Looking at science, here is how this would play out:

• It is accurate to say the Sun is far from the Earth, but it is not very precise.
• It is precise to say the Sun is 10,947.763 miles from the Earth, but it is not very accurate.
• To be precisely accurate, the Sun is a long way from earth – 1 Astronomical unit, or 92,955,807 miles.
• To be a little bit more thorough, we might note that this is the perfect distance to sustain human life. Much closer and we would be too hot. Much farther and we would be too cold. We could also note that while 93 million miles is a great distance, it’s still nowhere near as great as the distance between the Sun and Jupiter or Neptune or Pluto (and FYI, I’m still bummed about the whole Pluto fiasco). And the distance fades to a tiny speck if we compare it to the distance between the Earth and the Andromeda Galaxy (some 2,500,000 light-years away).

When it comes to Bible study we must be accurate in our observations, precise in our details, and thorough in our study. We will only grow in our knowledge of God’s Word, and the things revealed through God’s Word, when all three parts are present.

Take, for example, Revelation 22:18-19:
I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

• It is roughly accurate to say, “By this verse we see that anyone who adds or takes away from this book is cursed.”
• It is more precise to say, “John warns the reader of Revelation that if anyone adds or takes from the book of Revelation, he will be cursed.”
• Adding a bit of thoroughness, we can observe that the books of the Bible were originally independent works and John would have written the warning as applying to “this book I have written”, the book of Revelation. Nonetheless, we could say that the principle applies to all of Scripture, even if this verse does not directly apply. We are not to tamper with God’s Word. Note 2 Corinthians 2:17, 4:2.

(Note that in the example I’m by no means trying to say everything there is to say about the verse; I’m limiting myself to the scope of the verse’s application.)

Now, why am I saying all this?

I think we have a tendency to settle for accuracy without showing much concern for precision or thoroughness. When we do this, we can only arrive at a partial – and often distorted – understanding of Scripture which means our ability to walk in obedience will be limited. We also leave others with the impression that the Bible is not worth careful, attentive study and that people can claim to love Scripture without actually interacting deeply with the things taught in Scripture.

If we are to be people of the book – and we absolutely should be people of the book – then we must labor daily to arrive at a precise, accurate, and thorough understanding of all the verses of the Bible. We will never get there, but that’s no excuse to be caught neglecting the Bible.

Events of the Cross

Today, I’ve put together a briefer guide giving an overview of the events of Holy Week. This is highly summarized in order to fit everything on one page, but can provide a good, quick reference point.

Events of Holy Week

Ephesians chapter one, Paul’s only just begun.

He shows us what God’s done through Jesus Christ his Son.

Redemption! We’re set free! With God we’ve harmony!

Ephesians chapter two, by grace, through faith, it’s true!

Dead in your sins were you, but God, he brought us through;

Salvation full and free, Christ paid the price for me!

Ephesians chapter three, we’ve unity, you see!

The cross joined you to me, to show eternally,

The glory, the power, the love, of God Almighty above!

Ephesians chapter four, God’s opened up the door

Given workers to the chore of making something more

Of the people he has called till Christ is all in all!

Ephesians chapter five, to walk like Christ we’ll strive

To put aside all drive of the flesh in our lives.

With bride and groom we see that Christ has cherished me!

Ephesians chapter six, the devil’s evil tricks,

Cannot begin to nix our Lord’s mighty fix!

Put on his armor, saints! Your surety never faints!

Ephesians is God’s gift so we’re not left adrift

But Christ will us uplift and bridge the terrible rift

Thus, as you come and go, serve Christ and in him grow!

A few months ago Logos invited a number of users to participate in a private beta. In this post I will evaluate my experience with Logos 4, note many of the new and enhanced features, and discuss a few of the drawbacks. This is a lengthy post but feel free to jump around using the guide below.

Introducing Logos 4
Library Management
Notes, Highlighting, and Data Sync
Study Guides
Bible Features
Reference Tools
What’s Missing
Version 3
Mac Users
iPhone App
Conclusion

One of the biggest hurdles to using Logos 4 comes when you install the software. Once the software is installed and the resources are loaded Logos will index all of the resources in your library. Indexing is a step that will make searches perform much quicker than in Logos 3 but the initial indexing can take hours and hours. After you install the software, go watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Twice. Actually, many of the indexing delays took place early in the beta process and is now much faster though it will still take several hours to index a new installation. Indexing will also take place whenever resources are added or updated but it will be much quicker when only a few items have changed.

When you first open Logos 4 you are presented with a home page, seen above. This page has a few customization options to get you into your books or give you news and tips about Logos. You can also turn off the home page. At the very top of the interface is a command bar that offers quite a bit of power to jump around Logos resources and features or access some hidden tools. Below the command bar in the home page is a text box that can get the first time user going. Simply enter a passage or topic and Logos will go to work.

