 Welcome back. I think there were a few more questions before we closed, so we'll answer questions as well. But I was just going to show you this website that I use. It's BibleHub.com. So it has a lot of different options. The things that I use specifically are the inter-linear. So if you click here, you can look at any verse in the Bible. It will show you the original language and it will show you the translation of that language word forward. So now it's showing Genesis 1-1 and in the Hebrew. So this is the Hebrew and then in the beginning created God, the heavens and the earth. So it's showing us the exact translation. So in Hebrew it will be reading backwards. So we read it this way. And then if we go to the Greek, we can choose the New Testament and then it will show us the Greek and then the English translation of the Greek. So what is helpful here is you can see the Greek with the English word that translates exactly and the same word order. And then if you want to look more in detail, you can click on the Greek word and it will have the meaning of the word. It will have, yeah, so click on the number. It will tell you, yeah, it's a noun, it's a feminine word, the meaning of the word. It will have all occurrences of the word in different parts. So it comes in Matthew 1-1, Mark 12-26, all of the verses in which the same word is used. So altogether there are 10 times this word is used. And it will have a more full meaning of the word with also some historical context, how it was used in larger history, different translations of the word. So there's lots of things you can look at here to study the original language. And then you can also look at parallel. So that's the interlinear and then parallel will give you the same verse in different translations. So you can see the NIV, the NLT, the ESV, the King James, New King James, NASB amplified. So all of them together, you can read the same verse in all those translations. There are other things that are commentaries and things like that. I don't use any of those things. The things I use mostly are the interlinear and the parallel. But you can explore it and see if there are other helpful things you find. Okay, so there were other questions, I think. Sister Gertrude, yes, Sister Gertrude, you can go ahead. Sister, I wanted to ask you the word of God's spoken word was translated and how accurate the effectiveness of that when we say it, when we declare that word because it is not the same what God spoke, right? Exactly same. Yes, so it definitely is like the translations are very good scholarly work because there's a lot of study of the language, study of the culture, trying to get to the original manuscripts, all of those things. And so the work that we have, the translations that we have are very, very dependable. At the same time, God has chosen to use language, right? He's chosen to use words to communicate things about himself. He communicates in other ways through doing things in our lives through miracles, through all of those things. But language will always be limited compared to the truth of God, but it's still a useful tool. And so we can be quite confident about our translations. They're very good, thorough work that's been done by scholars. Yeah, you don't have to worry about how trustworthy it is. Thank you. Thank you, Sister. No problem. Any other questions? Okay, we'll just continue. So we're going to mostly just finish up this chapter on Bible study methods today and then we'll continue from there next week. Let me just go back to my presentation. Okay, so we looked at the character study approach. Another approach in studying the Bible is studying a theme or a topic or studying a word. So this is more using the language, a literary study of Scripture. And this would be considered somewhat deductive. Not that we are putting our own meaning to the text. That's not the difference between inductive and deductive. In this case, there are other instances when you use inductive as in that way where you are taking the word of God to give you what it says rather than going to it with your own message and trying to prove it. But deductive in the sense that you have a specific topic you want to study and then you look for that topic throughout Scripture or you look for that word throughout Scripture. And so it's deductive because you have a topic in mind, a theme in mind before you go to Scripture. Then you look in the Scriptures to find out what does Scripture say about that topic. So a topical Bible study is where you choose a specific topic across the Bible. Okay, so we have a few examples of APC books. So say you're choosing the topic of faith. Then you study what does Scripture say from the Old Testament, from Genesis to Revelation. What does Scripture say about faith? What are all the verses that mention faith? And then we put those verses into categories. So sometimes we'll find that the same word is used in different ways. And some things may not be relevant for our study. Some things may fall into a specific category. So faith in trials, faith in different circumstances so we can categorize it in different ways and then organize it in an outline. So why are we organizing it in an outline? This is more for the purpose of if we are sharing it in the form of writing or we are preaching or teaching. We can create an outline of how can I share this topic with somebody else? How can I share the Bible's teaching on faith? And then also when we are studying a specific topic, there may be other words that we need to study. So while I'm studying faith, I may also need to study about something else related to faith to better understand what does the Bible teach about faith. So an example here that's given is atonement and blood. So if I'm studying the topic of blood, of atonement, then when Scripture mentions the blood of the Lamb, the blood of sacrifices, we can also take those things into consideration to include it in our study of atonement. So we have different books, ministering, healing and deliverance, gifts of the Holy Spirit, different books that are written that are topical studies. So it's study of these topics across Scripture. Then there is a thematic study of the Bible. So this is similar to the topic, the topical study. The difference is that we are choosing a theme. So a theme is here again, we have examples of books who we are in Christ. So here this may not be as intense as a topic because who we are