's what we do in the Great Adventure Bible. And so we have a whole chapter at the beginning by Dr. Williamson on how to interpret the Bible and recommended reading sources. And then there's a special chapter at the beginning on Lexio Divina, because we really believe that if you're going to engage God in Scripture, you have to know how to converse with him. You have to know how to give him an opportunity to speak to you and to you, you to him. to gain something every single day. Now, we start off with the Old Testament, and I'm going to put this picture that I'm telling you right now in the show notes. It's called the early world. And what we have on this page in the Bible is we have an exact duplicate of the early world period from the

timeline chart, if you're familiar with that, that basically talks about Genesis 1 through 11. and then, in full color, there is a summary and then the narrative description of the early world and its significance to our life today. This is such a game changer, because right away at the beginning of the early world period, we're going to explain to you with the help of these incredible scholars. We're going to explain to you the key points in this early period of salvation history. and, for example, we have a whole chapter there on covenants and the development of covenants, the covenant structure of salvation history. We have all of that and the covenant at creation.

Now, here's another really important point. As you're reading through salvation history in the Bible, you're going to come across some major events, some major characters that are key along the way. We have marked out 70 key event, what we callouts. They are sections in the Bible that, you know, key event number one, the creation. And then we give you a little paragraph about the significance of creation, references from the catechism, cross-references from the Bible, very, very key. Now, at the bottom of the page, all of the cross-references are at the bottom. They are not between the two columns. They are conveniently placed at the bottom of the page. And so you go through Genesis knowing that Genesis is part of the early world. Now, how do you know

that? Because of this, and this is so cool. Every page in this Bible has about a one-inch tab built in. It's color-coded. It's not a physical tab. It's printed on the edge of the page. It's printed the name of the book and the color where it belongs in the timeline. For example, Genesis is turquoise, Genesis, and it is placed about about three-quarters of an inch from the top of the page. So no matter what page you look at in the Bible, you know exactly where you are in relationship to salvation history, in relationship to the story overall. that is just plain cool. That is just plain cool. That you can know where you're at all the way through

salvation history. I love it. I absolutely love it. Now we're going to take a break. When I come back, I want to talk to you about some of the other things that are in this Bible that make it very unique. And I really, I truly believe that this will be a game changer for you. And it certainly has for me. You're listening from the Harley Davidson dealer to the Jeff Kaven show. It's hard to live out your Catholic faith on your own. In fact, the Bible reveals that we need a community of people to help us on our journey of faith. If you're interested in finding that community by joining or starting a small group study, visit ascensionpress.com and sign up for a free Ascension account.

With your account, you'll get all the tools you need to start walking with others towards Christ. Welcome back to the show. This is an exciting show, epic show. It's the Bible. The Bible's here, the great adventure Bible. Great team at Ascension has been working at putting this together, headed up by John Hardin, who did just a great job, and we're working with some of the finest scholars

in the world to try to give you a Bible that will in itself explain how to read it. and we've been talking a little bit, a little bit about that. I was mentioning before the break, some of the other things that are in this Bible that really make it unique. It is, of course, the color-coded learning system, and I mentioned to you that it has 70 key event callouts. Every book, every page has a marker on the side that tells you what period this particular book is a part of. So never again do you have to be lost as to, you know, why am I reading Malachi? What does Malachi have to do with anything? What about Nehemiah or Jeremiah or Ephesians? Where does this fit in? Because at every moment, you're going to understand exactly where that particular book fits into the narrative. A few other things about this Bible, which, by the way, you can order, you can order right now, actually. You can go online to shop. dot ascensionpress.com, and you can order your great adventure Bible. And as far as I know, I think they're being shipped right now, because I got a couple of emails from people saying, I got mine

last week. And I thought, man, you got years before me. Such a deal. But it's 59.95. Somebody said to me, it's funny on an interview yesterday, and they said, $60. Jeff, is it worth $60? And I said, is it worth $60? I said, are you serious? this is God's word. This is his love letter. This is his message to you where he reveals who he is, the heart of the Father, and what he has done. Is it worth it? Yes, it is. Get it and get on the adventure. Okay, here's a few other things about this Bible that have got me so excited. I know you're going to be writing in and saying, Jeff, I've never heard you so excited before. Well, it probably never have been because this is a dream come true to see the great adventure incorporated into a Bible.

Okay, so we've got 21 explanatory articles. We've got different articles throughout this Bible that give you an explanation like a covenants in key places where the story can get really confusing. If you don't know what's going on, we help you through that with the 21 explanatory articles. Here's another one. We got 19 helpful charts that explain things like the kings of Israel and the covenants and, you know, all that key information. We've got 16 full-color maps that we created.

