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Feb. 8, 2022
The Daily Bible with F. LaGard Smith ( Going Deeper Series )
With so many different Bibles available today, it is good to know the best ones for specific purposes. When it comes to reading through the Bible from start to finish, the job has been made much easier by F. LaGard Smith in his Daily Bible. Learn how this Bible has changed lives and hear LaGard’s personal story of a project birthed by one simple statement made by his father.
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Going Deeper with F. LaGard Smith of the Daily Bible (Out of Zion Episode #82)
Transcript
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Welcome to Out of Zion with Susan Michael, an exploration of the Bible and the land of
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Israel.
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From ancient biblical sites to the story behind the stories, join Susan on a journey through
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the most exciting book on the planet.
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Hit the subscribe button for future episodes, which will deepen your faith and bring the
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Bible to life.
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And now here's our host, Susan Michael.
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Well, welcome everyone to the Out of Zion podcast.
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And today we are going to be going deeper on one of the neatest tools of understanding
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your Bible that is available today.
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You know, in times past, I think Christians probably really struggled to understand the
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Bible and the story of the Bible because of the way that the books of the Bible are not
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totally chronological.
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Yes, it begins with Genesis and the creation of the earth and it ends with Revelation and
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the return of Jesus.
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But in between, it's not in perfect chronological order.
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And sometimes there's even the same story is told more than once.
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For instance, the four gospels are telling the story of the life and ministry of Jesus
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four different times.
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So a wonderful thing of new technology is the advent of a chronological Bible.
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And there are several on the market today.
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But we want to introduce to you what really is the gold standard of chronological Bibles.
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And it's called the Daily Bible.
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We are using that Bible as a part of our Walk Through the Bible teaching series.
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And today we have a really special treat.
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First of all, we want to share with you a testimony of just how powerful the Daily Bible
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and its presentation is.
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And then we want to introduce to you the compiler of the Daily Bible, Effley Gard Smith.
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So you can hear his story and how God led him to do this project.
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So first I want to introduce to you, Julaine Stark.
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She is the content marketing manager for the ICEJ and for the Out of Zion podcast.
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She previously was on staff with the ICEJ in Jerusalem and then relocated to the United
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States and to the United States branch of the ICEJ.
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And has been helping us really behind the scenes for this podcast each week.
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She has a special testimony about the impact of the Daily Bible in her life.
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So I want to introduce to you, Julaine.
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Well, thank you, Susan.
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It's unusual to be in front of the camera, but I'm delighted to share my experience of
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how I discovered the Daily Bible because it truly has profoundly changed how I read scripture
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and see everything about the story behind the stories.
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And so I was living in Jerusalem at the time.
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It was my second year of working on staff at the ICEJ, and a friend of mine who had finished
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up her time there left some things with me, including this Daily Bible.
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And I thumbed through it and my first impression was, I don't think I'm ever going to use this
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Bible because all of the books are all mixed up.
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I'll never be able to find anything.
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And I just put it in a drawer.
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So but the timing of the Lord is so perfect because that fall, right after the Feast of
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Tabernacles, this huge event that we planned for, and there's all of these long hours and
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everybody is worn out.
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At the end of the Feast of Tabernacles, we have these little bits of vacation, and it
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was about four weeks into this time of kind of quiet rest.
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It was a Shabbat a Saturday morning.
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And I'm finally really wanting to dig into Scripture again.
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And I'm looking around my room.
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I'm looking around my apartment.
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I can't find my Bible anywhere.
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So the only Bible I could find was this one.
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So I pull out this Bible.
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I'm like, well, I guess I can figure it out.
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And so I open it up and I notice that there are dates in the top because it's daily readings
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for the days of the year.
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So it's like, well, it's November 4th.
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You'll see what they have to say on November 4th.
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And I open it up and the commentary for the reading of the day on November 4th, the heading
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is In Jerusalem for Feast of Tabernacles.
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And I sat there.
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It has been six months since the last Passover, which Jesus evidently did not attend because
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of threats on his life, and it drew me in.
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It's like we had just celebrated it in Jerusalem.
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I understood the context.
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And as I go to the reading, it's in the book of John, I think, chapter 7.
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And so it sets it up for me.
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All of a sudden, here's this very Jewish man and his friends celebrating this very Jewish
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feast of tabernacles, and it changed in a moment.
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It took scripture and it just shifted everything for me.
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And so I read through the rest of the story there.
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Then I went back and I ignored the dates and I went back to the life of Jesus.
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And for the first time in my life as a Christian, I've loved Jesus since I was a little girl.
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But for the first time in my life, his life came to life for me.
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And it was chronological.
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And I was able to follow the story.
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And when they'd be talking about the times of Passover, and I understood it's in the
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spring, and then he would be walking through to the fall.
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And it was like I was literally walking in the land with Jesus and walking out his life
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as an observer in an entirely new way.
