eBible.com

Back up and running...

Mark — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:49:00 -0700

For those of you who have tried to log on to eBible only to find we were down – we are very sorry! A couple of small issues turned into more major ones that caused the experts to be called in. Together everything was fixed up and now things are back up and running.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Team eBible

Lifetime premium memberships ... get them while they last.

Mark — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:58:00 -0800

This is the first and probably only time we will offer lifetime memberships. With one year of eBible.com behind us, the addition of The Word of Promise Audio Bible, Christmas around the corner and big improvements scheduled to go live early in the New Year, we thought we need to celebrate a bit! Each lifetime member simply gets premium access to eBible.com for as long as they or the site exists! We will also ship you the 20 CD set of The Word of Promise Audio New Testament (a $49.99 value) as our free gift for making this commitment to helping eBible.com spread the Word online.

This is a unique promotion that will not last long so we encourage you to take advantage now by going here to view the details.

The Word of Promise Audio Bible now available!

Mark — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 01:36:00 -0800

Congratulations to our Premium members who now have high quality streaming (128 kbps) of an amazing new audio Bible from an all-star cast including Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ). Basic users can also listen chapter by chapter to the 25 hours of New Testament in lower quality (16 kbps) due to extra bandwidth costs involved in streaming media of this nature. We are very excited about our partnership with The Word of Promise folks and would encourage everyone to not only upgrade to Premium and enjoy the high quality streaming version online but also to visit http://thewordofpromise.com to purchase other products or gifts for Christmas. It really is a great way to enjoy God's Word – we have spent hours and hours in testing listening to it and just love it. Enjoy!

eBible.com extension for TYPO3

Mark — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:30:00 -0700

Christoph and the guys at Web-Empowered Church have released an eBible.com extension for all you TYPO3 blog users out there. There is full documentation and other goodies at their site related to TYPO3 and online ministry. Great work guys!

Web-Empowered Church: eBible

Year 1 is in the books!

Mark — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:40:00 -0700

Today marks our one year anniversary at eBible.com and that is pretty exciting. It was only a few months ago that my wife and I celebrated our first year anniversary actually. Anniversaries are a great time to pause and reflect on the things that we have learned, the fun times behind us and also to look ahead with anticipation of many more exciting years ahead. That is what we have been doing around here at eBible.com and very soon you are going to see the fruit of some tough reflection, hard work and a renewed passion and dedication to our vision. A few months ago we decided that we needed to take yet another crack at redesigning the user interface for the site. Our vision is for an electronic Bible, an eBible, a Bible that is unlike anything ever been done before and yet holds the unchanging Word of God at the heart of it. We pushed the limits over a year and a half ago when we launched the eBible.com alpha and have learned sooooo much since that time. You guys have given us oodles of feedback and suggestions and some we have had a chance to implement and others we put on the shelf to revisit later. The eBible.com community has grown from a handful of friends and colleagues to tens of thousands dedicated people seeking God through His Word at the site. This is exciting. But we want more. God gave us a vision for eBible.com and with technology continuing to improve on the Web we are that much closer to realizing it.

All the above is summed up by saying that we have something big in store for you. Instead of working on smaller features the last few months we have dedicated most of our time towards a complete redesign of eBible.com. The goal is something that is more simple, much faster and yet can be used in so many different ways that we can't even guess them all right now. Everyone's bookmarks (notes and topics) will carry across nicely and there will be a time of transition where you can use either the new interface or stick with the current one. All premium users will serve as our beta group this time around because their support of the site is what has enabled this large undertaking. More news will come soon but for now we just want to celebrate one full year with you and let you know that the year ahead is sure to be an exciting time ahead.

Many blessings to you as you continue to love God and love others that He has placed around you.

- Team eBible

Keep it in context

Mark — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 11:39:00 -0700

We had some great feedback from August’s newsletter and some small but major changes are now live. A big part of the vision of eBible.com is engaging with the Bible as the Story of God and His people. It is easy to get caught up in the science of scripture references (book chapter:verse) and forget that these are stories and letters written by people and inspired by the Holy Spirit. Too often the Bible is taken out of context by simply quoting a single verse here and there to back up your point. Well … today we have made some changes to recommit to that goal of keeping the Bible in context. Click around on a few verse or passage references and you will see that we now display the whole story or section for added context. We even scroll down to your selection if it is deep within the section. Reading, studying and learning God’s Word is difficult with no context so we hope you agree this is an important change.

