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Backlog

A running, public list of study topics and research questions on the list to develop — some are just a title, others already have working notes. Organized by the site's own subject sections, in their published order, so a section only appears here if it currently has something queued.

Refer to an item by its number, e.g. "work on 4.3." Section 0 is work on the site itself rather than a study topic.

new

Add new items here. They get a number and move into their section.

Quick reference

Ref Topic Section
0.3 Key Takeaways: the remaining two parts Site features
0.5 A blog Site features
0.6 Pop-up follow-ups Site features
0.7 Review the older studies Site features
0.9 Drafts awaiting publication Site features
0.12 Label the discussion questions Site features
1.1 Extra-biblical texts Scripture
1.2 Typed scripture links Scripture
1.3 Learning Hebrew Scripture
11.1 The Trinity God the Father
11.2 The nature of God: His attributes God the Father
2.1 Prophecy and Jesus Jesus
2.3 Jesus' attitude toward women Jesus
2.4 The feedings and the hardened hearts Jesus
2.5 The heavenly pattern (series) Jesus
4.2 On death Salvation
4.4 Grace Salvation
4.5 Repentance Salvation
4.6 Justified Salvation
4.7 Adopted Salvation
4.8 Made holy Salvation
5.1 Tribulation perspectives Last things
5.2 End times Last things
5.6 They were given white robes Last things
5.7 Heaven and earth by fire Last things
8.1 Mirror the unfoldingWord sources Sources & tooling
8.2 Chronology follow-ups Sources & tooling
9.1 Calling good evil and evil good Sin
9.2 Sexual immorality Sin
10.3 Religion and the Way Christian life
10.4 "I stand at the door and knock" Christian life

Finished items move to Completed at the foot of the page and keep their numbers, so an old reference still points at the right thing.

0. Site features

Work on the site rather than a study. The verse and word pop-ups (0.1 and 0.2) are built; see Completed. Their data, exported from bible-text.db into docs/content/assets/popups/, is also the natural source for the reader-facing lookup in 1.2.

0.3 Key Takeaways: the remaining two parts

The first part is done: every Key Takeaways section now opens with one line saying it follows the format, with a link to Key Takeaways (2026-09-27, 50 studies).

  • Refresh the format page's example. Key Takeaways names the Melchizedek study as where the format was first built out, and draws its type example from it. The 2026-09-25/26 studies (Know the Truth, The Restrainer) now show the format better: pick one as the worked example.
  • Point each prayer to the prayer study. Add one line above each ### Prayer heading linking to Prayer: Communion with God, the same way the Key Takeaways line was normalised: one fixed wording, applied by script, relative link adjusted per file.

0.5 A blog

A place for shorter posts alongside the studies, built on mkdocs-material's own blog plugin.

  • Setup: the blog plugin is part of mkdocs-material, so no new dependency. Add it to plugins: in mkdocs.yml, create docs/content/blog/index.md and a posts/ folder, and give it a nav entry through awesome-pages.
  • Drafts: the blog plugin honours draft: true on posts by itself. Check that hooks/draft_pages.py does not also act on posts, or they will be handled twice.
  • Docs to update: AGENTS.md says "this site has no blog" in its note on draft handling; that line changes when this lands.
  • Deploy: posts live under docs/, so the existing path filter already deploys them.
  • A "New studies" feed, left over from 0.4. docs/data/published.json already holds every page's first-published date, so the feed needs no new git work.
  • Decide first: categories, authors, whether posts get the Key Takeaways shape (probably not), and whether a post can be the first draft of a study.

0.6 Pop-up follow-ups

What the pop-ups (0.1 and 0.2) left undone.

  • Strong's numbers on untagged words. A word gets a word card only when its Strong's number is written beside it. The 2026-09-27 sweep added the 198 numbers MACULA resolves to a single entry, so what is left needs a reader's judgement. references/build/strongs_suggest.py --all lists it: 34 words with more than one candidate number (חֶסֶד, pronouns), 40 not in MACULA, and 64 phrases where the gloss may belong to one word. The 7 in this page are left for the author.
  • Every reference names its book. develop-bible-study now requires (Revelation 21:2), never a bare (21:2), except a continuation within the same citation ((Revelation 21:2, 9; 22:17)). 912 stand-alone bare references across 46 pages were written before the rule. The pop-up resolves them from the nearest earlier reference, and an edit that moves that reference repoints them with no error: bride-of-christ.md's (21:2) opened Isaiah 21:2 after a rewrite cut the sentence naming Revelation 19:7. The 2026-09-27 audit caught only resolutions to a verse that does not exist or with another book named just before, so a wrong book with a real verse can still be hiding. The sweep adds the book to each, checked against its paragraph rather than taken from the resolver.
  • A validator warning for a bare reference. Once the sweep is done, a validate-content.js check warns on a chapter-and-verse with no book that is not a continuation in the same citation, so new text cannot drift back.
  • Pronunciation: prose, card, or neither. AGENTS.md asks for "the English pronunciation of a word" alongside the original text, but most studies give only the transliteration, and the word card shows the transliteration without a pronunciation. The studies that do give one use the house shape (*Petros*, PET-ross, G4074). Decide whether to keep the rule and add pronunciations where they are missing, move pronunciation into the card (STEPBible's lexicon would have to supply it), or drop the requirement from AGENTS.md.
  • Iscariot's derivation in biblical-figures/judas-iscariot.md. The page cites Strong's H377 for the "man of Kerioth" reading, and that is what Strong's G2469 says ("probably H0377 and H07149"). But H377 is the verb "to be a man", while the Hebrew the page writes, אִישׁ ish, is the noun "man", H376. Decide whether the page notes that Strong's points at the verb.
  • Hebrew meanings. The word card shows STEPBible's short gloss. TBESH's fuller "Meaning" column is left out because its header credits Online Bible's abridged BDB and asks that permission be sought. Ask Online Bible, or leave it out for good.
  • Counts in the studies against the cards. A study's "only here" or "N times" now sits on the same page as a card showing the concordance's number. A one-off pass comparing every stated count with the exported data would find the stale ones (see validator checks 18-19).

0.7 Review the older studies

About 70 hand-written studies are live, and 21 have had a review-bible-study pass since 2026-09-24 (The Rapture of the Church on 2026-09-28, Genealogy and Times on 2026-09-30, Melchizedek on 2026-10-02 after its rewrite, Six Days of History and A Thousand Years in Your Sight on 2026-10-20). Nearly every page lists anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 in its provenance, but that records the site-wide sweeps (pop-ups, Key Takeaways) rather than reviews. A review counts when it is recorded as a dated review_ block in the study's state file. Work through the list in batches of about four, and record each review in the state file.

0.9 Drafts awaiting publication

Files with draft: true, which the build drops. Each needs its remaining passes and a decision to publish. This list names them by file path and links none, because a published page may not link a draft (validator Check 24).

  • Great Commission (christian-life/great-commission.md): 3,289 words.
  • Supplication: Begging, Turned Upward (christian-life/supplication.md): 589 words, a stub.
  • How God Answers Prayer (christian-life/how-god-answers-prayer.md): 1,314 words. Publishing it restores the altar page's link in 2.5.
  • Psalm 118 on the Road to Gethsemane (jesus/psalm-118-road-to-gethsemane.md): 1,449 words.
  • The Rapture in the Early Church (last-things/rapture-in-the-early-church.md) (3,443 words) and Meet the Lord in the Air (last-things/meet-the-lord-in-the-air.md) (3,138 words).
  • Four Hundred and Eighty Years (chronology/four-hundred-and-eighty-years.md): 1,393 words, forked from Genealogy and Times; see 8.2.

