Hitching a Ride on J. Vernon McGee's Bible Bus

The following poem was read by Dr. J. Vernon McGee during his Thru The Bible radio broadcast on Ephesians 6:1-9. The poem is titled "The Bible Bus":

I was standing along a long weary road;
Where I was going I don’t think I knowed.
I was tired and so hungry for so many things—
No destination, like a bird without wings.
A big storm was coming, I could see, in the sky;
With no place to go, I was trembling inside.
The cars passing by, they didn’t care
If I got caught in the storm—it didn’t seem fair.
Then I saw it coming, a big Cadillac
As black as the night, it didn't seem right.
The window rolled down and a face looked at me,
As evil a face as I ever did see.
He said, “Come with me; I’m going to hell.”
And what that man said to me I’ll never tell.
I turned and ran and fell in the ditch
As the wind and the rain wet every stitch.
Then all at once the clouds rolled away,
The rain stopped falling and the sun had its way.
I saw it coming, a big silver bus,
But I had no money, and that was no fuss.
But believe it or not, it stopped at my feet,
The big door, it opened, and oh, what a treat!
The bus driver smiled as he looked at me,
And he said that his name was Vernon McGee.
He said, “Welcome aboard,” with an old Texas twang,
“And money to us don’t mean a thing.”
I said, “Where are you bound down this long weary road?”
“We’re headed for heaven.” And he seemed like he knowed.
Well I stayed right on, and I’ve left it behind—
The heartaches and sorrows and that sad, worried mind.
He told me of Jesus, how He died on the cross,
How He is my Savior through gain and through loss.
Every mile takes me closer to my God and my home
Down this highway of sin in God’s bus, not alone.
God will keep it running to pick up the strays
And Dr. McGee will keep driving while he teaches and prays.

–Author unknown

How The Ryrie Study Bible Came To Be

The Ryrie Study Bible, 1978.

The following dialog is excerpted from a November 1, 2008 interview with Dr. Charles Ryrie that was published by The Baptist Bulletin. In the interview, Dr. Ryrie recounts how The Ryrie Study Bible came to be.

[Baptist Bulletin:] 

Can you tell us what led to your work on the Ryrie Study Bible?

[Dr. Charles Ryrie:] 

It started one year on the way to my first Christian Booksellers Association meeting in Cincinnati. On the bus going in, a publisher who had published a book of mine said, “I want to talk to you.” He wanted me to edit a multiauthor volume of some sort, I don’t remember now, a dictionary or something. I said, “No, thank you! I am no good at riding heard on a hundred authors, making deadlines, and all that.” So in return he said, “Propose something to me.” I thought about that a while. There weren’t many study Bibles available then. The Scofield Bible had just been revised. The Pilgrim Bible was good, and used. There was a Lutheran New Testament Study Bible, and the Open Bible was maybe out by then. . . . I’m not sure of the dates. So I told him, “I think evangelicals need another study Bible. Not like the Scofield—there’s nothing wrong with it—but more interpretive.” I tried to write something with exegetically standard notes. I would say that the Scofield notes are more thematic, a synthesis of things. (I like the Scofield, that is not a criticism, believe me.) So I proposed this to him, and he agreed.

So we agreed on a New Testament. That’s all they wanted to take a chance at. But by the time I finished my part, that publisher had been sold to a larger conglomerate. The man came back to me and said, “I don’t think we’ll be able to publish your Bible for years, because we’ve got so much going with this merger. So you have the right to do whatever you want with it.”

And ultimately I went with Moody [Press]. One reason was that at that point, Moody was pretty sure they could get rights to the New American Standard, which had just come out. (I had written the notes using the King James.) But they did get the New American, so the notes were adapted to that, and later to other translations as well. That’s how it came to be.