Users will quickly  notice the new window management features of Logos 4. Early on this was one of the more difficult adjustments. Unlike Logos 3, the windows in Logos 4 do not float within the Logos window. They snap into place into several pre-defined areas:

I initially found this frustrating but quickly came to like the ease of lining up windows. Each window area also features tabs so if you drop multiple windows into one area they will be listed in a series of tabs such as with the Bibles open in the image above.

Windows can also be floated, undocking a window from the main Logos window. Any floated windows behave the same way as the main window. Floating windows give Logos 4 powerful support for multiple displays, something completely lacking in version 3.

One new feature is layouts. In Logos 3 users could save their work in a workspace. In Logos 4 this has been renamed layouts and has gained quite a bit of power. To the right of the Layout menu Logos automatically stores a snapshot of your current and past window layout. If you are working with a particular arrangement and want to be able to quickly return to it, give it a name and it will be added to the window on the left. Click on one of the Named Layouts and it will open your saved resources and window position, such as in my Greek layout below:

Library Management

In Logos 4 library management has changed. The changes, particularly to collections, may be confusing at first but add very powerful features to help users find, manage, tag, rate, and group resources. The Find box is much more powerful than in Logos 3, allowing a variety of searching methods including searching particular book types, topics, tags, etc. Entering a search for “type:commentary author:O’Brien” returns two results in my library.

I am currently preaching through Ephesians so I’m in my Ephesians commentaries a lot. But I do not like all of the commentaries so a search for “type:commentary subject:Ephesians” will give me more than I want. One option is to tag my favorites with Ephesians so I can search for “type:commentary mytag:Ephesians” I can also rate commentaries and look for commentaries on Ephesians rated four or better: “type:commentary subject:Ephesians rating:>=4” This is really more than I would ever want to do for my Ephesians commentaries, but you get the picture.

Where these features really come in handy is with resource collections. With Logos 4 collections have completely changed. Note the picture above. In the Find window I have a basic search. In Logos 3 you would take the results of a search and drag them into a collection. In Logos 4, the search results are your collection. The resources listed at the bottom of the window are the resources found by my search and are automatically included in my new collection. If your search gives you resources that you do not want included, just drag the resource into the section labeled “Minus these resources”. If your search does not give you resources that you want included, open the Library tool, find the resource, and drag it into the section labeled “Plus these resources”.

This method of creating collections results in dynamic collections. I have a collection where my only rule is author:”John Piper”. Under Logos 3 if I bought new Piper books I would have to remember to go back and add them to my collection. With Logos 4 any new books that match your collection rules are automatically added to the collection.

One of the most exciting new features of Logos 4 is resource synchronization. It is not clear if this will work for all books in your library, but most if not all books can be automatically downloaded and updated. Have to reload your computer and not looking forward to hunting down all of your Logos resources? No fear, Logos 4 will automatically download them. Buy a new book? Don’t bother downloading it and copying to a resource folder, Logos 4 will automatically retrieve it for you. And any time resources get updated the updates are automatically loaded to your computer, no need to run the update tool as in Logos 3.

Notes, Highlighting, and Data Sync

As with Logos 3, Logos 4 presents numerous flexible options to write notes and add highlighting, but Logos 4 takes things several steps farther. With Logos 4 notes can be written all over the place. Users can continue to create individual notes documents but notes can also be written within the various Bible study guides. When you pull up a Guide you are not just opening a list of tools and resources, you are opening any notes you have made within the guide.

The general Notes tool works about as expected, though it is a bit glitchy. It will need more attention from Logos as updates continue to be rolled out. Sometimes the cursor will jump to the beginning or end of a note mid-typing or the notes window will lose focus entirely. Writing notes can also be sluggish, at least under my setup (more on that later).

There is one more new feature that makes notes, highlights, and a host of features even more useful: synchronization. With Logos 4 user notes, highlights, layouts, settings, guides, collections, shortcuts, etc etc are all synchronized to the server. I rarely used notes and highlighting with Logos 3 after a few instances of losing them when forgetting to back them up during a reinstallation. With Logos 4 the work I do at my church office is synchronized and waiting for me when I get home.

Study Guides

Logos 4 includes the same guides as Logos 3 but with rich new features. The Passage Guide has numerous customization options, allowing you to save as many guides as you wish tailor-made for your study. I have one guide set up for my sermon work in Ephesians, another guide set up for general study. Passage guides can also include the same sections found in the Exegetical Guide. Want everything in one place? Make a guide:

Passage guides feature a new Handout tool which can help users create a handout to share with a class or church group. I have not used handouts much and reports are mixed. This is another area Logos will need to keep working on before it becomes fully useful.

The new Biblical People, Places, and Things tools enhance features already found in Logos 3 and give users great ways to visually explore biblical topics and relationships.