0.10 Cut the AI register

A tidy of Biblical Numerology on 2026-10-09 took its em-dashes from 109 to 64, "rather than" from 7 to 0, ", not" from 9 to 1 and "exactly" from 8 to 1, and the study lost 437 words with nothing of substance gone. The pages below carry the same markers most densely. They were counted on 2026-10-09 in prose only (quotations, tables and References excluded) and scored per 1,000 words, one point per em-dash and four per contrast or intensifier. Numerology now scores 6, Hebrew Roots and Israel's Regathering about 3. Each count is a pointer to read the page: a contrast stays where the reader arrives holding the wrong version.

Progress. A review-bible-study Phase 8 pass was applied on 2026-10-09 to Bible Prophecy Essentials, The Trumpet Call of God, Prophecy Events and Times, Dreams and Visions, What Creation Declares, Genealogy and Times, Christians and Deliverance Ministry, The Day No One Knows, Assurance of Salvation, The Woman Who Touched the Fringe, Bread of Life, Israel and the Church, Bible Translations & Source Texts, The Day Is Near, The Twelve and its six apostle pages. All but Bible Translations (22, its remaining contrasts are real distinctions between translations) and Thomas (18) now score under 13. Content questions those passes raised are not yet resolved; a review-bible-study pass should take them up. Still to do: the reference and about pages below.

0.11 Content questions from the 0.10 pass

The style passes in 0.10 changed wording only and found about a hundred content questions along the way. On 2026-10-09 each was checked against source (quotations against study-notes.db, Greek and Hebrew against bible-text.db). Those confirmed as errors are fixed, and 75 evidence: entries recording the checks now sit in the study state files. The fixes included the "Daughter" and Mark 6:56 claims, 2 Timothy 1:12, Luke 23:45's ἐκλιπόντος, Anderson's date, Jeremiah 23:32 and 23:27, "lie down" at Mark 6:39 (now "recline"), the Song 8:6 word count, the "never speak" count on The Twelve, and the Hebrew New Testament anchor. The same pass capitalised pronouns for God and Jesus in the studies' own prose and closed prayers "In Jesus' name. Amen." What follows is what remains: decisions and new wording that are the author's.

Check against a source not held locally

  • Bible Prophecy Essentials: "That Greek translation existed roughly two hundred years before crucifixion was ever inflicted on a Jew." Alexander Jannaeus crucified Jewish opponents about 88 BC (Josephus, Antiquities 13.380), and Josephus is not in the repo. A suggested wording: "That Greek translation was made before Christ".
  • Prophecy Events and Times: the early witnesses for ἐκλιπόντος at Luke 23:45 (P75, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus) are not named, since no apparatus is local.
  • Simon the Zealot: the body gives the root as H7065 and the References give H7067.

Arguments a fix has weakened

  • Bread of Life: with "lie down" gone from Mark 6:39, the Psalm 23 / Ezekiel 34 staging rests on the green grass, the shepherdless sheep and "fed to the full". Keep the claim or soften it to an allusion. The Septuagint does not help it: LXX Psalm 22:2 reads ἐκεῖ με κατεσκήνωσεν, "there He made me dwell", which shares no verb with Mark's ἀνακλῖναι either.
  • The Trumpet Call of God: Revelation 11:18 is now quoted in full, including "rewarding your servants… and saints", next to "It describes no resurrection of the righteous dead in Christ."
  • Genealogy and Times: in the Samaritan Pentateuch Jared, Methuselah and Lamech all die in exactly AM 1307, its Flood year (checked). Its agreement on Methuselah therefore comes from adjusting three totals, and "corroborates MT… by an entirely different set of numbers" overstates it in two places.
  • Assurance of Salvation: 2 Timothy 1:12 now reads as the ESV does, "entrusted to me". The ESV margin, "what I have entrusted to him", may be the sense the argument wants, cited as the footnote reading.

Decisions

  • The Day Is Near: μακροθυμέω is defined as patience and hypomonē as endurance, but the Attitude bullet and the prayer call James 5:7 "endurance".
  • Bread of Life: "abundant" in Theological principle against "sufficient, never abundant"; "Grace answers a craving the law once judged" (Numbers 11 judges the people); one point made twice.
  • Christians and Deliverance Ministry: what the empty-house danger is to a believer the Spirit indwells; deliverance "at conversion" or "at the cross"; the κολαφίζω caveat appears twice; whether the block quote opening the preparatory-work section is quoted or the site's own words.
  • The Day No One Knows: name the state-of-exaltation distinction behind "no question of incarnational limitation", or soften it.
  • Assurance of Salvation: "the list omits the believer's own future failures" beside "exhaustive on purpose"; the fourth "how the week has gone".
  • Matthew and The Twelve: "at minimum a distinctive editorial choice" leaves the humility inference unstated.
  • Israel and the Church: restore "The Church is not Israel, and Israel is not the Church" as a signature line, or leave it cut.
  • Bible Prophecy Essentials: "a claim no other ancient religious text makes at the same scale" is uncited.

New wording only the author can write

  • No sentence saying what the passage shows about God, or no "so you…" landing: Prophecy Events and Times and Christians and Deliverance Ministry (neither has Key Takeaways), The Trumpet Call of God ("Then and now"), Genealogy and Times (closing section), Dreams and Visions (Joseph, Daniel, Acts 10), What Creation Declares (science section), The Woman Who Touched the Fringe and The Twelve ("Theological principle"; election unnamed), Simon the Zealot (reconciliation unnamed), The Day No One Knows ("Lessons about Jesus"), The Day Is Near, Bible Prophecy Essentials (God keeps His word; the prayer never names Jesus).
  • What Creation Declares: Discussion question 3 asks the reader to judge the study's fairness.
  • Prophecy Events and Times: "Three days and three nights" lists its evidence and gives no verdict.

Structural, for read-bible-study or simplify-bible-study

  • No Study outline (validator Check 22): Prophecy Events and Times, The Woman Who Touched the Fringe, Bible Translations & Source Texts. Prophecy Events and Times is also over its word budget.
  • Headings that are still contrasts or carry dashes: What Creation Declares ("A caution, not a citation", "Two revelations, not one"), Bread of Life (two dash headings), Bible Translations (two dash headings, one now a link target).
  • The Day No One Knows: a textual-note paragraph sits under the Prayer heading.
  • Bible Translations: the Hebrew New Testaments' status stated four times, the NASB caution three.
  • Frontmatter descriptions still carry "honestly" (Bartholomew, Judas Iscariot) and "genuine… rather than assumed" (Bible Prophecy Essentials).

0.12 Label the discussion questions

Every Discussion questions set is being brought up to the facet-labelled format of Hurt by the Church: each question opens with its facet in bold (The language., The text in its context., Christ., The hard part., Be transformed.), rests on a named text with the ESV checked against study-notes.db, and the set ends on Be transformed. Validator Check 25 flags the sets still to do. The format is in .claude/skills/develop-bible-study/discussion-questions.md.

Where it stands, 2026-10-12. Nine waves of four are done: 36 of 70 sets. The 34 left are listed in references/study-state/discussion-questions-sweep-2026-10.yml under todo:, in order, with each finished wave under done:. The work runs about four studies a wave, the author approves each wave before the next, and each study gets its own commit.

