Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

The Marked Bible

Staci Schefka

1. Bible Marking Basics: How to Mark Your Bible for Sharing Truth

Dear God, I want to thank you for this afternoon and for this group of eager learners to learn how to mark their Bibles so that they can be able to share their faith more effectively with others.

Thank you for this opportunity to spend this time together.

And we ask that you would bless this class, that it would be helpful, and that we could really learn.

I am a pastor's wife and a Bible worker down in the Brighton and Walled Lake area, kind of northwest of Detroit.

And I learned about Bible marking from my mom.

And some of you have maybe been to my mom's and dad's classes.

Cinda Osterman is my mom, and she taught me Bible marking when I was a child.

I also, I think the very first Bible studies I ever marked in my Bible Happened when I went to a camp meeting by lightbears ministries And I'm sure many of you are familiar with that ministry a tie Gibson and James Rafferty When they were in Northwest Washington Our actually was Northeast Washington.

They had a camp meeting, and when I was a child, we would go there to camp meeting, and I learned how to mark Bible studies in my Bible there.

So it's been something I've been doing for a long time, and it's really helped me to be able to share my faith better and to be able to find those Bible verses.

And from there I've also learned how to mark my Spirit of Prophecy books too.

So I'm actually on Friday going to be showing you the method I use for marking my Spirit of Prophecy books so that they're not just all yellow because it's all good.

And then you can't ever find anything because all you want to do is whole page yellow.

So I have a, do we have any extra handouts left?

I thought someone was sitting there, but maybe she was.

I made 24, but Obviously we have more in here than that.

Yeah, so I'm gonna share the method I use for that.

But I wanna just begin by telling you about a little book I read a few years ago that actually is where I got the title for this class the marked Bible has anyone ever read this little book I think it's out of print.

It's been reprinted by UPMI which is a ministry to prisoners But it's a old like Adventist Classic probably from the 1940s or 50s.

I'm guessing It's a story about a boy who was kind of rebellious, had an Adventist mother.

His father passed away at some point, I don't remember when, and he wanted really nothing to do with religion.

He kind of grew up with God and then was drifting and He ended up going out as a sailor and his mother packed into his trunk before he went a Bible that she had marked.

And she had highlighted passages throughout the Bible, passages of promises related to being out at sea, and also different Bible doctrines.

And somewhere in his travels, he was digging in that trunk and he found that marked Bible, and he was like, oh, mother, you know, like, well, you're following me even out here to sea.

And so he ended up getting mad at 1 point and he threw the Bible overboard, Which is why in the picture you see the Bible floating down in the ocean.

And many years went by, and he was headed back home, and his mother passed away from the illness before he got back to San Francisco and through a series of circumstances he ended up giving his life to the Lord and decided to follow God and he had got in trouble with the law and he was being sent out on exile I guess from the United States for a period of time, and he was put on another ship, and before they left port, he stopped at a waiting room by the dock, and there was some different literature there for the sailors to take.

And he saw a Bible that looked very similar to the 1 that his mother had given him, and he immediately was drawn to it.

And he went and picked it up and opened it, and it was marked like the 1 he had thrown overboard.

Similar passages, looked like similar handwriting, and he was just like visibly moved.

And this older gentleman that was there came up to him and said, young man if you'd like to take that Bible you may have it.

It was provided here for anybody who would like to have it.

And he said this is just like the Bible my mother gave me.

So long story short, his mother actually wrote a marked a second Bible and left it there in that waiting room.

And he ended up getting the second Bible which is like amazing coincidence which wasn't really coincidence it was providence so he took that Bible with him on ship and started to read and study it and the story the book the most of the book is about his experiences on this ship learning about the Adventist message and it covers the Sabbath and all these different things as he met some other Adventist missionaries that were going overseas.

So this was definitely back in the time when our Adventist missionaries would travel by ship rather than by airplane and many people on that during that voyage ended up accepting the Adventist message as a result of this marked Bible so it's a cool storybook if you ever want to pick up a copy of it.

But if you ever find it, get it because it's a great little story.

But it shows the impact a marked Bible can have of being able to share God's Word with somebody else and have those scriptures.

The first 1 is so that you can fortify your mind with Bible truth.

When you take the time to actually write something down, highlight something, you're actually taking time to think about it and you're putting it in your mind.

We know that when we write something down, we remember it much more.

So the Word of God says in Psalms 119 11, Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you.

When we put God's word in our heart, we're not going to sin against Him and we will follow His ways.

The second reason is so that we can witness.

You'll be equipped to be able to share a Bible truth with others.

Always being ready to give a defense to everyone who asks a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.

