Why This Site Exists

Christ’s command is clear: We are to witness for him to the most distant part of the earth. When powerful clergymen tried to stop the first apostles, they had to answer "We cannot stop speaking about the things we have seen and heard." The apostles well knew the power of those clergy, for they were responsible for having Christ murdered. But the apostles had also seen Christ risen from the dead! He had ordered them to tell the world that death had no power over him now, that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him. They had seen him ascend into the clouds with their own eyes! After that, holy spirit had been poured out on them, energizing them with the power to speak boldly in many languages. From that day forward, they used every appropriate means to spread the news of this salvation to all mankind. They spoke to crowds in market squares, they ran alongside chariots on the road, they knocked on doors, they sat down with people in their homes, they sought out people working by rivers, they wrote letters. If they had had telephones, radio or internet then, they would have used them. They were unstoppable! —Romans 6:9, Matthew 28:18, 19, Acts 1:8, 2:1-11, 4:5-20, 17:17.

Close Romans 6:9
Christ, now that he has been raised up from the dead, dies no more; death is no longer master over him.
Matthew 28:18, 19
Jesus approached and spoke to them, saying: “All authority has been given me in heaven and on the earth. Go therefore and make disciples of people of all the nations, . . . teaching them to observe all the things I have commanded you. And, look! I am with you all the days until the conclusion of this system of things.”

Acts 1:8:
You will receive power when the holy spirit comes upon you, and you will be witnesses of me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the most distant part of the earth.

Acts 2:1-11:
Now while the day of the Festival of Pentecost was in progress, they were all together at the same place. Suddenly there was a noise from heaven, just like that of a rushing, stiff breeze, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And tongues as if of fire appeared and were distributed one on each one of them, and they all became filled with holy spirit and started to speak in different languages, just as the spirit enabled them to speak. At that time devout Jews from every nation under heaven were staying in Jerusalem. So when this sound occurred, a crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Indeed, they were astonished and said: “See here, all these who are speaking are Galileans, are they not? How is it, then, that each one of us is hearing his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, and Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and the province of Asia, and Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya near Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them speaking in our tongues about the magnificent things of God.”
Acts 4:5-20: (edited for length)
The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem. . . They stood Peter and John in their midst and began to question them: “By what power or in whose name did you do this [miracle]?” Then Peter, filled with holy spirit, said to them: “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today about a good deed to a crippled man, and you want to know who made this man well, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you executed on a stake but whom God raised up from the dead, by means of him this man stands here healthy in front of you. . . 12 There is no salvation in anyone else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must get saved.” Now when they saw the outspokenness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were astonished. And they began to realize that they had been with Jesus. As they were looking at the man who had been cured standing with them, they had nothing to say in answer to this. So they commanded them to go outside the Sanhedrin hall, and they began consulting with one another, saying: “What should we do with these men? Because, for a fact, a noteworthy sign has occurred through them, one evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. So that this does not spread any further among the people, let us threaten them and tell them not to speak to anyone anymore on the basis of this name.” With that they called them and ordered them not to say anything at all or to teach on the basis of the name of Jesus. But in reply Peter and John said to them: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, judge for yourselves. But as for us, we cannot stop speaking about the things we have seen and heard.”

Acts 17:17 — He began to reason in the synagogue with the Jews and the other [non-Jewish] people who worshipped God, and every day in the marketplace with those who happened to be on hand.
CloseActs 5:42 — Every day in the temple and from house to house they continued without letup teaching and declaring the good news about the Christ, Jesus.
Acts 20:20, 21 — I did not hold back from telling you anything good for you, nor from teaching you publicly and from house to house. I thoroughly bore witness both to Jews and to Greeks about repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus.

Should preaching house-to-house be the primary method used today because it was the early Christians’ signature method? Actually, house-to-house is mentioned only twice in the entire account of their activity (Acts 5:42; 20:20, 21), both times with an alternate method also named. So it does not seem to have been viewed as the overwhelmingly dominant method at the time; other methods receive more prominence in the accounts. Of course, serious conversation is easier in a person's comfortable home, away from the interference and distraction of public places. So contacting people at their houses is reasonable, if they can be found there. Unfortunately, today many neighborhoods are almost empty during the daytime, and a nighttime knock on the door is unlikely to be well received. Surely the early Christians would have focused on methods that proved effective. They would have continued door-to-door insofar as it worked, but would also have tried other ways to reach people.

