Theology Central Study Bible Update

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast, making Theology Central. Good evening everyone. It is Sunday, January the fifth, twenty twenty five. It's going to take me a while to get used to saying that. I all right there. I was like, wait, is it really twenty twenty five? Is it really? Isn't it? Twenty? Yeah? Twenty twenty five, Ladies and gentlemen. It is Sunday evening, January the fifth, twenty twenty five. It is currently eight eleven pm Central Time, and I am coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Well, it's a brand new year. And if you listen to the two hours of teaching that I did today, actually it was more like two and a half hours, almost three hours of teaching that I did today. We really started looking at twenty twenty five, the coming year, and we started talking about how artificial intelligence is going to have a profound impact on Christianity and the church. And we talked, I mean, we spent so much time talking about that. Hopefully that was beneficial, Hopefully it was interesting, and we will be talking about that through a good portion of twenty twenty five. We're going to be doing a lot of discussions about artificial intelligence moving forward, and we will see where that goes. So that's done, I mean, that's not completely done, but we got that off to

1:34 a good start. There's some other things we're going to be trying to figure out and what we're going to be doing in twenty twenty five right now. Typically what typically happens here is as I'm getting close to the end of the year, I kind of start talking a lot about the new year, kind of making plans, saying we're going to do this, and I didn't really do that this year. I didn't really you know, I kind of just left the page. It's almost like I have a no book sitting here in front of the microphone with a pencil. I have a box of pencils, so like, I have a notebook here is completely blank. I have a pencil laying right here next to the notebook, and I just kind of left it blank. And I'm just kind of like, I don't know what we're going to do in twenty twenty five. So right now we just we're just going to kind of wait and see instead of making any definitive plans. I have a plan ready to go. But the AI discussion today really, you know, it is making me rethink a lot of things. So we will be talking about that. But what I wanted to do this evening, right, I wanted to just turn on the microphone and take care of kind of an administrative housekeeping detail. As many of you know, at the end of twenty twenty four, I made available to everyone what we are referring to as the Theology Central Study Bible. Right, we made that available to everyone. We made it free for everyone, Okay, because we were given like a month free trial. I think so. I think maybe actually we

3:04 made it available somewhere in November, and it was available through much of December. I did one broadcast about it, didn't say anything else about it, and just kind of waited and see if I received a lot of feedback, right, And I told everyone it was going to cost one hundred dollars to really keep it going. And I'm like, well, do we want do we want to keep this going? What do we want to do? And I just kind of threw it out there and just moved on, and I'm like, okay, I kind of monitored email. I didn't really get a lot of I didn't get a lot of feedback. I think I got a few. Yeah, it was good. I was definitely wasn't getting offers like hey, I will help pay for that. Okay. Now, I wasn't getting any I wasn't getting you know, emails saying hey, now.

3:47 Some people were like, now I did. I think I got a few emails. Well I like this, but I don't like this. And of course, you know, you always have. You know, there's going to be people who don't like certain things. And I'm like, well, you know it is free, so but but okay, you know it is free for you, but all right, but it is it's gotta cost me something. So I'm kind of was like, well, well, when the free trial runs out, I'll be done. Well, it's just nobody. I don't think people really care, and I just I'm gonna move on. And then I saw sermon audio announce that the Bible arc Study Bible for Ministries is available. I don't know what the time limit was for eight like seventy seventy five percent discount, and I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. I can do this for basically twenty five dollars. I'm like, look, even if no one uses it, just making it available. And I can make it available for twenty five dollars, I think for an entire year, maybe even longer. I'm like, I've got to jump all over that. So I think it was around three or four in the morning. That was three or four this morning. I was going, Okay, how do I do this? Because I saw the ed I'm like, I don't I don't want I want to miss this. So I was like three or four in the morning. I'm like, all right, okay, okay, pay the money. All right, good, everything's great. And then all of a sudden, I realize, wait, not everything is great. I paid the money. You can't access the Bible. So many of you you can check right now. Let me go to the page here to

