November 20, 2007 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

The following is from the Advanced Bible Studies Series course “How to Study the Bible,” which is available from Way of Life Literature.

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I have delighted in the Bible for 34 years, but for the first 23 years of my life I did not care anything about it, in spite of the fact that my parents faithfully took me to church when I was a boy. They lovingly bought me Bibles as I was growing up, but as far as I can remember I had no interest in them. I cannot recall even one time when I opened my Bible to read and study it for myself. I knew the well-known Bible stories by heart, and I knew the books of the Bible, and I even won Bible sword drills by being the first to find a certain passage; but I did not understand the meaning of the Bible and I saw no personal benefit in it for my daily life. The reason was that I had never repented toward God and received Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior (Acts 20:21). I was baptized when I was about 10 years old and joined the church, but it was an empty thing.

The Bible says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:21). True salvation makes a powerful change in one’s life, but there was no change in me. Though I was in church, my heart was in the world, and I sought the things of the world. When I went to church, my thoughts were not on the Bible and the things of Christ; my thoughts were on foolishness and on my worldly friends. Titus 1:16 describes my sad condition perfectly: “They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.”

My relationship with the Bible in those days was all “head knowledge.” There was no heart relationship with Christ, and when that is the case, the Bible is a closed book. As soon as I was old enough, I quit going to church. I was about 16 years old at the time, and I did not go back to church or have anything further to do with the Bible for several dark years.

One glorious day in late summer 1973, though, the Lord had mercy upon a prodigal son and He sent a Christian man named Ron Walker to help me find my way back to the Bible. This man loved the Word of God so much that he had memorized large portions by heart and he could show you exactly what the Bible said about practically anything you were thinking. He was a walking Bible concordance! By the grace of God and through the prayers of my mom and dad and my godly maternal grandmother, my path crossed with Ron’s. He spent about four days with me, showing me what the Bible says about all of the foolish things I believed at the time.

I was a voracious reader even when I was not saved, and through foolish books and the influence of various people I met in my worldly travels, I had gotten involved in Hinduism and New Age and various other vain philosophies. I had spent a year and a half in Vietnam with the U.S. Army, and I spent a lot of time reading and discussing philosophy with unsaved buddies. After I returned to the States I became infatuated with Hinduism and joined the Self-Realization Fellowship Society.

Ron didn’t know anything about the philosophies and religions that I was involved with, but he did know the Bible. We traveled together from near Miami, Florida, to Mexico via Brownsville, Texas, and then back to Daytona Beach, Florida. All along the way, I was trying to impress Ron with my philosophical views and attempting to convince him of the glories of New Ageism, but for his part he simply quoted the Bible.

At first, I was very impressed with his knowledge of the Scriptures and very interested in what he was saying, but after a couple of days I became frustrated, and I said to him, “Don’t you have any thoughts of your own? All you do is quote from the Bible!” He replied something to the effect that his thoughts were not important but the Bible is the very Word of God.

I said, “I trust my heart.”

He replied. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9).

I said, “I must go the way that seems right to me.”

He replied, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Prov. 14:12).

I said, “How can a man know if the Bible is true?”

He replied, “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself” (Jn. 7:17).

I said, “There are many religions that lead to God.”

He replied, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

It went like that for about four days.

At the end of those days, we got a motel room in Daytona Beach and decided we would split up the next day and go our separate ways. Because of the books I had read about gurus in the Himalayas, I was thinking that I needed to find some mountains and I would discover God there, but by the grace of our blessed God, my heart was opened that night like Lydia’s long ago (Acts 16:14). I became strangely calm and my fretful compulsion to dispute the Bible left me, and for the first time in my life I started really listening to the Scriptures. That night I repented of my wicked sin before God and I had confidence that Jesus had died for me and I put my faith in Him. And that very night I became a fundamentalist Bible believer, meaning one who believes and has a zeal for every word in the Bible! I have never doubted one word of the Scriptures since that day, and how I thank God for it.

The next day we had breakfast together, and Ron started off in another direction to find another needy soul (I have never seen him again), while I headed back home to make things right with my parents and to start my new Christian life. I had an intense desire to learn everything I could about the Bible. I read it through probably three times that first year, and I not only read it, I studied it diligently, for hours a day. And there was nothing tedious about it; it was pure joy! How my heart thrilled that I had the very Word of God in my hands and that I could literally know the thoughts of God and His will for my life. I had Christ’s promise that I could know the truth and it would set me free (John 8:31-32). I had wasted many years, but now I didn’t want to waste another day.

I memorized hundreds of verses during those first few years, plus many individual chapters and the book of Colossians. Ron had given me a Strong’s Concordance and had shown me how to use it, so from the very first day of my new Christian life I understood the value of this amazing tool. That first year alone I looked up hundreds of words to find their definitions and to commit them to memory.

Before I went off to Bible School about a year after I was saved, I made my own thick topical study book filled with the studies that I had mined from the Scriptures. By the time I took a formal course in Bible doctrine, I already had a firm foundation in what the Bible said about the major subjects because I had studied them on my own.

Even though I was not saved when I was a boy, all of the Scriptures that I had learned came back to me and it gave me a good start in my Christian life. It is never in a waste of time to teach children the Bible!

When I was about six months old in the Lord, I wrote my first booklet. It was about the dangers of rock music, because that had been my lifestyle for many years. Within that first year, I wrote many other booklets; and by the time I was four years old in the Lord, I had written my first major book. It was titled “Avoiding the Snare of Seventh-day Adventism.” It was published by Challenge Press in Little Rock, Arkansas, and is still in print today. I did the research for and wrote most of it when I was still in Bible School. I was learning how to discern sound Christian teaching from heresy.

I developed a filing system that consisted of hand-written quotes on index cards that I gleaned from my constant reading. By the time I graduated from Bible School, this index system consisted of thousands of cards.

From that day to this, I have loved the Bible and I have never ceased to study it diligently; but let me hasten to say that it is not my doing. I don’t want anyone to think that I am tooting my own horn. Far from it; I stand in amazement at what the Lord has done for and through me. At my best I am an unworthy servant of the Lord. Before I was saved, I was the epitome of inconsistency and foolishness. I got involved in every sort of wickedness, and there was zero stability in my life. The only thing I completed during those dark years was a term in the Army. Somehow I finished my three years in the military and received an honorable discharge, but even at that, I made no effort to excel. Before and after the Army, I merely jumped from job to job, from place to place, and from philosophy to philosophy. Thus, my steadfastness in the Bible and in the things of Christ for these past 34 years is certainly not my own doing. It is purely and simply the grace of God, and how I thank Him for it.

The Bible is the greatest treasure in this sin-cursed world. It is far more valuable than the wisest Christian even begins to understand.

My earnest prayer to God is that He will use this course [“How to Study the Bible”] to bring the joy of effectual Bible study to many people, and that it may help many of God’s people to be excited about the Bible in these dark days and to help protect them from the wiles of the Devil and the machinations of false teachers.

In the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,