  • Next, wave 10: Woman at the Well, The Woman Who Touched the Fringe, A Thousand Years in Your Sight, and A Day Is a Thousand Years.
  • After that: the rest of Last things (21 studies, two of them drafts), then Scripture (6), Spiritual beings (2) and Reading the Song of Songs.
  • Found along the way. The sweep agents touched only the questions, so problems they noticed in study bodies are recorded under found_outside_questions: in the same file: nine misquotes or citation slips (Ephesians 5:32 in Bride of Christ, 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Romans 8:3 in As the Snake Was Lifted, LXX Genesis 37:35 in Three Days and Three Nights, Hebrews 9:8 in The Way, and others), lowercase divine pronouns in five studies, and three formatting slips. A review-bible-study pass should take these up, misquotes first.

1. Scripture

1.1 Extra-biblical texts

  • Which texts, from when, and why they're of interest
  • Which ones are referenced in the Bible
  • Which ones are deuterocanonical, and what that means
  • Other known texts from Jewish heritage (across the patriarchs)
  • Gad the Seer, etc.
  • Dead Sea Scrolls
  • Early church fathers

Scripture links to Scripture, and this site should be able to show that without borrowing anyone else's theology to do it. The goal is not a graph database of other people's cross-references — that data is already ingested and largely commoditised. The goal is to type the links by how they can be established, keep the objective classes separate from the opinion-based ones, and join them to the studies we've actually written, which is the one thing no other site can compute.

Already done — don't re-acquire. The OpenBible.info set is in bible-text.db as openbible-crossrefs (via the scrollmapper-bible-databases submodule, build.py's ingest_scrollmapper_crossrefs): 415,433 distinct directed edges, votes from −31 to 1,268, 28,956 distinct source verses. It's agent-only today — query.py crossref and the MCP bible_crossref tool, at Phase 6 of develop-bible-study. No reader ever sees it. The only reader-facing scripture linking is commentary_index.py, which maps chapters to the studies citing them.

Edge classes, ordered by how objectively each can be established

The ordering is the point. An edge's class travels with it, and classes are never summed into a single "strength" score — that is exactly how one tradition's reading gets laundered as data.

  1. Quotation — the New Testament quoting the Old, verbatim or near enough. The most objective class, and the one to build first: it is a textual judgement, not a theological one. Computable as Greek n-gram overlap between sblgnt and the Brenton LXX (ebible-grcbrent), both already ingested and both open tier. Worked example: Luke 4:18 reads Πνεῦμα κυρίου ἐπʼ ἐμέ, οὗ εἵνεκεν ἔχρισέν με εὐαγγελίσασθαι πτωχοῖς against LXX Isaiah 61:1 Πνεῦμα Κυρίου ἐπʼ ἐμὲ, οὗ εἵνεκε ἔχρισέν με, εὐαγγελίσασθαι πτωχοῖς — near-verbatim.
    • The distinctive value-add is recording which text the quotation follows. We hold the Masoretic (morphhb-wlc, macula-hebrew-wlc) and the LXX and the Greek NT, so a quotation edge can carry its Vorlage. That Luke follows the LXX rather than the Hebrew is a real exegetical fact a study can use, and it isn't in any cross-reference list.
    • LXX coverage: resolved, and we already had the text. The Brenton edition looked as though it lacked Daniel, Esther and Nehemiah. It doesn't — the Greek canon just puts two of them somewhere a USFM book code doesn't reveal, and the ingest was dropping them as "deuterocanonical". Daniel ships as Greek Daniel (DNG, and it's Theodotion — the form the NT generally quotes, confirmed at 1:3's Ἀσφανὲζ against the Old Greek's Ἀβιεσδρί), and Nehemiah is the back half of 2 Esdras inside EZR chapters 11–23. Both are now ingested.
    • Daniel 9:24–27 aligns verse-for-verse with the WLC, as do Daniel 1–2 and 5–12. Only chapters 3 and 4 diverge, and they are one problem seen twice: Theodotion inserts the Song of the Three after 3:23, and the chapter break then lands three verses late, so Greek Daniel 4:1–3 is WLC Daniel 3:31–33. Never compare those two chapters verse-for-verse.
    • Greek Esther is in too. Its six additions ride on lettered sub-verses (1:1b–1s, 3:13a–g, 4:17a–x, 5:1a–2b, 8:12a–u, 10:3a–k) exactly so the numeric verses keep the Hebrew numbering, so ingesting the numeric verses aligns eight of ten chapters with the WLC. The additions themselves aren't in the database — verses.verse is INTEGER — and Esther 1 starts at verse 2, because Addition A's opening carries a plain numeric 1 that would otherwise put Mordecai's dream at an address reading "in the days of Ahasuerus" everywhere else. The LXX now holds all 39 protocanonical OT books.
  2. Rare-lemma allusion — two passages sharing a lemma that occurs only a handful of times in the canon. Objectively gradeable by corpus frequency, and it surfaces allusions crowd-voting misses. We have the lemmas already: macula-hebrew-wlc (475,911 words), morphhb-wlc (376,712), macula-greek-sblgnt (137,741).
    • Works within a testament; blocked across one. Hebrew and Greek lemmas don't join, and Strong's H/G numbering doesn't bridge them. The pivot would be a lemmatised LXX, which we don't have — Brenton is text-only. STEPBible's TAHOT/TAGNT files (open-data/stepbible-data, CC-BY, currently raw-only) are the first place to look for that bridge. Until then, cross-testament allusion is out of scope — and it's the case that matters most for a promise-to-fulfilment reading, so it's the open question to resolve first.
  3. Semantic-domain proximity — Louw-Nida and SDBH domains, already sitting in morphology.domain_code. This is how to get "theme links" without inventing a theme taxonomy.
  4. Curated typological / dispensational links — hand-authored in our own frontmatter. The smallest class and the only one that is our own scholarship rather than someone else's data. Always attributed as a reading, never presented as a computed fact.
  5. Crowd cross-reference (OpenBible votes) — kept, but ranked last and always labelled. Its votes are consensus from a largely covenantal user base and will confidently weight Israel-equals-church links this site doesn't hold; it's also KJV-versified, so expect drift at the Psalm superscriptions, Joel 2/3 and Malachi 3/4. Useful as a lead to chase, not as evidence.

Source data — state of play

Cleared, in the order they were found — each one blocked something in the edge classes above:

  • SBLGNT word separators. All 7,939 verses were stored run-together (Ἐνἀρχῇἦνὁλόγος), because the XML encodes the separator implicitly. Without it the Greek NT cannot be tokenised at all, so the quotation class was dead on arrival. The reconstruction now reproduces the publisher's own text edition exactly.
  • The LXX's "missing" books. Daniel, Esther and Nehemiah were on disk all along — Daniel as Greek Daniel (Theodotion), Nehemiah inside 2 Esdras, Esther with its additions on lettered sub-verses — and were being dropped as deuterocanonical. All 39 protocanonical OT books now.
  • Duplicate verse rows. 28,674 references carried two or three rows across 38 works, because upstream ships each verse many times with differing whitespace. Now deduplicated at ingest and enforced by a unique index.
  • Versification. (book, chapter, verse) means different things in different works. Joel, Malachi, Daniel, Psalms, Proverbs and Jeremiah all disagree across schemes; works.versification and versification.py now carry it, and the lookups align automatically.

  • Style markers and translation-code resolution. BibleOrgSys markers reached 47% of WEB verses; and WEB resolved to a work that does not exist, so the default English lookup returned nothing.

