06/29/2026
I was asked why I color coded the Bible. Here's a brief (1:48) video clip of my response.
Why did I color code 259,923 words in the Bible? Well, I knew I was going to be getting a brand new Bible for Christmas — a wide margin Bible, clean and pristine. I had marked in my previous Bible, but in a sloppy, haphazard kind of way. And I thought, "Before I make a single mark in this brand new Bible, I better have a system."
So I sat down and thought about it and obsessed over it for days. I thought about all the ways you could possibly mark the Bible. You can underline; you can highlight; you can change the color of the text. You can box, square, and circle things. You can have symbols, and you can have color variations on all those.
Then I made another list of what you'd want to mark in the Bible: repeated words, phrases, themes, and things like that. Finally, I ranked those lists in order of visual prominence (what would stand out the most and what would be the most subtle).
After matching those things up, I realized that every time you come to a passage of Scripture, you're always asking the same basic questions. You need the journalistic background context – the who, where, when, why, and how many. And I thought, wouldn't it be great to accelerate the process of finding all the context clues in the Bible?
🔵 If all the names of people were color coded in blue, you could identify all the characters quickly.
🟢 If all the geographic locations were in green, all the places could be found fast.
🟣 If the names of God were in purple, you could see God in every passage.
🔴 I did the same with numbers and time words and more — all the things that give you that context.
It took me 15 years to color code those 259,923 words, but the time investment was worth it! Not only has it benefitted me, but now thousands of others around the world are finding Bible patterns and context more efficiently.