Posted by PS on April 27, 2004 at 10:37:20:
In Reply to: Bible Study - Hey, PS... posted by j on April 27, 2004 at 08:31:09:
: Howdy,
Partner?
: What have we officially determined as the next course of study for Sundays?
Hmmm... Let me check with the officials with office of officially officiating.
O fish shells,
O fish shells,
By the sea, O
Fishy Ating.
They always speak to me after that song, you know. Oh wait, here come their little squeaky voices now, riding on the wind...
They say we should all agree here.
We can engage the Epistles in the framework of Acts chronologically (AMAP) so to apprehend the message of each of the letters in better context, seeing each letter in the illuminating info in Acts and the other letters that are related.
We can also decide on a topic we want to study, and use that focus as an organizing principle. For instance, someone mentioned early church dynamics. The reason this suggestion led into the Acts possibility above is because "early church" as a topic is so broad in scope–almost the whole NT is about church dynamics, and the diversity is overwhelming.
We can also pick a book that seems particularly attractive in content and engage it, using Acts and other epistles to contextualize the main postitions. For instance, imagine what I did as an example Sunday, but turned around the other way: instead of going from Acts 17 to Thessalonians or Acts 16 to Philippians, we would be starting from an epistle like Thessalonians and in the course of that reading going back to Acts and looking at other letters.
Either way, we end up covering broad amounts of information, but with different organizing principles.
: What should we be re-reading in preparation?
The entire New Testament. By Sunday. ;-) And Webster's New World Dictionary.
Seriously, can't say yet. But Acts would not be a bad idea. When you see a church mentioned in Acts, you (Jason) could check out LTJ's chapter in WNT. You could also check all references to that city-church in the Bible. You could cross reference events, like relating the council in Acts 15 to Galatians 2. You could also check all biblical references to the PEOPLE mentioned in the Acts or epistolary account.
There are multitudes of online resources also.
NT Gateway
The BEST overall site, with links to everything. Many of the the links are really lists of links. You can just about get everywhere from here. The NT Gateway is the BOMB.
Crosswalk
Another site with many resources. This is also listed as a link from the site above.
Bible Gateway
A great site for searching many Bible translations (this is all it is). It is also listed as a link from NT Gateway above.