The Sword Of Faith

Maybe many of you have known about this, but for those who have not known yet, let me tell you about the sword that you can use to work up your faith and learn more about the Truth. It is called the e-Sword, something I found on the 'Net a while back ago, completely free and altogether great.

If you have a PC (which of course you must!):

• Go to http://e-sword.net/downloads.html
• Download the "application installation", but if you have installed e-Sword previously (which I guess you won't if you're reading this article) you can just take the "update patch".
• Download some Bibles. The e-Sword already come packed with a King James Version with Strong's Numbers, but those Strong's Numbers can be too much to see if you just want to read some scriptures. The Strong's Numbers will be really useful if you want to find the root meaning in the original language (whether it is Hebrew or Greek) of a word, just by hovering your mouse over the Strong's Number, the e-Sword will open up a tooltip which links to the Strong's Dictionary, complete with explanations and its original meanings. In order to avoid becoming too occupied with these numbers, I suggest you download some other Bibles, like KJV Red Letter, ASV, ESV, and whatever Bible versions you may like. Unfortunately some newer Bible versions, like the New King James Version, are unavailable. For you Indonesians out there, there IS a TB-LAI version here, just look for the "Indonesian Terjemahan Baru" version and download it. After you download it, you can just run the installer to add the Bible.
• Download some Dictionaries. I suggest downloading Nave's Dictonary and International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE). Both of them will give you topical explanations about the Bible, but the difference is that Nave gives you a list of Bible verse references which relates to the topic, while ISBE gives you a thorough and detailed explanation about the topic, just like a handbook or an encyclopedia does. This is really useful if you want to learn about some topics. For example you can just enter "salvation", and Nave will give you verses relating to that, while ISBE will teach you the details about the salvation topic. I'm trying some other dictionaries soon but they're mostly large so it will take some time to download and install them. But for the most of us, those two should be enough.
• If you're interested to learn something more, download some Commentaries. But be warned though that Commentaries are personal opinions about the Bible from Bible Scholars, and should NOT be taken all at once, everything, zip, without any considerations, rethinkings and relearnings. The best out there for me is Albert Barnes' but if you're interested feel free to also take John Gill's and Matthew Henry's (NOT the concise one!) too.
• You're set to go with what I listed above, and those things above will probably take more than 50 MB download already, but if you got the spare time and the bandwith to download more, feel free to take more from the site, but right now I'm just working with what I listed above. No need for maps, satellite photos and et-ceteras here.

For those of you rich enough or lucky enough to have a PDA/XDA/smartphones/whatever with Pocket PC 2002 or Windows Mobile 2003 installed (no PALM!):

• Go to http://e-sword.net/pocketpc/downloads.html
• Download either the Pocket PC 2002 version or the Windows Mobile 2003 version, depending on what OS you have on your device, and install it (of course you know how to use ActiveSync by now, right?)
• Because mobile devices only have a little amount of memory available, just download what you need. Maybe you won't even have the space to put a dictionary over there, but if you got some SD/MMC there, then feel free to take everything you need and wanted. For guidelines I suggest you download the same as above, but be warned though that doing searches and everything in your mobile device is very exhaustive, and it's not fast too. So maybe you'll better stick to just a bible and a dictionary for the mobile device, and let your PC/laptop do all the extensive searching and hard work. Extensive Bible Studying using the mobile device is DEFINITELY NOT RECOMMENDED, unless you want to wait long periods of time just to look for some Bible verses.

I've been using e-Sword for my bible studies for almost a year on my PC, and now since I have got my new laptop and my hp iPAQ 4150, I installed e-Sword also on those. Having e-Sword on my laptop is certainly very helpful, because at any time and any given place I can just run the software and do some bible studying in my free time, whether it's waiting for class or just waiting for the rain to end or something. I suggest you to use it, and it's not that difficult to use, even if you're not too computer literate. If you encounter some problems or would just like to ask something about it, feel free to ask me about it. As a long-time user I might just be able to help you.

Oh yeah, and by the way, it's not me who has made this software (I wish!). Thanks to Rick Meyers for this great piece of software (and it's free too! just how cool is that?). Wish I can meet him someday.