What Is a SAM?
The nickname "SAM" is the diminutive for "SAMUEL," which, in turn, is an acronym for Summary And Master User E-Links.
Briefly, a SAM is a web page that contains what its full name states: A Summary definition of the topic, followed by a master list of links to pages, from the several theological contexts in which the topic occurs. The linking of documents from a SAM page was specifically designed with the User's personal notes in mind.
SAMs
are intermediate web pages from which all topical documents in Chafer Seminary's Topical Notebook are linked—a Grand
Central Station—for helping the user navigate the contents of the Topical Notebook, within a category of Biblical
truth, allowing discrimination between the various connotations of the keywords that are associated with that topic. How
many times have we all searched every page number from a book's Index, in an attempt to find desired subject matter?
The
SAMs solve this impediment to the student’s productivity. For example, the category (keyword) “Death” is
associated with several different Bible doctrines, occurring in different major categories of Chafer Seminary's Topical
Notebook. It may not always be clear to the user which link in the Index to follow. The Index entries associated with
“Death” all link to a common SAM.
Within that SAM the user will find excerpts from the appropriate Tables of Contents displaying the several theological
contexts from which to choose: