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Lots of people of faith are interested in becoming a serious student of the Bible — but they are unsure where to start. Becoming a serious Bible student needs a real commitment and a systematic strategy, but it is not quite as complicated and confusing as some might have you believe. In this article I want to outline a perspective general recommendations which can allow you to begin.

A Definite Plan Desired

Among the most important points to be stressed is that in order to be successful in Bible research you must have an organized plan. Many men and women believe this is beyond them because they are too busy — but in reality, the busier you are the more you need a strategy! With a strategy in place, even if your time is limited, you will be able to know precisely where you left off on your research — active people don’t have enough time to fool around using a disorganized, hit-and-miss approach. There are, of course, that a multitude of different types of Bible study schedules and plans which are available — you can discover many of them from Christian book publishers and from online sources online.

The main issue is to get an organized strategy — if you were a student in college studying economics, as an example, your instructor would map out a whole program that would take you through the entire textbook — and that is how you must approach your analysis of the Bible.

The Value of Context

Finally, on your study of the Scriptures, your final goal is to make sense of everything — to understand it, to interpret it — properly. "Context" has several different levels: the immediate context, which would be the verses and passages which encircle the one which you are studying, the publication context (the way the specific Bible passage fits in with the theme or concept of a specific book of the Bible), the literary context (how one prophetical writing, as an example, fits in with the other prophetical writings), and ultimately the total context of the entire Bible.

Free Heaven Video is also important to understand something of the cultural and historical setting in which the writings of the Bible have been awarded. The Biblical documents were composed thousands of years back — during times far removed from our own, if distinct countries dominated the globe, also when different traditions and manners of living. None of us is born with a built in knowledge of those ancient times — we must take some opportunity to find out about them.

Luckily, there are a great number of resources available that could help individuals in understanding the historical and cultural histories of the Bible — Bible study tools like Bible Encyclopedias and Bible dictionaries can place the huge resources of biblical scholarship at our fingertips.

As you study the Scriptures, try to relate the message and meaning of a specific passage of the Bible into the total message of that entire biblical book. You need to ask yourself questions such as — who wrote the book of Exodus? Who had been the book of Exodus composed to? Getting answers to those questions is essential to gaining a proper understanding of what the Bible is all about.

Use Good Tools

Again, none of us is born with this advice already packaged inside of our head — we’ll at some point need to look up and explore this background utilizing different types of biblical reference tools — which means that part of your job as a serious Bible student is to develop, over time, a tiny personal or family biblical reference catalog. It isn’t that you were hoping to develop into a "bookworm" — you should view these materials as tools, just as any contractor or contractor or a electrician has their own set of resources which they need to find the task finished.