Build Your Own Bible Study Library

Here is a basic Bible Study Library that I recommended to my friend Stephen Doxsee a while back (with some minor changes). It may be helpful to some of you in building a small library that will help you in the study of God's Word for the rest of your life.

(compare prices between http://www.amazon.ca/, http://www.chapters.ca/, http://www.abe.com/ (used), for individual books)

New Bible Dictionary and New Bible Commentary (IVP) as a set (good deal!): see here.

A Harmony of the Gospels: New American Standard Edition (Hardcover)
by Robert L. Thomas (Author), Stanley N. Gundry (Author) [or Synopsis of The Four Gospels : Greek/English (Hardcover) by Kurt Aland (Author)]

Zondervan Handbook to the Bible

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

(buy at CBD, super cheap!: See here)

Hard Sayings of the Bible by Walter Kaiser Jr. and F.F. Bruce

Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties by Gleason Archer

NET Bible (shows how they came up with the translation in the footnotes)
Avaliable at http://www.bible.org/ (make sure you don’t get the readers version, but the one with the footnotes); also avaliable for free to view and/or download to your computer here.

The ESV Bible (good literal translation for Bible Study; view online at http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/.

The MacMillian Bible Atlas

Biblica: The Bible Atlas: A Social and Historical Journey Through the Lands of the Bible by Prof. Barry J. Beitzel (Editor)

IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament

IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament

How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart

Exegetical Fallacies by D.A. Carson

An Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics by Walter Kaiser and Moises Silva

The best book to look at for picking excellent individual commentaries is: The Essential Commentaries for a Preacher’s Library by Dr. Derek W. H. Thomas: see here.

New Testament Commentary Survey by D.A. Carson

Old Testament Commentary Survey by Tremper Longman III

Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words by William D. Mounce (Editor)

Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem

New Dictionary of Theology edited by Sinclair B. Ferguson, David Wright

The History of Christianity edited by Tim Dowley

You Can Memorize Whole Books of the Bible! Seriously!

Dr. Andrew Davis has a helpful and practical article called: "An Approach to Extended Memorization of Scripture." You can access it here.

How to Listen to a Bad Sermon

Click here for an interesting message by Ligon Duncan.

Pope Benedict XVI Reasserts Other Christian Denominations are Not True Churches

You can access the article here. Maybe the pope should read the book of Galatians. Is the Pope teaching a "different gospel" (Galatians 1:6), that one is saved by joining the Roman church and not "through faith in Jesus Christ" alone (Galatians 2:16). If the works that the Galatians trusted in were not sufficient for salvation (Jewish ceremonial law, identity, and their righteous deeds), then why does the pope think that one needs to be a member of the Roman Church to be saved (cf. Galatians 3:10-12)? And is the claim of the Pope to Apostolic Succession even valid historically? Your thoughts?

N.T. Wright's Simply Christian Reviewed

Check out this excellent and balanced review by Andrew Davis. What we discover is that this is not a book to be given to new Christians and it should not replace C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. You can find the review here.