This isn’t the final word though so we want to get some feedback on this different approach. What do you think?

Ask eBible Thumper: Firstfruits and tithing

Mark — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 11:23:00 -0700

This is a monthly column where we attempt to help you answer your own questions using eBible.com, or at least start you off on your search. This month, our eBible Thumping Team tackles this question:

Please tell me more about the first fruit and tithes. Thank you.

This is a subject that is actually in the Bible so that means lots of content at eBible.com to dig through. I love it! Here are some links to get you started followed by some of my thoughts after going through them. Please post your own eBible.com links and comments below for all to see as together we dive into what the Bible has to say about first fruits and tithing.

Bible

http://ebible.com/bible/firstfruits

Library

Bookmarks

http://ebible.com/bookmarks/firstfruits

Sometimes in the Bible we run into things that are difficult to relate to in this day and age. One example I have been thinking about lately is the “kingdom of God” and “kingdom of heaven” Jesus refers to and that appears in the Gospels over a hundred times. Back then people completely understood the meaning of a kingdom and a king. They lived it everyday. Today I understand democracy and voting and cities, states, countries and continents a lot better than I know anything about what living in a kingdom under a king is really like. It isn’t a huge stretch to think in terms of countries and presidents but I wonder if I am missing out on the full meaning because of the culture and times I live in.

Similarly, firstfruits is a concept that made a whole lot more sense to people back in the Bible times than in today’s information age. I don’t work the land or farm barley, wheat, wool, honey, fruit trees, wine and oil or any agricultural produce for that matter (see these firstfruits Bible examples here). I don’t fully know what it means to live off a yearly harvest and to take the first and best of the harvest to the temple to help with the maintenance of the building, the support of the priests and the sustenance of the poor and marginalized the church is responsible for.

While some of this may be foreign, here are some things that I do know:

God owns everything and any possession or resource I think is mine is really only entrusted to me to manage according to His will
It takes money to build/buy/maintain a building to meet and serve God out of. It takes money to free up the people whom God has chosen to lead the Church (1 Cor. 9:13,14, Gal. 6:6). It takes money to help the poor and marginalized in our communities that Jesus so clearly wants us to care for and reach out to.
The “first” part of firstfruits is important. Instead of giving what is left over after we have taken care of ourselves we should strive to give first to God each week or month with faith that HE will take care of us

My wife and I are currently giving to our church by means of direct debit. That means on the 1st of every month a certain amount is automatically drawn from our account. We do the same for a missionary friend we support. At first I thought this was a good way to ensure we gave the amount we both felt God wanted us to give each month. Now I wonder if it is more about convenience than giving our firstfruits to God. It sometimes feel too close to paying just another bill ask I look at our bank statement and see the other bills on direct debit right beside it. Does anyone have some practical tips on giving our firstfruits to God?

There are many questions and debates around how much to give, is tithing still relevant under the new covenant, etc? Let’s focus on the firstfruits aspect of tithing and remember that simply loving God and worshiping Him are at the heart of tithing.

Lord teach us practical ways to give our firstfruits to you in this day and age so we can acknowledge that it is all yours and that you are the one that provides for our all of our needs. Increase our faith and let us hold loosely the possessions and money that we sometimes mistaken as our own.

Scripture Memory, Monthly Premium option and more!

Scott L — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:00:00 -0700

Hey everyone, I hope summer is treating you well and that everyone is getting their fair share of sun and barbecues! It’s been awhile since our last post but that’s only because we’ve been working so hard on some very big things for eBible.com. Let me start by pointing out what’s new in our latest release, and then move on to what we are working hard on right now get out to you within the coming weeks.

New memorization tool

For all you premium users out there we have just introduced a pretty sweet new tool to help you memorize scripture. You will now see a "memorize" link when you search for a verse or view your saved verses, which allows you to test yourself and aid you in committing your favorite verses to memory. Now, this tool is for eBible Premium members only, but for all you basic members out there we are happy to announce (see more below) a monthly subscription service that might be just what you are looking for to give eBible Premium a test drive.