But if you ever had someone ask you a Bible question and then you went to try to find that verse and you just couldn't locate it, you know, it's really frustrating when that happens, right?

You're like, I know it's somewhere in Isaiah, and you're just like flipping and flipping and flipping, and you just can't ever find it.

And we want to be a Seventh-day Adventist, people who know how to find a Bible answer and go to it.

And I think we maybe were better at this in the past, but we've somehow gotten away from that.

But if your Bible is marked, you know exactly where to go, and you if you don't know exactly, and you kind of a general idea, the verse will pop off the page to you if it's highlighted.

If I'm like, I know that somewhere, somewhere in...

Somewhere in Luke, I know it talks about the signs of Jesus coming.

I know Matthew 24 does, but I remember somewhere in Luke, it also mentions it too.

And I'm looking and I'm kind of thinking, and I think it's somewhere maybe around chapters 15, 16, 17, to 20 maybe and I'm just flipping and I'm just trying and rather than trying to find the verse I'm looking for color okay so when I get to Luke 21 and I see the yellow, I know this is the passage on the second coming.

So all I had to do was look for the yellow and I knew right where to go.

So when your Bible is marked, it makes it much easier to find the scriptures you're looking for to be able to answer those Bible questions.

How many of you are giving Bible studies or have given Bible studies?

If you're giving a Bible study, you know that even if you're following a set of lessons, that there are sometimes questions that come up that aren't in the lesson.

Or you think of another verse that might help in the discussion you're in.

And you're thinking, oh, I should take them to that verse, and then you're like, oh, where's that verse?

If your Bible's marked, it's easier to go to that passage and to find it, to be able to share it with them at that moment.

So that's another reason why marking your Bible is so helpful.

There's something very exciting about marking your Bible with studies.

Not only does it give you a clear understanding of the important Bible truths, it also gives you greater confidence to share those truths with others.

Dozens of studies and scriptures are at your fingertips ready to be given to others.

So let's talk about some of the tools that you would use.

The first thing is you have to have a good Bible.

I use the King James or New King James primarily for giving Bible studies.

You want to have 1 that's more of a word-for-word translation rather than 1 that's more of a paraphrase or a thought translation.

You'll find it just a little bit easier to, I think it's a little bit more accurate and a little easier to communicate our Bible doctrines.

And it uses the similar words too, so they see more of a connection between the passages.

Now, when it comes to Bible marking, my preferred Bible is a wide margin Bible.

So I'm gonna give you a few places where you can get 1, but you can mark any Bible, you just are gonna have to write smaller and just be a little bit more creative.

2. Mark Your Bible: Salvation & the Sabbath

Dear God, I want to thank you so much for each of those that are here to learn about how to mark their Bible so that they can share the Word of God with others and help them to learn these skills so that the word of God will come alive to them and that we can better be able to share your truth with those who ask questions.

Okay, so just a little review for those who may be new joining us today.

Yesterday I passed out this handout, how to do Bible marking, and in here I talk about the 2 reasons why I love Bible marking.

It's actually something that I started when I was just a child.

I think my parents wanted to get me into my Bible, and a lot of kids like lots of colorful books and that sort of thing, and they open up the Bible, and it's all black and white, and it looks really kind of boring.

But they said, no, let's mark your Bible.

And it got me very excited about my Bible.

This Bible was the 1 I got when I was about 10 years old, 12 years old maybe.

This is a big Bible for a child when you think about it, now that I think about it.

But I started back then just starting to color code it and write Bible studies in it.

And You can see some of my really terrible handwriting back then and some of these notes that I put in there, but I just don't have the heart to get rid of them because it was something that was very precious, you know, and it was getting me into the word of God.

I gave my first Bible study when I was 7 years old, and the Bible study I gave is the 1 we're gonna mark in our Bibles today.

But what it allowed me to do was to know how to present a Bible study, and all I needed to have with me was my Bible.

When your Bible is marked you don't have to have a set of study guides with you or a DVD with you.

Anywhere you are you could give a Bible study just with your Bible because the Bible studies are chain referenced in there.

But another thing is that the method of Bible marking that I use is with colors using coloring pencils so that they don't bleed And what it does is it allows me to quickly find Bible verses on Bible topics, because each topic is by color.

So if you look at your handout that I gave you on the third page, yes.

On the third page is my Bible doctrine color chart.

So these are the colors that I use for the different topics in my Bible.

And I try to pick colors that make me think of that Bible subject.

So for example, the 1 that you see on your table is the salvation 1 and it's the color red because red makes me think of the blood of Jesus' sacrifice and this seems like the fitting color for that.

I use dark blue for the law of God and light blue for the Sabbath.

I use brown for topics of sin or the origin of evil, the fall of Lucifer, the destruction of the wicked like hellfire.