For centuries Christians have used the printing press to spread the word. A page can continue to "speak" long after the person who left it is gone; it can be consulted many times, pondered over, studied. It cannot, however, respond to all questions the reader may have, so it cannot replace personal contact. More recently, many have used radio to project their voice earthwide, and then TV to add visual communication. These have their place, but they are not ideal. Public media are subject to control, first by government, which "owns" the channels, and by private owners of the hardware, who may censor at will. They are also very expensive and scheduled very tightly. The Internet now bypasses some of those limitations. In the "blogosphere" any wild and crazy (and sane and reasonable) viewpoint can be published from any basement or kitchen table. Christians are rightly interested in the possibilities.

If you like this online book, please tell others about it. You may also print out any part of it for yourself and for personal friends. Of course, include a note as to where you got it. If you add any commentary, make what is yours clearly distinct. ©1993-present by Stan Jones. Never finished, always improving.

About the author: I am just a blue-collar workman in rural Alabama with about 50 years of experience teaching the Bible at the layman's level. I do read some scholarly discussions, but I believe the Bible is best understood and taught simply. We do not have to be philosophers or experts in dead languages to understand it correctly; just careful, reasonable and humble before God.

Have a thoughtful suggestion or want to express support and encouragement? Write to letters@lifes-purpose.info. Use a meaningful subject line (I assume vague, nonsense, random and blank subjects to be spam and do not open them).

Note: I email only if I respond to your comments. So if you receive any spam with this return address, be assured that I did not send it. If it has an attachment, do not open it.

Update Log

August 28, 2023: Found the Mobile Friendly version after chapter 11 had not had the footnotes completely formatted, so finished that. And of course changed a word here and there.

August, 2023: Began to publish the book in small snippets on Substack.com. Due to the confusing interface, I'm not sure how it is being seen out there in the world. Started with Chapter 1 rather than the Introduction page. Haven't yet reached the first scripture link, but the first footnote link posted as a working link to the website's footnote. Since I am copy-pasting from the mobile-friendly version, the other footnote is visible below it, and a simple scroll up would bring the reader to the rest of the book, since the mobile-friendly is just one long web page, with links up and down between the text, scriptures, and footnotes. So far, no comments.

December 12, 2022: Minor revisions near end of 12b and some punctuation corrections.

September 2nd & 3rd 2022: Revised the wording of a few paragraphs in chapter 1, just for a friendlier tone and greater clarity.

January 8, 2022: Due to official release of new understanding of John 5:28, 29, chapter 10 revised to clearly align with it. This has been my understanding of those verses since 1986. Sometimes progress comes later than we expect. Does not fundamentally alter anything.

January 1, 2022: Corrected minor coding errors in chapter 11. Also put the hr's into 11b mobile friendly. 11a was done earlier but not mentioned here.

November 21, 2021: One paragraph in 12a lengthened, new scripture added.

November 14-18, 2021: Revisions applied to Chapter 12 mobile friendly, along with hr's between the scriptures.

November 11, 2021: Chapter 12b discussion of Matthew 18:15-17 revised and moved. Other adjustments in 12a and 12b for clarity and tone. Applies only to Desktop version at the moment, Mobile-Friendly update soon.

October 22, 2021: Cut the entire new section "Questions About the Resurrection" out of chapter 10 and made it a stand-alone supplement, as it was not needed in chapter 10. Also made minor changes to the js file that controls all the chapters. Note that your cached pages may fail to see the new js file; you may have to flush your cache to force it to fetch the new copy. The change affected only one item in the toolbar, so you may not notice the difference.

Sept 6 through October 19, 2021: Many tweaks to the addition to chapter 10.

August 24, 2021: As usual with new sections, some aftershocks as the rubble settles: adjusted some sentences for clarity and added 3 more paragraphs.

August 22, 2021: Added 17 paragraphs to chapter 10. A new subhead, "Questions about the Resurrection."

August 20, 2021: HR's added to chapters 9 and 10, with other slight adjustments to appearance (mobile-friendly only). No change in wording.

August 8, 2021: Minor text updates in chapters 6-8, put HR lines in mof chapter 8.

June 5, 2021: Chapters 6 and 7 mobile scripture appearance updated. Minor revisions to next to last paragraph in chapter 1.

April 20, 2021: Chapter 5 scriptures done.

April 6, 2021: Added a "history.back()" link to the end of each scripture group so that the user can touch that instead of their Back button (that still works too of course). This revision is complete through chapter 5 and partly done for chapters 13 and 14.