Improvements have also been made to the Exegetical Guide. I really like the layout of Greek and Hebrew. Also, when looking at the Word byWord breakdown, users can see the Greek word’s location within an English translation:

Visual enhancements to Word Study make word study just plain fun:

Bible Features

The Bibles themselves have had an overhaul in Logos 4. New features make it easier to use reverse interlinears and easier to compare versions. On the reverse inerlinears, Logos 4 has an in-line interlinear display for any version that has an associated reverse interlinear:

The word you click in the english text will highlight in the interlinear below. In the above screenshot we see that both the ESV and the NRSV have reverse interlinear data. Note also that when you highlight one word or phrase in one translation, the corresponding word or phrase in the other translation is also highlighted. This way you can quickly see translation differences in any tagged Bibles.

In Logos 3 users were able to place text side-by-side using the Compare Versions tool. In Logos 4 the tool is called Text Compare and it comes with more power to specify what changes you want to display and how you want to display them.

Reference Tools

Logos 4 comes with an Information window essentially identical to the one in Logos 3. However, in my own use the information window for Logos 4 updates so slowly it is almost unusable.

In addition to the information window, Logos 4 also has a Cited By tool and a Power Lookup tool. The Cited By tool provides a simple way to search your library for a given passage and Power Lookup will display any text contained in footnotes or Bible references within the resource you are reading or within any text you have highlighted. If you are looking at the Treasury of Scripture Library the Power Lookup will display the full text of any passages you highlight.

Logos 4 also includes new tools for creating reading plans. The reading plan in Logos 4 is more powerful than in Logos 3. With Logos 4 users have the ability to create a reading plan for any book in their library. In the picture below I created a plan for reading John Piper’s Finally Alive in two weeks:

Book reading plans work best when the book is tagged with page numbers. Older Logos books may not contain page number data.

What’s Missing

Update: Logos has released a list of planned features including a timetable for release: What’s Missing from Logos 4

Unfortunately, Logos 4 is missing a lot of the extra tools found in Logos 3. Examples are:

• Verse lists
• Prayer request lists
• Sermon addin
• Personal book builder
• Printing is very limited. Users of the Mac engine of Logos will already be familiar with this limitation. A few of the tools within Logos 4 can print, but not all and not terribly well.
• Sentence Diagramming

Not exactly left out, but at present there is no way to import notes and highlighting from Logos 3 to Logos 4.

Logos has discussed its intention to add each of these features, and more, in future releases. It is the goal of Logos Bible Software to release a good, solid Bible study program even if it lacks some of the features found in version 3. With the automatic update mechanism in Logos 4, Logos will be able to roll out these new features without the user having to do anything. As Logos expressed in the beta discussion forum, the user will open the program one day to find new features ready to go.

Some of the delay releasing these tools is the work required to bring them up to standard for Logos 4. Many of the tools are old and have been patched together through the years and will take a bit of work to recreate for version 4. Once the work is complete I think users will find it was worth the wait.

Also missing are the Remote Library tool and the Graphical Query. Logos has said they do not intend to reproduce these in version 4 since other, better alternatives are available.

Version 3

For some users, the features missing in Logos 4 will be deal breakers. Those users will be glad to know that Versions 3 and 4 can run side-by-side. They will not share any data or resources (Logos 4 makes its own copy of resources when installed) but they do not conflict with each other. Use Logos 4 for your regular work and load up Logos 3 for those missing features until they are available in version 4.

Mac Users

For now the best option for Mac users remains as it has been: run Logos from within a virtual machine. Almost all of my time with Logos 4 has been done within VMWare Fusion. Mac users may need to tweak a few performance settings or the experience will be sluggish and unenjoyable. In VMWare Fusion go to the virtual machine settings and disable 3d acceleration, then within your Windows OS open display settings, click advanced, go to the Troubleshoot tab and click Change Settings. Drop the Hardware Acceleration slider way down. This should improve performance quite a bit.

If you have multiple displays, VMWare’s multiple display setting will let you use both displays for your virtual machine and will let you take advantage of Logos 4’s ability to use multiple displays. Unity view may be an even better option for some as the floated windows in unity view can be dragged around any monitor.

Logos is also working on a Mac version equivalent to Logos 4 for the PC. Users of the current Logos Mac engine will know it lags far behind the windows version. At present the Mac version of Logos 4 is also missing a host of features and is very early in development (Alpha 1 at time of writing). Logos plans to open it up as a public beta so Mac users will be able to play with it as development continues. Logos has not released a timeframe for the Mac version but considering its current state, it will take a little while. Still, it will be nice to see the Mac version grow as features are added. I am encouraged that it seems Logos does plan to bring the Mac version fully up to par with the Windows version and though a lot of work remains, we should see it in the not-to-distant future.

iPhone App

Also available is the Logos iPhone app. Logos has been hinting about this app for a few weeks now and the app turned up in the app store Saturday, October 31.

