"I get to read the bible in many ways - through listening to sermons, doing my daily devotionals like Our Daily Bread, receiving a verse of the day through email everyday...what's the big deal with reading the WHOLE bible back to back?"

Firstly, it's fantastic to be constantly engaging with the bible through hearing it preached, reading books about it, devotionals that make you read a couple of verses a day for reflection... that's all very well and good! But if that's all you ever do, I reckon you've really missed out.

Put it this way. Take The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) trilogy, written by J.R.R Tolkien. Let's say you own the series, and regularly read small sections of the books every day at random (although not in order), listen to friends talk about the books, play the LOTR game on playstation, read books about the LOTR series...but have NEVER read the entire series itself from beginning to end. Anything strange there?

The example seems ludicrous, but it's not a far cry away from what many of us do with the bible. We read countless books about the bible, talk about the bible with friends, even read bits of it every day, but the question remains - why haven't we read the whole thing?

Back to the LOTR example - if I only ever read bits of the series here and there, but never the whole thing, how much of the whole story would I know? Well I'd probably have a good idea of the main characters, the main events, the rough plot...but I'd be missing the point, wouldn't I? There are countless things that I could only discover or learn if I read the whole series straight through, that I would never have gotten if I'd only read bits and pieces. 

Same with the bible. For sure, in God's sovereign grace, there's LOTS you can get out of it just by reading chapters here and there. But you'd be missing the point if you never read the whole thing. Read the bible cover to cover, and you'll find so many things just fall into place. All the verses you've memorised and loved will suddenly have contexts! All the famous bible stories you've treasured will finally make sense in the big scheme of God's overall plan for mankind. Joseph and his coloured coat and the famine suddenly becomes way more than just a story about perseverance and honesty - it's a shining testimony to the great providence and wisdom of God in maintaining the line of Jacob (Israel) because of His covenant made with Abraham, through which the saviour of the world would eventually emerge! And that's just barely scratching the surface. There's an amazing continuity that permeates through all 66 books in the bible - it almost makes you think that the same mind authored them all ;)

In summary - why do you need to read the whole bible? Well, why wouldn't you? That's what you do with books! Why not do it with the BEST book ever written.