Bible Study Tools

BIBLE STUDY TOOLS AND TIPS
TOOLS I USE I bought an eight-color pencil and keep it in my Bible. I color code scriptures as I read so I can easily find things by topic later. They are called 8-Color Dry Mark Bible Highlighter. Here's how I divided them: sky blue: evidence of the Trinity red: salvation scriptures royal blue: (2 topics) Jesus' ancestors in the OT and scriptures that have become important to me after my "Big Wow" experience pink: important points in each chapter orange: promises yellow: general highlighting of any kind green: prophecy and prophecy fulfilled and scriptures relating to holiness brown: things that refute teachings of cults ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I keep a small quantity of small post-it style notes in the front of my Bible. I separated them and attached them to the front page. Separating them keeps the page flat. When something jumps out at me and needs further study or when I find scriptures I'd like to ponder I write on the post-its or I mark the page with one. My Bible cover (carrying case) has a zippered area for my Bible. I keep a mechanical pencil my multi colored pencil in a pocket on the inside. I used to keep all my notes inside the cover of my Bible but I have so many they broke the binding on my Bible. This Bible cover has pockets on the outside so my notes (which consist of a lot of the charts and lists I've put here at the Clarion Call) don't affect my Bible's binding.
CONCORDANCE I bought myself a Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible published by Nelson. In that concordance every word that is in the Bible is listed. If you need to find a verse that has the word "spring" in it you could find every instance that word appears in the Bible. The only bad thing is that some words appear many many times. This book is helpful if you are doing a word study because you can look up every single time the word appears in the Bible. I have scanned a portion of my concordance and you can view it. In the back of the concordance are the Greek and Hebrew words from which the Bible was translated. This way you can look and get a more thorough definition of words to enable you to better understand what was written. [NOTE: There are also computer Bible programs that provide excellent concordances.]
BIBLE DICTIONARY I also bought The New International Dictionary of the Bible by J.D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney. A better word for this book would be encyclopedia. It gives extra information about people, places, and things in the Bible. This book also tells you where to go in the Bible to find the subject being discussed. It has pictures and diagrams as well.
TOPICAL BIBLE I have the Nave's Topical Bible. A topical Bible has a lot of the same information as found in the Bible dictionary but also has items grouped under topics instead of just the item itself. You can also view a portion I scanned. This book is good if you can't find something by looking in the other two books above.
OTHER HELPS Other things that are available to purchase at Christian bookstores are maps, photo books of Bible lands, books with information about Bible clothing styles and food, and much much more. Find out where the Christian book stores are and go spend time browsing! There are lots of resources available to you! Here's a Christian store online: Christianbook.com.

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