Pleasure & Profit in Bible StudyMoody, Dwight Lyman
Religion
Pleasure & Profit in Bible Study
Moody, Dwight Lyman
Bible -- Study and teaching
Another good way is to study Bible characters--take them right from the
cradle to the grave. You find that skeptics often take one particular
part of a man's life--say, of the life of Jacob or of David--and judge
the whole by that. They say these men were queer saints; and yet God did
not punish them. If you go right through these men's lives you will find
that God did punish them, according to the sins they committed.
A lady once said to me that she had trouble in reading the Bible, that
she seemed to not feel the interest she ought. If you don't keep up your
interest in one way, try another. Never think you have to read the Bible
by courses.
PROPER NAMES.
Another interesting study is the meaning of proper names. I need hardly
remark that every name in the Bible, especially Hebrew names, has a
meaning of its own. Notice the difference between Abram (a high father),
and Abraham (father of a multitude), and you have a key to his life.
Another example is Jacob (supplanter), and Israel (Prince of God). The
names of Job's three daughters were Jemima (a dove), Kezia (cassia), and
Keren-happuch (horn of paint). These names signify beauty; so that Job's
leprosy left no taint.
CHAPTER XII.
Study of
Subjects--Love--Sanctification--Faith--Justification--Atonement
--Conversion--Heaven--Revivals--Separation--Grace--Prayer--Assurance
--God's Promises.
I FIND some people now and then who boast that they have read the Bible
through in so many months. Others read the Bible chapter by chapter, and
get through it in a year; but I think it would be almost better to spend
a year over one book. If I were going into a court of justice, and
wanted to carry the jury with me, I should get every witness I could to
testify to the one point on which I wanted to convince the jury. I would
not get them to testify to everything, but just to that one thing. And
so it should be with the Scriptures.
I took up that word "_Love_" and I do not know how many weeks I spent in
studying the passages in which it occurs, till at last I could not help
loving people. I had been feeding so long on Love that I was anxious to
do everybody good I came in contact with.
Take _Sanctification_. I would rather take my concordance and gather
passages on sanctification and sit down for four or five days and study
them than have men tell me about it.
I suppose that if all the time that I have prayed for _Faith_ was put
together, it would be months. I used to say when I was President of the
Young Men's Christian Association in Chicago, "What we want is faith; if
we only have faith, we can turn Chicago upside down"--or rather, right
side up. I thought that some day faith was going to come down, and
strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read
in the tenth chapter of Romans, "Now faith comes by hearing, and hearing
by the Word of God." I had closed my Bible, and prayed for faith. I now
opened my Bible, and began to study, and faith has been growing ever
since.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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