Display of Bible translations in many languages at the Museum of the Bible. One of those on the shelf in the middle is one that I typeset for Tonga. It is possible to count Bibles on display in this museum, but very difficult. Counting digital all of the Bibles we have distributed is impossible, because many of the distributions are from servers we don’t operate. But we count what we can.

I recently updated the process that counts Bibles. At first, our metrics page looked like our Bible traffic went way down because I wasn’t collecting all of the logs. After fixing that, it showed that there were 21 million more Scripture deliveries than what we counted the newsletter before last. Why so much? It isn’t all one thing. One interesting part of that increase is a rise of agentic AI, that is AI acting on behalf of a human making a query.

Here is a real world example. Dr. James Tour, a chemistry professor and Bible teacher, wrote to me concerning the World English Bible (WEB):

“Thank you for a freely accessible and quotable Bible that is faithful to the manuscripts. It is the version that ChatGPT freely quotes when I am preparing my Bible studies. It can quote large portions of the KJV, but that is hard for college students to follow. Here is what ChatGPT says:

“An important feature—and one reason I sometimes use the WEB when you ask me to quote substantial amounts of Scripture—is that the biblical text of the WEB is in the public domain. You can copy, distribute, print, preach from, or publish it without paying royalties. The name “World English Bible,” however, is protected as a trademark so that substantially altered versions cannot simply retain the WEB name.“

Flash back to Bulal Village, Madang Province, Papua New Guinea, in 2003. Unlike then, people in this village now have access to digital Bibles they can read on PNG.Bible.

What I do to get God’s Word to people all over the world:

Work on the World English Bible so that a quality modern English Bible translation can be distributed freely by anyone without copyright hassles.
Digitally distribute Bible translations in digital formats in many languages for free that other Bible translators allow me to distribute.
Freely help and mentor Bible translators and Bible ministries with consulting, typesetting, etc.

This Bible access is open to all, but especially targeted at those least willing or able to pay. This work is made possible by the prayers and support of our partners and the great God we serve. Thank you for being a part of this ministry.

Thank God that

We don’t currently have a named storm near our island, for a pleasant change. Not only that, but Hurricanes Lala, Nowell, and Nolo all missed making landfall on Maui. Even though there were some power and communications outages from fringe effects, our web sites stayed online and we had no damage, except for one fence that fell down. (The fence is repaired.)
We have distributed more than 684 million Scriptures from our Bible web sites. That doesn’t include distribution that go from web sites and apps I don’t run, but supply some Scriptures to, like free.Bible and the YouVersion app. I can’t count all of them, but the fraction I can count is encouraging!
We have awesome prayer and financial partners making our ministry to the world possible.
God’s Word never returns to Him without doing what He sent it to do. (Isaiah 55:11)

Prayer Requests

That I would be able to efficiently program Haiola to handle audio-only Scriptures well on eBible.org. I am getting more of these as audio-to-audio translations take place.
Pray for provision, protection, health, and wisdom for all who volunteer their time working on Bible translation, Bible study software, and Bible web sites.
Wise balancing of competing time demands.
Supernatural productivity for me and our volunteers.

How can we pray for you, today?