People have been prejudiced against the Bible by poor churches they attended as a child or maybe for a wedding or funeral, by comedy shows on TV or strange appearance of a priest with a crucifix in a horror film.
They know little or nothing about the Bible or its teachings. They know Homer and the Iliad are cool and have monsters epic battles and triumphant heroes. But they don’t know that this is true of the Bible too. But on top of that, it is true and holds the secrets of life and eternity.
The Bible is a bigger book than most people will ever read, or at least think of reading as a book, but today it can be read on a phone or tablet, on the train or on a couch.
But as the Ethiopian Eunuch said when Philip asked him if he understood what he was reading, “How can I, except some man should guide me?” Acts 8:31. People need someone to explain what the Bible is, what it says and why it is important to them.
The App Preview is live
This week the first piece of that went live. The App Preview is at bible-matters.com/app, and it opens on Genesis 1 — the first chapter of the first book, where the whole story begins.
Four things now sit side by side on the page. On the left, a way to navigate: the whole Bible, then the testaments, then the books, then this chapter. In the middle, the chapter itself. Alongside the text, notes that walk through it. And on the right, the cross-references — the other places in Scripture this chapter points to.
On a phone the same columns arrive as tabs along the bottom of the screen — Navigate, Notes, Bible Text, Refs — and each opens over the passage rather than pushing it off the screen, so you never lose the place you were reading.
The notes follow one shape, the same shape they will carry at every level of the Bible: the takeaway, the context, what the Bible says, the background, what it means, how it connects to the rest of Scripture, what it says of Christ, what it shows us of God, how it applies to our lives, and something to think about.
It is a very small beginning
“For who hath despised the day of small things?”
— Zechariah 4:10 (KJV)
It is one chapter, and one chapter is all it is. The books, the testaments and the rest of Genesis are still being written, and there is a great deal left to build. But this is the shape of the thing, and it is now on screen where it can be looked at rather than described.
There is also a credits page, because this work stands on other people’s careful work: it names every source we draw on — the chapter text, the cross-references, the topics, the links back to the Hebrew and Greek — and the terms each is used under. The page has a Feedback link too, because that is how this gets better.
If you would take a few minutes to open it and tell us honestly what helps and what does not — especially if you are reading with the eyes of someone who has never done this before — that would be a real gift to the work. Look at Genesis 1 at bible-matters.com/app, and leave your thoughts there.