This website is intended to be a companion resource to a physical book, published in a 2015 print edition, entitled Three Books. The links at the top connect you to text and tools by which you can dig deeper into the context of the three books, namely, the Gospel of John, Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistle to the Romans. An additional link provides selected general online Bible resources. Additionally, there is a link to next steps reading recommendations.

The 2015 (1st) Edition of Three Books is now out of print. A 2016 (2nd) edition is being prepared and scheduled for completion by the end of the year (2016). If you would like to receive information as the availability of the 2016 edition please fill out the “Newsletter” form available on this page.

Also I will be providing an abbreviated version of Three Books as an emailed pdf. Presently I am planning of producing such edition as the first four chapters of the Gospel of John. Again, please fill out the form to received such pdf when it becomes available.

Free Electronic Resources for Bible Reading in Three Books (John, Acts, Romans)

In the alternative to the 2015 print edition of Three Books, or a limited pdf (discussed above), there are many wonderful online Bible resources. Here are some recommendations for reading these three books–John, Acts, and Romans–on your own.

Free resources, like Grace itself, for reading John, Acts, and Romans:

Bible Gateway www.BibleGateway.com
This website offers the complete Bible in some 40 English translations, and many foreign translations. After opening the webpage, which if you click on the above highlighted text, will take you directly to that site, simply type “John” into the search window. The screen will show you four different Bible books with “John” in the title, and all the verses in the New Testament (NT) containing the word “John.” We are interested in the Gospel of John which BibleGateway identifies ad the “Book of John.” (The other three books are by the same writer but were later written, short letters (Epistles).

Clicking on “Book of John” brings you to the first chapter of the Gospel of John, that begins with “In the beginning was the Word....” Each chapter is presented on a separate page. The left / right arrows enable you to scroll between chapters. Upon finishing John, you will Acts next, and in turn the Epistle to the Romans.

At the top of your screen, just to the right of the box containing “John 1” is a pull down menu giving all the available translations you can use. My recommendation for a first time reader is to use a modern but accurate translation such as: New English Translation (NET), English Standard Version (ESV), New King James Version (NKJV), New American Standard Version, or the New International Version (NIV). If you struggle with reading English you may try a more reader-simple translation such as The Good News Translation (GNT).

The Holy Bible App (for smart phones) www.TheHolyBibleApp.com
An excellent (and free) app is called, simply, “Holy Bible.” The relevant website home is given directly above at the hot link.

Our three Bible books are readily available there in many languages. There is embedded in each verse many helpful resources such as commentaries and available word studies.

Why Three Books?

The Bible is a long, complex collection of 66 different “books” written over a period of at least 1500 years. It’s constituent books begins with Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning God…”) and ends, about 1000 pages later, with the Book of Revelation (Chapter 22:21 “The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”). In between, it claims (in about one million words in 31,000 verses) to be the very “Word of God.” [words highlighted in blue and underlined are links to other pages on this site].

For someone new to reading it, whether young or old in age or the Faith, it is difficult to get started, or re-started, reading the Bible. Beginning at the beginning, in the Book of Genesis, is a fine place to start. But, this means that the New Testament, which begins with the Gospel according to Matthew, will not be reached for months, or years, or never, because of the challenge of sticking with such a cover to cover reading plan.

And, there is another ‘problem.’ It is said of any book with a depth of meaning that “you cannot read it once.” By that it is meant that reading a book of substance with prior comprehension requires understanding substantially what it is about in order to grasp anything that is read. What one normally does is stumble through or or multiple readings as best one can recognizing that the first several read-throughs will enable only a very limited understanding. But with each reading, one’s background grows, sometimes by trial and error, such that subsequent readings enable both the big picture and the fine details to become clearer and more complete. With the Bible such a process is, because of its special nature, a never ending process of discovery and learning.

Our purpose here is providing a tool and method for getting started on what should be a lifelong journey of coming to know the Person and Work of God. Such method is to begin our reading by a focus on just three books of the Bible: the Gospel of John (“John”), the Book of Acts (“Acts”), and the Epistle to the Romans (“Romans”). These are three sequential books from the New Testament, beginning with the last Gospel book, John. John, as with the other three Gospel writers focuses on the earthly life of Jesus to His crucifixion and resurrection. Acts begins with the resurrected Jesus, and maps the initial proclamation of the Gospel message. Romans is the first and most doctrinal of the letters (“Epistles”) to the early church. By covering these just these Three Books we will experience the sweep of God’s Work from eternity past (John 1:1) to the earthly ministry, teaching, and claims of Jesus Christ, to His death and resurrection, to the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in communicating the message of the Gospel to the New Testament Believers in the founding of the church (in Acts) and the core doctrines of Grace (in Romans). There is no greater density of revelation in just 65 chapters.

To aid our reading, Three Books employs four highlighting tools, as described briefly in the physical book and in more detail here.

So our method is to begin our access to the entire story of the Bible by using these Three Books (John, Acts, Romans) to understand certain foundational truths about the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. We will use a particular reading / understanding tool for our study, namely threading through these 65 chapters the idea of two journeys, one in our physical world (Space – Time), and a distinctly different, internal, Spiritual journey coming to understand certain things about the ultimate reality that extends through and beyond the bounds of Space – Time.

If you have completed reading John in the book Three Books, you will have noted certain verses numbers highlighted in black block. These highlighted verses can be reviewed again and again, even memorized, to remind oneself of the great story contained within John. A table of the highlighted verses in John is provided here. Likewise, the highlighted verses for Acts is here, and Romans here.

Comments, corrections, suggestions can be sent to raz followed by the at sign and this website (threebooks) dot org.

Bible texts cited in this web site, and the companion book Three Books, are taken from the NET Bible®. Scripture quoted by permission. All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the NET Bible®, copyright ©1996-2006 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved. Information on the NET Bible translation is available at: http://netbible.com

The complete NET Bible is available online at: https://net.bible.org/#!bible/Matthew+1

https://lumina.bible.org/bible/Matthew+1

The companion “app” for the NET Bible is “Lumina Bible Study”

For questions re availability of Three Books or comments you may reach me by interpreting the below:
ra(then add what is in this paren with “z3b” followed by the “a t” designator, followed by “three books” but with no spaces then ending “.” org)