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So that was my first, probably six months or a year with the daily Bible.
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And so when I went back and started at the beginning, when I got to the stories of the
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kings and what was happening in Israel, and now I'm living in Israel, what was happening
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historically, and then what the prophets were saying, suddenly the words of Isaiah and Jeremiah
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took on totally new meaning.
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It's like light bulbs went off in my head almost every day because I was understanding
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why God was saying this because of the historical context.
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And a couple of times I had just been in the regions where that had happened.
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And so even if you can't live in Israel like I was living, it wakes you up to the very real
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nature.
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And this is a book about real people, real events, and God actively being involved, woven
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in to the events of their life.
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And that's what this book did for me.
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I can show you, I just have so many notes of the revelations and just the new perspective
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that reading chronologically did for me.
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So I would highly recommend this to anyone and everyone.
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It's been transpirational.
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You had no idea that you were going to move to the United States and be part of a program
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to take this Bible to many, many people and to really make it come alive.
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So that is really a God thing, isn't it?
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Absolutely.
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It truly is.
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All right.
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Well, thank you, Julaine.
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And we are so excited today to be able to go deeper with a good friend, Efflegard Smith,
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the compiler of the daily Bible.
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You know, we get questions from people about which translation and the different types
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of Bibles.
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And I will say that there's no substitution for the Bible exactly as you have bought it,
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the traditional compilation of the Bible.
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But if you really want to take a time and read through the whole Bible, then it's best
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to use a chronological Bible.
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And I have done my own, where I used my own Bible and I was flipping back and forth trying
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to find the different passages based on a reading guide.
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And I've also, I bought a chronological Bible years ago that I used.
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And then I came across the gold standard of chronological Bibles.
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And it is here, in regard the narrated Bible.
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I bought back probably in 1990, somewhere around there.
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It says it's the second printing from 1985.
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And I recommended it to many people.
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And of course, now it has been published as the daily Bible.
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And the compiler of this and the author of the narration in it is Efflegard Smith.
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And I was so delighted to find that he lived in Tennessee.
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I was flying through Tennessee.
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I was able to meet with him.
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We had a delightful lunch together by getting to know the man that did this just amazing
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chronological Bible.
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And so I'm so excited to be able to introduce him to each of you and that you would get
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to know more of his story and to be encouraged to use this Bible.
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So, my God, I want to welcome you.
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I thank you so much for being with us today.
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So, thank you for inviting me on your program.
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So, please, would you just introduce yourself to our audience?
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Tell them a little bit about your background and who you are.
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Well, it's not terribly complicated.
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I was born in Texas and we're in Oklahoma and Texas and Alabama.
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My father was a preacher.
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I have three older sisters, one younger sister.
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I went to school for college in Temple Terrace, Florida, near Tampa at Florida College.
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Chased a girl out to Oregon who ended up marrying someone else, which was fine.
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Got me to the West Coast, which was wonderful.
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I went to Willamette University there, finished up my undergraduate studies and then went
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right into Willamette School of Law, graduating in 1968.
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For three years, I was in the District Attorney's Office in Eastern Oregon, in Malheur County,
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Badd Hour County.
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And for a year and a half, I was the assistant prosecuting attorney there and then became
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appointed by the governor of Oregon to fill out my predecessor's term for a year and a
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half as the district attorney.
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And then I went to the Oregon Bar to be an administrator for about a year.
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I told my mother I was going to be a bartender.
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I was wondering what kind of bartender I was going to be.
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I said, well, I'm going to be tending the Oregon State Bar.
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But then I had gotten a call from Pepperdine University at that time, Orange County, California.
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And they were looking for someone to teach criminal law.
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And so I decided to go down there and ended up teaching at Pepperdine Law School for about
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27 years.
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Started when I was five, I wish.
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But I taught criminal law and trial practice and law and morality seminar, various other
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courses as well.
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But more toward the middle of that experience, I started writing books.
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One was a criminal law text for my students.
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But after that, the next project that I took on was exactly what you've been talking about,
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initially called the Narrated Bible and later on the Daily Bible.
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Since that time, I got married.
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I was an old bachelor at the age of 48 when I finally got married to a gal who hadn't
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gotten married until she was 38.
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So we're kind of late bloomers, don't have children.
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We have returned to live in Ruth's hometown of Murphysboro, Tennessee.
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I had a couple of visiting stents as visiting professors at Liberty University for about
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a year and a half and fought in the University of Montgomery, Alabama for four years.
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But now, retired, maybe one of the more interesting facets is that I worked a deal with my dean
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many years ago to teach only half of a year each year and to take off to write during
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the spring and summer time.
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And because of that opportunity, I ended up buying a little cottage over in the Cotswolds
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of England.
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That was my sort of riding escape.
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And Ruth and I have enjoyed living there five or six months a year.
