Daily Bible Reading Podcast

Today I will do my best to convince you that the last 12 verses of Mark 16 shouldn’t have brackets around them or footnotes that cast doubt on their authenticity. I believe that they are authentic Scripture inspired by God. Now, I try to stay away from saying anything controversial in the Daily Bible Reading Podcast series, and it kind of bothers me that here in this first extra podcast of the year, I will say things that quite a few people with seminary training will consider leaning too much to the conservative side of the scale. But I feel constrained to be controversial now so I will come right out and say it: I believe what Moses (Deut. 8:3) and Jesus (Luk. 4:4) said: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word of God.” If we are to live by ‘every word’, then it makes sense to me to believe that God would preserve every word for us. Please remember that all Bible translations were made by humans. This means that there is no such thing as a perfect Bible translation, as almost all good versions

Hi there! I’m so glad you have clicked to listen to this introduction to the Digging Deeper Daily Bible reading plan and podcasts for 2025. If you want to read the Bible in a great reading plan that will hold your attention and enable you to stay with the program, you are in the right place. If you want to listen, the complete Bibles I have recorded following my reading plan are the New Living Translation and the Good News Bible. If you can, do both: listen to the podcast while reading along. My name is Phil Fields. I’m almost 75 years old and happily married to Gale. We have three children, and five grandkids. In 1983, when our kids were still small, our family went as Bible translators to Papua, Indonesia. We finished a New Testament translation for the Orya people in 2005. Since that time I have been leading an organization which is translating the Bible into the national language of Indonesia. We’re hoping that the entire Bible in the Plain Indonesian Translation will be finished at the end of 2025. Our s

Hi Everyone! I’m so glad that you are listening to this extra podcast episode, because something that may cause confusion is going to happen soon. If you are listening to the NLT podcast series, and if you are now ready to listen to episode 345, you are used to seeing your next episode appearing daily at the top of your app's list. Starting this Sunday, my volunteer secretary, Vicky, will be releasing seven episodes in a row, just minutes a part. So when you open your podcast player on next Monday, your Monday episode will be the 7th one down the list. Then no new episodes will be released until the next Sunday. In other words, every Sunday afternoon, episodes for Monday through next Sunday will be released. With most podcast players, the episodes you have aready listened to are shown in a different color than your not-yet-listened-to episodes. So hopefully it will always be visually clear where in the list for your next episode is. For instance, in the Antenapod app, episodes I have listened to are listed wi

AMOS 5-6:One device that Amos used in yesterday’s reading was rhetorical questions. He asked a whole series of them like this one: 3:4 GNT Does a lion roar in the forest unless he has found a victim? All of his rhetorical questions expect the unspoken answer, No. And they all led up to this one: Amo. 3:8 NLT The lion has roared— so who isn’t frightened? The Sovereign LORD has spoken— so who can refuse to proclaim his message? And, surprisingly, the message the Lord proclaimed next was an invitation to Israel’s enemies to come and witness Israel’s destruction. After the unforgettable denunciation against Israel’s wealthy women— whom he calls ‘cows’, he lists some of the previous acts of judgment against Israel— things like drought. And after each one are the words, “but you still would not return to me.” Chapter 4 ended with these awesome words: Amo. 4:12 GNT “So then, people of Israel, I am going to punish you. And because I am going to do this, get ready to face my judgment!” 13 God is the one who made the m

Lesson 6 THEME: Buckle up the belt of truth by believing you are ACCEPTED, SECURE, AND SIGNIFICANT. According to Dr. Neil T. Anderson, nearly all Christians struggle to overcome Satan’s lies in at least one of these three areas: 1) I’m not accepted. No one wants me. God certainly couldn’t want someone like me. Even though I confess sins, I never feel that I am fully forgiven. 2) I’m not secure. I am weak. The evil one is stronger than I am. I'm gonna fall into the trap of sin and never get out. 3) I’m not significant. I never live up to anyone’s expectations, even my own. I am worthless and stupid. If you are a believer in Christ and believe in what God’s Word says, these are lies. I hope that the outcome of this lesson is that you know which of the three lies is the one you struggle with the most. Then, when you figure out which is your weakness, Anderson’s Freedom In Christ Ministries gives you verses you can memorize to combat the problem. https://www.ficm.org/about-us/who-i-am-in-christ/ Buckle the belt o