VIEW SCREENCAST HERE

eBible Premium gets sweeter

First of all, take a look at how much sweeter the eBible premium membership is getting:

As you can see we have a few new features labeled as “coming soon” and we are committed to releasing those features VERY soon which is why we are including them in the chart right now. Also, up until now we have only offered yearly subscriptions to our premium service, but starting today we are now offering monthly subscriptions for only $9/month! Remember that the reason eBible.com is able to keep innovating and growing is because of our Premium Members. When you upgrade to premium not only do we give you everything we have, but you are also helping eBible.com to spread God's Word across the globe.

What's next?

One of the new up-and-coming features to eBible that we are super excited about is the integration of The Word of Promise audio Bible into the site. If you haven’t already heard any of this amazing production, you soon will so stay tuned.

eBible.com isn't just about presenting tools and making scripture available. We want to help people ENGAGE with scripture! One of the upcoming tools will help you create a self-paced reading plan with your daily readings available via RSS and/or email. Instead of coming to search and explore we are going to be serving up scripture to you and encouraging you to respond and engage with it on a regular basis.

Is it possible to have too many Bibles?

Mark — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:04:00 -0700

My pastor closed his message on Sunday by reading a passage from “The Heavenly Man”, a book about Chinese pastor and teacher Brother Yun. He asked the question of us, “How many Bibles do you have at home?” and I guessed about a dozen. At least. Then he questioned if maybe we have TOO MANY Bibles – too much access to God’s Word that we often take it for granted. The other day when explaining what I do to someone I just met, they replied “Isn’t there already a ton of other Bible websites out there?!”. Most of us in First World do have easy access to God’s Word including right here at eBible.com. Listen to the story of Brother Yun for a refreshing and encouraging perspective:

Brother Yun was 16 at the time. The family did not have a Bible, and it had been many years since Yun’s mother had heard any teaching about Jesus. Yun began to ask his mother who Jesus truly was. She would reply, “Jesus is the Son of God who died on the cross for us, taking all our sins and sicknesses. He recorded all his teachings in the Bible.” Yun would ask if there were any way he could learn of the teachings of Jesus for himself. His mother would say, “No. All his words are gone. There is nothing left of his teaching.” Imagine a family hungering and thirsting for some knowledge of the words of God, and no way to find out what they were!

Yun’s mother took him on a long walk to see a man in another village who she remembered had a Bible. The man was too afraid to show Yun his Bible, but he told him, “The Bible is a heavenly book. If you want one, you’ll need to pray to the God of heaven. Only He can provide you a heavenly book. God is faithful. He always answers those who seek Him with all of their heart.”

Yun decided to fast and pray for a Bible, and for the next 100 days ate only one bowl of steamed rice every day. He cried out to the Lord for a Bible. His parents thought he was losing his mind. One morning, there was a knock at the door. Two men had brought a Bible to Yun.

Three months before, an evangelist in another town had been instructed by the Lord in a vision to give his Bible to Brother Yun. Although he did not know this young boy, the Lord had showed him the village and house where Yun lived in a vision. It had taken him three months to decide to obey the Lord.

Yun began to devour the Word of God. Even though he could hardly read, every day, he would painstakingly look up one character at a time as he advanced through the Bible. When he had finished reading in this way through the whole Bible, he started memorizing one chapter per day. In 28 days, he had memorized the gospel of Matthew, and then started on the book of Acts.

We pray that each of us and each one of our user’s would develop the same passion and hunger for reading, studying and memorizing God’s Word. Over the next few weeks we will be releasing a couple of new features to help you in the journey of reading the Holy Bible that God wrote for us to know Him and follow Him. But all the technology and bells and whistles won’t help us if we don’t see the importance of and the gift that the Bible is, and then respond by actually reading and studying it!

Blogger.com and eBibleicious

Mark — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 11:37:00 -0700

Attention all you Blogger.com bloggers! Sid Emory was kind enough to post very detailed instructions on how you can easily bring all your blog scripture references to life with our eBiblelicious Tool.

Take a look at Sid’s easy directions with screenshots: http://www.wonderingfellow.com/2007/06/ebiblelicious-for-blogger.html

And get the script code to copy & paste along with your own API key here: http://ebible.com/toolkit/developers