I then sometimes use variations of a color like the light or the dark version of it.

So I use the light brown for the origin of evil.

I use the dark brown for the Antichrist, the fall of Babylon, that sort of thing, just showing the depth of deep darkness it goes to.

I use Yellow for the second coming, dark green for the stay of the dead.

These are actually the colors we'll use in our study today and into tomorrow.

Now, you don't have to use these colors for these topics.

You can choose other colors if something else seems to fit better for you.

It's just my, what makes sense to me, but there's some variation.

Like if you're doing something like on the topic of stewardship and tithing and you want to highlight all the verses in the Bible that talk about finances and the stewardship of God's money.

Well, there isn't really any maybe good or bad color for it, you know.

You may say, well, I think I'd like to use pink or peach or whatever.

So there's some that are kind of maybe more obvious than others, you could have whatever color you choose.

There are lots of different variations of colors and you can get pencil sets that have many different colors in them, but what I find is that if you get too far beyond maybe like a basic 24 set, that you're going to have The difference between the colors is going to be so close, it's going to be hard to tell the difference.

So I try to avoid getting too creative in how many colors you pick.

Now, the other thing we talked about yesterday was how I use shapes.

So if you look at an example of this, on page 4, The very next page, you can see I have circles and triangles on this page.

I use a circle for my main study on a topic, and I will use a different shape if I have other studies on the same topic, but they're not gonna be my primary study.

So for example, this circle here, this purple circle, is representing that this is a study on the Word of God, on the Bible.

If I was gonna give a study to someone on God's Word, this would be the main primary study.

But I also wanted to mark a study in my Bible that was on how to have a devotional life and the importance of having a devotional life.

I also have a study in my Bible that's on Bible memorization and the blessings that we gain from memorizing Scripture.

So you can see that you can use several different shapes to differentiate between different studies marked in your Bible that are on the same general topic of the scriptures, for example.

Another thing that you will notice from the way I mark is that I don't mark the entire passage.

So, if you flip the page, you'll see my example here of Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12 where it says, the Word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul, spirit, and joint, and morrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." So this scripture is about the scriptures and what they do, but I didn't highlight the entire thing purple.

Instead, I select key words and phrases that I think are the important part of that verse and the part I would emphasize if I was sharing this verse with someone else.

I find that today, most people, when they read, they don't comprehend immediately what they read.

So after you they read a text, you have to go back and talk about, well, what did we just read?

And that's when you're basically summarizing or pulling out from the text what was the key point, what was the key thought in that verse.

That's the part I'm highlighting so it makes it very easy then to pull out that key point.

So in this case the key point is that the Word of God is living and powerful, it's sharper than a two-edged sword, and it discerns my thoughts and intents of my heart.

Those would be the 3 thoughts from that I would want to emphasize.

So it makes it a lot easier to summarize the important part of that passage.

Let me see if there's a couple other things we talked about yesterday.

So you'll see in the margin, well next to the verse, I will use my symbol, here in this case, a purple dot.

And then in the margin, I also will use it and have my next text.

Now this is the last text in the study, so it has end next to it, but if it was a previous text it would have the text and then the abbreviation of the Bible study.

And I have in the back of my Bible a list of all these studies and what their titles and abbreviations are.

So I actually have 2 because I have quite a few studies marked in my Bible.

This is a Bible study index that I actually typed up onto an Avery shipping label and placed it in there when I did a Bible marking class at my church and so I was able to print off a bunch of these for everybody.

And so you had your color and the symbol next to it, your subject, and then the code.

So, Word of God would be WG, the divinity of Jesus was DJ, the law of God was LG, you know, that sort of thing.

So you could go to that first text and when you get to the first text, it would have the next text and then you go to that text, it has the next text and it's taking you through your entire chain until you get to the last verse and then it says end in the margin.

So that's a label where you've typed it up, but you can also just write them out.

So you can see my shapes and colors here, my titles and my abbreviation and my first text.

And this is what I was doing long before I ever started developing this.

Now someone today brought an example of some Bible study that I had mentioned yesterday.

These are little, they're actually stickers.

So you have to cut it out with either scissors or an X-Acto knife.

And you have your topic and your text for each 1.

And this actually matches with the studies and studying together by Mark Finley.

So if you go to Mark Finley and you cover, look at the 1 here on the Sabbath, it's going to be this 1 right here and it's exactly these verses.

I'm not 100% sure about that, but that's what I understand is that these match together.

So this is nice if you don't like to write, you think you have terrible penmanship or you can't write that small.

Now this is pretty small print, if you can see.