EZEKIEL 24-25:Yesterday in Ezekiel we heard the shockingly graphic story of the two adulterous sisters, which were really the cities of Samaria and Jerusalem. ISAIAH 8:In yesterday’s reading, Isaiah was sent to Ahaz, and the message to the king contains a prophecy that probably had two fulfillments— one in King Ahaz’ time and another at Jesus’ birth: “The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).” Had the New Testament not explicitly stated that Jesus’ birth was a fulfillment of this verse, the similarity would be considered just an interesting coincidence. HEBREWS 4:In chapter 3 we read about God promising another day for the fulfillment of giving Israel a place of rest. And that other day is called ‘today’!     Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Strea

EZEKIEL 16:This book should make modern day ‘prophets’ reconsider what they do in the Lord’s name. In this book we have heard again and again that the Lord will punish those who prophesy falsely. And in the part about the wood of a vine being useless in yesterday’s reading, there is only one useful thing a grape vine does, and this is bear grapes. And God was saying that since Israel did not bear the proper fruit, He would judge them, and do this without delay. The complaints become even more graphic in today’s reading. ISAIAH 1:For a number of years now, Isaiah has marked the end of my year. We will be reading Isaiah in our poetry portions until day number three hundred and 65. Since I start my readings anew every January 1st, I always enjoy the preparation Isaiah gives for Christmas, and also the correspondences with Revelation in the New Testament, which we also will read at the end of our reading calendar. Isaiah was written between 739 and 681 BC. I am of the opinion that the break in material at chapter

This seems to me to be a good time to talk with you about how to understand the prophetic books of the Bible, as we now are starting to read the Babylonian exile prophet Ezekiel. And starting in a week and extending to the end of the year, our poetry readings will be from the prophet Isaiah, who lived 200 years before Ezekiel. Near the end of the year we’ll read the minor prophets in quick succession. All the books in the prophetic genre are hands-down the most difficult books to understand in the Bible. So I hope I can give basic pointers in this episode that will be helpful to you from now on to the end of the year. I will start with quoting a paragraph from How to Read the Bible for all it’s worth (by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart) that gives one reason people have difficulty with the 16 prophetic books of the OT: We come to these books with false expectations. Speaking about the word ‘prophecy’ they state: For most people this word means what appears as the first definition in most dictionaries: “foretell

2CHRONICLES 31:A sign of how far Judah and Israel had wandered from the Lord was that even the Passover was not celebrated. When Hezekiah reinstituted the Passover celebration, it was the start of a real revival. ECCLESIASTES 7:I find it interesting that Solomon would say that everything has been decided beforehand. GNT certainly implied Who it was who decided beforehand, but NLT makes that explicit: Ecc. 6:10 NLT Everything has already been decided. It was known long ago what each person would be. So there’s no use arguing with God about your destiny. Not about the issue of destiny, but about another key point presented in chapter 6, I think that Solomon would have taken back some of his words if he could have listened to what Jesus taught in yesterday’s reading in Matthew. MATTHEW 20:In yesterday’s reading, Jesus taught how evil divorce is, He blessed children (because they are so close to the kingdom of God), and He taught about the difficulty for rich people in this world to enter the Kingdom of God. And

THEME: Buckle up the belt of truth by FOCUSING YOUR GAZE ON CHRIST. OK, in my last episode I told you about my nightmare. There was a visitor on my porch that night. That visitor was a picture of the demon who had gained a foothold in my life. He had been tempting me for years and knew just how to do it. He got on the exercise bicycle on my front porch— which, as I told you, did not exist— rather it was a symbol. I believe that the Lord helped me figure out the meaning of that symbol. The night-time visitor got on the bike and kind of lazily gave a few turns of the wheel. But he was watching me. This time the wheel didn’t do the trick. Normally if he said the tempting two words and generated that flickering light by turning the wheel, I would go back into my past to re-live one of several temptations. Now I will say the awful truth: His temptation was sexual fantasy. If I went with him on the journey into my past, I would fantasize about taking advantage of situations where in the past I had wisely avoided co

This is a bonus episode republished from my JoySightings.info podcast.

