Book Review: How to Memorize Bible Verses: The Fast and Easy Way to Memorizing Scripture

Yikes! This book basically employs a common technique for memorization whereby one turns words and numbers into pictures and then creates a bizarre story so as to remember the exact order of the thing needing to be memorized.

While I’m sure it can help in certain situations, I don’t know that it’s something that ought to be applied to Scripture.

For an example of how the author applies this method to Scripture, see the following (WARNING: Long quote):

Let’s look at Ephesians 4:11. The key words I’ve chosen to memorize are underlined. This is a challenging verse to correctly memorize in order due to the list of people it mentions.

“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, theevangelists, the pastors and teachers…”

…[He then gives a chart of words and corresponding images]...

Here is my story to link together all of those images. Be sure to picture everything clearly in your mind.

“Imagine that you are trying to sew up a hole in your jeans, which is currently revealing your bottom. The sewing needle you’re using is the size of a baseball bat and the thread is like bright orange string. You end up with some very bright and untidy stitch work. Sew = So

The stitching looks less than desirable, so you decide to cover it up with a fabric patch of Christ on the cross. Christ is wearing a crown of thorns and is bleeding, and once the patch is on, the blood from the picture starts to drip onto your jeans. Bright red drops of blood on the blue denim. Christ on the cross = Christ.

Then the picture of Christ comes to life, and he begins to sing a hymn about himself. For a picture so small you’d expect a soft, high pitched voice, but this is a deep baritone and extremely loud. The picture is quite animated as he sings the hymn about himself. Hymn self = himself.

In the middle of his hymn, the animated picture’s stomach starts to rumble, almost drowning out his loud singing. So he stops and pulls from his pocket a carton of twelve eggs. Each of the twelve eggs has a face painted on it and is dressed in tiny robes. The animated picture of Christ carefully chooses an egg and then gives you the rest of the carton. He gave them to you. Gave twelve eggs painted and dressed like the apostles = gave apostles.

You hold the carton of eggs in your hands and watch the remaining egg apostles all huddle together discussing something. Then they hoist up a big chart showing a graph of profits getting bigger and bigger, and the graph doesn't show a line but a picture of a pile of money getting larger and larger. Profits = prophets.

You watch the pile of profit on the graph getting higher and higher, and then suddenly the chart is ripped from the hands of the egg apostles by Linda Evangelista. Linda Evangelista is a former supermodel (if you can’t picture her clearly, Google her image or just picture a beautiful woman and name her Linda Evangelista). Evangelista = evangelists.[(1)]

Linda Evangelista takes the chart, tears it into tiny pieces, and adds it to some assorted pastas that she’s cooking, as if it were seasoning. There’s spaghetti, rigatoni and penne, and she drops the torn profit chart into each of them. No doubt the profits will make the pastas very rich (I apologize, I couldn’t resist). Pastas = pastors.

Once she’s happy with how the pastas are cooked, Linda Evangelista spoons them into buckets and gives them to teachers in their class rooms. She walks around, interrupting teachers in the middle of lessons to give them a bucket of pasta. Linda Evanglista is in such a hurry that she throws the pasta buckets at some teachers, and they get covered in pasta and rich sauce. Teachers = teachers.”

After reading this story you’ll be able to watch it like a move in your mind. You are sewing your jeans (So) and stick on a fabric patch of Christ on the cross (Christ), who began to sing a hymn about himself (himself) and then gave you some egg apostles (gave apostles). The egg apostles showed you a chart of profits (prophets) before it was snatched away by Linda Evangelista (evangelists) who added it to some buckets of pasta (pastors) which she handed out to teachers (teachers).

Now...in some respects I understand that there are different types of learners: audio learners, visual learners, etc. And if that’s truly the case, then this book probably most appeals to visual learners. And it really may prove to be a good mechanism for learning the exact wording of a particular translation of Scripture.

But at the same time we must remember that it’s our obligation as Christians to have a Biblical mindset of ethics in all aspects of life (1 Cor. 10:31). And so just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should (1 Cor. 10:23-24).

For instance, are the exact words of a particular translation the main point of Scripture, or is the exact meaning of God’s Word the important thing?

Now of course I’m going to uphold that the exact words are important in the original autographs (Mt. 5:18; Jn. 10:34-25; Gal. 3:16).

Yet at the same time, we see that those exact words (in the original autographs) give a particular meaning to the text, ameaning which seems to have the priority in Scripture. For instance, while the authors of the New Testament sometimes quote from the Hebrew, they also felt free to quote from the Septuagint when the meaning of the original Hebrew was still preserved; and other times used their own translations or allusions of the original while keeping the meaning intact. (See this article by Roger Nicole for a more in-depth look at this)

However, if one uses this methodology for memorizing Scripture I’m not really sure the outcome would be that of hiding the Scriptures in your heart so as not to sin against God (Ps. 119:11), or so that you might be able to encourage and teach others (Col. 3:16).

Perhaps that could be the end result. But it seems the more likely result is that you remember a bizarre story so that you can get the exact word order of a particular translation just right. And I don’t see how that is useful or even Biblical.

One casual remark by the author I found disturbing regarding this thought was when he said:

A good way to check if you’ve done this effectively is to see if you can recite the key words backwards. Start with the final image in the story and rewind through your mental movie. There is little practical benefit in being able to recite Bible verses backwards, but I suppose everyone needs a party trick.

Yes, I “suppose” the Bible was inspired and preserved so that we could have a “party trick.”


Another unbiblical principal that comes out in the author’s seemingly too-casual approach to Scripture is the following:

It’s obviously important being able to reference what Bible verse you are quoting. You lose street cred when you recite a verse and then say "That’s from the Bible … somewhere."

First of all - street cred? Seriously? Secondly, I believe the author of Hebrews would beg to differ - Hebrews 2:6: “It has been testified somewhere...” (emphasis mine) and then he goes on to quote from Psalm 8.

Obviously the reference system is helpful, but it’s certainly not necessary for the purposes of knowing God’s Word.

All in all, while I'm sure this book provides a useful method of memorizing exact word order for a particular translation, I personally don’t see how just understanding the meaning of the text won’t help you memorize it even more (and have a much deeper appreciation for it) than making up some bizarre (and I would even say somewhat irreverent) story so that you can get the exact translation-specific word order and reference spot on so that if all else fails you can use that knowledge as a party trick.

To me, it just seems a far cry from, and nothing what the apostle meant when He said, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom…” (Col. 3:16).

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(1) That's right. Linda Evangelista. An unbelieving supermodel who has had multiple lovers out of wedlock and coined the phrase: "We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day." Now certainly we can pray for her salvation and sanctification from the same Holy Spirit who gave us and gives us ours. But is it really a good idea to use her as an image when thinking of the word translated in English Scripture as "evangelist"?