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And then we back here in Murphysboro, Tennessee.
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So that should bring us up to today, Donas.
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Well, you are definitely a gifted writer.
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And of course, coming from a background of law and teaching law, one of the things I
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think that the legal profession does is it does teach you how to write and how to articulate
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how to present a case.
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And so I'm sure that it played a role in this amazing project.
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But I also know that you have an interesting story that goes all the way back to your father
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that birthed this idea.
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So would you share that story with us?
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I love sharing this story.
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It's just phenomenal, actually.
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My dad was preaching in Birmingham, Alabama, and the church had provided a home across
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the parking lot from the church building.
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And dad and I had been to his office at the church building and were coming down the steps
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to the parking lot.
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I remember the exact place and moment that it happened.
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I don't know.
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I don't remember at all whatever else might have led to his one statement that has kick-started
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all of this.
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But he said on those steps as we were coming down, he said, somebody ought to put the Bible
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in the right order.
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And intuitively, I knew what he was talking about.
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As a preacher, he'd been trying to get people to understand the Bible, very difficult to
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figure out where the prophets prophesied in the history of Israel and so forth.
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And just to keep the events even of Jesus' life somewhat in order, since they were repeated
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in the four gospels.
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So that little statement when I was about, I guess, 14, stayed with me.
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And when my father died suddenly at the age of 63, I don't know exactly what prompted me,
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but I thought, you know, dad had such a good idea.
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I think I'm going to try to do that for him.
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And so I started working nights, weekends, and summers and so forth on doing what ended
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up as now what we know as the daily Bible.
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And from that sort of one idea, all of this has come.
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And I like to kind of get a lesson out of this for everybody else, that you never know
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what your words are going to do.
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Because if dad could know, I mean, there have been a couple of million copies of this Bible
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sold and hopefully read, which would mean that my father through this project, through
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his idea for this project, would have reached far more people than he ever would have reached
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from the pulpit himself.
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You just got to be grateful for the opportunity to pass on to the next generation, maybe just
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one sentence.
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But I believe you were ordained to do this because you certainly did an exceptional job.
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What I love about the daily Bible not only is it chronological, and there's different
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ways of approaching a chronological Bible, but you actually combined the repetitive,
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like the four gospels into one narrative so that nothing was left out.
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I used to read through the Bible chronologically, and when I get to the gospels, I just pick
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which one I was going to read, and then I'd go on.
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And here they're all four combined.
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And how you did that, I don't know.
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But so it's a read through.
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It is divided up into 365 daily readings.
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But what really makes it over the top is your narrative where you have introductory remarks
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to various sections.
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It's not every day, but most days.
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And it really helps the reader to stay in touch with the story behind the stories.
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Well, Susan, that's easy.
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My dad never said anything about the narration part, but I'm a teacher.
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I'm a teacher of heart, and I know that you've got to lay background for people so they can
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get context and understand where they're heading and so forth.
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So that was just, I don't know, just was a natural for me.
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It just had to be.
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How do you bridge between this story and that story and this century and that century?
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And there were a lot of things that the average reader wouldn't understand in the reading
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for the day if you didn't give some background to say, OK, in those days, this is what they
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were talking about.
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So that just came on pretty naturally, actually.
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And that's the beauty of reading through a Bible chronologically is that you are following
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the story.
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And so you're reading everything in its right context and when it happened.
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And therefore you understand things a lot better.
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And of course, it doesn't replace doing book studies and all like in your normal Bible
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and digging deeper in word studies and all of that.
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But every few years, I like to just do a read through chronologically and do it in a year.
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And I feel so good about myself when I finished the year.
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Yeah.
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The one verse I left out had to do with pride.
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So.
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And humility, but what I want to know is how did you do this?
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Because you actually did this project back in the 70s and 80s before we all had a personal
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computer.
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The organizing of the verses and all.
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I can't imagine you had to have been so organized.
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Well, I mean, that too is part of my character.
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I'm an organized kind of guy.
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Ask my wife.
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But it's both more difficult and not as difficult as one might think in a way in its simplest
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format.
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It is a giant cut and paste job because I mean, by and large, we know when the prophets
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prophesy and we know where in the history of Israel they would have been.
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It's just that the text itself doesn't take us there in that order.
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So all I had to do was to make that order, the natural order, the known order happen.
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So that was pretty easy.
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I just started working and by the way you talk about technology.
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I was working in pencil and eraser on legal pads.
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That's how primitive it was.
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But I certainly didn't rewrite the verses, the text at all.
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I didn't even attempt that because if you open up this particular presentation of scripture,
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what you'll see is that I have divided everything up into make sense paragraphs.
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And I don't do it with verses inserted into that.
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All the verses are out in the margin where you can see where they've been drawn from.