in Christ will be somewhat limited to the New Testament. We definitely refer to the Old Testament to see what is the covenant that God made with the Israelites that was fulfilled in Christ. And so we will study the whole of Scripture, but compared to a topical study, it won't have as much content because we're choosing a specific kind of thing that we are studying. It's not just a word, not just one small section that we're studying, we're choosing something a little bit broader. So it can be the study will be a little shorter. So again, we have some examples of APC books that follow a thematic study. Another approach is a word study method. And this is where we take a specific word and we look at it across Scripture. So examples here, if you're looking at the word heart, we look at like how I showed you on Bible Hub, right? If you click on the word, it will show you every place in the Bible where that word is mentioned. Now, if you choose something like heart and love, you'll have thousands of references in the Bible. It would be better to look at some word that is a little less common and look at it across the Bible. How many times does it occur? What does the word mean in the original language? How is it used in different contexts? And then what do you learn from this? So you draw conclusions from all of that study and you make practical applications based on what you study. Now, for example, suppose I take the word love and I look at it across Scripture. Love is going to come up in many, many different contexts, right? There's going to be love within the family. There's going to be God's love. There's going to be people's love for God. There's going to be lust like David with Bachiba, all of these things. So not everything is going to be relevant to what I'm studying. So I'll have to be a little more specific. So if I'm looking at love, am I looking at God's love? Am I looking at our love for God? Then I can choose the verses that are relevant to what I want to study. So if there are the word love comes up in Scripture say 1000 times out of those 1000 times, how many times is it talking about God's love? So I look at only the verses that are talking about God's love. And then from those verses, I look at God's love for His covenant people, God's love for sinners, God's love for those who do not know Him, whatever, all of these different aspects of God's love. And then, okay, what are some things I can learn from this? If we are supposed to be people who love the way God loves, how can I apply this to my life, my learning from these verses? Okay, so that would be the practical application. Again, creating an outline for communicating it with others. If I'm going to teach on it, if I'm going to write on it, how will I communicate what I've studied in a way that other people can understand this topic better. And then the last is this method, the chapter, oh, there is chapter and there's book study. So the chapter study approach, there are three different approaches. One is summarizing the chapter. Okay, so in this method, you read through the chapter a few times. So here it's recommended that you read through it five times. The idea is to just get an understanding of what is the overall message of that chapter. And then you summarize what are the major themes in the chapter and what are the main things that that chapter is talking about. Sometimes it may not be the best idea to study a whole chapter because our chapters are like they've been put in place by people, right? When scripture was originally written, it wasn't written with verses and chapters. So when chapters were put in, sometimes it comes in the middle of a passage. So there may be something that is continuing into the next chapter, but suddenly the chapter ends and a new chapter begins. So you can decide based on how you see the themes in that book that you're studying. You can study a whole chapter or you can study a certain section of a book, read it a few times, summarize what is it talking about, what are some of the major themes it's talking about. And so this diagram is just to explain some of the things that we look at when we're looking at that passage or that section. Let's look at who are the characters in this story? Why are they included in the story? What do we learn about this character from this passage? So sometimes in the New Testament, we'll see references to people from the Old Testament using them as an example we should follow, right? So if you're looking at the book of Hebrews, we're looking at Hebrews 11 talking about faith and they mentioned so many people from the Old Testament. So looking at all of those characters, why does this chapter mention these specific people? What was it about their lives? What was it about their faith that the writer wants to highlight here that we can take away when we are looking at faith? Then we ask questions of that chapter. So what does this mean? Why has the writer said it this way? Why have they not included another character? Different questions like that. Normally when we read a passage, we have our own questions, right? We have things that we don't understand or we wonder why did he say it this way? Why didn't he say this? So those are the questions we should try and answer. Or if we're thinking about who we want to communicate this to, what would be some questions that they would have when they're looking at this passage? So we try to answer those questions. So if I'm preparing for class before I teach, when I'm teaching, I have certain questions that I like something I may not understand or something I don't fully know. So then I study up on that. Or I think about, okay, what would be some questions that you might have? And then I look up answers for those questions. So that's the way when you're teaching from a passage to do that kind of study on the passage. You cross-reference. So if there's something that's mentioned, so we're looking at the example of Hebrews 11, mentioning different characters of faith. Go back to the Old Testament stories. What are the stories about them that the Hebrew writer is highlighting? So read the other passages of scripture that he's referencing to better understand Hebrews 11. What are some major principles? What are some insights? What are some lessons we can take away from this? Then divide the chapter into themes. Now most of our Bibles nowadays have already divided. The passage will have a heading. So