The Bible is the one of the most revered, respected and celebrated books of all time. Since the first published book (a Bible, of course!) rolled off the Gutenberg press over five hundred years ago, it has been a perpetual bestseller, far surpassing sales of any other volume in human history.
Some parts of the Bible are easy to understand yet many are not. With its lengthy genealogies, Levitical laws, and apocalyptic visions, even for sincere readers reading with understanding can be a monumental task. Obviously, to navigate these challenging and potentially treacherous waters, you need a trustworthy and experienced guide — someone who knows both the world of the text and the ways of God in human history.
That is why Bruce Wilkinson’s newest course Survey of the Bible was created – to help people understand the big picture of God’s Word.
When we had the opportunity to review the Survey of the Bible product, we were thrilled. To be honest, I’ve been struggling to read and teach the Bible to my children lately. Not that I don’t want to, but I was feeling overwhelmed and didn’t quite know how to incorporate it into our homeschooling efforts. Within 15 minutes of starting the streaming videos and looking at the workbooks, I knew this was the answer to my prayers.
Let me start off with the streaming videos. They very easily help you see the big picture. The structure of the Bible is broken down so you can better understand and plan your teachings. Utilizing memory pegs, animation and creative staging, difficult content is made mind-easy and memorization become effortless.
With 66 books in the Bible (Old Testament – 39, New Testament 27), this course really brings everything to life and helps you better understand.
You can Stream this course for FREE by going to: https://www.brucewilkinsoncourses.org/collections/dvds/products/survey_preorder?variant=36512439809 and using the code BSHSS at checkout to get the Streaming version for free!
You can fill in your workbook as you take the course, or you can review later on (which is what I preferred to do. My kids liked filling in the blanks as they went — this made it easier for them to remember — for me, I liked the review part after I had watched the course.
You can also get 20% off your workbook! Use code BSHSW at checkout! **Must purchase this separately because only one coupon code can be used at a time.
There are a total of 8 sessions — all around 30 minutes each — long enough to constitute a lesson, but not too long that you get bored or the information gets too overwhelming. They are bite sized enough for my kids to watch them multiple times, as well. I thought we would go over the course once, like we normally do with online courses, however, we watched these sessions multiple times over the last few weeks. Since there is so much information in the Bible, I thought watching these a few times would really help with our memorization and my kids liked Bruce so much that they actually WANTED to watch these sessions at least twice with me. I can’t even tell you how happy that made my Christian Mom heart. 🙂
In Session 1, Bruce goes over the books of the Old Testament, Session 2 goes over the places of the Old Testament, Session 3 is about the people of the Old Testament, and Session 4 is about the periods of the Old Testament.
The remaining sessions keep the same format, but just for the New Testament. Session 5 goes over the books of the New Testament, Session 6 goes over the places of the New Testament, Session 7 goes over the people of the New Testament, and Session 8 is about the periods of the New Testament.
For example, in Session 2, you learn the most important PLACES of the Old Testament — you don’t learn every place that is mentioned in the Bible, but the most important are highlighted and Bruce goes over each one in enough detail to make it memorable. Including bodies of water, regions/nations & cities. This overview and lesson was incredibly helpful to me and my family. It helped us better understand the scale and what was going on at the time.
In Session 3, Bruce went over the most important people in the Old Testament. For example, I didn’t know there are 31 Zachariahs, 5 Johns and 13 different Josephs. No wonder I had trouble understanding! With over 2,000 people in the Old Testament, Bruce goes over the top 10, which was REALLY helpful, including something about them. My kids absolutely LOVED this session. It was by far their favorite. Bruce really helped us all understand the players/characters in the Bible. The Bible can feel so abstract but knowing about each person, or at least the most important, makes the teachings feel so much more real.
This all repeats for the New Testament — the same format for each session. The really exceptional part of all of this is that not only are these sessions incredibly helpful, but you can also purchase the Workbook (HIGHLY RECOMMEND!). The workbook has colorful photos and cartoons in it to help the kids get excited about learning. I can’t express how important it is to me that my kids are excited and interested in learning and workbooks like this one help them get more excited about the content. Bruce did an exceptional job at the content, layout and review throughout the workbook.
Some other really great things I love about the Survey of the Bible Course:
- They’ve broken the historical timeline into 20 different periods – 10 in the Old Testament and 10 in the New Testament. These “bite sized” historical periods help to better understand the history and makes it much easier to teach to my kids. They are actually quite interested in the content now, which is something I struggled with for years before this resource.
- They provide maps (that make sense) so that you can discover where the Garden of Eden was, where Abraham came from, where Jesus walked, Paul was imprisoned and much more. These are absolutely amazing. My kids had so much fun interacting with these and we put them up on the wall of our homeschool room.
- What I loved most though, was the consistent review throughout the videos and workbooks. It is such a crucial element in making this big-picture tool your own. After just a few sessions, I had such a better knowledge of the history, events and people than I ever had before. Even as an adult, this is the perfect tool to better understand the Bible and the history.
The workbook is an extra cost, but it is filled with colorful charts, illustrations, fill-in-the-blanks and masterful summaries of the stories of both the Old and New Testaments, making it the perfect companion to Bruce Wilkinson’s Survey of the Bible DVD series. As I mentioned above, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND it! My kids learned more with this course and workbook in a few weeks than they’ve learned from their father and I teaching them for the last year. This course and workbook are truly an answer to prayer and I hope that it helps your family as much as it has mine.
REMEMBER: You can Stream this course for FREE by going to: https://www.brucewilkinsoncourses.org/collections/dvds/products/survey_preorder?variant=36512439809 and using the code BSHSS at checkout!
You can also get 20% off your workbook! Use code BSHSW at checkout! **Must make two separate purchases because only one coupon code can be used at a time.
Have any questions about the course and contents? Send me an email! I’m happy to personally respond! Jessica@HowToHomeschool.net.
Further, there are also a bunch of skill courses if you like the teaching style of Bruce Wilkinson. I’m already looking at other courses by Bruce because I love his style!
Have you taken this course? What did you think about it? I would love to hear from you!
Learn more about the course here: https://www.brucewilkinsoncourses.org/collections/dvds/products/survey_preorder?variant=36512439809