This is an introductory episode of A Better Bible Study Podcast where Jack and our Bible study teacher, Rudy “the Bear†Kantu, discuss Rudy’s methods and goals of teaching the Bible.

Class Types

This online bible study series dubbed The Gospel and Spiritual Growth will be composed of two types of classes. One is the online Bible study class in which we are currently going through the series The Gospel and Spiritual Growth. The second type is a question and answer episodes , in which we will discuss specific topics as they come up in the regular online Bible study class. Many times we will focus on particular topics that are wide in scope and needs to be expanded.

Bible Study Teacher

Our Bible study teacher is Rudy “The Bear†Kantu. He lives in Washington State and is a business owner. His origin is Texas. Our Bible study teacher admits to being blind not physically but blind in the sense that he can only read Bible passages as they are and not what is not written. Rudy contends that this blindness is good. He believes that Bible scholarship requires this kind of blindness.  His analytical limitation is evident when the bible text is unspecific or leans on interpretation and he does not tend to cast his own interpretation or ask someone’s opinion regarding the matter.

Ultimately, our bible teacher depends on two resources: 1] simple two value logic, and 2] the Bible itself. These are the only two analytic devices that Rudy leans on.

Teaching Objective

Rudy’s objective is to habituate the student to independent study and train him to rely solely on the Bible for information of spiritual matters and nothing extra biblical. The scriptures ask mature Christians to rightfully divide them or to handle them accurately. This is saying that the Bible is the only source of information regarding Jehovah’s paradigm, God’s dimension, Yahweh’s’ reality and the Lord’s expectations. Personal opinions, opinions of preachers, pastors, tradition, church hierarchy or anyone else’s is irrelevant and can only become a source of confusion and division.

Class Structure

Rudy has been teaching bible classes since 1961. In his classes, he often expects that the students have read what he has assigned. Reading assignments will sometimes be given before class. At the end of the lecture, he likes to allocate at least 15 minutes to questions on those assigned scriptures and the lecture. Whenever possible, Rudy gives out tests . He contends that this is a way to test how the student understands the lecture.

However, for this online class, no tests will be given out. Online classes are limited in that way, but he still gives much importance to knowledge assessment. He believes that knowledge assessment is required because he does not give lectures to show what he knows and understands but his goal is to  expand the students’ knowledge, This is to train the student to read analytically, to rightly divide, to be a good bible scholar.

Rudy further says, “Our failure to rightly define the scriptures or to handle them accurately or to make the proper logical distinctions is the cause for all religious error. It might be motivated by jealousy, maliciousness or some other thing but it is the cause of the error.â€