  • The LXX's own versification, now derived rather than deferred. Jeremiah is reordered with an identical chapter count, so it hides from any count-based check; it was found by a quotation landing on the wrong chapter and then mapped chapter by chapter from the text itself — each relocated chapter names the nation it is against, and proper nouns survive translation. Only Jeremiah 30 resists, its sub-oracles being reordered within the chapter. The same pass turned up two more chapter breaks nobody had noticed: Daniel 5/6 (where the LXX sides with the Hebrew, having sided with the English at 3/4) and LXX Jeremiah 51's tail, which English prints as its own chapter 45.

Still open, both needing a source rather than a fix:

  • A lemmatised LXX. Deriving one from the annotated Greek NT covers 55.3% of LXX tokens — useful for confirming a specific lemma, but not enough for the rare-lemma allusion class, which rests on corpus frequency and would be computing rarity against a broken denominator. Cross- testament allusion stays out of scope until a real lemmatised LXX lands. Proverbs turned out to be mappable after all, once it was clear that Brenton preserves the Hebrew verse numbering and merely omits what the LXX lacks — a short chapter is an omission, not a renumbering. Six New Testament quotations confirm it, the Greek match and openbible's english-scheme cross-references independently naming the same reference for each.

Quotation hits that cannot be expressed as English references are down to 2 of 968 (0.2%) — both weak two-gram hits in Jeremiah 30, the one chapter whose sub-oracles the LXX reorders internally.

One constraint on the generator

Threshold, never top-N, and sort deterministically. The prototype capped candidates per verse at the best four, which looked harmless and was not: a score tie straddled that cut for 58 of 541 verses, so which candidates survived depended on set iteration order and changed between runs, and the cap discarded 27% of qualifying pairs outright — including 32 quotations strong enough to carry an eight-token verbatim run. Keeping everything above the threshold and letting the grading rank it gives byte-identical output across runs and more real signal. This matters because the generator writes into committed content: a re-run that produces a different set makes every diff unreviewable and lets a cited edge vanish under someone's feet.

Deliverables, in order — each one gated on the last proving out

  1. Gap detector. Built: references/build/study_gaps.py and the review_gaps MCP tool. For a study, take primary_passage + bible_references, pull typed edges, subtract what the study already cites, and report what the tradition connects that we never mention. A query.py subcommand plus an MCP wrapper, consumed by review-bible-study. No database, no visualisation, plain text output.
  2. Test it on real studies before building anything else. If it doesn't change a study, the rest of this item isn't worth building.
  3. Scripture-derived related studies. Two studies are related when their passage sets are densely linked — even when they share no tag and never cite each other. Emit a "Related by passage" block through the same <!-- ...auto-start/end --> mechanism commentary_index.py already uses. This is the integrated-message claim made concrete.
  4. A reader-facing reference lookup — see below.

Surfacing it

If this proves out it shouldn't stay buried in an agent tool. But the right surface is not a second search box: mkdocs-material's search already indexes prose and a competing one is a UX problem. What's genuinely missing is a reference resolver — enter or click Isaiah 61:1 and get (a) which studies treat it, (b) its typed links, each labelled by class. Site search can't do that, because it indexes words rather than references.

  • Build it the way the timeline and genealogy already work: a static JSON index emitted at build time (the build-events.js pattern), mounted as a React page from app/src/entries/. No server.
  • Scope the shipped index to our own passages and their immediate neighbourhood, not 415k edges.
  • Licence constraint: any verse text rendered in the browser must be WEB or another open work. ESV/NIV/NKJV/CSB live in study-notes.db under quotation-only and never ship to the client.

Prerequisite

75 of 134 hand-written pages now carry primary_passage and 80 carry bible_references (up from 46 and 49 of 102; counted 2026-09-27). Every step above is bounded by that coverage, so filling it in is the cheapest first move — and it improves the existing commentary index immediately.

Explicitly not doing

  • A force-directed whole-canon graph. 415k edges renders as a hairball, and OpenBible already publishes the arc diagram.
  • A graph database. At this scale SQLite with an edge_type column is sufficient; a graph store would have to earn its place later.
  • A hand-built theme taxonomy, when semantic domains and the existing tag facets already exist.

1.3 Learning Hebrew

  • Memory verses in Hebrew. A few key verses to learn in the original, like Genesis 1:1, which Verses Quoted Well already gives with its Hebrew and pronunciation.
  • The aleph-bet. Expand the material on Aleph with Beth: the first week, the words, and the link to the videos. Make sure there is material on the basics, such as learning the alphabet. Started 2026-10-17: Learn Hebrew is now its own section, with the alphabet and vowels, a pronunciation guide and a names-of-God flashcard deck. Still to come: A4 writing sheets for the square, Paleo-Hebrew and cursive scripts, a Three Scripts page, a Names of God study in God, and the Shema read letter by letter. Plan and decisions: references/study-state/learn-hebrew-section.yml.

11. God the Father

Numbered 11 because 3 to 10 were already taken when the section was added; it sits here in the site's teaching order.

11.1 The Trinity

One God in three persons, as a study of its own. The section page for God the Father and the statement of faith state the doctrine in a paragraph each, and the names studies for the Father, Son and Spirit take the persons one at a time; nothing yet works the doctrine itself from the text. The gap shows in The Nature of God series, where it is the week marked coming.

  • The oneness first. Deuteronomy 6:4, with אֶחָד (echad, H259, "one") worked from its own uses rather than from what either side of the argument needs it to mean, and Isaiah 44:6; 45:5.
  • The three named together. Matthew 28:19 (one name, three persons), the baptism of Jesus (Matthew 3:16-17), 2 Corinthians 13:14, John 14:16-17, 26 and 15:26 (the Son asks, the Father gives, the Spirit is sent).
  • Each person named God. John 1:1-3, 14; 20:28; Acts 5:3-4; Hebrews 1:8.
  • The Old Testament hints, marked by how firmly the text makes them, stated, echoed or read in: Genesis 1:26, Isaiah 48:16, the angel of the LORD.
  • The words the church used and why: Trinity, person, essence, as the councils used them against modalism and Arianism. Name each error in a sentence; define the doctrine affirmatively.
  • Land it in the second person: the Father adopts you, the Son redeems you, the Spirit seals you (Ephesians 1:3-14).
  • Check against the statement of faith's "One God in Three" section, which this study must agree with or flag.

11.2 The nature of God: His attributes

What God is like, as a companion to The Names of God, which is organised by what He does. Holiness, love, justice, faithfulness, eternity, unchangeableness, His presence everywhere, His knowledge and His power, each from the passages that state it (Isaiah 6:1-7; 1 John 4:8, 16; Exodus 34:6-7; Malachi 3:6; Psalm 139; Psalm 90:2).

  • Start from Exodus 34:6-7, God's own statement of His character, which the rest of the Old Testament quotes back (Numbers 14:18; Psalm 86:15; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2). Run the concordance on the echoes before claiming a count.
  • Group them so a reader can hold them: the attributes God shares with people in part (love, justice, faithfulness) and the ones only He has (eternity, unchangeableness, presence everywhere). This is the traditional communicable/incommunicable division; say so and gloss it.
  • Each attribute seen in Jesus (John 14:9; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3), so the study ends in a person.
  • Nine attributes will not fit the 4,000-word budget in one study. Consider two, the shared attributes and the rest, each its own week of The Nature of God.

2. Jesus

2.1 Prophecy and Jesus

  • Nature
  • Birth and lineage
  • Childhood
  • Ministry
  • Passion
  • Work — redemption
  • Prophet, priest, king
  • Future

2.3 Jesus' attitude toward women

How Jesus treats women across the Gospels, against the norms of his day — not yet scoped beyond that.

2.4 The feedings and the hardened hearts

Expand The Bread of Life with Mark's reading of the two feedings (the five thousand and the four thousand) — a revision of that study rather than a new one.

