READING GOD'S WORD THAT IS PURE AND WITHOUT ANY ERROR
WOW, THIS PHOTO (BELOW) IS FROM A LONG TIME AGO.
Intense I would say. That has been a life long habit of mind.
Studying, reading, writing, printing, typing.
1969 IN FORT WORTH TEXAS
(What a beautiful girl, sitting beside me)
There are four levels of reading: For example the Bible:
Elementary Reading: Three chapters a day. Simple reading the chapters will do you a world of good, in a year you can read the entire Bible. This would take fifteen minutes.
- Inspectional Reading: You take a book in the Bible, like Genesis, and you view the sub topics over each chapter. There are 50 chapters and you view the subject matter of all 50 chapters. This would give you a quick overview of the entire book in ten minutes or less. Which is going to lead you to the next level because you will want to know more.
- Analytical Reading: Okay, this will take longer. The idea here is you want to know what you have read means. You will now look at the footnotes of the John MacArthur's Study Bible. You are inclined to separate things into their constituent parts in order to study or examine them, draw conclusions, or solve problems You want to understand the verses you are reading.. It's intensive, right Ellen.
- Syntopical Reading: Here you are constituting a general view of the whole of a subject. You are going to research from several books what the meaning of the chapter means, or even the book as a whole. Here you might research the meaning of words within a verse. For example: John 3:16. You will want to know what the "whosoever" means! You might want to research "believes," or "everlasting life." This will take days, because you will read other resources on the subject at hand. Here you also might research the Hebrew or Greek for the orginial meaning of the word.
When I am asked "How do you start the study of the Bible", I will say, start reading Genesis, and for fifteen minutes a day read the Bible.
I am amazed how long some people will read a novel that is on the #1 New York Times bestselling book list. They will read three or four hundred pages in maybe two days and think nothing of it. And they have no time to read the Bible. The Bible is God's #1 Book for all Christian to read.
I would say for the new Chrisitan, that you just read, don't try to understand all you read, but just get some of it in your mind. Its it elementary level. Tell yourself this: "I want to know what God is saying to mankind, and I want to read what God has said."
The Lord Jesus Christ is the one who has commission men like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, James, Peter and Paul to write the New Testament, for us to read about what God wants us to know about about Himself and how to live the Christian life.
I WANT TO KNOW. DO YOU?
