A topical Bible study is a study of a topic. It is when you take a specific topic that you want to learn more about and find verses throughout the Bible that mention that topic.

Verse mapping is when you take a specific verse about the topic and study it in-depth.

The most important thing you need to remember about topical studies, and about verse mapping in general, is that it can be dangerous.

What do I mean by that?

Well anytime we take one verse and pull it out of a book of the Bible, we lose the context.

Besides prayer, context is the most important part of Bible study.

It's the reason why I teach that studying the Bible should be done by going through one entire book from front to back. If you do this, you will not lose the context. You will know what the author is saying and why. You will also know what kind of writing the book is, so that you can know if it should be taken literal, if it's poetry, or prophecy, or instruction, etc.

Exegesis is the art of interpretation. We absolutely HAVE to try to understand the purpose of a book, the author, the audience, the historical times of the people and the places. This is what I like to call "then and there". We must research what it meant then and there to be able to learn from it and apply it to the here and now.

We need to do this with topical studies too. It's not as easy as going through one entire book is, but it is possible. In this study, you will learn how.