1. Have a regular, private place for your study. Pray in the spirit of humility for God to guide and direct your mind in your studies. Let the word of God correct you and you not correct God.

2. Begin with scriptures that are easy to understand. Use these scriptures to understand harder, vaguer passages of God's word. Also, do not build doctrine on one scripture!

3. Let the Bible interpret and prove the Bible. Don't look for what you want to prove; look for what the Bible actually proves.

4. Understand the context - the verses before and after, the chapters before and after. Does your understanding of a particular verse harmonize with the rest of the Bible. Remember, the Bible does not contradict itself!

5. Understand the original language (Hebrew or Greek). Never try to establish dogmatic doctrine or teachings by solely using Strong's Exhaustive Concordance or other Bible helps. They can be helpful at times, but can be limited and are only helps, not scripture.

6. Ask, what does the scripture clearly say?

7. Ask, what does the scripture not say?

8. Ask, who was the book written to?

9. Ask, who wrote it?

10. Ask, who said it?

11. Understand the time frame in history when the book was written.

12. Understand that the Bible at times uses parables, allegories, symbols, poetry, metaphors and other figures of speech and literary techniques to reveal God's truth.

13. Don't bring your own personal assumptions and preconceived notions into your understanding or conclusions.

14. Base your study on scriptural knowledge that you already understand. What do you know up to this point in time?

15. Do not make conclusions based on partial facts or insufficient information, or the opinions and speculations of others.

16. Opinions, regardless of how strongly you feel about them, don't necessarily count. Scripture must be your standard and guide.

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Written by: Les Pope and Fred Coulter