  • The gap. The study treats the rebuke in the boat over the loaves (Mark 8:14-21) but never Mark 6:52. There, after Jesus walks on the water, Mark gives the disciples' astonishment (6:51) its cause: "for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened" (Mark 6:52, ESV).
  • The thread. Both scenes are in the boat, and both tie the disciples' failure to the loaves. In the first they are straining against the wind when Jesus comes to them on the water (Mark 6:48). In the second they are arguing over having no bread, and Jesus asks, "Are your hearts hardened?" (Mark 8:17, ESV) and makes them count the baskets from both feedings. Matthew's parallel calls them "you of little faith" (Matthew 16:8), which links this item to Faith.

2.5 The heavenly pattern

A series at jesus/the-heavenly-pattern/ on the furnishings God told Moses to make "after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain" (Exodus 25:40, ESV). There is one page per furnishing. Each follows the furnishing from Sinai through Solomon's temple and the prophets to Christ and the heavenly sanctuary. Each ends with a table that sorts the connections by how firmly Scripture makes them: stated in the New Testament, echoed there, inferred, or later tradition. Hebrews sets the limit: "Of these things we cannot now speak in detail" (Hebrews 9:5, ESV).

Each page gets a plate drawn by utils/sanctuary_plates.py. The plate is built from a facts table that tags every detail as given, inferred or unstated. Unstated details are drawn dashed, with the tradition that supplies them named.

Started. Published, reviewed and corrected, each with its plate: The Lampstand and the series index (2026-09-28), The Ark of the Covenant and The Golden Altar of Incense (2026-09-29). The lampstand's Revelation 11 material became its own study, The Two Witnesses. Still worth doing: a read-bible-study pass on each in a fresh session, and restoring the altar page's link to How God Answers Prayer once that study is published.

The remaining pages, in the order suggested. Figures marked (verified) were checked against the text or the concordance when the series was planned; the rest still need checking.

  • Index: "According to the pattern."
    • Tabnit (תַּבְנִית, H8403) names God's pattern for the sanctuary (Exodus 25:9, 40; 1 Chronicles 28:11-19). It also names the carved "likeness" God forbids (Deuteronomy 4:16-18), the Damascus altar Ahaz had copied (2 Kings 16:10), and the forms of creeping things drawn on the temple walls (Ezekiel 8:10) (verified).
    • The Greek words for copy: typos, hypodeigma, skia and antitypa (Acts 7:44; Hebrews 8:5; 9:23-24).
    • A plate of the whole plan. God gives the instructions from the inside out, starting with the ark (Exodus 25:10), while a worshipper comes in from the gate. The plate shows both routes, with metals keyed: bronze outside, gold inside, silver under the frames.
    • Two cubits: Ezekiel's longer one (Ezekiel 43:13) and "cubits of the old standard" (2 Chronicles 3:3).
  • The ark and the mercy seat. Published as The Ark of the Covenant; planning notes kept below.
    • At Sinai: 2½ × 1½ × 1½ cubits (Exodus 25:10). The poles were never to be removed (Exodus 25:15). God says, "There I will meet with you" (Exodus 25:22). The mercy seat's thickness is not given.
    • Solomon's cherubim (1 Kings 6:23-27), with the poles still visible (1 Kings 8:8).
    • What was in the ark. Hebrews 9:4 puts the manna jar, Aaron's rod and the tablets inside it. 1 Kings 8:9 says there was nothing in it but the tablets (verified).
    • Jeremiah 3:16 says the ark "will not come to mind… nor will another be made." The ark is nowhere in Ezekiel (verified). John sees it in heaven (Revelation 11:19).
    • Hilastērion is the Septuagint's word for the mercy seat. It also names the ledges of Ezekiel's altar (Ezekiel 43:14, 17, 20) (verified). Paul calls Christ the hilastērion (Romans 3:25), and Hebrews 9:5 uses the word for the mercy seat.
    • The veil: Exodus 26:31; Matthew 27:51; Hebrews 10:20.
  • The table and the bread of the Presence.
    • At Sinai: 2 × 1 × 1½ cubits (Exodus 25:23). Twelve loaves, set out every Sabbath (Leviticus 24:5-9) (verified). Ma'arakhot can mean rows or stacks, and the plate has to flag which.
    • David eats the bread (1 Samuel 21:6), and Jesus cites it (Matthew 12:3-4).
    • Solomon's ten tables (2 Chronicles 4:8) and David's silver tables (1 Chronicles 28:16) (verified).
    • Ezekiel's wooden altar is "the table that is before Yahweh" (Ezekiel 41:22) (verified).
    • John 6:35 as an echo.
    • The lampstand page's note that the lamps lit the table (Numbers 8:2; Exodus 26:35) connects the two pages.
  • The altar of incense. Published as The Golden Altar of Incense; planning notes kept below.
    • At Sinai: 1 × 1 × 2 cubits, before the veil, with its horns touched with blood once a year (Exodus 30:1-10).
    • Hebrews 9:4's thymiatērion is the Septuagint's word for a censer (2 Chronicles 26:19; Ezekiel 8:11) (verified). That is why the KJV has "golden censer." The page should argue it both ways.
    • Later: Uzziah (2 Chronicles 26), Zechariah's service (Luke 1:9-11), Psalm 141:2, and the golden altar before the throne (Revelation 5:8; 8:3-5).
  • The bronze altar.
    • Three sizes: 5 × 5 × 3 cubits at Sinai (Exodus 27:1); 20 × 20 × 10 under Solomon (2 Chronicles 4:1) (verified); Ezekiel's stepped altar, with a 12 × 12 hearth, a 14 × 14 ledge and steps facing east (Ezekiel 43:13-17) (verified).
    • Ahaz's copied altar (2 Kings 16:10-16). "We have an altar" (Hebrews 13:10). The souls under the altar (Revelation 6:9), and which altar that is.
    • Plate: all three altars at one scale.
  • The basin and the bronze sea.
    • At Sinai the basin has no measurements. It was made from the mirrors of the ministering women (Exodus 38:8), for washing hands and feet "that they not die" (Exodus 30:18-21) (verified).
    • Solomon's sea: 10 cubits across, 30 around and 5 high, standing on twelve oxen (1 Kings 7:23-25) (verified).
    • Two differences between Kings and Chronicles. The sea holds 2,000 baths (1 Kings 7:26) or 3,000 (2 Chronicles 4:5), and has gourds (1 Kings 7:24) or oxen (2 Chronicles 4:3) under the brim (verified).
    • Ten basins on wheeled stands (1 Kings 7:27-39). The sea "was for the priests to wash in" (2 Chronicles 4:6).
    • There is no basin in Ezekiel (verified); a river flows from under the threshold instead (Ezekiel 47:1).
    • John 13:10. The sea of glass (Revelation 4:6; 15:2) and "the sea was no more" (Revelation 21:1). Whether the sea of glass answers to the basin is contested.
  • The house, from tent to city.
    • The tent's frames are 10 cubits tall and 1½ wide, 20 on each side, making 30 cubits (Exodus 26:16-25) (verified). The width depends on how the corner frames are read, and the plate can show the working.
    • The silver sockets came from the atonement money (Exodus 30:11-16; 38:25-27).
    • The Most Holy Place over time: a 10-cubit square (reconstructed), Solomon's 20-cubit cube (1 Kings 6:20), Ezekiel's 20-cubit square (Ezekiel 41:4), and the city's cube (Revelation 21:16). The page links to The New Jerusalem rather than repeating it.
  • Optional: the high priest's garments (Exodus 28). The breastpiece stones lead into the city's foundations (Exodus 28:17-21; Revelation 21:19-20). Podērēs, the robe of Revelation 1:13, is already worked out on the lampstand page.