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But I don't want us to think in terms of a book chapter in verse because too many times
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in the history of my experience with people, it was often the case that people would cherry
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pick a verse to prove a point that that particular verse had nothing whatsoever to do with in
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context.
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So to try to avoid the abuse of scripture that way, I just said, look, I'm going to
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do it by sense paragraph.
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Each paragraph will have a heading to kind of help you navigate through the reading to
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the day.
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But the verses are going to be out in the margin.
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And so what you will see there too, as you said, I've combined any of the texts that's
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overlapping like in Kings Chronicles and sometimes the prophets overlap with that account as
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well within the four gospel accounts.
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So I will tell you in the text, in the margin, I will tell you which verses I'm combining.
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So you'll always know every verse is not reported because there are virtual duplications with
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the gospel writers, but every verse is accounted for.
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And if you look at the index at the back and you want to know where a particular verse
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is, then you can find your way to that page and see it there at least referenced.
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But I had to avoid kind of mishmashy stuff because the difference between Matthew, Mark,
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and Luke, even the synoptic gospels, we call them, the three that seem to be pretty closely
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aligned, you would get unto there by back forward.
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There were words that if you were trying to put every word in there, it would not have
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made sense.
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So I typically would take the fullest account of any one of the gospel writers and then
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splice in any additional information that would have been supplied by one of the other
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writers.
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So it's not every word of the traditional Bible in there, but it's very, very close.
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And the idea was to help you read, not to make a technical structure that you couldn't
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get through, but to help you read.
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And I think we've pretty much accomplished that.
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And it's available in two different translations, right?
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Or there more?
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It is.
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No, it's in the new international translation was the original one I put it in.
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And then the new living translation has been added in the last couple of years.
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It's your organization.
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That's really what I love the organization of it all.
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And you're, you know, as you said, you have headings, not just narration, but the headings
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you put in there, the way you did it.
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And it's just a magnificent project.
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And I thank you for all that.
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How many years did it take you to do this before it was published?
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About five.
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But you said that you have sold what, over two million copies of the daily Bible now?
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Yeah, I think so.
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Sometimes I let my mind wander to think it's 300 or three million, but I think it may be
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closer to two million.
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It doesn't really matter, but the most gratifying thing is that through Eastern European mission,
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we now have this translated into all sorts of Eastern European languages, Russian language
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and Ukrainian language, which will be interesting in the upcoming conflict.
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I don't know.
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And maybe the both sides will be reading it.
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But we've given away, I don't know, how many thousands upon thousands upon thousands
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through Eastern European mission.
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So it's not just the ones that are sold, but also those that have been given away as a
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part of the mission effort.
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Well I can't imagine the impact that this has had.
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And I just was wondering if maybe there's one particular testimony or one particular
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story that sticks out in your mind of someone that has given you feedback on their use of
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the Bible?
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Well, your own producer has her own wonderful story about it.
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I think more than any individual testimony, what's been very gratifying is that whole
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congregations in fellowships of all stripes have ordered in a copy for each of their members
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and they've gone through it together in a year with either Bible class or sermons based
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upon it throughout the year.
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And so to think that a whole congregation, many of whom have never read the Bible from
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cover to cover, are doing it together and encouraging one another to do that.
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I mean that just blows my mind.
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And so I don't know, it's just when I look into the text and I see God using broken vessels
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to be prophets or to do whatever God wants them to do to advance the kingdom, very humbling
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to think that God would use this broken vessel and I'm not being facetious about that at
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all.
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I'm not the person that had I been God I would have chosen to do this work.
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It's just amazing that he gives an idea to a man who talks to his son, who then takes
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that man out of the picture and then that son comes along and does something that you
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have no idea where that work is going and it goes into all the world.
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It's just an amazing process.
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To me that's a more personal testimony than the ones that I've gotten through the night.
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Well we are certainly thankful for what you did and the effort.
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We know, I mean millions of lives have been impacted through this around the world to better
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understand God's Word and therefore to be able to better walk in fellowship with him
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and fulfill the calling that the Lord may have on their lives.
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And so we are using the daily Bible as a part of a year long walk through the Bible that
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we've done, that we've recorded and making available to churches as a accompaniment but
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a part of the requirement is that comes with the daily Bible so that they will all read
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through it with us and follow along.
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And as you say we have new technologies and new platforms and so we want to make sure
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to be out there on all of them reaching a new generation.
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But I want to make sure they all know about this, the daily Bible.
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And so I want to invite everyone, if you haven't already purchased a copy of it, to go down
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below in today's show notes and we will have a link to how you can purchase the daily Bible.
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You can purchase the course through Amazon but we also will link to it in our ministry
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store.
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Your purchase through our ministry will help us to continue to produce broadcasting like
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today to bring this information to you.
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So I really encourage every one of you to get your copy of the daily Bible and to begin
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a really life-transforming read-through of the Bible chronologically where you understand
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that grand story that is behind all the stories.