March 28, 2021: Finally got back to putting the horizontal lines between the scriptures, but found a better way to do it using anchors instead of divs. So did chapter 5 then have to work back to chapter 1 with this improvement. This was discovered while updating the HumanOrigins page, which had archaic scripture popups that dated back to about 2005 and didn't work correctly on a mobile screen. For now the desktop version of that page still has the ancient popups.

November 20, 2020: In the mobile-friendly version, added horizontal lines between all the scripture segments and moved the scripture id's up to divs that contains the hr's, so that when a scripture is selected, the hr is at the top of the screen (before, the first line of the scripture was Very close to the top of the screen.) Also, removed the special appearance of the footnotes; now they look similar to scriptures, except the font is 90%. Removed the "verses" div so that the scripture and footnote background now match the chapter. So far only done for chapters 1-4.

May 6, 2020: added two paragraphs about the 2020 pandemic and the reckoning that appears to be looming before mankind. It would be very surprising indeed for it to evaporate and come to nothing, as the US president wished to believe.

May 5, 2020: Added an "X" to the subhead list in each chapter (part of the toolbar at the top). This signals that the subhead list can be dismissed by clicking (touching) the list. The X itself isn't necessary, but acts as a message.

April 29, 2020: Removed the css that hid the table of contents. The js is still there so the list will hide if title is clicked, but the chapter list shows by default. Also adjusted the appearance of the table of contents. Discovered that the Google Translate widget is no longer supported, so I removed it. You will have to translate the pages the hard way, unfortunately, by copy-and-paste short segments into Translate on their page. It never was very accurate.

March 14, 2020: Improved chapter 4 with some minor rewording, and fixed a broken link on the mobile-friendly edition. Eliminated two footnotes by moving them into the scripture pane.

February 11, 2020: Found that the *'s were hard to touch on a small screen, so I expanded the links to include the appropriate word(s) in the sentence. Also found a few minor broken links. The desktop version really fails badly on a small phone screen because the different panels clash in the cramped space. It works well enough on a tablet screen, although the text size is rather small. The mobile-friendly index page looks better vertically, the chapters look good both vertical and horizontal, but I prefer horizontal (wide view). I may try to find out how to allow text reflow when you zoom in, as the text size is fine for younger eyes, not so much for poor vision.

February 10, 2020: Mobile-friendly re-creation completed. The two-page version still exists, but nothing points to them, and they do not go past chapter 13.

February 8, 2020: Converted chapters 11 to the end to the new single-page mobile friendly format. Working backwards toward chapter 1. It goes a little faster as the coding is simpler than the 2-page format, and I am making no new edits to the text at all. The Table Of Contents (the index) will point to the new format as available, until all are changed.

January 30, 2020: My brain suddenly started working! (News Flash...) To be exact, I solved a problem with the mobile-friendly version, and it involves LESS recoding than before. The only problem is, I had already recoded 13 out of 14 chapters. To wit: when a scripture link was clicked, I had the browser open another tab, load the scripture section as a new file, and find the anchor for the reference clicked. Worked fine except when the SECOND scripture was clicked, the scripture page would dutifully find the new reference, but the browser would stay in the chapter. The user had to manually change tabs. Solution: just keep the scriptures on the same page. That is, after all, how the desktop version works. The only difference is, on the desktop, the scriptures are shown on a sidebar and the click just makes the selected reference visible, and the footnotes are popped into view as boxes on top of the chapter. On the new mobile-friendly, the footnotes and scriptures are simply in order after the chapter body (which is exactly how they are in the desktop version, just not visible that way) so clicking a link just shoots the view down to that place in the page. All you have to do to see the chapter again is touch "<", the back icon. This change has been implemented only on the Supplement and is not yet available from the main index. "Coming Soon."

January 21, 2020: Uploaded mobile-friendly chapter 13 without any text edits yet.

January 18, 2020: Finished creating mobile-friendly version of chapter 11. Not much content editing, as it has been worked over quite a bit since first written. Later the same day: created all three sections of mobile-firendly chapter 12. Also very little revision of the content.

January 13, 2020: Made part 1 of chapter 11 mobile-friendly, and in so doing found some things that needed correcting about most of the earlier chapters, mainly links in the scripture/footnote section that were broken by the conversion. Also, some editing of the chapter, mainly shifting sentences around for better flow.

December 16, 2019: Added a privacy policy statement to the index page. We do not use cookies, but we do eat them. I do not know if the Translate or visitor counter plugins collect anything, but probably not.