Settle first. Ezekiel's temple has sacrifices (Ezekiel 43:18-27). A dispensational reading has to say what they are in a future temple, and the statement of faith is silent. The author needs to decide before the Ezekiel sections of the altar and house pages are written.

4. Salvation

4.2 On death

For those in Christ, we are immediately with Christ in spirit/soul, though our bodies are yet to be resurrected.

Notes to work through:

  • "Went to be with the Lord"
  • "Risen"
  • "Today you will be with me" — Jesus to the thief on the cross (Luke 23:43)
  • Moses and Elijah with Jesus at the Transfiguration
  • The parable of the rich man speaking with Abraham and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31)

In progress: At Home with the Lord is published (2 Corinthians 5:1-8, the believer with Christ between death and resurrection), and the body that follows is We Shall All Be Changed (5.8). Still to fold in from the notes above: the thief on the cross, Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration, and Luke 16.

4.4 Grace

The coming week two of Saved, after Why We Need Saving. God's favour given to those who have earned the opposite.

  • χάρις (charis, G5485) and חֵן (chen, H2580), with the LORD "gracious" in Exodus 34:6, which 11.2 also starts from: link the two, do not repeat.
  • Ephesians 2:4-9; Romans 3:24; 5:15-21; Titus 2:11-14 (grace that saves also trains).
  • Grace and works in Romans 11:6, and grace as the power for service (1 Corinthians 15:10).

4.5 Repentance

Week four of Saved.

  • μετανοέω / μετάνοια (metanoeō, G3340; metanoia, G3341) and שׁוּב (shuv, H7725, "turn, return"), worked from their uses.
  • Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30; 2 Corinthians 7:9-10 (godly grief and worldly grief); Ezekiel 18:30-32; Luke 15.
  • Contested, and say so: how repentance relates to faith, one turn seen from two sides or a second condition. Give the textual case on each side, then check the conclusion against the statement of faith.
  • Link Forgive Us Our Debts, which already treats repentance between people.

4.6 Justified

Week five of Saved. God declares the ungodly righteous for the sake of Christ.

  • δικαιόω (dikaioō, G1344); Genesis 15:6 read in Romans 4:1-8 and Galatians 3:6; Romans 3:21-26; 5:1; Galatians 2:16; 2 Corinthians 5:21.
  • Romans 3:25's ἱλαστήριον is already worked in The Ark of the Covenant: link it.
  • James 2:21-24 beside Romans 4, from the text of each.

4.7 Adopted

Week six of Saved.

  • υἱοθεσία (huiothesia, G5206), five New Testament uses: Romans 8:15, 23; 9:4; Galatians 4:5; Ephesians 1:5. Verify each against the concordance; Romans 9:4 is Israel's.
  • The Spirit of adoption and "Abba" (Romans 8:15-17; Galatians 4:6), with Roman adoption as background, cited to a primary or scholarly source.
  • Prayer: Communion with God and The Names of the Holy Spirit already rest on adoption: link both.

4.8 Made holy

Week seven of Saved. Sanctification, both set apart once and made holy over a life.

  • ἁγιάζω (hagiazō, G37) and ἁγιασμός (hagiasmos, G38); Hebrews 10:10, 14 (set apart once for all, and being made holy); 1 Thessalonians 4:3; 5:23; Philippians 2:12-13; 2 Corinthians 3:18.
  • Unleavened Bread's "as you really are unleavened" (1 Corinthians 5:7) and Partakers of the Divine Nature already make the case from two sides: link both.

5. Last things

5.1 Tribulation perspectives

Pre-tribulation

Post-tribulation

5.2 End times

  • Ordered events
  • Signs
  • How God removes his people from judgment

Psalm 83 war

Ezekiel 38 war

  • Objective is the plundering of Israel
  • Who —

5.6 They were given white robes

White garments on God's people run through Scripture, explicitly and significantly, and Revelation returns to them repeatedly. The study should gather every occurrence and ask what the robes mean, who wears them, and whether they are God's gift.

  • Where they appear: Revelation 3:4-5 and 3:18 (the promise to those who conquer, and the counsel to Laodicea); 6:11 (the martyrs under the altar); 7:9 and 7:13-14 (the great multitude, who "washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb"); 19:8 and 19:14 (the Bride's fine linen, and the armies of heaven). Behind them: Isaiah 1:18, Zechariah 3:3-5 (Joshua's filthy garments taken away and clean ones given), Daniel 7:9 and 12:10, and Isaiah 61:10 ("garments of salvation").
  • The Transfiguration parallel: Jesus' clothes became white as light (Matthew 17:2, Mark 9:3, Luke 9:29), and the angels at the tomb and the Ascension are dressed in white (Mark 16:5, Acts 1:10). Ask whether the saints' robes share in His glory.
  • Who wears them: the martyrs of 6:11, the multitude "out of the great tribulation" (7:14) and the Bride of 19:8 may be different groups. That matters for this site's reading of the tribulation and the Church, so mark which identifications are contested.
  • Gift or deeds? The robes are given (6:11, the verb ἐδόθη, a divine passive), washed in the Lamb's blood (7:14), and the Bride's linen is granted her yet is "the righteous deeds of the saints" (19:8). Hold the three together: imputed righteousness (Zechariah 3, Isaiah 61:10) and the fruit it produces. Name the doctrines.
  • Words: στολή (stolē, "robe"), λευκός (leukos, "white"), λευκαίνω (leukainō, "make white", 7:14) and βύσσινος (byssinos, "fine linen", 19:8). Count occurrences with the concordance before claiming any.
  • Does it tie in with The Wife of the Lamb? Almost certainly at 19:7-8, where the Bride is clothed in fine linen at the marriage of the Lamb. Test whether the white robes of 3:5, 6:11 and 7:14 are the same clothing, and say how far the link holds.
  • Other links: The Bride of Christ, and The Rapture of the Church, which places the Bema and the linen.
  • Not the resurrection body. We Shall All Be Changed notes that the robes of 6:11 are given to souls not yet raised, so they cannot be the body of 1 Corinthians 15. Both are clothing (ἐνδύω, "put on", 1 Corinthians 15:53-54) and both are God's gift; this study says what the robes are.

5.7 Heaven and earth by fire

What happens after the thousand years: Satan's release, the fire from heaven, the great white throne, and the passing of the present heaven and earth by fire before the new heaven and new earth. No study works through it. Heaven and Earth Will Pass Away (spun off from the Olivet Discourse, published 2026-09-28) places it in two paragraphs ("Where it falls") and stops there.

  • Texts: 2 Peter 3:7-13 read alongside Revelation 20:7–21:1; Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22; Isaiah 51:6; Hebrews 1:10-12 (Psalm 102:25-27); Hebrews 12:26-28 (Haggai 2:6); Romans 8:18-25. Verify each wording against the ESV before quoting.
  • Order of events: does the fire of 2 Peter 3:10-12 fall at the same point as Revelation 20:9 (fire on Gog and Magog) and 20:11 ("earth and sky fled away"), or are they separate? Say where the text settles the sequence and where it is inferred.
  • Renewal or replacement: the open question the sibling draft records. The textual problem at 2 Peter 3:10 ("will be found", "will be burned up", "will not be found") bears on it, and so does καινός (kainos, G2537) against νέος (neos) for "new". Count and check the lexica before claiming a distinction.
  • The day of the Lord as a period: the dispensational reading that it opens with the thief-like coming and closes with the dissolution a thousand years later. Check it against the statement of faith, and give the amillennial case.
  • Links: A Day Is a Thousand Years (2 Peter 3:7, the seventh day and the eighth), The Wife of the Lamb (Revelation 21), and The End of the Age (5.5, completed).

