Fr. Mike Schmitz creates viral videos at the frantic pace of a shark that would suffocate if it stopped moving, and just as sharks are the top of the food oceanic food chain, Fr. Mike is at the apex of producers of introspective and thought-provoking Catholic content. Just days ago, during Shark Week, the priest released a new video that abridged the Bible into just 10 minutes of narrated animation, and it’s now his most successful video to date.
According to a press release from Ascension, The Bible in 10 Minutes has already broken two of Fr. Mike’s well-earned records. The video broke his record for most views in a day upon its release, attaining 358k views in just 24 hours. Now, it is also his fastest video to reach 1 million views, garnering such monumental attention in just 3 days.
We never expected The Bible in 10 Minutes, as Fr. Mike Schmitz only recently concluded his video series explaining every page of The Catechism in a Year, and before that he took just 365 days to illuminate The Bible in a Year. It was quite a feat to make it through 73 biblical books in 12 months, but to further boil it down to just 10 minutes sounded far-fetched.
The key to Fr. Mike’s success was the angle at which he approached his 10-minute video. As Aleteia previously reported, Fr. Mike presented the video as a road map for the Bible, and due to this, it is less concerned with specific biblical scenes, but rather the overarching narrative and how each of the biblical books is an answer to the prior.
Fr. Schmitz explains at the opening of the video:
“The Bible is amazing,” Fr. Mike begins. “But sometimes confusing and hard to read … We’d like to read it, but without a map, it’s easy to get lost. There is a narrative throughout the Bible that tells a single Story -- the Story of God’s plan for our Salvation. Once we understand that Story, we can understand the context of every book of the Bible. So, here’s the Story in less than 10 minutes.”
Fr. Mike’s success in his new animated video has yet to stop, as it reached 1.1 million views as of the writing of this article. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out The Bible in 10 Minutes, above. Be sure to follow the Bible in a Year YouTube channel to make sure you don’t miss any of Fr. Mike’s animated releases.
Fun Fact: If you watch at 2x speed, then it becomes "The Bible in 5 Minutes," a feat of explanation which will be hard to beat.