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So I want to thank our special guest, Lagarde Smith, for being with us today and sharing
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his testimony.
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Thank each of you for listening and we will see you back here next week on Out of Zion.
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Thank you so much.
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Welcome to Out of Zion with Susan Michael, an exploration of the Bible and the land of
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Israel.
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From ancient biblical sites to the story behind the stories, join Susan on a journey through
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the most exciting book on the planet.
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Hit the subscribe button for future episodes, which will deepen your faith and bring the
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Bible to life.
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And now here's our host, Susan Michael.
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Well, welcome everyone to the Out of Zion podcast.
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And today we are going to be going deeper on one of the neatest tools of understanding
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your Bible that is available today.
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You know, in times past, I think Christians probably really struggled to understand the
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Bible and the story of the Bible because of the way that the books of the Bible are not
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totally chronological.
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Yes, it begins with Genesis and the creation of the earth and it ends with Revelation and
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the return of Jesus.
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But in between, it's not in perfect chronological order.
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And sometimes there's even the same story is told more than once.
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For instance, the four gospels are telling the story of the life and ministry of Jesus
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four different times.
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So a wonderful thing of new technology is the advent of a chronological Bible.
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And there are several on the market today.
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But we want to introduce to you what really is the gold standard of chronological Bibles.
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And it's called the Daily Bible.
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We are using that Bible as a part of our Walk Through the Bible teaching series.
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And today we have a really special treat.
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First of all, we want to share with you a testimony of just how powerful the Daily Bible
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and its presentation is.
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And then we want to introduce to you the compiler of the Daily Bible, Effley Gard Smith.
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So you can hear his story and how God led him to do this project.
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So first I want to introduce to you, Julaine Stark.
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She is the content marketing manager for the ICEJ and for the Out of Zion podcast.
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She previously was on staff with the ICEJ in Jerusalem and then relocated to the United
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States and to the United States branch of the ICEJ.
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And has been helping us really behind the scenes for this podcast each week.
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She has a special testimony about the impact of the Daily Bible in her life.
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So I want to introduce to you, Julaine.
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Well, thank you, Susan.
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It's unusual to be in front of the camera, but I'm delighted to share my experience of
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how I discovered the Daily Bible because it truly has profoundly changed how I read scripture
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and see everything about the story behind the stories.
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And so I was living in Jerusalem at the time.
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It was my second year of working on staff at the ICEJ, and a friend of mine who had finished
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up her time there left some things with me, including this Daily Bible.
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And I thumbed through it and my first impression was, I don't think I'm ever going to use this
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Bible because all of the books are all mixed up.
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I'll never be able to find anything.
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And I just put it in a drawer.
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So but the timing of the Lord is so perfect because that fall, right after the Feast of
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Tabernacles, this huge event that we planned for, and there's all of these long hours and
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everybody is worn out.
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At the end of the Feast of Tabernacles, we have these little bits of vacation, and it
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was about four weeks into this time of kind of quiet rest.
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It was a Shabbat a Saturday morning.
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And I'm finally really wanting to dig into Scripture again.
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And I'm looking around my room.
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I'm looking around my apartment.
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I can't find my Bible anywhere.
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So the only Bible I could find was this one.
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So I pull out this Bible.
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I'm like, well, I guess I can figure it out.
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And so I open it up and I notice that there are dates in the top because it's daily readings
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for the days of the year.
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So it's like, well, it's November 4th.
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You'll see what they have to say on November 4th.
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And I open it up and the commentary for the reading of the day on November 4th, the heading
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is In Jerusalem for Feast of Tabernacles.
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And I sat there.
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It has been six months since the last Passover, which Jesus evidently did not attend because
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of threats on his life, and it drew me in.
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It's like we had just celebrated it in Jerusalem.
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I understood the context.
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And as I go to the reading, it's in the book of John, I think, chapter 7.
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And so it sets it up for me.
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All of a sudden, here's this very Jewish man and his friends celebrating this very Jewish
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feast of tabernacles, and it changed in a moment.
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It took scripture and it just shifted everything for me.
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And so I read through the rest of the story there.
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Then I went back and I ignored the dates and I went back to the life of Jesus.
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And for the first time in my life as a Christian, I've loved Jesus since I was a little girl.
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But for the first time in my life, his life came to life for me.
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And it was chronological.
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And I was able to follow the story.
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And when they'd be talking about the times of Passover, and I understood it's in the
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spring, and then he would be walking through to the fall.
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And it was like I was literally walking in the land with Jesus and walking out his life
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as an observer in an entirely new way.
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So that was my first, probably six months or a year with the daily Bible.
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And so when I went back and started at the beginning, when I got to the stories of the
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kings and what was happening in Israel, and now I'm living in Israel, what was happening
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historically, and then what the prophets were saying, suddenly the words of Isaiah and Jeremiah
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took on totally new meaning.
