The story is told of a new pastor who visited a children’s Sunday school lesson. After standing quietly at the back of the room for a few minutes, he asked the young people, "Who tore down the walls of Jericho?"

"It wasn’t me," shouted young Tommy.

The pastor was unfazed and repeated the question to the children. "Come on now, who tore down the walls of Jericho?"

Suddenly alarmed, the Sunday school teacher took the pastor to one side. "Pastor, Tommy’s a good boy. If he said he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it. I believe him." The pastor was stunned. Later, he related the story to the Director of Christian Education.

The director frowned when the pastor was finished. "I know we have had trouble with Tommy in the past. I will have a word with him."

By now the pastor was totally baffled. He left the Director of Christian Education and approached a deacon. Once again he told the whole story, including the response from the teacher and the Christian Ed director.

The deacon listened patiently and then smiled. "Yes, pastor, I can see your problem. But I suggest we take the money from the general fund to pay for the wall and leave it at that."

I have long believed there is a need to encourage pastors, Sunday school teachers, and Bible teachers, along with every fellow laborer for Christ, to know the Scriptures thoroughly from a practical point of view. Much time and effort is spent learning about the Bible when perhaps more time is needed just reading each verse of Scripture and meditating on what is actually being said. To that end, we offer Simple Questions and Answers in Scripture.

The uniqueness of Simple Questions and Answers is that each verse of a book of the Bible has at least one question and answer. Most verses, however, have two or more. Special Notes are added for some verses in order to provide supplemental material and Old Testament reference cited or alluded to.

A Student’s Study Guide is available whereby the questions are asked but the answers are withheld so that a person can write in his or her own response to be reviewed with someone using the main text which includes the answers. The Student’s Study Guide is an excellent tool for private Bible study, parents who are home schooling their children, Sunday school classes, or small study groups.

Again, the primary objective is to stay close to the biblical text and consider what each verse of each Bible book is simply saying. We are continuously adding new Student and Leader Guides for each book of the Bible so check back often for updates.