Do-It-Yourself Bible Study Course

young man with bible

 

Recommended Bible Study Program From comingintheclouds.org

 

“O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.”
[Psalms 119:97]

 

The ComingInTheClouds Internet ministry does not offer a correspondence course per se, though we offer a lot of Christian discipleship materials. The correspondence courses that are available today have their good points and bad points. There is one ministry (MountZion.org – a.k.a. Chapel Library) that offers a course that is better than many other courses out there.  You can learn more about that at this link: http://www.chapellibrary.org/bible-institute/.

 

What I really recommend is that you check out the articles at our site before starting any correspondence course. Then, if you do start a course, you will be able to see IF they are leaving out important subjects and you will be able to see IF they are wrong about some of their ideas on certain subjects – because they may not back up those particular ideas with scripture or enough scripture or they just teach what everybody else in a particular denomination has been teaching on a subject for centuries.
 

Here is a good sampling of discipleship articles from our website to help get you started:

  1. Christianity 101 – Important Information For New Christians
  2. What the Gospel is and is not
  3. The articles about “Predestination” starting with “Who accepts whom?“
  4. The articles “About God” starting with: “The God nobody knows“
  5. False doctrines in Christianity today
  6. Why are there so many different kinds of Christian churches?
  7. How to identify a religious cult
  8. The articles on “Christian Living” starting with: “Should Christians watch TV?” and “How Shall We Then Live?“
  9. The Bible Student Toolkit
  10. The information on “Hermeneutics” (how to study the bible)
  11. The articles on “the basics about how to do church” starting with “What most churches don’t teach their members“
  12. Words They Never Taught Me In Sunday School“

If you are serious about discipleship, which I do hope you are, you will learn that you can’t just let somebody feed you information. You need to read and study the bible for yourself and check out what everybody says. And that means you really need to CHECK OUT WHAT EVERYBODY SAYS, thoroughly! Look at cross references to other verses in your bible. Look at concordances. Look at a respectable commentary like John Gill’s Commentary on the entire bible (an exhaustive and perhaps the best commentary there is anywhere). Matthew Henry’s commentary is also a solid reliable commentary, though not as exhaustive as John Gill’s.

 

I hope this information is of help to you. May the Good Lord richly bless you as you study to show yourself approved, a workman rightly dividing the Word Of Truth!

 



Christianity 101
Important Information For New Christians

guidelines for new Christians

This article is intended to be a very brief crash course highlighting important issues in biblical Christianity for all those who are new to the faith and for all those who wish to find out some important facts that all Christians should be aware of.

 

Rule #1:

Don’t blindly trust what anybody says – not your pastor, not some famous preacher on TV or radio. No one! Be like the Bereans in Acts 17:11 who checked the scriptures to see if what the Apostle Paul said was true…

 

Acts 17:11 – “… they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”

 

Rule #2:

Expect people who graduate from seminaries to have a seminary-induced bias about many biblical doctrines – a bias that locks them into a wrong interpretation of things.  And never assume that a religious title or religious degree is a guarantee that some teacher is interpreting scripture properly…

 

1Corinthians 1:26 – “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: 27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; 28 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: 29 That no flesh should glory in his presence.”

 

Rule #3:

Expect to be deceived by the many religious preachers, teachers and authors around you. They know most people don’t bother to really do the kind of research often necessary to determine that they are wrong… 

 

Mark 13:22 – “For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.”

 

Rule #4:

When it comes to being really sure about the correct interpretation of many Bible doctrines, don’t expect it to be an easy task.  You may need to do Greek and Hebrew word studies but fortunately nowadays with computerized as well as printed Bible tools such as concordances, you can uncover biblical truths in far less time than it took Bible students in days gone by…

 

Proverbs 25:2 – “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.”

 

Rule #5:

Expect to be discouraged by the Christians around you. Many will say all the right things and yet will live no differently than the lost people you witness to every day…

 

Luke 12:1 – “In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.”

 

Rule #6:

Expect to be have to learn many things yourself without the initiative of church leaders.  Some of those things will include:

  1. Which bible versions are reliable and why?
  2. How do you properly interpret the bible for yourself?
  3. What are the “Doctrines Of Grace” versus the “Free-will gospel”?
  4. What is the social gospel?
  5. What is the ecumenical movement?
  6. Why are tongues and signs and wonders not for today?
  7. Why is it unbiblical for women to teach and oversee a congregation?
  8. Why do people conduct highly structured church meetings in large special purpose buildings when the early church met in ordinary homes?
  9. Why do parents send their kids to public or private schools when the Bible says that it is parents alone who have the primary responsibility for teaching their children?
  10. Why is “tithing” not a biblical practice for the Church? (Giving is biblical, but tithing is not.)

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