The iPhone App, which also works on the iPod Touch, requires an internet connection as none of the content is stored locally. Logos has mentioned that there are plans to enable offline use in the future but at present technical and licensing issues prevent offline use. Even with this limitation, it is amazing what all the iPhone app can do.

Passage guide, word study, reading plans, bookmark sync, library search, text compare, and more. The iPhone app puts quite a bit of power into your iPhone or iPod touch. Perhaps best of all, the application is free. The iPhone app works best if users are also using Logos 4 and the synchronization features will only be useful alongside the desktop version of 4.

Conclusion

At the time this review was written Logos has not yet released version 4 and has not announced pricing. It is assumed that Logos will release the Logos 4 engine for free for current users and it will, as normal, be bundled with packages for new users. The libraries being released with version 4 are being expanded to include new content and existing users will be able to pay a small cross-grade fee to buy the resources matching their current library. The new collection for Scholars Library Gold is said to contain some 200 new resources and current Scholars Library Gold users will be able to purchase those resources at a greatly reduced price.

A number of the features in Logos 4 took a bit of getting used to and the beta discussion forums were filled with frustrated comments as users tried to figure out this or that new feature. In the end, most users seem either satisfied or thrilled with the direction Logos has moved with this version of the software. I have really enjoyed the enhancements and new features of Logos 4 and have found several ways that they make my Bible study process both more thorough and more simple. I have kept Logos 3 installed and updated but have only returned to it when comparing old features with new features.

Logos version 4

There will always be impostors, who make insidious attacks upon our faith; but, if we are fortified by the truth of God, their efforts will be unavailing. Both parts of this statement deserve our careful attention. When new sects, or wicked tenets, spring up, many persons become alarmed. But the attempts of Satan to darken, by his falsehoods, the pure doctrine of Christ, are at no time interrupted; and it is the will of God that these struggles should be the trial of our faith. When we are informed, on the other hand, that the best and readiest defense against every kind of error is to bring forward that doctrine which we have learned from Christ and his apostles, this surely is no ordinary consolation.

With what awful wickedness, then, are Papists chargeable, who take away from the word of God everything like certainty, and maintain that there is no steadiness of faith, but what depends on the authority of men! If a man entertain any doubt, it is in vain to bid him consult the word of God: he must abide by their decrees. But we have embraced the law, the prophets, and the gospel. Let us therefore confidently expect that we shall reap the advantage which is here promised, — that all the impostures of men will do us no harm. They will attack us, indeed, but they will not prevail. We are entitled, I acknowledge, to look for the dispensation of sound doctrine from the church, for God has committed it to her charge; but when Papists avail themselves of the disguise of the church for burying doctrine, they give sufficient proof that they have a diabolical synagogue.

Note in the first paragraph that which is our defense against “new sects, or wicked tenets”. Calvin says that “the best and readiest defense against every kind of error is to bring forward that doctrine which we have learned from Christ and his apostles”. Where do we gain this insight into the mind of Christ and his apostles? Does it come from man’s authority and teaching? Hardly. In the second paragraph Calvin directs his criticism against those in the Catholic church who undermine people’s confidence in Scripture by claiming that right faith can only come through the authority of men – meaning the authority of bishops and popes.

This takes place today in slightly different manner. Many are they who “take away from the word of God everything like certainty”. A preacher will undermine the authority of Scripture by professing humility and claiming that he is not sufficient to the task of delivering the one true understanding of the text and it must be left to each individual’s subjective feeling to determine the meaning of the text. Rather than appealing to the authority of the Pope, such men appeal to the authority of every individual appetite. Such men are masters of telling you when your interpretation cannot possibly fit the Bible – very often criticizing the teachings that do, in fact, reflect God’s truth – but will shy away when pressed to deliver the universal meaning of the text.

So we must keep in mind the instruction and the warning given in the second paragraph: “We are entitled… to look for the dispensation of sound doctrine from the church, for God has committed it to her charge…” Calvin tells us that God has committed the church to dispensing sound doctrine and those who are part of the church are granted the freedom to look for sound doctrine in the preaching of the church. When a church fails to deliver sound doctrine, it says something awful about that church: “…but when Papists avail themselves of the disguise of the church for burying doctrine, they give sufficient proof that they have a diabolical synagogue.”

May all who seek you
rejoice and be glad in you!
May those who love your salvation
say evermore, “God is great!”
But I am poor and needy;
hasten to me, O God!
You are my help and my deliverer;
O Lord, do not delay!

Can there be any more wonderful resolution to a situation than this? To see ghosts in the night and yet find out that it is none other than our Savior? How many ghosts have come our way at the hand of God and we never took the time to recognize the work he was doing through them? How many terrors have consumed us where God stood behind them?

To all of that Jesus says, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”