Initial Thoughts
New Developments
Ask the eBible Thumper
Tips and Tricks
Special Offer

Initial Thoughts

Hello fellow eBiblers! We are very excited about what God is doing in and through eBible.com lately and look forward to sharing some of it here. This is the first edition of our monthly newsletter and we also invite all of you to regularly check out the eBible.com Blog (subscribe via RSS here)

eBible.com has quickly turned into a major online destination for Christians around the world. We are doing our best to manage the growing community (keep the servers up!) and are constantly adding and refining features on the site. But remember, we need your help to make this website the best it can be. Email us with your ideas and suggestions at anytime - team@ebible.com - and be sure to check out the special offer on a premium membership at the end of the newsletter.

New Developments

The first and biggest development is that eBible.com just received a license to display the New International Version (NIV)! There is some work ahead still to get it up and set as the default translation on the site but we hope to get this popular and trusted translation live in the next month. We are still working on licensing additional Bible translations and reference titles for eBible.com and ask that you join with us in prayer for favor from the publishers and copyright holders we are contacting. Here is the summary of updated featured detailed in this recent blog post:

Premium memberships - more content, more features and no ads for $99/year (only about $8/month). See the details here and be sure to check out the special offer at the bottom of this email.
User Profiles - As Christians we are called to live in community and we are starting to see that even happen online at eBible.com. Now you can let other eBiblers know what part of the world you're from, the church you attend, your favorite verse or passage, your testimony and more.
eBible Points - a new way to recognize the people who are using and sharing God's Word through eBible.com. While eBible points won't get you free trips around the world, they will give others an indication about your seniority at the site.
Advanced Search - Now you can search for an exact phrase, return results that exclude certain words, limit your search to only certain Bible translations and narrow your search to a specific section or book of the Bible. Example: "three days" gospels
Did you mean - We give you a helping hand when searching for hard to spell words like "Nebachnezzar" :-)

Ask the eBible Thumper

This is a monthly column where we attempt to help you answer your own questions using eBible.com.

After Jesus was crucified and laid in the tomb, did he lay dead the whole time until his resurrection on the early morning of the third day?

This is a great question that I received by email just after the Easter weekend. In fact it is one of the big questions I had when I became a Christian at the age of 18. I asked friends, pastors, almost everyone and anyone "what happened to Jesus during the 3 days"? The answers fell into two categories basically: a) Ahhhh...I don't really know. That is a good question. b) He went down to Hell to pay for our sins and defeat death

I tried to find some scripture that talked about Him going down to Hell but I couldn't really find anything that satisfied my desire to know the details. But people I respected seemed pretty adamant so I kind of just went with answer "b" and moved on to my next big theological dilemma of the week :-). But upon getting this question I started diving into eBible.com to go deeper. Here is what I did:

I remembered that a key verse in this discussion was something about Jesus preaching to some spirits after He died and before He rose. So I searched the Bible for: Jesus preached to spirits
The first result looks like the verse I was thinking of so I clicked on the "study" button for 1 Peter 3:19.
After reading around verse 19 for some context I right-clicked on the verse and read through the entries for the seven (7) commentaries in my library. This provided a lot of insight into the question!
I noticed that "Hades" was a topic attached to 1 Peter 3:19 and it also was at the center of some commentary explanations for the verse. I searched the library for "Hades" to try and get some more background and ended up doing the same for "Hell".

This particular passage of the New Testament is one of the most controversial and there is a wide range of theological views that come of it. I hope it was valuable to follow along with the above and it is just the beginning of yet another journey through God's Word at eBible.com. If you have your own question or comments, please pass them my way at thumper@ebible.com. Blessings!

Tips and Tricks

A little known feature at eBible.com is the Bible Outline and it is found in the Study Browser. What is the Study Browser you ask? Well, all over the site you will see an option to "Study" a verse. By clicking here you will load eBible.com's cool Web 2.0 "Study Browser". This is a simple interface with powerful features like continous scrolling of the Bible up and down, parallel Bibles, right-click to pop-up commentary entries and much more including of course, the Bible Outline. Go here and click the "Show Bible Outline" link to start exploring the Bible one section/story at a time. It is a great way to get some context as to where things are in the Bible and yet another way to find that verse or passage you kind of remember but are not sure of the exact location. People remember stories a lot better than we do "addresses" like Galatians 2:8

So there you have it. A complete, interactive Bible Outline built into your favorite Online Bible.

Special Offer

To celebrate the introduction of premium memberships we are offering everyone an introductory 10% off!

Just use coupon code "WELIKEU" (without the quotes) when upgrading.

(Note: For those early members who received a personal coupon code, be sure to take advantage of your offer before they coupons expire this weekend.)

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