It's pretty tiny, which could be helpful if you have a Bible that doesn't have a lot of space to write in the margin, because this doesn't require a lot of space.

Now this is its own color-coding method, and It doesn't necessarily, I'm not sure what the rhyme and reason is between them.

For example, they have the origin of evil as orange and they have salvation as blue.

So to me, this doesn't match in my mind, but it can work, you know.

3. Mark Your Bible: Death & The Second Coming

Dear God, thank you, Lord, for this afternoon and this time to spend in this Bible marking class to learn how we can share your word with others and just so that the Bible will come alive to us as we color it with our pencils and just discover your truths there.

So bless this time, Lord, that we spent together this afternoon.

May it be practical and may it result in us being able to be greater witnesses for you.

Someone brought their Spirit of prophecy books.

So today we're going to be kind of going over some more of the ones we did yesterday, but we will also be doing spirit Prophecy color coding.

So for those of you who are brand new today and weren't here yesterday when we started practicing, you'll catch up to speed pretty quickly.

And you can always ask the person sitting next to you if they were here, because they should be able to help you too.

So I hope you have your Bible with you, because we're going to actually mark a Bible study in our Bibles.

Did anyone yesterday have a chance to finish the 1 that we started on the signs of Jesus coming?

So in the handout that you have of Bible studies, we were, the first 1 that we did yesterday was called Steps to Salvation, and it has the bright red on it.

And this was our sample that we used where I actually put down exactly what part to highlight.

Now, for those of you who are new, just a quick review.

I color code my Bible and my spirit prophecy books using coloring pencils and each color represents something.

So in my Bible, the colors represent different Bible doctrines, whereas in my spirit prophecy books, they represent other things, which we'll get to a little later.

But in my Bible, they represent Bible doctrines.

And as you can see from this example, I don't highlight the entire verse most often when it comes to doing a verse.

I just pick out the key words or the key phrases, the key thought in that passage.

If you remember from the handout I passed out the first day, I had a sample page of chain referencing and color coding, which is a good 1 to keep out as a reference.

And you will see that there's sometimes a passage of scripture is used for 2 different Bible studies.

For example, this 1 in 1 Thessalonians 4 is used for a study on the second coming and the state of the dead.

If I colored it all yellow when I was doing the Second Coming, and then I went back and I was doing the State of the Dead in my dark green, I would be like, oh, now what do I do?

So we only highlight the part of the text that is talking about, specifically about the Second Coming.

In this case, it said, the Lord descends from heaven with a shout, the voice of the Archangel and the trumpet of God.

And then the dead in Christ rises first is about the resurrection, and that's what we do in dark green.

So it allows you when a verse is used in a couple different studies to be able to maybe not overlap your colors that way.

Do you ever have, have you, I know in all your studies there has to be some that have overlapped or not?

I can't think of an example right off, but I'm sure there must have been somewhere along the way.

And I think when it did happen, I underlined in the other color where I had highlighted above it and then I just underlined it.

That would be another way you could if you were using it for both.

But usually the phrase is going to be referring to a specific topic matter.

So, you wouldn't normally run into that problem.

Now the other thing I've shared in this class so far is that in addition to coloring phrases and words, I also use symbols, in this case it's dots or circles, to point out which verses are in my study and then in the margin what the next verse is going to be.

And this allows me when I'm reading a passage to know that these are the 3 verses for the second coming study and then when I go to the margin I'm looking for the yellow dot which will guide me to the next verse.

Now I was talking with this lady and remind me your name?

So she had yesterday 1 of the studies that we were marking, she had already marked another Bible study in her Bible.

Yeah, she was doing the 20 fundamental beliefs, And so she already had a verse there that had a verse in the margin.

So she's like, how am I going to keep these from getting confused?

And I said, well, that's why the shapes are so helpful.

When you put the little yellow dot there and then you put your next verse, you know that when you're doing your second coming study, your verse is going to that 1.

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Series

The Marked Bible

3. Mark Your Bible: Death & The Second Coming

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The Marked Bible

1. Bible Marking Basics: How to Mark Your Bible for Sharing Truth

1h 11m

The Worker’s Tool Box

45m

The Marked Bible

2. Mark Your Bible: Salvation & the Sabbath

1h 7m

The Lost Art of Reading: Why We Should Re-read the Un”Red” Books

42m

The Gift of Prophecy - When and Why

57m

The Godhead

The Godhead Part 4

58m

Sabbath School: ALIVE

ALIVE - Part 2

58m

Practical

The Bible According to Little Red Riding Hood

1h 4m

Personal Preparation

Personal Preparation- Part 5

1h 12m

The Testimony of Jesus

49m

Jesus in Our Doctrines

1h 6m

Sound Doctrine