5:18 the administrative page, and you can check it out. I don't think you're gonna be able to access it right now. Here's the admin setting. If you go to Bible Arc, that's b I B L E A R C. Bible Arc dot com forward slash church forward slash theology Central. That's Bible arc dot com forward slash church, forward slash theology Central you should be in theory able to access the Theology Central Study Bible. However, you're going to read something that says this study Bible. Trial period ended. It is disabled until the church admin completes the setup. Well, the setup was to pay money, so I paid twenty five dollars at around three or four this morning. Well, then I was like, okay, you know I've got I don't know what's going on. It's three or four in the morning. What am I going to do? So then I forgot about that. Then I started moving forward getting things ready for church in the two hours of teaching I was going to do and I think it was either right before church or maybe after church at all blurs together now because I have I haven't been asleep in almost forty eight hours. At this point I was like, you know what, I'll try it again. I'll try it again.

6:37 So I paid another twenty five dollars. So at this point I have paid fifty dollars and it still doesn't work. So I have sent an email saying, hey, here's the screenshot of two receipts. I like to be refunded for at least one of those, and can we make it work. So I am hoping tomorrow the Theology Central Study Bible will be once again live and you can use it. If it is, I'll do another one of these little pot you know, episodes where I just kind of give everyone an update. But I wanted to, you know, because for the people who have used it, right, for the people who have used it, I don't want them going, well, I guess he just was finished with that. I want them to know. No, no, no, we're not finished with it.

7:22 We were going to be right once the trial ended, I was going to be done because for one hundred dollars, with the amount of actual response, it wasn't going to be worth one hundred dollars. I mean, I could just I could use one hundred dollars to do something I want to do if I'm going to pay one hundred dollars to provide I mean, I don't need the Theology Central Study Bible. I don't need it. Ladies and gentlemen, Okay, the way it was and if you used it, you know why, it was what it was supposed to do, and it's really cool, it's really awesome. But I don't need it. I know, you know, I'm pretty good to go with what of where all my content is and what it you know it's for, but I thought it would be helpful. So but for twenty five dollars. For twenty five dollars in fact, if I if I go here, Yeah, it's a one time fee. So basically, basically it was one hundred dollars and that would make it available up to one hundred people. If we wanted to make it up to available to up to four hundred people, that would be two hundred and fifty dollars. If we want to make it available up to nine hundred and ninety nine people, that would be four hundred and if it if we wanted to make it for a thousand more than a thousand, that would be seven hundred and fifty dollars. Right, So well, that's just you need lots of feedback if you're going to get that. And we've kind of gone through this before. We used to make digital curriculum available to people and a lot of people would ask for it, then didn't really use it and not and most people

8:54 didn't want to support it. So kind of the same thing with this. But if it's a one time fee and we're getting like a seventy seventy five percent discount. Well, that one hundred dollars turned into twenty five dollars and I was like, well, I can't pass that. I almost wanted to go with the two fifty and do the seventy five percent discount. So that's kind of where we are right now. It's disabled. I'm hoping I get a refund for at least part of that, for the one twenty five dollars, and then we will see. So if you've been using it, that's why it's disabled. For those who listen, I have no idea what it is. It's a digital Bible. You can basically make it an app on your mobile device and then it's a digital study Bible.

9:34 But what's cool about it is it I mean, over how many messages do I have over the over two on what almost two thousand and sixty three I think is currently available two thousand and sixty three messages that I have done, they will appear right there on the Digital Study Bible, right there to the side, covering whichever reverse that they are connected to. So if I do a message connected to Genesis one to one, when you're looking and you're just you know, reading the Digital Study Bible, and let's say you end up in Genesis one one, you'll see what messages I have done that pertain to Genesis one to one. So it's kind of a really cool idea. Hopefully it helps people find my older messages that I have done, because those tend to get overlooked because I typically produce so much content on a regular basis.

10:21 So we're going to see if it works. Then twenty five dollars. It's one time, and if we get to one hundred people, then I'll be like, all right, guys, we're up to one hundred people. Does anybody want to support this so we can we can make it available to more. We will see them. Look, that's always the thing, right, I mean, that's I mean, you know, we've been through it so many times. I hate that podcasting and that ministry of any kind requires money to be able to do. I hate that. I hate that, I really do. I despise it. So, but we will see. If people don't use it, great, I mean, it doesn't hurt anything, right, twenty five dollars dollars, it's set up for life. I mean, if nobody ever uses it, I mean, twenty five dollars, I mean, that's nothing. So I'm all for that, So I hope I can give you an update. I just I don't know why it's not working. So again, if you go to Bible Arc that's b I, B L e A Arc all run together, Bible Arc dot Com forward slash Church Forard slash Theology Central that should be the Theology Study Bible, they're gonna get a message that's been disabled and I don't know why it's been disabled, telling me that I need to set it up, and I need to set it up by giving them money And I gave them fifty dollars today and it doesn't work.