8. Sources & tooling

Not study topics — work on the material the studies rest on.

8.1 Mirror the unfoldingWord sources

The four unfoldingWord submodules (uw-uhb, uw-ugnt, uw-ult, uw-uhg) point at Door43 directly. Every other source in references/open-data/ is forked to ding0t/* first, so the project survives an upstream disappearing; these four are the exception, because GitHub auth was not working on the machine that added them on 2026-09-05.

Auth has since been fixed, so the only thing left is the doing. Pinned submodule commits already protect against upstream changing — the gap is Door43 going away entirely.

Licensing is not a blocker. All four are CC BY-SA 4.0, which permits redistributing the unmodified work provided unfoldingWord's trademark and licence file stay intact. A verbatim mirror does exactly that.

Per repo — hbo_uhb, el-x-koine_ugnt, en_ult, en_uhg:

  1. git clone --mirror https://git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/<name>.git — a full clone, since the submodules here are --depth 1 and cannot push complete history
  2. gh repo create ding0t/<name> --public — matching the visibility of the existing forks
  3. git push --mirror https://github.com/ding0t/<name>.git

Then repoint the four URLs in .gitmodules, run git submodule sync, and correct the three places that currently say these are not mirrored: the permanence note on Public Data Sources, the unfoldingWord section of references/README.md, and references/study-state/unfoldingword-wireup.yml.

Roughly 140MB in total; en_ult is nearly all of it and en_uhg is 3.6MB.

8.2 Chronology follow-ups

Left over from moving the site's chronology to the Masoretic numbers on 2026-09-28 (see The Flood and the King Lists).

  • Terah's birth year. Genealogy and Times works Terah's puzzle from 1876 BC; the generator (references/build/genealogy_chronology.py) uses 1878. Find which is right and make the other agree.
  • Stale source paths. Existing references in docs/data/chronology.json point at studies/prophecy/..., which no longer exists. Repoint them at the current pages.
  • Steinmann's count. The Flood study cites 467 secondary readings in the Septuagint (Steinmann, JETS 64/1, 2021, pp. 26, 29, 34); his own prose says 468 once (p. 33). Note the discrepancy in the study or confirm which figure his table supports.
  • Genealogy and Times: simplified, restructured and given its Study outline on 2026-09-30. The file is still 4,825 words, so re-run validator Check 23 and either trim further or record a raised word_budget and its reason in the state file.
  • The Flood study skipped two passes. It was published straight after its develop pass. Run read-bible-study (in a fresh session) and review-bible-study on it.

8.3 AI-assistant friendliness

A reader can point an AI assistant at the site and ask "how can I be sure I am saved?", "what scripture is related to this?" or "what is this site about?". Done on 2026-10-21:

  • Cloudflare had been blocking ClaudeBot and GPTBot while robots.txt allowed everything. The author turned on AI crawlers; all of them now get through.
  • hooks/llms.py writes llms.txt (every study by section with its one-sentence thesis, primary passage and questions) and a markdown copy of every page at its URL plus index.md.
  • A For AI Assistants page says how to represent and quote the site.
  • A questions: frontmatter field, listed in llms.txt and in the FAQ's "What questions do the studies answer?". The first 24 studies have one.

Still to do:

  • Questions for the rest. Write questions: for the remaining studies, starting with the ones readers search for. The author should check the first 24, which were drafted by AI.
  • One small file per Bible chapter. The studies that treat it, its cross-references and the quotations in and out, as JSON. The commentary chapter pages hold this as HTML, kept out of search engines.
  • The public connector is built (2026-10-21) at /mcp, inside the site's own Worker. The gospel comes first in its instructions, its tools and its prompts. Its 18 tools cover the studies, the original languages (hidden_distinctions is new: the English words that hide two Hebrew or Greek words), the chronology and the prophetic outline, and the study skills are served as prompts. The data is the open tier plus the CC BY-NC Dead Sea Scrolls, served free with attribution; never study-notes.db or TWOT. Since 2026-10-22 search_studies also searches the full text of every section, from the site search's own index, and returns each study's best sections; it still matches words, so a spelling variant (hesed, chesed) finds only the pages that use that spelling, and the questions: lists remain the way a reader's own wording is matched. Still to do: list it in the connector directories, and add a lxx_occurrences list (the Septuagint counts are in the lexicon, but not where each one is).
  • Richer structured data. Add to each page's JSON-LD its primary passage (about), its tags (keywords), its section (isPartOf) and its one-sentence thesis (abstract).
  • Key verses by topic. The Memory verses sections as JSON, grouped by tag.

9. Sin

9.1 Calling good evil and evil good

Tracing the prevalent sin of calling what is good evil, and what the Bible says of it.

  • when someone condemns another of wrongdoing who has called out sin - such as murder
  • when sin is legalised as not only ok, but as good, and those who speak against it are in the wrong
  • when preaching Christ is considered as wrongdoing

9.2 Sexual immorality

The current study is very light.

  • the bible is clear what is sexual sin
  • why is it sin
  • the impact on the individual: sin against one's own body
  • defiling the image of the bride of Christ?

10. Christian life

10.3 Religion and the Way

We are called to know Jesus, who is the truth, and so to have assurance of life in Him. Religion as self-effort offers a moral code to live by instead.

  • Self-effort and pride: works as a trap that feeds pride, in the self and in one's religion (Ephesians 2:8-9; Luke 18:9-14, the Pharisee and the tax collector).
  • What God desires: a broken and contrite heart (Psalm 51:17); also Isaiah 66:2 and Micah 6:6-8.
  • Handle the word carefully. James uses θρησκεία (thrēskeia, "religion") positively: pure religion is to visit orphans and widows and keep oneself unstained from the world (James 1:27). So the study cannot rest on the English word "religion". It has to say affirmatively what God asks for.
  • Links: The Way (the name the first believers took), Assurance of Salvation, Know the Truth, and 10.4.

10.4 "I stand at the door and knock"

✝️ Revelation 3:20 (ESV)

20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

A study on Jesus seeking His people. He is not meant to stand outside, and the answer is a contrite heart that opens the door.

  • Context first: the verse is addressed to a church, Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22), whose members thought themselves rich and needing nothing (3:17). It is most often preached as an invitation to the unconverted. Set out both uses and say which the text supports; the context favours a call to a complacent church first.
  • Word and background: δειπνέω (deipneō, "eat, dine"), a shared evening meal as fellowship; and Laodicea's lukewarm water supply, which the letter's "neither cold nor hot" draws on.
  • Links: 10.3 (religion and a contrite heart), The Way, and Faith, which reads the verse as the door faith opens.

10.5 Follow-ups from Those Who Sigh and Groan

The review of Those Who Sigh and Groan on 2026-10-21 found things for other studies. It was published the same day without a read-bible-study pass; run one in a fresh session. Each sibling below got an "On this site" back-link when it was published; the content notes are still to do.

