How to Study Your Bible - Rule #2

Shortly following the terrifying events of the French Revolution, many people turned back to God for comfort and direction. This was especially true in the United States, as people began to open their Bible’s again seeking truth. Camp meetings, study groups, temperance societies, books, and newspaper’s were popping up left and right, all seeking and promoting the wonderful Bread of Life.

A man named William Miller was one of the leading Bible scholars of that time. Once a deist who believed that God abandoned earth after creation, Miller saw clear evidence during the war of 1812 of a God that intercedes upon request. This experience motivated Miller to look to the Bible for answers. For over 2 years Miller dedicated much of his time to reading and understanding the Bible which lead to many amazing discoveries in the books of Daniel and Revelation that had not previously been seen.

Although William Miller made some bold predictions that never materialized, his Bible study method that he calls “Rules of Interpretation” are still highly regarded and widely used. Many of Miller’s 14 rules have been taught by others previously but his comprehensive list is clearly written and provides great instruction for the beginner Bible student.

Over the next few weeks, we will walk through each of the 14 rules of interpretation to help us all us learn how to study our Bibles more effectively—we will learn and grow together in Christ!

Let’s take a quick look at the second rule:

-Every word must be in proper context with the subject presented in the Bible

At first glance, the idea of reading in context seems fairly simple and obvious but be careful not to overlook this very important tip. There are some serious dangers in plucking out single verses and attempting to understand the total picture without proper context.

The correct way to read anything, especially the Bible, is to understand the total picture of the story or subject, and let the words guide us to truth. Some use the Bible as a tool to confirm or support their own ideas—even if the Bible doesn’t actually support their own ideas. This is called confirmation bias and has caused many to go astray or lead to believe ideas that are not in harmony with the Holy Scriptures.

It is absolutely crucial to spend the extra reading time to allow the material to fully develop. If done with patience and prayer, we can easily understand what God is trying to teach us. After all, our Father in Heaven is not a God of confusion but of power and peace (1 Cor. 14:33). He wants us to understand Him and His Son Jesus fully, and just how much they love us (John 3:16).

This sounds like it will take up a lot of time, I’ll give you that, but you would be surprised at what you can understand by studying for just 30 minutes, which is only about 2% of our day.

Here are a few quick tips on how to read the Bible in context. Please keep in mind that not all of the below tips can be applied to all Scripture 100% of the time. However, a combination of these tips will certainly help us all better understand what God is trying to teach us, whether we’re a beginner Bible student or an accomplished theologian.

1. Read the entire chapter

2. Identify the author

3. Identify the audience

4. Identify the date or time period

5. Identify the location

6. Write down people, places, and events (using Bible maps are helpful)

7. Identify repetitive words and conduct a root word analysis using a concordance. There are many treasures to be found when looking up the Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic definitions of these words

8. Find other places in the Bible where it talks about similar things (using a concordance or software like Accordance or Logos will help accomplish this faster)

9. If after doing all this, you still don’t understand what is being said, keep expanding out by reading the chapter before and after, or even the entire book

I hope you have been blessed by reading this and I pray this information will lead to a more fruitful Bible study and a closer relationship with Jesus. Feel free to reach out to us at hello@remnantroadministries.org if you have any questions about how to study your Bible.