The Useful Bible Study Centre is an online place to assist in your personal study of the Bible, by means of teaching articles in clear and simple English. These articles guide the reader through complete books of the Bible, with a separate section on each verse (or small group of verses). It is possible to use these articles whether you intend to study a whole book, or simply to understand better the meaning of any verse in the book.
We are careful that our articles are of a proper professional standard. The process to write a set of articles on a Bible book is a slow process, which typically takes a year or two for each book. We check each article several times before it appears on this website. We design the articles to be suitable for use by church leaders and ministers who are preparing sermons, speeches and public lectures. However, we also desire the same articles to be useful to anyone who studies the Bible in private. That includes Christians, people of other religions, and people with no religion who wish to understand the Bible, perhaps because of its importance in the world.
The use of EasyEnglish (2800 word vocabulary) makes these articles much easier to understand than the books about the Bible that are generally available. EasyEnglish was developed by the UK charity, Wycliffe Associates (UK) which is now called MissionAssist. The original aim was to assist readers whose first language is not English. However, very many of our readers today speak English as their first language, but choose to benefit from the clearer explanations of our method. We use no technical or theological words unless we explain those words in the same article. We use simple sentence structures, and we use only the simpler meanings of each word. That is very different from most of the books that are available to teach the Bible. Often those books are only suitable for people who have reached a high standard in education. Even for people with a degree, such books can be slow and difficult to study. We believe that clear knowledge about the Bible’s meaning can and should be available to everyone.
Our team members are all Christians, from different types of churches, all of which believe the Bible strongly. However, we do not publish articles on the beliefs of our own churches. Rather, we publish articles that help the reader to understand the Bible. We explain the matters of history, geography, and language that a reader might not realise. Then we show the reader how the verse matches into the surrounding verses, the rest of the book, and the whole Bible. In this way, the correct meaning of the original authors soon becomes very clear to the reader. It is simply wrong to think that much of the Bible is impossible to understand correctly. The fact is that there is no serious argument about the meaning of the vast majority of the Bible. Occasionally we mention an important disagreement between Bible teachers. Generally, however, we find agreement between sincere Bible teachers, even when they come from different types of churches. There are of course many minor differences of opinion, but there are plenty of books that discuss these matters. So we do not consider it part of our work to explain those.
The Useful Bible Study Centre has carried on this work since 2011. We now have a large set of complete series of articles on many different Bible books. We continue to research, study and publish articles on further Bible books.
The Useful Bible Study Centre has a small team of people who prepare, check and publish our articles. Keith Simons leads the team; and he writes all the articles and corrects them personally when necessary.
Keith is a Bible teacher from England. Before he started Useful Bible, he was (from 2004 to 2010) the leader of the EasyEnglish Bible Commentary team at Wycliffe Associates UK (now called MissionAssist). He wrote several Bible Commentaries for the EasyEnglish project, including Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon and Ezekiel 40-48, and also a simpler Commentary on Mark’s Gospel. He also co-wrote EasyEnglish Commentaries on Genesis and Romans.
Since 2010, he has been the team leader and Bible teacher at the Useful Bible Study Centre.
In some ways, we are similar to a Bible College. We teach, by means of our articles, to a level of knowledge that is similar to a good Bible College. Many people who cannot attend Bible College, use our articles to study the Bible. We care about standards; we want our readers to be able to use what we teach to serve God in their daily life.
As Christians, we believe that it is important for everyone to study the Bible. We all need to develop in our knowledge of God and our relationship with him. That is why we share the products of our own studies freely with other people. It is our hope that our efforts will make it easier for them to discover more about God and about the Bible.
However, in many ways we are different from a Bible College. Our work is entirely online. We are unable to provide personal advice for students; we do not arrange courses of study; and we do not offer qualifications. This is for an important reason. We want to support our readers in their own personal study of the Bible. Therefore, we encourage our readers to choose for themselves what they will study with our help. One person may want simply to understand one verse better, and perhaps to compare it with the explanations of other Bible teachers. Another person might choose to study one particular Bible book. At different times, the same people may return to our articles for other purposes. We want our readers to be free to benefit from these articles as they consider best.
It is free to study online with the Useful Bible Study Centre. You can read as many articles as you wish, there is no ‘pay wall’. We do not ask for any payments or gifts. We are happy for you to print articles for your own use. Please do not place our articles online or sell them without permission.
We have published a few of our most popular studies as ‘Print on Demand’ titles at Amazon. These are for sale; we have kept the cost low so that as many people as possible can afford them.
We prepare our articles to be suitable for use with any Bible translation. However, we prefer you to use a Bible translation that is more literal – in other words, as close as possible to the Bible’s original languages, Hebrew and Greek.
For our talks on the Psalms, we have used the King James Version (KJV) – also called the Authorised Version (AV). However, it is a very old translation – for that reason, we have given very careful explanations of the language. We chose the KJV because it is one of the most literal translations available today. The experts who prepared it did so with very great respect for God, and for the Bible’s meaning. That is why the KJV remains so popular and important today.
When someone reads the Bible, God teaches that person. However, God uses various methods to teach them, and one of those is by Bible teachers.
If we could understand everything perfectly, then we would not need teachers. However, the experience of most people is that they do not understand Bible passages well. As they continue to read, their knowledge and experience of the Bible increases – so they understand more. After many years, they may understand the Bible very well, even without a teacher – but they also become more aware of the limits of their knowledge. So, they are grateful to God for everything that he provides to teach them more.
The people who lived at the time of the Bible understood their culture. They knew about their country and its history. Those people who followed the religion of the Old Testament understood its laws and its practices. So, many people who originally read the books of the first Christians, did not need anyone to explain about such matters. However, today our world is very different. Our articles explain such things clearly. In this way, many passages that seem difficult will become clearer to you.
On the other hand, new ideas have developed in society. The modern age has an effect on how people today think and behave. That affects religion in particular – for example, doubts often fill people’s minds when they read the Bible. However, that is not a proper way to read the Bible, because it shows no respect either for God, or for the contents of the Bible. Therefore, we constantly remind you about the importance of your relationship with God. We emphasise that your relationship with God is not something that you can achieve by your own efforts. It is completely the result of God’s work, his great love, and how he sent Jesus to die for your wrong and evil deeds.
There are many different kinds of Bible Commentaries. Originally, the purpose of Commentaries was simply to explain the books of the Bible. However, often today people use them to argue for a theory or a new idea in religion.
We often describe our work as Bible Commentary because the description helps people to understand it. However, our work is more than a Bible Commentary, because it aims to teach, and not only to explain. Each of our articles carefully teaches the meaning of the passage. Generally, our articles also show how the passage fits into the Bible as a whole. So often, the reader of even just one of our articles has learned about much more of the Bible than that one passage.
We do not approve of new ideas and theories about the Bible. Our purpose is to teach the lessons that are already there in the Bible. We are not trying to prove our opinions, but rather to show why we have those opinions. We allow the reader to make his own decision about everything that we say. We provide many references to other parts of the Bible in order to help the reader in that task. We do not think that it is possible to prove anything by just one passage in the Bible – we want to show that the whole Bible teaches that lesson. We do not believe that the message of the Bible has ever changed – that is so, because God has never changed. He still works in the same way as he always has done. He still has the same opinions about what is right and wrong. He still has the same power; he still rules with absolute authority over all things. His word is always true, and he will always carry out his promises.