Libraries, Fingertips, Books, and Ears

This is a post about books. As you  know, I love them. And so do most bloggers,  probably. Does anyone else like libraries? Particlularly ones with a great  Biblical section?

Well, how  would you like to have your own theological library at your finger tips?      Now you can! Let me introduce to you  The Bible Centre  (HT: Boanerges). Yes, that’s centre with an “re” instead of “er”. Its British, but we won’t hold that against them.

The Bible Centre is an online library of all things theological. They have as many commentaries as you could want, almost. They  nearly have the entire WORD Biblical Commentary set for the NT available. And of course they have Matthew Henry, Adam Clarke, and all the gang.    While they also provide the Pulpit Commentary, they provide others you may not have heard of too. They showcase 6 volumes of Jonathan Edwards’ works, along with a dozen or so Systematic Theologies. And they have everything a Greek or Hebrew Scholar would need. Kittel’s finds its place there and they have a wide array of text critical helps as well (did anybody say Metzger?). All in all, they have hundreds, let me repeat, hundreds, of reference and other works available for your now happy fingertips to peruse!

Better yet,  it is all free from now through Jan. 1! At that time, they will ask you to pay a $20 yearly fee if you can afford it, if not they have reduced rates or would even offer the service free. For Bible colleges and seminaries a flat $50 yearly fee covers all the instructors and students alike! Check out their fee explanation for more detail.

Update: the Bible Centre is not obeying copyright laws and has refused to comply with numerous requests from Christian publishers and others. I think the site was taken down, if not: please do not support or use such a site.

Talking about commentaries, I recently discovered that Monergism.com offers the  best one stop source of online commentaries (outside of the Bible Centre) available on the web—at least I think it is.    They link to all of John  Calvin’s commentaries, as well as the commentaries of Albert Barnes, Matthew Henry, Adam Clarke, John Gill, Keil & Delitzch, Matthew Poole, and  Warren Wiersbe to name just a few. They also have a listing of all of John Piper’s sermons by sermon text. And they link to the online Pulpit Commentary, some of John MacArthur’s NT  commentaries online and many, many other resources. They also have the excellent Commentary on Revelation by Vern Poythress, that I am currently reading, available on line. So be sure to bookmark their Commentaries page!

I’ve covered the “libraries”, “books”, and “fingertips” from the title of this post, but what about the ears? I figured that this kind of a hodge podge post about books would be a good place to mention another resource I have discovered. Sonic Faith offers downloadable Christian Audio books. These are audio books for your iPod. Now I don’t have an ipod, but I can still listen to mp3s on my computer, and you can too, even if you don’t know it!

Sonic Faith has a fairly good selection of Christian books—some of the more recent and more widespread “bookstore” variety books, as well as some Bibles. Hey, they even carry the ESV! I also  like the fact that it has Ted Dekker’s and Randy Alcorn’s fiction books. I haven’t read Ted yet, but Alcorn’s fiction is out of this world good—and also spiritually substantial.

Sonic Faith also has a yearly membership deal whereby you can save even more off the price of books by getting them as downloadable digital files. The site is worth checking out and very easy to use. It also looks like they will be including free audio books  sometime soon. So if you like audio books, let your next one come from a Christian audio book company.

Well, that’s it for now. I need to go and read some books!

∼striving for the unity of the faith for the glory of God∼ Eph. 4:3,13 “¢ Rom. 15:5-7