they made it easy for us, but you might choose to divide it a certain or different way. So sometimes you can look at the Bible without having those headings and try to put your own headings to the passage. What are the different themes that the writer is talking about? How is he moving from one topic to the next? How is this topic related to the previous topic? Or how does it relate to the rest of the book? All of those things you can study. And then after looking at all these things, what is the key verse in this passage or in this chapter? What verse kind of communicates the central message of the chapter? And why does God want this chapter in the Bible? So what is the purpose of having this specific chapter included in the scriptures? So these are some questions we can ask when we're studying a chapter. A chapter analysis method is where you go much more in detail. So the summary method was where you're just reading through it and trying to get a general understanding of the passage. Now in chapter analysis, you go into each verse. You look at what are the specific words that the writer is using. There are some really good things that you may notice that they're repeating the same word many times in the same chapter. If they're repeating the same word, what does that word mean? Why is he using this word? Why has he not used another word? What does the word mean in the original language? Understanding those kinds of things. Or if he's repeating a certain thought, sometimes you'll see a writer start a section with one thought and then they'll say something and again they'll end with the same thought. Sometimes in the Psalms they'll say, if thanks to the Lord for He is good, His love endures forever. And then you'll say some things, examples of how God was faithful to the Israelites. If thanks to the Lord for He is good, His love endures forever. So he's repeating that thought many times. His main thing is God's love endures forever. We should praise Him. And then he's giving examples of how God has demonstrated His love for people in history. So those are some things when you're doing the chapter analysis, you go more in detail and examine those kinds of things. How has the writer structured the writing like this? How they've repeated the same thought. There are different, much more detailed methods of Bible study. But this is one thing, repetition, where they've repeated the same thought again and again. Then we can look at book study approaches. So we've gone from a chapter study to a book study. So a book background method. Now this, I don't think would ever be something we do by itself. A book background method. It will be the background to then study the book to help us better understand the chapter. But when we're looking at the background, we're looking at the geography. Where did this happen? Where did this writer write from? Who did he write to? Where did the people get it? Let me just, sorry. Okay, I think we're all muted. Okay. So when we're doing a chapter, sorry, a book background method, where was the writer when he was writing this book and who were the people he was writing to? Where were those people located? That's why we look at, every time we're studying a book, we look at the background. What were the events that were taking place in history at that time? And how is what he's writing related to? It's always going to be related to what was happening around them in that context. So we understand the historical events. We understand the culture. Was he writing to Greeks, to Jews, to Gentiles, to people in Asia, to people in Rome? Who were the recipients and what was the culture there? Because based on the culture, he'll communicate in a certain way. He was writing to people who were living in a city that was like a cosmopolitan city. So the things he addresses in that book, Paul addresses in that book, is relevant to people, the things they were experiencing there, whether it was idol worship or that there was loose, like a loose lifestyle, sexual immorality. All of those things he's talking about is because of the culture of Corinth. So that's why it's important to know the culture. And then the political environment. Sometimes when there was a lot of persecution from the leadership. So how is the writer addressing persecution? We've seen the New Testament still the instruction to submit to authority, even in times of persecution, even when the authorities are against you. So considering what was the political environment and how is the writer, including that in his writing. The book survey method is similar to the chapter survey method or the chapter summary method where you read the whole book a few times and then you create a summary. So how does the book flow from one theme to the next? How does the writer address different topics? And then you see what is the overall message. So there'll be one theme throughout the book, but within that larger theme, there are many sub themes within the book. So how do all of these sub themes relate to the overall message that the writer wants to communicate? And we will also in this consider what was the background. So all of these things that we talked about. Book synthesis method is where we do, we take the book survey method and the chapter analysis method and we put them together. So we do an overall survey of the whole book, then we go into each chapter, we study each chapter in detail and then we get an overall message of the book. That is how does each, what is the message of each chapter, the themes in each chapter much more in detail than we did in the book survey. And then how does all of this communicate the overall message that the writer wants to communicate? So example, if we're looking at again, if you look at first Corinthians, we look at each chapter in first Corinthians, what is the writer wanting to communicate? So suppose we do a Bible study in church, right? Whenever we do a Bible study in church, each week we're looking in detail at a specific chapter and then over a month or over a few weeks, we've covered one whole book. So that would be the book synthesis method where we've gone in detail to each chapter, but we begin with what is the overall message of that book, what is the background of that book, of the writers, the audience, all of those things and then we go into a more detailed study of each chapter and that's how we understand the overall message of the book. So this image is just