Last week I

ran a real mind boggler- a Bible Brain Teaser picked

up from the pages of the Fayetteville Christian Caller,

the newsletter of the Fayetteville Christian Church. It

was a real challenge, both for those who know the bible

and for those who don't. It concerned a paragraph which

contained 22 books of the Bible...hidden among the words.

Well? How

did you do? I admit I never got the last one...and never

would have. It wasn't a word you'd normally consider a

book of the Bible...unless you were a minister...or had

some type of ministerial training or background. I

certainly never heard of it. I had to call Daniel

Overdorf, senior minister at Fayetteville Christian

Church, to find out the last book. A couple of people

hollered "foul" when they learned that last

one, including a couple of folks here at the office. And

we discovered if you insert the word "usually"

in the sentence which says it takes a minister to find

one, i.e. "...we admi t it us ually takes a

minister..." then you will easily have the book of

Titus.

But the

real solution, according to Rev. Overdorf, is that the

book of Exodus, in the Hebrew Bible, is called the book

of Names. And that word appears in the first sentence. If

you picked up on that, give yourself an A-plus. Here's

the solution to the brain teaser...the hidden books of

the Bible are in bold.

It is re mark able that the names

of one-third of the books of the Bible can be hidden in

one short paragraph. It was an interesting job to

hide them, and finding them will not be a f luke or

an accident. T ruth fully, the search for f acts

will be a revelation for numbers of our

readers. As you search f rom ans wer to answer,

however, don't get yourself in a jam, es pecially

since we want this to be a mos t enjoyable

experience for you. Just keep looking and thin king s o

you won't want to sla m at the w alls in frustration

if you don't find them all right away. Y es, ther e

will be some that are really easy to spot, and if one mis judges

a name or two, he can always call on St. Jude for

help. I will readily admit it takes a minister to find

one of them, and there will be lamentations and

gnashing of teeth when it is found. Some people think the

composition of one's genes is a factor in how well

one does in this exercise. One little lady said s he

brews a cup of tea so she can concentrate better, and

another c hose a cup of coffee and a john ny

cake to sustain her as she worked. So let's see how you

com pete. R elax now as you work, for there really

are twenty-two names of books of the Bible in this

paragraph.

<!--##############