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It's like light bulbs went off in my head almost every day because I was understanding
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why God was saying this because of the historical context.
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And a couple of times I had just been in the regions where that had happened.
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And so even if you can't live in Israel like I was living, it wakes you up to the very real
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nature.
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And this is a book about real people, real events, and God actively being involved, woven
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in to the events of their life.
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And that's what this book did for me.
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I can show you, I just have so many notes of the revelations and just the new perspective
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that reading chronologically did for me.
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So I would highly recommend this to anyone and everyone.
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It's been transpirational.
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You had no idea that you were going to move to the United States and be part of a program
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to take this Bible to many, many people and to really make it come alive.
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So that is really a God thing, isn't it?
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Absolutely.
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It truly is.
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All right.
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Well, thank you, Julaine.
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And we are so excited today to be able to go deeper with a good friend, Efflegard Smith,
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the compiler of the daily Bible.
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You know, we get questions from people about which translation and the different types
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of Bibles.
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And I will say that there's no substitution for the Bible exactly as you have bought it,
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the traditional compilation of the Bible.
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But if you really want to take a time and read through the whole Bible, then it's best
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to use a chronological Bible.
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And I have done my own, where I used my own Bible and I was flipping back and forth trying
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to find the different passages based on a reading guide.
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And I've also, I bought a chronological Bible years ago that I used.
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And then I came across the gold standard of chronological Bibles.
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And it is here, in regard the narrated Bible.
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I bought back probably in 1990, somewhere around there.
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It says it's the second printing from 1985.
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And I recommended it to many people.
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And of course, now it has been published as the daily Bible.
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And the compiler of this and the author of the narration in it is Efflegard Smith.
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And I was so delighted to find that he lived in Tennessee.
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I was flying through Tennessee.
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I was able to meet with him.
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We had a delightful lunch together by getting to know the man that did this just amazing
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chronological Bible.
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And so I'm so excited to be able to introduce him to each of you and that you would get
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to know more of his story and to be encouraged to use this Bible.
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So, my God, I want to welcome you.
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I thank you so much for being with us today.
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So, thank you for inviting me on your program.
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So, please, would you just introduce yourself to our audience?
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Tell them a little bit about your background and who you are.
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Well, it's not terribly complicated.
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I was born in Texas and we're in Oklahoma and Texas and Alabama.
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My father was a preacher.
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I have three older sisters, one younger sister.
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I went to school for college in Temple Terrace, Florida, near Tampa at Florida College.
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Chased a girl out to Oregon who ended up marrying someone else, which was fine.
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Got me to the West Coast, which was wonderful.
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I went to Willamette University there, finished up my undergraduate studies and then went
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right into Willamette School of Law, graduating in 1968.
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For three years, I was in the District Attorney's Office in Eastern Oregon, in Malheur County,
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Badd Hour County.
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And for a year and a half, I was the assistant prosecuting attorney there and then became
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appointed by the governor of Oregon to fill out my predecessor's term for a year and a
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half as the district attorney.
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And then I went to the Oregon Bar to be an administrator for about a year.
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I told my mother I was going to be a bartender.
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I was wondering what kind of bartender I was going to be.
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I said, well, I'm going to be tending the Oregon State Bar.
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But then I had gotten a call from Pepperdine University at that time, Orange County, California.
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And they were looking for someone to teach criminal law.
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And so I decided to go down there and ended up teaching at Pepperdine Law School for about
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27 years.
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Started when I was five, I wish.
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But I taught criminal law and trial practice and law and morality seminar, various other
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courses as well.
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But more toward the middle of that experience, I started writing books.
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One was a criminal law text for my students.
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But after that, the next project that I took on was exactly what you've been talking about,
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initially called the Narrated Bible and later on the Daily Bible.
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Since that time, I got married.
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I was an old bachelor at the age of 48 when I finally got married to a gal who hadn't
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gotten married until she was 38.
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So we're kind of late bloomers, don't have children.
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We have returned to live in Ruth's hometown of Murphysboro, Tennessee.
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I had a couple of visiting stents as visiting professors at Liberty University for about
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a year and a half and fought in the University of Montgomery, Alabama for four years.
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But now, retired, maybe one of the more interesting facets is that I worked a deal with my dean
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many years ago to teach only half of a year each year and to take off to write during
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the spring and summer time.
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And because of that opportunity, I ended up buying a little cottage over in the Cotswolds
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of England.
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That was my sort of riding escape.
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And Ruth and I have enjoyed living there five or six months a year.
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And then we back here in Murphysboro, Tennessee.
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So that should bring us up to today, Donas.
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Well, you are definitely a gifted writer.
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And of course, coming from a background of law and teaching law, one of the things I
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think that the legal profession does is it does teach you how to write and how to articulate
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how to present a case.
