The Complete Visual Bible
Stephen M. Miller
BarbourBooks, 2011, 528 pp., $19.99
The Complete Visual Bible is a great tool for youth workers trying to prepare meaningful and accurate lessons using the Bible. This handy tool can bring passages of Scripture to life with some nice images and very helpful descriptions of background and history and a good overview of the books of the Bible. While it is not something that can be used for significant exegesis, it is a helpful aid in understanding context and background.
–Rev. Marcus J. Carlson
The Complete Visual Bible by Stephen M. Miller provides a beautiful panoramic canvas of the Bible through his use of artwork, photographs and his clear and concise writing style. However, I wonder if the book is not a decade too late. I continually found myself wanting an electronic format that would allow me to pull up the pictures, charts and artwork with ease to engage a generation that is more at home visually online rather than be confined to a book, even if it’s a gorgeous book such as this one.
–Seth M. Vopat, Associate Pastor, Louisburg First Baptist Church, Overland Park, Kansas
The Complete Visual Bible provides a concise overview of the Bible via a visual tour packed with lots of vivid illustrations, pictures and short bursts of text that move you quickly through its pages and draws you into each book’s particular milieu. The appealing images, witty quips and pertinent information join to help the reader understand and appreciate the Bible in a memorable way. This practical and affordable book is a welcome resource for youth workers to engage students in reading the Bible and discussing its life-changing message.
–Mike Medeiros, Pastor of Christian Education, Cornerstone Bible Church, Glendora, California
The Complete Visual Bible is full of some great background information and visuals that really do bring a new level of understanding to the texts. It’s a really helpful book for getting a grip on the settings of the various parts of the Bible and where biblical events fit into and shaped the historical timeline. For most youth leaders, it will be pretty useful in individual study or maybe very small mentoring groups. If it came with a digital library of images and info-graphics, that would make it even more useful for wider use in youth ministry.
—Mike Andrews, WestWay Christian Church
This is an incredible additional resource for our church to use in preparing for our different small groups, teaching confirmation and VBS as it helps our students and adults really see where things in the Bible happened and how things looked. I loved the maps, timelines and photos throughout that helped get me geared up for teaching. I also let our education director use my copy for a while, and she wants her own now! This is a great resource for any ministry to help bring clarity and visualiztion to things in the Bible — a must-read.
–Brit Windel, Minister of Family Life and Spiritual Formation, Faith Community Church
After reading through The Complete Visual Bible, I actually prefer the title The Visual Bible. The title The Complete Visual Bible to me is a little bit of a stretch seeing that this is not an actual Bible at all. It does a very good job of illustrating the Bible and walking an individual through the pages of Scripture, but in order to get the complete Bible, one must be willing to have another copy of a Bible on hand and read the chapters referred to on each page.
I enjoyed the illustrations and the remarks made on each section. It was easy to follow and navigated through each page. I can see youth ministers using this in faily quiet time readings or as supplemental material for sermon prep.
I think it would be amazing if somehow the photos and illustrations could be included on a CD or DVD for ministers to use during sermons. When you are talking about a particular story, to have some of those illustrations visible would be a nice addition to a sermon.
–Jeff Dye, Minister of Students, Northcliffe Baptist Church, Spring Hill, Florida
The Complete Visual Bible paints with rather large brush strokes what is happening and an overview of chapters or clumps of chapters at once. Miller does skip some chapters; I checked into a few of them, and overall I found they were not germane to where Miller was trying to go with this volume. I found there were times when science was placed on par or above what the Bible said; other times readers are left with questions; and other times it reinforced what the Bible says.
–Matt Murphy
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