to summarize all of these methods of Bible study and we're talking about these methods of Bible study as ways in which we can study or teach the Bible, but there are other methods also. Okay, so these are just some ways that we can look at. So here I just put this together just to help us understand the different ways we can start with a verse study and then do a verse by verse study into a passage study. Then we can do or we can do a larger book study or we can do a whole Bible study. So these are all the methods we looked at. The verse study we looked at was devotional study and the passage study also was a devotional or passage study where we study each verse. On the books and then or a chapter summary or analysis would also fall within the passage. In the book level it would be a book background, book survey, book synthesis and in the whole Bible it would be a character or biographical study or a thematic topic or word study. So based on which method we're using we'll either focus on a verse or a passage or a book or the whole Bible. Okay, is that clear? Okay, so your next sermon, what are you all going to preach on? We'll see which method you should follow. Any specific thing that you want to teach on or you want to study personally, which is the background method for what for a specific book? The epistles, isn't it? Okay, so using the book background method to study why Paul wrote certain epistles or who he wrote to. Yeah, so that would be, you'd use the book background method to understand that. Any of you are actively teaching anywhere or preaching anywhere, online students as well. What are some methods you all have used? Have you used one of these methods or others that we haven't covered? Sister, I would use the analysis method because I'm still learning. Okay, so the chapter analysis? Yeah. So what exactly are you doing in that? Can you just summarize that for us, what's the chapter analysis method? Sorry, I just need to connect my power. So I won't be in front of you, but you can, okay. Yeah, you can go ahead. What is the chapter analysis method? What is that method? I meant to analyze what God is telling us and why he's telling us and to whom these words were spoken and I would research different versions of the Bible and how the word means different at the same time we can understand. Yeah, I think that's my sister. Okay, thank you. Yeah, and using these different methods based on what our intent is, what the end goal is, really helps us get much more in-depth into scripture, find new revelation in the Bible. We may not be able to always do it, especially in our regular devotions, but if we have the opportunity to teach or if we just want to personally study a specific book, spend some additional time doing that, then using some of these methods and tools is very helpful. Okay, so anyone else wants to share any of these methods that they've used or anything that you are preparing for that you could use one of these methods? Okay, Sister Lucy has shared and I also see some questions that were shared. Sorry, I'll answer these questions as well, I hadn't seen them. So Lucy said in family prayer, okay, you've been sharing what you've been learning at Bible College. Yes, I think the best way to learn is to teach others because then we are trying to communicate what we've learned. It really helps us understand how much we know or how much we've understood and how much we still have to understand to be able to explain it to other people. That's great that you're sharing that, Sister. So I'm just going to read and address these questions. Where do we look for the background details? Do we get it in Bible Hub? I haven't used Bible Hub to get background details but I can look at some online resources and let you know. I typically use some resources that I have already, books and things like that but I'm not sure about free online resources. You can check out a biblia.chat. It's an AI and if you want to use it, you can use it. It's completely free. So whatever questions are there, whatever queries are there, you just need to type and it will give you a complete solution or a resource from where you need to and where you can read it, a particular article or whatever. Okay, biblia.chat, isn't it? Good questions. Okay. Do you know how dependable the information is that's available? Okay. Okay. So biblia.chat. Is this the biblia? Biblia.chat. I'll also just check it out but I'll just share it here. It's one that I've not looked at that but that's one. Oh, sorry. Can you tell me your name? Repeat your name. Okay. So Sagar shed biblia.chat is one resource that he uses. Sister, if it is a paid also, it's fine, sister. Let us know about it. Okay, sure. So in your book actually, we're not covering that today because we did go over it in an earlier class but page 15 of your book has a list of resources that you can use online resources, page 15 of your textbook. So there's e-sport, blue letter bible, logos.com, bible gateway. Also a lot of study bibles nowadays have, if you buy a printed study bible, it will have a background. It'll have an introduction to the book before the book actually begins. So that's another way that you can get some background for each book. Okay, sister. Thanks. Welcome. And the other question was what is the difference between a bible commentary and bible dictionary? So a bible dictionary will give you more of the meanings of words and give you that kind of information. Whereas a bible commentary will give you more information about the background, will give you information on how to, how this person is interpreting that specific passage. It will give you cross references to other parts of scripture that talk about the same topic. So a bible commentary will give you a lot of information about each verse in each book of the bible. But a bible dictionary will give you more of the meanings of words. So that would be the major difference. Okay. Sister Gertrud has said the study bible is one that she uses. Okay. So I think we can close with this for today. Next week we'll start with the illumination of the Holy Spirit, that chapter in your textbook. So studying the bible while depending on the Holy Spirit for revelation. And then we'll continue from there. So we'll take a break now and come back for the next hour in about 20 minutes. I hope there were no more questions. Sorry. If there were, we can still take questions. But if not, we can end. Thank you.