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And so I'm sure that it played a role in this amazing project.
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But I also know that you have an interesting story that goes all the way back to your father
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that birthed this idea.
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So would you share that story with us?
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I love sharing this story.
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It's just phenomenal, actually.
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My dad was preaching in Birmingham, Alabama, and the church had provided a home across
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the parking lot from the church building.
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And dad and I had been to his office at the church building and were coming down the steps
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to the parking lot.
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I remember the exact place and moment that it happened.
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I don't know.
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I don't remember at all whatever else might have led to his one statement that has kick-started
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all of this.
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But he said on those steps as we were coming down, he said, somebody ought to put the Bible
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in the right order.
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And intuitively, I knew what he was talking about.
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As a preacher, he'd been trying to get people to understand the Bible, very difficult to
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figure out where the prophets prophesied in the history of Israel and so forth.
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And just to keep the events even of Jesus' life somewhat in order, since they were repeated
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in the four gospels.
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So that little statement when I was about, I guess, 14, stayed with me.
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And when my father died suddenly at the age of 63, I don't know exactly what prompted me,
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but I thought, you know, dad had such a good idea.
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I think I'm going to try to do that for him.
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And so I started working nights, weekends, and summers and so forth on doing what ended
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up as now what we know as the daily Bible.
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And from that sort of one idea, all of this has come.
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And I like to kind of get a lesson out of this for everybody else, that you never know
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what your words are going to do.
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Because if dad could know, I mean, there have been a couple of million copies of this Bible
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sold and hopefully read, which would mean that my father through this project, through
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his idea for this project, would have reached far more people than he ever would have reached
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from the pulpit himself.
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You just got to be grateful for the opportunity to pass on to the next generation, maybe just
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one sentence.
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But I believe you were ordained to do this because you certainly did an exceptional job.
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What I love about the daily Bible not only is it chronological, and there's different
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ways of approaching a chronological Bible, but you actually combined the repetitive,
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like the four gospels into one narrative so that nothing was left out.
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I used to read through the Bible chronologically, and when I get to the gospels, I just pick
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which one I was going to read, and then I'd go on.
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And here they're all four combined.
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And how you did that, I don't know.
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But so it's a read through.
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It is divided up into 365 daily readings.
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But what really makes it over the top is your narrative where you have introductory remarks
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to various sections.
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It's not every day, but most days.
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And it really helps the reader to stay in touch with the story behind the stories.
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Well, Susan, that's easy.
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My dad never said anything about the narration part, but I'm a teacher.
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I'm a teacher of heart, and I know that you've got to lay background for people so they can
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get context and understand where they're heading and so forth.
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So that was just, I don't know, just was a natural for me.
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It just had to be.
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How do you bridge between this story and that story and this century and that century?
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And there were a lot of things that the average reader wouldn't understand in the reading
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for the day if you didn't give some background to say, OK, in those days, this is what they
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were talking about.
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So that just came on pretty naturally, actually.
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And that's the beauty of reading through a Bible chronologically is that you are following
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the story.
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And so you're reading everything in its right context and when it happened.
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And therefore you understand things a lot better.
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And of course, it doesn't replace doing book studies and all like in your normal Bible
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and digging deeper in word studies and all of that.
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But every few years, I like to just do a read through chronologically and do it in a year.
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And I feel so good about myself when I finished the year.
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Yeah.
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The one verse I left out had to do with pride.
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So.
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And humility, but what I want to know is how did you do this?
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Because you actually did this project back in the 70s and 80s before we all had a personal
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computer.
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The organizing of the verses and all.
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I can't imagine you had to have been so organized.
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Well, I mean, that too is part of my character.
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I'm an organized kind of guy.
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Ask my wife.
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But it's both more difficult and not as difficult as one might think in a way in its simplest
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format.
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It is a giant cut and paste job because I mean, by and large, we know when the prophets
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prophesy and we know where in the history of Israel they would have been.
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It's just that the text itself doesn't take us there in that order.
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So all I had to do was to make that order, the natural order, the known order happen.
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So that was pretty easy.
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I just started working and by the way you talk about technology.
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I was working in pencil and eraser on legal pads.
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That's how primitive it was.
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But I certainly didn't rewrite the verses, the text at all.
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I didn't even attempt that because if you open up this particular presentation of scripture,
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what you'll see is that I have divided everything up into make sense paragraphs.
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And I don't do it with verses inserted into that.
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All the verses are out in the margin where you can see where they've been drawn from.
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But I don't want us to think in terms of a book chapter in verse because too many times
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in the history of my experience with people, it was often the case that people would cherry
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pick a verse to prove a point that that particular verse had nothing whatsoever to do with in
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context.
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So to try to avoid the abuse of scripture that way, I just said, look, I'm going to
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do it by sense paragraph.
