Well, welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history.

Last week we started the story of Robert Murray Machane.

And though we only lived 29 years, that was a 29 years that were chock full of all sorts of interesting things and we simply did not have enough time to get to it all.

So here we are again spending time with this young minister from Dundee, Scotland.

Well if you remember last time together, I read to you from his letter to his church with his Bible reading plan.

I tried to track this down to see if this is the first of the read through the Bible in a year plans.

I can't say that definitively, but what I can say is that this is a very popular one.

And what I find interesting about this is, if you remember, he wrote this in 1842.

He wrote this in December of 1842.

Constructed a plan, and in his plan, you're reading about four chapters of the Bible a day, you're reading

through the New Testament and the Psalms actually twice in a year, and you're reading through

the entire Old Testament once in a year.

He put this out for his church church and what's interesting is he himself

never finished it because it was in that very next year 1843 that he died.

He made it as far as March 25th into the year 1843 and again as we said last time that

was 27 days shy of his 30th birthday.

Well in addition to this Bible reading plan which he himself never finished and also in

addition to his book of that exciting and adventurous missionary journey to Israel that was a bestseller

in its own day.

There were other things that Robert Murray-Machain did as well.

He's very quotable.

As I mentioned. He had a pension for poetry and as a young man evidenced significant aptitude

...