fellow believers about genuine concerns of welfare and spiritual growth. Letters (consider your letters to your friends) are not written simply for someone to pick out single sentences. They are written to be read as units. So let's see what it is like to read a New Testament letter as a unit.
While I was a student I heard it said that repeated reading of the same scripture is a wonderful way to grasp the real meaning of its content. So, one Sunday, I read Hebrews ten times. Well, Hebrews remains one of the richest books of Scripture to me. The insight that I caught of the sense of the whole truth of the glory of the priesthood of Christ became wonderfully vivid. That wasn't simply the result of a discipline; that was the Holy Spirit blessing the Word.
Now if I was a pastor, perhaps I would offer my people an experiment. We would spend the first week with a covenant that we would, all of us, read the book ten times. Then come together and ask them to tell what the repeated reading has done for them. I believe a strong interest in all the scriptures would arise out of the impact of such a reading.

CBL:We are working hard to present Biblical studies using the latest high-tech tools for Distance Learning. Do you consider the "Information Superhighway" a valuable method of increasing Biblical literacy?

Packer:Well it could be, if people are motivated to use it. The basic problem is motivating people that don't read much to read more, and motivating people that don't read at all to start reading. See, I'm a historical theologian. I know very well that in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries there were more people who wanted to learn to read than there were people to teach them. Neither do you have a problem with wanting to read in primitive tribal situations; they beg visiting moderns to teach them to read.
You have enormous problems nowadays with illiteracy in the modern world because so much is done for us by our technology. People find that life is easier, that they can get along without the "sweat" of reading, and so they choose instead to watch the television, read the cartoons. You don't have to read, except to fill out a form.
The first thing you must do is convince people that it is a wonderful thing to read. Competing with the MTV generation is difficult, if not impossible. Somehow you must make people aware of the benefit of reading, the excitement of reading, the fun of reading--strike whatever note is going to motivate them. Start there.

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