December 13, 2019: Moved a large footnote in the Sons of God supplement (linked in chapter 14 only) up into the main body. This required some rewording and reorganizing. Hopefully it is still comprehensible. It is a deep discussion of who God's figurative wife is.

December 6, 2019: Minor improvements to chapter 13. After reviewing through the end of the book, I will return to creating the mobile-friendly versions.

December 3 & 4, 2019: Significant revisions to 12b, some of it about democracy and more of it about disfellowshipping and reinstatement. In short, the main body is slightly reduced, made more concise, but several footnotes are lengthened and some are added. Some adjustments to 12c also.

November 29, 2019: Began revisions of chapter 12 (mobile friendly to follow). Significant new footnote about Judas.

October 23, 2019: Some typo and wording corrections in chapter 11.

August 15, 2019: Chapter 11 was in four parts, now reduced to three, although the total length is only reduced by a few lines. A few paragraphs removed, a few others simplified, and wording made a little clearer in a few more places. Not yet made ready in mobile-friendly. The 4-part version can still be seen presently by typing in "11aLoyaltytotheKingdom.html" in place of "11LoyaltytotheKingdom_Part1.html" on the browser address bar. The links in 11a still point to 11b, c and d.

August 12, 2019: More revisions, the largest is to move the long last footnote in chapter 1 up into the main body of the chapter. Also, uploaded chapter 10 mobile-friendly. No edits to its text yet.

August 8, 2019: Continued minor revisions and correction (mostly punctuation and layout) in chapters 1 and 5. Links to "Printer-Friendly Versions" removed, as these have never been updated, and the mobile-friendly version is a fair substitute.

August 6, 2019: Corrected coding in the footnotes in chapter 1 so that the hyperlinks will work with touch. The lines with links cannot be used to move the footnote around by finger, as the move code requires the link code to be turned off, but these are now segregated to very little of the footnote area.

August 4, 2019: Revised the opening paragraphs in the first chapter; removed its first footnote; minor revisions to the page linked in one of the footnotes; some typing errors corrected in B section of chapter 11. Found that the links inside the footnotes of the Desktop version do not work in Safari on an iPad, but they work in the Mobile-Friendly version, which does not use javascript to make the footnote appear. More corrections and revisions are planned.

June 6, 2019: moved the review questions out of the scriptures tabs and put them at the end of each chapter. The Quiz button on the chapter toolbar now works.

June 4, 2019: Chapter 9 mobile-friendly uploaded. No edits to the body text yet.

February 22, 2019: Chapter 8 mobile-friendly uploaded. As usual, other minor changes and updates.

February 20, 2019: Chapter 7 mobile-friendly finished. Also image links in several other mobile-friendly chapters corrected. The image links point to the same files as the desktop version, but mobile-friendly pages are in a different folder, so the links need to be aimed up one level. Some added to the paragraph on lawlessness as part of the sign of the last days, along with other minor changes in words and punctuation.

January 25, 2019: Found that themeswap code on the home page wasn't working anymore, probably due to browser updates. The js code is still on but removed the link to it for now. Also, who knows when the visitor counter quit working. Put in a new counter, although may remove it later. Also removed the link to "Easy-print pdf's", since these were way out of date, and I never created them beyond chapter 3 anyway. If you wish to print anything out, use the mobile-friendly version, which puts all the scriptures and footnotes in each chapter on a separate page. Am partway through mobile-friendly chapter 7. Finally, added an entry all the way at the bottom of this Update Log, describing what I can recall of the timeline of this site before 2003. (Hint: it ain't much...)

January 19, 2019: Finished mobile-friendly chapter 6.

January 14, 2019: Added Google Translate (GT) widget to the Index (home) page so that the opening table of contents can be rendered in any language GT supports. Not sure why this adds a green border around the background picture (I specify forest green if the photo fails to load), but it looks good so will leave as is. GT is imperfect: for example, the Chapter 14's title is rendered "Velg Way of Life" in Norwegian (a language I know). It should be "Velg Veien til Livet." If I plug "the way of life" into GT by itself, I get "livsstilen," which means "the lifestyle," which is not what I meant. If I use "the way TO life," I get "veien til livet," which is correct (although it literally means "the way to the life," but that's OK.) I suppose that users of GT are used to these quirks. In other news, I have been dragging my feet, but chapter 6 is nearly ready in mobile-friendly.