We had a company create some of the best-looking maps in the world for this Bible. And one of the most important things that I really wanted in a Bible, and it's in this one, is get this, red-letter edition. That's right. What does that mean? Red Letter Edition. It means that when you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, when you come across the words of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, those words are in red. And so when you're reading the actual biblical text, you will see the words of Jesus. They'll pop out at you. Now,

what's the advantage of that? Well, the advantage is, I think, twofold. One is that you are immediately drawn to the words of Jesus. Now, of course, all the Bible is the word of God, right? There's no disputing that whatsoever. But there's something special about seeing the words of Jesus in red. Number two, one of the advantages that I have seen over the years in the Bibles that I have used and marked up is that when I am teaching, whether I'm teaching at a conference or whether I'm teaching at a CCD class or I'm doing a radio interview or whatever it might be. As I turn to that page in the Bible, my eyes are immediately drawn towards the distinction between what Jesus said and what is not the words of Jesus as far as what he's quoted

is saying. And that helps me as a teacher. It helps me as a teacher. Now, another thing that we've done with this Bible is that we have made the side margins a little extra long, a little extra wide, I should say. Now, why is that important? Because one of the things that we really encourage people to do is to mark their Bibles and to make notes in the column, whether those notes are cross-references to the Catechism or a book they read or a quote, whatever it might be. People have often complained that they just don't have room to write in their

Bibles. And so we wanted to make sure that we would give enough room in the column on the side for you to make significant notes in your life. And in the back of the Bible, there's some blank pages for you to write notes about, you know, life and baptism, children, things like that, just notes that we have in the back. Now, another thing that's important that was put into this Bible is that one of the questions, in fact, I think that it was the most common question that we received was how big are the fonts? Is this something that older people can read? Well, I wouldn't know that yet, but I can tell you this. We took the average font of a Bible and raised it up a notch, and so one of the comments that we have received from people who have been reviewing the Bible

is, they're saying, this is so readable. This is so readable. It has a beautiful contrast between the text and the color of the page, which is kind of a little bit of an off-white, but it's white, but a little bit of an off-white, and it's just so easy on the eyes. And I have to concur. I think this is amazing, you know, what they have put together as far as the readability. I can tell you right now, the one that I'm holding in my hands right now, which I'm going to put some pictures up in the show notes for you, is now my everyday Bible. I've had to retire my third Bible and it's retired. It's in the office and I've got I've got this new beautiful Bible and I'm so looking forward to reading it and doing Lexio Divina as an activated disciple in the morning and listening to Jesus throughout the day. This as far as Bibles go is the best feeling Bible, the best looking Bible and the most usable Bible that I have run into. And I'm just thrilled to be.

a part of it. Now, after saying all of that, once again, you can get the Bible. And I would also recommend not only should you get a copy of the Bible to learn how to read the Bible in chronological order, but I would suggest that if you have anybody who is going through confirmation, anybody for an Easter gift, a birthday gift, whatever it might be, this would be a Bible for them, because it will become evident very clearly that this Bible is all about teaching you how to read it and how to get the most out of it. And so not only is it going to be a great Bible for devotions and Bible study, but it's also going to be just a great gift to introduce newbies, you know, into salvation history. Back up for just a moment. Before we conclude this today, back up for just a moment and

remind ourselves, what do we want the Bible for? I mean, why do we want to person? own a copy of the Bible. And the answer to that is, we want a copy of the Bible because we desperately need to know the heart of our Father in heaven. We need to know His heart. We need to know the mystery of the Trinity. You'll get that in Scripture. God is revealing himself to you in Scripture. And number two, not only do you need to know the heart of your Father, but number two, you need to know his plans because your life is all about his plans. Your life is all about knowing how to live and to be encouraged along the way and to be corrected along the way and for God to reveal himself to you. That's why we carry Bibles. That's why this Bible was actually created in a size that you can

create, that you can carry with you because the whole idea is that we come to know God by studying his word, his love letter, as the saints said. Many of the saints talked about scripture as being the love letter from our father to his children. And so, my friends, I'm just excited today. I wanted to share it with you. Had no idea that I'd be sitting in the CEO's office of a Harley-Davidson dealer talking about sacred scripture. But you know what? We're disciples. Everywhere we go, we got to be ready and I just happened to have my equipment as I rode my motorcycle over here today to get its service servicing so will you pray with me pray that God moves in a powerful way in scripture study I know that right now we're facing a lot of problems I'm so aware of that and

has it affected me certainly and I know it's affected you and this is one reason that we we really need to press in and we need to seek our father and to know his heart and to know his will because we're living in troublesome times. But I can tell you one thing. Let me tell you this. Yeah, people are going to let you down. I may let you down. A bishop may let you down. A priest may let you down. A religious. A father, a mother. People let people down from time to time. But I got news for you and that is this. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is not going to change. He is not going to disappoint.

He is not going to let you down. He is faithful. And our faith is based on his faithfulness. The righteous live by God's faith, Habakkuk. And so this is the reason that we need Bibles. This is the reason that we need the catechism. This is the reason so that we have something solid to build our lives on. We're going to get through this.

You keep your joy. You keep your joy. Do not lose your joy. And if you just listen to this broadcast today and you didn't have a chance to listen to last week, I encourage you to listen to episode 78 called Church Scandles and Mousetraps. and I hope it's a little bit of an encouragement to you. Let's pray, shall we? In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Lord, I thank you for your word. Oh, Lord, your word is guidance to us. It is a light unto our path. It is correction, admonition. It is comfort in every

situation in our life. We want to come to know you, and we want to know your ways. Help us, Lord, as we open up your word to understand your ways. Mary, our mother, pray for us in these tumultuous times. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. Now and at the hour of our death, amen.

Well, my friends, didn't know it. didn't know. I was going to talk to you about the Bible from a Harley-Davidson dealer. But here we are. And maybe it's just a little bit of a reminder that wherever we hear God's word, it's a reminder that we need to put his word into practice wherever we may go. May God be with you, and you have a wonderful week.