How To Study The Bible

* caused many to lock themselves away from society and family life believing that by doing so they were doing good;

* caused husbands and wives to separate out of misunderstanding the teachings about divorce and re-marriage;

* caused fathers to impoverish their families by "giving God the first tenth no matter what";

* caused people to hurt or ignore the plight of others out of an inflexible attitude to the "Lord's day";

* caused men to torture and murder others because it would supposedly be good for their souls.

Understanding the Bible is a lifelong process. Do be patient, and be very sure before you make any drastic changes to your life.

Ask God

The best place to begin is to ask God to show you this wonderful book. Ask him to open your mind to understanding. Jesus said that the truth will make you free. He also said that without his help we can do nothing.

Resources

Bible e.g. New International Version (NIV)
Concordance of the whole Bible.
Greek interlinear New Testament.
Hebrew interlinear Old Testament.

This list is in order of importance, so if you cannot afford to get all four together, begin your acquisitions working from the top.

The ideal is if you can get computer software which includes all these items; and better still if it also includes various Bible translations and Bible dictionaries.

The Purpose For These Resources

The NIV was suggested because it represents a middle-of-the-road translation half way between the extremes of "word for word", and very free translations which aim to project the meaning in contemporary terms.

Other Bible translations are useful because of course not all the scholars agree on some verses. So another suggestion would be the New King James Version (NKJV).

The concordance will enable you to search through the whole Bible for a word or phrase. The Strong's Concordance is very valuable in that it provides the root words of the original Hebrew or Greek.

The interlinear books give us a line of the original language followed by a word for word translation.

Study Plan

We recommend you strive to study for about half-an-hour every day. If you are able to do more you will benefit, however five minutes is better than no minutes at all.

Follow three study plans simultaneously (say a day on each, or two per day, whatever..) -

1. Keep reading or skimming the Bible from the beginning. When you reach the end begin again.

2. Study a particular topic, e.g. baptism, or resurrection say. This is where a concordance is invaluable.

3. Begin to memorise verses or passages which you find useful or interesting. You can give yourself a kick-start by including verses which are generally very well known already, like John 3.16, or say The Lord's Prayer

Do these three things for the rest of your life. Endeavour not to miss a single day.

A. The Bible is the word of God.

B. Where a translation may differ from another, then the original Hebrew or Greek is taken to be the inspired word of God.

C. Where you find a verse hard to understand, your conclusion must be in harmony with the rest of the Bible. In other words, the Bible interprets the Bible. An often-quoted example is Rev.1.20, but naturally they are not all as easy as this.

D. This is a subtlety based on A. Because the Bible contains the words of God, we are not as concerned with what the human writers may have had in mind, as much as what God actually says in scripture.

A BIG TRAP

This concerns D above. Scholars - intelligent, sincere, well-intentioned - reason and argue over why Paul may have omitted to preach on a topic (for example keeping the sabbath day). They will assume reasons and base their conclusions on these reasonings.

On the other hand, where Paul does teach on a topic (for example, women preaching), they assume it was only dependent on the customs of the day, and does not apply to us.

Let us remember to study what God says, not what we think Paul or the other writers had in mind. God completed the Bible for us today, and he was happy with his work. Where something is very important God does not try to trick us, he makes it very plain. At the very end of the Bible he commands that no-one should add or subtract from what he caused to be written.

The Great Adventure

Physical adventures can be exciting, but intellectual adventures even more so. May you embark on a spiritual adventure which surpasses them all.