Acts, Chapters 1-14

This book was unexpectedly great. Admittedly, this book didn’t * quite * satiate the things I was looking for when I grabbed it, but this is entirely my fault for not actually looking fully into what this book was prior to purchasing (the BOGO sale at the Christian bookstore won me over, what can I say).

I grabbed this from the bible study section in search for a theologically-founded read, with particular interest in the book of Acts since I’ve been interested in early church history. Like I said, I was hoping for something that was theologically or even more historically founded, from which I could then springboard from to other reads from relevant sources. I was originally quite bummed to see this wasn’t what this book was — actually, there weren’t really any references throughout this (besides, you know, the Bible, obviously) (though there was a short list of further reading resources included at the end). I didn’t realise that this book (and the rest of the Thru the Bible Commentary series) is actually a transcription from McGee’s 1990s Thru the Bible radio broadcast show (like I said, very rookie mistake on my end for not realising this prior to purchase).

As of such, this book (and I’d surmise the rest in this series, too) are written super colloquially (we’re reading what someone has verbally articulated, so the vernacular is very easy to digest). However, I found myself enjoying this more than I’d expected to, as it similarly felt like listening to a sermon. The structure of this book is also very straight forward– McGee literally goes through the first 14 chapters of Acts without skipping a verse. He breaks down sections in nicely-sized chunks, then reflects for a couple of short pages on those verses. I also found his commentary to be quite informative; while I was indeed bummed that there weren’t citations or references to other historical/theological texts, McGee does break down concepts in an incredibly easy-to-digest manner. After each book chapter, I really did feel like there was a clear and informative takeaway that I could then reflect upon. I really did learn quite a lot from this book, albeit not in the way I was originally expecting. I’m quite looking forward to reading more in this series!

Overall Rating:5/5

Would I Recommend? Yes