11:36 That's a little frustrating. So hopefully they will get it fixed. I'm assuming it's just some kind of technical error glitch and it'll all be fixed and they're gonna refund my twenty five dollars and everyone's gonna be happy and life's gonna move on, and then we can see how we and then then it'll turn into me coming up with ideas to better utilize it so that it works for everyone. But I wanted to just take a few minutes to do that. I didn't want to necessarily do a broadcast tonight where I tried to do any serious teaching since I, you know, it won't be along all been up forty eight hours and that's probably, you know, probably not conducive. I this morning, with the two hours of teaching dealing with AI was a little bit like, I don't know, was it good? Was it? I don't know. When you go that long without sleep, you start you know, I don't know, but it is what it is. I can clean it up later and try to improve on it to some of it. I think by the end we had kind of an interesting thing that played out at the end. If you listen to the end of part two, someone in the church really just demonstrated in real time exactly what I was talking about, and they used AI in real time to basically they you know, put together, in real time basically an entire teaching on what I'm going to be teaching next week on Isaiah forty And they did it within about five seconds, and it was like, see, what's the point. Yeah, So I don't want to start preaching that because I want to. I'm what I want

13:07 to do now is just tell you, all right, if you've been using the Theology Central Study Bible, the electronic Digital Study Bible. It's currently not working. However, I've done what I can. I've paid the money, I've given them the money. I just wanted to work. Okay, that's all I want. Okay, and hopefully I get at least twenty five back. If I get twenty five back, all right, then that's great. It's good. If I get no nothing back and they can. If I have to pay fifty dollars for it, I guess it's still worth it, but that would be a little irritating. But we will see, all right, So that's the situation. I don't think there's any I mean, there's there's a million. I mean, I felt like I haven't broadcasted, and well, well the last broadcast I did was in twenty twenty four. So yes, it feels like it's been a year, ladies and gentlemen.

13:59 But we will see. I don't know what this week of broadcasting is going to look like. We do have some you know for us here in West Texas, some you know winter weather approaching. It's all I mean. I was last night or early this morning at two or three in the morning, it was like almost seventy degrees outside. It was nice it was beautiful, and then I get ready and when I leave the house to go to church at about nine to twenty this morning, it was like, you know, I don't know, fifteen below zero. Okay, that's a little bit of an exaggeration. It was cold. I'm like, what just happened? And now it is freezing outside, So it's going to be so I don't know how that will impact things. We will see, hopefully. You know, we did have that one winter apocalypse here in West Texas where our power grid failed and we had no power, no water, and it was a disaster. So I don't think it's going to be that severe this time. So it should be perfectly okay, but we will see. All right, there you go. I always hate these administrative ones. I just did fifteen minutes and we didn't cover anything, right, I mean, I didn't cover a thing. I hate that.

15:13 I hate that if I'm gonna turn on the microphone, I should do something. But see if I would have done that prior, like its the introduction to actual a program, then that's fifteen twenty minutes into a program without getting to the program. So I try to pull these out and just do it separate, so there you have it. That's the latest on the Theology Central Digital Study Bible. Currently it's disabled. We don't know why I've sent an email. I doubt I'm gonna get an email on Sunday evening, so I'm probably I'm just gonna look just to see if by some chance I received an email, and no, I haven't. I have not, all right, I have not.

15:55 I received an email from crosswalk dot com and I did receive a message from someone on a spreaker, our podcast hosting site. It just says I love this as well, great teaching on a program on a message I did. I don't even know how many years ago. When when was that message? Hang, let me see, I'm looking what message this was? Yeah, March the second, twenty twenty two. So that's good. People finding older stuff. That's always good. So that's awesome, that's encouraging. But yeah, thanks everyone, have a great evening, and we'll see what's in store for us in twenty twenty five. God bless