Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
Looking to dig deeper into the Scriptures? "How to Study the Bible: A Brief Guide" offers essential techniques to help you study and understand the Bible effectively, fostering your spiritual growth and comprehension of God's Word.
There is no greater resource for Christian living than the Scriptures. The Bible is God's revelation of Himself to humanity, His recorded interactions with our ancestors, His principles, His promises, and His prophetic utterances. It is the definitive guidebook for the Christian journey and our primary source of knowledge about God and His plan for our lives.
Most have heard the saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ However, the Bible has a real knack for painting a picture with just a few words. The word pictures found in God’s Word creates an image in the mind of the reader that will likely never be forgotten.
However, what happens if and when we do commit sin? Have we tried in vain to be holy? Do we start all the way back at the beginning and lose the spiritual ground we’ve gained?
Many don't know that out of the millions of Christian books, most by far are liberal to moderate. For example, out of the 1,200+ books available on biblical hermeneutics right now, all but about 20 are liberal to moderate.
Anybody who wants to study the Bible, either at a personal level or at a more scholarly level, needs to understand that there are certain principles that guide and govern the process. The technical word used to refer to the principles of biblical interpretation is hermeneutics.
There are dozens upon dozens of books on how to interpret the Word of God. The intention of this appendix is to give the Christian the basics of the correct way to interpret the Bible. Almost all the books on biblical interpretation are liberal to moderate, that is, follow what is known as the historical-critical method (subjective) instead of the conservative historical-grammatical method of interpretation (objective).
In Josiah’s day, the book of the law was found in the temple, and Josiah’s humble response to its demands changed his generation. Jesus later confronted religious teachers of His day who, for all their attention to the law, had often buried it beneath their religious traditions.
Ancient biographies often opened with the noble background of their subject, background that would shed light on the identity or character of the person about whom they wrote.
Have you ever been quoted out of context? Sometimes people quote something you said, but by ignoring the context of what you said they can claim that you said something different—sometimes exactly the opposite of what you actually meant! We often make this same mistake with the Bible.