Two years ago I told you about a project that I put together in my spare time which connected the reading of the entire Bible with the narrations of the Bible by the English actor David Suchet. Suchet's narrations are available for FREE on YouTube. The results of that project are found on this webpage:

I continue to use that webpage each morning to read the portions of the Bible listed for that day.

Personally, I have decided to change it up every other year. This past year, and two years before, I used the list of Bible references to read the entire Bible including Old and New Testaments. Last year I only used the October to December lists of reading which are the New Testament portions (1/4 of a year). That allowed me to read the New Testament 4 times. I will do that again next year. I use the narrations every other quarter, and the other quarters I simply read without the narration. I think it is important to break up the routine. I may try to change it up again this year, and use a different translation of the New Testament for the "reading only" quarters.

The original New Testament was written in Greek, and there are a number of very good English translations that have been produced in the last century. I find, when trying to grasp the meaning of a portion of the Bible, that reading that same portion in different translations can enhance the understanding of it.

All these various translations of the Bible can be found at BibleGateway.

The default translation on the page that I created for daily Bible readings was the New International Version - UK edition. That is the translation that Suchet reads from. I think that this year I will use that version for the narration and then for 1/4 of the year use the New American Standard Bible. That was the translation of the Bible that I used very early in my Christian walk. And in the other 1/4 of the year reading, I will try another translation that I have not used as much: New King James Version (NKJV). All of these translations are available on-line at:

BibleGateway is a fantastic Bible study resource. The website allows easy word and idea searches of the Bible as well.

As I mentioned, this past year I used some spare time to develop a new web page. This web page lists the sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Spurgeon's ministry was during the period of Queen Victoria (19th century). In this day, Spurgeon was a very well known Baptist minister.

Spurgeon and the sermons he preached were so well loved that he early on had them transcribed, published and distributed. They were sold and the funds were used to finance over 60 ministries that Spurgeon started. There are over 3,500 of these sermons.

I have organized the sermons by Biblical reference:

During COVID, when we tended to avoid going out to public gatherings, I began to read a Spurgeon sermon each Sunday. After COVID the habit stuck. Years ago I had purchased a 10 volume set of Spurgeon's sermons (there are about 25 sermons per volume). The 10 volume set is a reprint of the original series of volumes and there were over 60 of those. I am now into my 9th volume of the 10.

Because the sermons are out of copyright, they are available in many places on-line for free. Early on I found a found a particular website that has many of them on-line and I like the way that they have set up their web pages. The web page I created links to those. I continue to add to the list, as I read them or discover narrators that I particularly like.

And as with the Suchet narrations of the Bible, YouTube is full of narrations of Spurgeon sermons. I decided to put links to both the text versions and narrations on one web page which you will find here:

I had been thinking about what to share with you this Christmas. As I was reading through one of those sermons this paragraph stuck out:

There is a page in God's Book where your sins are recorded unmingled with the transgressions of your fellows. Now, beloved, you must obtain for all this sin a personal pardon, or you are undone for ever. No other can be washed in Christ's blood for you; no one can believe and let his faith stand instead of your faith. The very supposition of human sponsorship in religion is monstrous. You must yourself repent, yourself believe, yourself be washed in the blood, or else for you there is no forgiveness, no acceptance, no adoption, no regeneration. It is all a personal matter through and through: "your own salvation" it must be, or it will be your own eternal ruin.

The paragraph is taken from the sermon:

The reference to "God's Book" is connected to this verse from the Bible:

Revelation 20:12 NIV
12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.

The reference to "your own salvation" connects to the verse that I shared in the December bulletin:

Luke 2:11 NIV
11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.

And just one more thought. The name "Jesus" comes from the Hebrew name of "Yeshua" which means "God" our "Savior".

The rest of my comments about Spurgeon can be found in the introduction at the top of the web page. Here it is again:

The web page has been my Christmas gift to myself and I use it every week. If you find it useful, consider it my Christmas gift to you.