My people will live in peaceful dwelling places,
    in secure homes,
    in undisturbed places of rest.
Though hail flattens the forest
    and the city is leveled completely,
how blessed you will be,
    sowing your seed by every stream,
    and letting your cattle and donkeys range free.

• Isaiah 32:18-20

The Scripture above speaks of people and places and things.  Could that become a quiz?

This week, we are doing something completely different. It is an “open” quiz, in that there can be multiple answers.

Have you ever played the game, Scattergories™?  I believe that the original game was (is) made by Hasbro™.  I think that the actual game was around long before that in that I used to buy the huge Word Game variety packs at the book store, those inch-thick compilations of Crossword puzzles, Seek-a-Word puzzles, Acrostics, Logic puzzles, and such. 

They would occasionally fill up the bottom of a page with a Category puzzle, spelling a word vertically, one letter at a time, and then having categories in the columns.  As a result, you could conceivably have an infinite combination of puzzles.

The play of the quiz is simple. The answer starts with the letter and matches the category. For the letter “A”, Adam would be a man in the Bible, for one example, or the answer could be Amaziah or Artaxerxes – as long as you can find the answer in the Bible.

All Scattergories™ added to the game was give a series of cards to change the categories for each round and provide a multisided die to determine the starting letter.  Plus they offered a timer to provide a little control to the game.  If you are interested, there is an online version of the game.

Since there are possibly a great deal of answers available for each letter (not always), when you scroll down to the answers, I will give my answers and the Biblical references for those answers, but as long as you can produce the answer in your Bible, you would be correct.

This quiz is just a suggestion of letters and categories.  You could add more categories or change the categories.  You could do the same for the letters.  If you are doing this with a Sunday school class, make sure your categories and letters create legitimate answers.  Some of these may be stretches or very obscure.

You can see that I picked a five-letter name, Simon, as in Simon Peter or Simon the Magician.  There are no repeated letters, but even then, you could only count the answer correct if they used a different answer for the second occurrence of the repeated letter, as in Matthew.

Also the last category is “events in the Bible.”  A key letter should describe the event, such as “Walking on Water” for a “W” answer.  If you are doing this for a party or a Sunday school class, either carefully define what is meant by the category or have fun laughing about the bizarre answers afterwards.

Also, depending on the age group, this quiz could be timed or not timed, or even open Bible or from memory.

Have fun with this one and then create your own.

In Scattergories™, two people with the same answer cancel each other, not allowing them to score any points (thus usually avoiding the obvious common answer), but you can do it for the fun of it without scoring or score points any way you wish.

In choosing these categories and letters, there are two letters under the Women in the Bible category that only have one answer each.  The events in the Bible may have to be a bit obscure.  You might even have to accept a person’s name or a place name as long as an event happened with that person or in that place.

I would love to know your answers or suggestions for other categories.  You might have a different category available in case you cannot find an answer for each letter, such as: things in the Bible or animals in the Bible.  Or you could make the matrix larger and not worry if there are no answers for some of the squares, crossing them out to keep people from going crazy trying to find an answer.  Then there is the miscellaneous category, where, in this case, I could have used miscellaneous instead of the “Events”, but only accept an additional answer from the other three categories.  In most cases, the men in the Bible would have multiple answers.  In other words, for your quiz, you can make up your own rules.

The Questions:

	Men in the Bible	Women in the Bible	Places in the Bible	Events in the Bible
S
I
M
O
N

The Bible References for my answers are as follows:

Bible References:

For Men in the Bible:

               S: Judges 13

               I: 2 Kings 19:2

               M: Acts 12:25

               O: Philemon

               N: 2 Samuel 12

For Women in the Bible:

               S: Genesis 17:15

               I: Genesis 11:29

               M: Luke 10:38-42

               O: Ruth 1:4

               N: Ruth 1:2

For Places in the Bible:

               S: 1 Kings 13:32

               I: Esther 1:1

               M: Jeremiah 48

               O: 1 Kings 9:28

               N: Genesis 4:16

For Events in the Bible:

               S: Genesis 3

               I: Genesis 21:1-7

               M: Mark 6:30-44

               O: Genesis 8:20

               N: Acts 2:23

   …

   …

   …

The Answers:

For Men in the Bible:

               S: Samson

               I: Isaiah

               M: Mark

               O: Onesimus

               N: Nathan

For Women in the Bible:

               S: Sarah

               I: Iskah

               M: Martha

               O: Orpah

               N: Naomi

For Places in the Bible:

               S: Samaria

               I: India

               M: Moab

               O: Ophir

               N: Nod

For Events in the Bible:

               S: Sin – when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, but the Serpent tempting Eve would work also

               I: Isaac was born

               M: Multiplication miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000 or 4,000

               O: Offering a sacrifice

               N: Nailing Jesus to the Cross

Since you did so well, treat yourself to a little virtual choir from David Wesley.  This one is In Christ Alone.  I chose this style because your answers may have been much different than my own, except for maybe a couple.  Then if you are familiar with David Wesley’s work and you know what he looks like, the video gives you a second game, similar to “Where’s Waldo?”  In this case, where is David Wesley?  He pops in and out.

But then, Reformation Day was only two weeks ago on October 31.  Why not David Wesley’s virtual choir for A Mighty Fortress is Our God – originally composed by Martin Luther.

Of course, if you did not do well on this quiz, maybe you just need some help with your alphabet, three stooges style.

And regardless of the categories or the letters, it all comes down to the knowledge that Jesus Paid it All.  This version with Ivan Parker as soloist, which I think I used a few weeks ago.

If you like these Saturday morning Bible quizzes, but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Saturday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.