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Each paragraph will have a heading to kind of help you navigate through the reading to
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the day.
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But the verses are going to be out in the margin.
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And so what you will see there too, as you said, I've combined any of the texts that's
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overlapping like in Kings Chronicles and sometimes the prophets overlap with that account as
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well within the four gospel accounts.
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So I will tell you in the text, in the margin, I will tell you which verses I'm combining.
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So you'll always know every verse is not reported because there are virtual duplications with
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the gospel writers, but every verse is accounted for.
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And if you look at the index at the back and you want to know where a particular verse
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is, then you can find your way to that page and see it there at least referenced.
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But I had to avoid kind of mishmashy stuff because the difference between Matthew, Mark,
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and Luke, even the synoptic gospels, we call them, the three that seem to be pretty closely
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aligned, you would get unto there by back forward.
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There were words that if you were trying to put every word in there, it would not have
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made sense.
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So I typically would take the fullest account of any one of the gospel writers and then
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splice in any additional information that would have been supplied by one of the other
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writers.
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So it's not every word of the traditional Bible in there, but it's very, very close.
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And the idea was to help you read, not to make a technical structure that you couldn't
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get through, but to help you read.
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And I think we've pretty much accomplished that.
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And it's available in two different translations, right?
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Or there more?
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It is.
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No, it's in the new international translation was the original one I put it in.
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And then the new living translation has been added in the last couple of years.
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It's your organization.
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That's really what I love the organization of it all.
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And you're, you know, as you said, you have headings, not just narration, but the headings
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you put in there, the way you did it.
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And it's just a magnificent project.
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And I thank you for all that.
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How many years did it take you to do this before it was published?
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About five.
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But you said that you have sold what, over two million copies of the daily Bible now?
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Yeah, I think so.
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Sometimes I let my mind wander to think it's 300 or three million, but I think it may be
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closer to two million.
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It doesn't really matter, but the most gratifying thing is that through Eastern European mission,
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we now have this translated into all sorts of Eastern European languages, Russian language
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and Ukrainian language, which will be interesting in the upcoming conflict.
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I don't know.
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And maybe the both sides will be reading it.
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But we've given away, I don't know, how many thousands upon thousands upon thousands
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through Eastern European mission.
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So it's not just the ones that are sold, but also those that have been given away as a
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part of the mission effort.
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Well I can't imagine the impact that this has had.
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And I just was wondering if maybe there's one particular testimony or one particular
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story that sticks out in your mind of someone that has given you feedback on their use of
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the Bible?
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Well, your own producer has her own wonderful story about it.
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I think more than any individual testimony, what's been very gratifying is that whole
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congregations in fellowships of all stripes have ordered in a copy for each of their members
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and they've gone through it together in a year with either Bible class or sermons based
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upon it throughout the year.
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And so to think that a whole congregation, many of whom have never read the Bible from
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cover to cover, are doing it together and encouraging one another to do that.
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I mean that just blows my mind.
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And so I don't know, it's just when I look into the text and I see God using broken vessels
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to be prophets or to do whatever God wants them to do to advance the kingdom, very humbling
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to think that God would use this broken vessel and I'm not being facetious about that at
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all.
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I'm not the person that had I been God I would have chosen to do this work.
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It's just amazing that he gives an idea to a man who talks to his son, who then takes
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that man out of the picture and then that son comes along and does something that you
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have no idea where that work is going and it goes into all the world.
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It's just an amazing process.
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To me that's a more personal testimony than the ones that I've gotten through the night.
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Well we are certainly thankful for what you did and the effort.
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We know, I mean millions of lives have been impacted through this around the world to better
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understand God's Word and therefore to be able to better walk in fellowship with him
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and fulfill the calling that the Lord may have on their lives.
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And so we are using the daily Bible as a part of a year long walk through the Bible that
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we've done, that we've recorded and making available to churches as a accompaniment but
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a part of the requirement is that comes with the daily Bible so that they will all read
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through it with us and follow along.
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And as you say we have new technologies and new platforms and so we want to make sure
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to be out there on all of them reaching a new generation.
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But I want to make sure they all know about this, the daily Bible.
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And so I want to invite everyone, if you haven't already purchased a copy of it, to go down
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below in today's show notes and we will have a link to how you can purchase the daily Bible.
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You can purchase the course through Amazon but we also will link to it in our ministry
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store.
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Your purchase through our ministry will help us to continue to produce broadcasting like
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today to bring this information to you.
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So I really encourage every one of you to get your copy of the daily Bible and to begin
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a really life-transforming read-through of the Bible chronologically where you understand
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that grand story that is behind all the stories.
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So I want to thank our special guest, Lagarde Smith, for being with us today and sharing
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his testimony.
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Thank each of you for listening and we will see you back here next week on Out of Zion.
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Thank you so much.
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