Day 4  THEME: Buckle up the belt of truth about RESISTING SATAN. All of the Buckling the belt episodes are scattered throughout the Bible reading calendar. This episode will be folded in at episode 219. You can find this and all the other Buckling the belt episodes by searching for the word ‘buckling’ at dailybiblereading.info. Searching for that word might also work in your podcast app. After searching for answers in the Bible and reading a few books that talked about the topics we read about in days 1-3, I found myself still bothered and worried because I couldn’t seem to experience the level of victory that others talked about. I will tell the story today about how the Lord gave me the answer to my problem by showing me how to resist Satan. Satan is alive and well. Yes, there are demons. No, Satan himself probably doesn’t have time to bother you or me directly. But he leads an army of evil spirits. They will not want you to listen to this podcast. Please try to push through their opposition. The more you f

Recorded July 7, 2023 Buckling the Belt of Truth, lesson 3 THEME:  following the SPIRIT’s lead I will not read all the verse numbers, nor will I always cite which translation I am quoting from. If I don’t say which translation, it is either NLT or GNT. The complete information is found in the episode notes. One of the mistakes I made in trying to find victory over my evil desires was thinking that the spiritual reality of my death and resurrection with Christ was going to be the key that would give me total victory over sin. It doesn’t work that way. But the reality I find is that the Holy Spirit empowers all the truth about our unity with Christ. The Spirit is actually the Answer to the prayers we made based on the first two lessons for bucking the belt of truth. He is our rescuer from evil desires (our ‘flesh’) which is bent on taking us to spiritual death. He is the power for transformation, the creator of a new creation, the motivator of our hearts. But realizing the role of the Holy Spirit is not like

1SAMUEL 25:God gave protection and victory to David. In a scene that must have caused Saul's men to roll their eyes several times, Saul was humbled before them as David directly confronted him. But after making peace, they didn't go back to the capital together. PSALM 105a:Today’s psalm is for teaching and reminding each generation of the children of Israel about the great things God has done for the Jewish people. ROMANS 9a:What wonderful promises God has given to us in chapter 8 of Romans! That chapter always reminds me of a time when a Christian leader did wrong to me, and then said that it really didn’t matter because it would all turn out OK because of Romans 8:28. That is the ultimate of hypocrisy! It ruined that verse for me for a long time. But God DOES indeed work all things for good for all of us who fulfill the conditions stated. This chapter also reminds me of Eloise Burson— the wife of one of my spiritual fathers, Richard. Some years after her husband's death, she showed me how her Bible— if you

1SAMUEL 15:Jonathan saved the day! He and his faithful armor bearer kind of took a leaf out of Gideon's play book and agreed on a sign that would show what God wanted them to do— although they didn't ask for confirmation like Gideon did. They took the adventure God set before them and won an amazing victory, and God worked with them by causing panic among the Philistines. After lapses and dithering at the beginning, Saul went on to be a great military leader. Note that Ahijah, the priest, is Eli's grandson. PSALM 99:Take off your sandals, because this ground is holy! Enjoy this psalm proclaiming God’s majesty and holiness. ROMANS 5—6:4:God’s ways are always counter-intuitive for humans. One would think that if one is right with God and at peace with him, that everything would be smooth sailing from then on, with health, wealth, and prosperity. God shows his love for us by treating us like sons and heirs— meaning, He gives us problems and trials to cause us to grow and better reflect his glory. There is a wond