  • Taken Before Judgment: add that 2 Peter 2:8's ἐβασάνιζεν (ebasanizen, G928) is imperfect. Lot "was tormenting his righteous soul" day after day, which is the continuing grief of Ezekiel 9:4's participles.
  • When Love Grows Cold: consider linking the new study from the remnant section itself (Romans 11:1-6). The two make the same "for myself" point about Romans 11:4.
  • Israel's Regathering and Refining: note the order in Ezekiel 36. The new heart and Spirit come first (36:26-27), then "you will loathe yourselves" (36:31), so the grief follows the gift.
  • The Names of the Holy Spirit: consider linking the new study from its treatment of Ephesians 4:30, the Spirit who seals and can be grieved.
  • Fork candidates (from the study's state file): the remnant across Scripture (שָׁאַר shaʾar; 1 Kings 19:18; Isaiah 4:3; Romans 11); the rabbinic reading of Ezekiel 9 in b. Shabbat 55a, which needs a primary source first; and the seal of God against the mark of the beast (Revelation 7:3; 13:16).

10.6 True worship: in spirit and truth

Published 2026-10-22 as True Worship. Move to Completed when convenient.

What true worship is, what Jesus taught about it, and how the Old and New Testaments describe it. It is the positive counterpart to Idolatry: people are made to worship (Isaiah 43:7; Romans 1:21-25), so the answer to an idol is the worship the idol took, given back to God.

  • Jesus' teaching: John 4:21-24 (where becomes how; "the Father is seeking such people"); Matthew 4:10 / Luke 4:8 ("You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve", from Deuteronomy 6:13); Matthew 15:8-9 (lip worship, quoting Isaiah 29:13); John 9:38.
  • Old Testament: the words שָׁחָה (shachah, bow down) and עָבַד (ʿavad, serve), and what each adds; the first "worship" in the Bible (Genesis 22:5); Psalms 95-100; worship and obedience (1 Samuel 15:22; Psalm 51:16-17; Micah 6:6-8; Amos 5:21-24); the tabernacle and temple as the pattern.
  • New Testament: προσκυνέω (proskyneō) and λατρεύω (latreuō); Romans 12:1 ("spiritual worship", λογικὴν λατρείαν); Philippians 3:3 ("worship by the Spirit of God"); Hebrews 12:28; 13:15-16; Revelation 4-5.
  • Settle in the exegesis: whether "in spirit" in John 4:23-24 means the human spirit or the Holy Spirit, with the case on both sides. Check what The Woman at the Well already says. It treats John 4:20-24 directly, so decide first whether this is a new study or a link to that one for the John 4 material.
  • Links: Idolatry (both ways once published), The Woman at the Well, Prayer as Communion, and 10.3 (religion and the Way).

Completed

Kept here so that an old reference like "work on 3.1" still resolves.

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2.2 Priest of the order of Melchizedek Jesus, Priest in the Order of Melchizedek; rewritten 2026-10-02 to say what a priest is and what "the order" means before the evidence
3.1 Nephilim The Nephilim
4.1 Assurance of salvation Assurance of Salvation
4.3 Faith Faith
5.3 The last trumpet The Trumpet Call of God
7.1 Twelve disciples The Twelve: Disciples and Apostles, with a page per apostle
10.1 Know the truth Know the Truth
10.6 Run the race Run the Race, published 2026-10-13 after two review passes and a read pass; opens on relief, with a one-minute comic
0.1 Scripture pop-up on a verse reference Every reference on the site opens the verse, its context, cross-references and the studies that treat it, 2026-09-27. Blue Letter Bible links removed
0.2 Word-study pop-up on an original-language word Every Strong's tag, and the word in front of it, opens a word card: lexicon, counts, where it occurs, renderings, and the studies that discuss it, 2026-09-27. Follow-ups in 0.6
0.3 (part) Normalise the Key Takeaways opening line Done across 50 studies, 2026-09-27
0.4 New studies shown apart from updated ones New this month on Recent updates and the homepage, dated from the commit that took each page out of draft, and a "New" line under the title and icon in the nav for 30 days, 2026-09-28. The feed idea moved to 0.5
5.4 The Olivet Discourse, regrouped by the disciples' questions The Olivet Discourse regrouped under the question each part answers, a section on which question the flight to the mountains answers (marked contested), and "one taken, one left" pointed at One Taken, One Left from both it and the rapture study, 2026-09-28
5.8 We will all be changed, raised imperishable We Shall All Be Changed (1 Corinthians 15:35-58), linked from At Home with the Lord (4.2); the white robes of 5.6 treated as a separate gift, 2026-09-28
10.5 In humility In Humility (Philippians 2:1-11), rooted in dependence on God; its counterpart Pride, with "You are gods" and the Isaiah 14 / Ezekiel 28 question marked contested, 2026-09-28
10.2 Where two or three are gathered Where Two or Three Are Gathered (Matthew 18:15-20), filed under the church because the passage is about the church dealing with a brother's sin; gives a verdict on each church use of the verse, with prayer alone and together, 2026-10-01
new Commonly misquoted scripture Verses Often Misquoted: 1 Peter 3:15, Matthew 18:20, John 8:32, 1 Corinthians 15:44, Mark 9:29 and "demonized" (Mark 5:15), each linked to its study, 2026-10-01
new Well used scripture Verses Quoted Well: Genesis 1:1 (with the Hebrew and pronunciation), John 3:16 and Hebrews 11:1, 2026-10-01
6.1 Appointed times (overarching) The Appointed Times, linking each feast to its own study; the Feasts section ordered by the calendar, 2026-10-02
6.2 Individual feast studies Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Weeks, Trumpets, Day of Atonement and Tabernacles, all published by 2026-10-02
6.3 The Lord's Supper The Lord's Supper: Do This in Remembrance of Me, with two graphics; the four-cups study now points its general communion material there, 2026-10-02
new Edits to Verses Often Misquoted Verses Often Misquoted opens on common church sayings, adds "Did God actually say?" (the garden, the wilderness, the church), "Take up your cross" and a link to How to Read the Bible, 2026-10-02
5.5 The age to come The age to come in A New Heaven and a New Earth; the line between the ages in The End of the Age (Matthew's συντέλεια, opened at the cross and closed at the return), with cross-links and a scope line on each, and the Zadok calendar's 49- or 50-year jubilee question, 2026-10-03
9.3 Why we need saving Why We Need Saving, week one of Saved: God's commands are for our good, sin calls His good evil, the Hebrew and Greek words for sin, Romans 3 and 5 (the "all sinned" question marked contested, with Jewish writers on both sides), ending on Romans 5:8; with a one-minute comic, 2026-10-23
10.7 Forgiveness Forgive Us Our Debts, on Matthew 6:14-15: God's forgiveness paid and offered to all and received by those who repent, releasing a debt to God (Mark 11:25) and forgiving the one who repents (Luke 17:3-4), the offender who keeps on, Matthew 6:15 used as a weapon, and what forgiveness is not, 2026-10-04
5.9 The tribulation period The Tribulation: Daniel's Seventieth Week, Year by Year: what the week is for, the seals, trumpets and bowls in order, the midpoint, and where the church, Israel and the tribulation saints are, with four charts, 2026-10-03
10.8 Fasting: a rewrite Fasting rewritten so "When to fast" no longer reads as deliverance ministry (2 Corinthians 10:4's strongholds are arguments), then reviewed, 2026-10-01
new Hurt by the Church Hurt by the Church: Wolves, Weeds and the Good Shepherd, published with its review and a readability pass, 2026-10-04
0.8 Fixes found by reviews Christians and Deliverance Ministry now quotes John 10:20-21 correctly (δαιμόνιον ἔχει in 10:20, the participle in 10:21) and treats κολαφίζω as suggestive rather than decisive; As the Snake Was Lifted Up marks the οὕτως reading contested; Paul added to the Biblical Figures sidebar, 2026-10-04