1SAMUEL 3-4:Yesterday we heard Hannah's poetic and prophetic prayer of praise. R Then we heard of the contrast between the boy Samuel serving the Lord, while Eli's sons were scoundrels. Finally a “man of God” (a prophet or perhaps even an angel) gave a long prophetic warning to Eli. Today we will see that prophecy come true. PSALM 92:This is another favorite psalm of praise! ROMANS 2:Yesterday we heard the first part of some bad news which makes the Good News ‘good’. This reminds me of the movie Second Hand Lions. In the movie a main character has a lecture on ‘how to be a man’ that he frequently has given in his career. It starts out, “Understand this: All people are basically good.” However in the movie, all we see in that character's past life and in the current way he lives is that mankind can't be trusted and you gotta’ build high fences around your property, and have your gun and fists ready. According to Scripture and what we will read in Romans, mankind hasn't been ‘basically good’ since the Garden of

Review: This podcast is Day number 2 in my series about Buckling the belt of truth. In the first day in this series (which can be found by searching for 195 or the word ‘buckling’, I explained what I consider to be the first step in putting on the belt of truth. The belt of truth is one of seven parts to the Christian’s armor found in Ephesians 6. But I suggest that we make this clarification: Buckle the belt of truth by believing what God says about you in the Bible. The belt of truth is put on by believing what God says. (Remember: Believing = faith.) The belt of truth includes all of the truth found in Scripture. But if you just believe a lot of general truths found in the pages of the Bible, but don’t believe what the Bible says about YOURSELF (your own identity), it would be like leaving your house with your belt in your belt loops, but not buckled. Everyday we live in a spiritual war zone. You’ll be at a great disadvantage if your belt isn’t buckled! The main thing I am after in this belt-buckling is li

A few years ago I published a YouVersion reading plan entitled Buckling the belt of truth. In this podcast I’m reissuing the first episode of that reading plan. Here I am at 72. I'm beginning to not be so surprised at my own age. Being so very elderly, perhaps it is time to share some grandfatherly advice. Maybe I have some of you fooled. Some of you may think that an elder missionary like me has it all together and that I don't ever sin. You might think that I have conquered all weaknesses and no longer have episodes of sinful thoughts. You would be wrong. And I suspect that I don’t fool everyone. People who really know me have seen my weaknesses. However, if I am working with the right information, a lot of you have struggles with sin the same way I do. So let me start by calling our attention again to these frequently quoted verses: 2 Peter 1:3-4 NLT'15 3 By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called

I am releasing this episode number 12 of Joysightings at the DBRP feed in order to let you know about my recordings of Tales of the Kingdom and Tales of the Restoration, by David and Karen Mains. You can find the other chapters of these two books at Joysightings.info. It was perhaps in 1989 that a precious friend sent the two books to us, when we were living in the rainforest of Papua, Indonesia. Our children were at just the right ages to enjoy the full impact of these stories. It is a joy for me now to share these with you also. Each book consists of 12 chapters written as allegories. You will enjoy the deep symbolic meanings that underlie the story of characters with names like Caretaker, Mercy, and Hero. At the Joysightings.info site, the first chapter of Tales of the Kingdom is episode 12, and the first chapter of Tales of the Resistance is episode 25. When I made the podcast recordings, I was reading from the first edition of the two books of Tales, published in 1983 and 1986 by David C. Cook. The books

LEVITICUS 17-18:Yesterday we learned about regulations concerning uncleanness caused by bodily discharges of all kinds. Then we heard the procedures for the high priest to perform yearly on the day of atonement. PSALM 19:Today’s Psalm is a famous poem celebrating the heavens and God's creation, and secondly celebrating the perfection of God's Word. LUKE 12b:In yesterday’s reading in this chapter, Jesus warned about hypocrisy, and one of our biggest fears— fearing what other people will think of us. I want to read a clear version of these three verses: Luk. 12:8 [PET “I tell you the truth, everyone who says publicly here on earth, ‘I am a follower of Jesus’, I, the Son of Man, will also acknowledge them as my followers in the presence of God’s angels. 9 But those who deny me here on earth, saying they are not my disciples, I will also say that they are not my disciples in the presence of God’s angels.//GNT “I assure you that those who declare publicly that they belong to me, [I,] the Son of Man will do the sa