October 14 2018: Uploaded minor revisions and corrections to Oct 7-10 files and also chapter 5 Mobile Friendly.

October 7-10, 2018: Mobile-friendly chapter 4b also uploaded with no text edits at all yet. Then revised the added paragraph in chapter 3 to four shorter paragraphs and corrected chapter 4a and 4b links.

October 5, 2018: Finally finished the mobile-friendly adjustments to chapter 3, with a paragraph added to the main text, and some other revisions. Also finished 4a, with only minor edits. Chapters 4, 11 and 12 are split into sections because they are quite a bit longer. This is a relic of the time they were first composed, when I was on slow dial-up internet. This happens to fit well with today's mobile screens, so the sectoring will not be removed.

July 11 2018: Quotation from commentator Jim Brovard added to discussion of democracy in 11c. Improvements to discussion of slavery in the same chapter, including a link to another site.

July 9, 2018: Sons of God supplement update completed. Next, mobile-friendly chapter 3.

July 6, 2018: Uploaded chapters 1 and 2 in mobile-friendly format. Revised the Introduction to describe how the desktop and mobile versions are different. The Index page for the site now has a link to the mobile version, which has an index page with a link back to the desktop version. The mobile table of contents has chapters 3-14 in strikeout until they are uploaded. The "Test Yourself" icon on the toolbar will open the questions in the same tab as the chapter, but if you use the Review Questions link at the end of the chapter it will open in the second tab. A limitation of my javascript knowledge.

June 30, 2018: Some progress on the Sons of God update. Also, rereading chapter 2, decided it could be improved. You may try rereading it to see if I succeeded. I have saved the previous version in an unlinked directory, older_versions. (Just insert /older_versions/ between the site address and the page name.) That folder doesn't have the js or css files, so all you will get there is the bare text. Which brings up another project: starting with chapter 2, I am working on a mobile-friendly version. This separates the chapter body and scriptures/footnotes into two html pages; touching/clicking on the scripture links or asterisks will open the second page and move focus to the place of the relevant text. There all the scriptures and footnotes will be visible, so you can scroll up or down to any of them. Use the back or tab feature on your device to return to the chapter. This design will use very little javascript, so it may work better across platforms. The downside is that the scriptures and the chapter will not be visible on the same screen; you will have to swap back and forth, unless your browser can show two tabs open side by side. This one chapter should be uploaded fairly soon.

May 15, 2018: Scriptures in body of Sons of God supplement updated (along with a little addition), and the sidebar texts begun.

April 26, 2018: Completed scripture updates in chapter 14, along with some revisions in the chapter. This finishes the book, except for the supplement accessed in one of the footnotes. That is next.

April 21, 2018: Chapter 14 body scriptures updated, plus the the usual minor improvements for clarity and flow.

March 24, 2018: Chapter 13 scriptures updated, along with the usual minor adjustments, including some typos corrected.

February 28, 2018: minor improvements to transgender paragraph, and enabled touch action on "Restore Scripture View" in review questions pane.

February 17, 2018: Finished the scripture updates in 12c and added an entire subheading about gay marriage and transgender identity.

January 20, 2018: 12b revisions completed. On to 12c. A new footnote in 11b.

January 18, 2018: Added to the last footnote in chapter 1; revisions to chapter 12b body tentatively complete. Although I had intended to cut back on it, it ended up expanded instead. The scripture texts are partly updated.

January 13, 2018: The new footnote code installed in all chapters. Wiil finish editing chapter 12 content before addressing the Android and width questions.

January 12, 2018: After much more work, touch-move and mouse-move finally work alike. Except that the width-adjust is still mouse-only and Android based browsers don't recognise touch. And only chapters 1 and 2 have the optimized code installed. So the next stage is to put it into all the other chapters, then go back and find out how to make Android work; then (if I want) make the adjust-width box respond to touch. THEN, get back to editing chapter 12, which needs some improvement.

January 5, 2018: After considerable circling and redoing, the touch-move ability has been added to all footnotes. Still ontouchstart/move/end, which Android touch devices do not seem to recognize. I know there is another way (declare addEventListener()'s ) but will study how to do that later. Had enough trouble getting nested footnotes to work. The mouse moving routine is also improved. Still some quirkiness, but it's tolerable. The blank area along the top alongside the CLOSE icon does not respond correctly to touch, and every effort to make it work breaks the CLOSE. That being unacceptable, I am leaving it flakey. Just put your finger below that to move the footnote. On really small footnotes that takes some care, but you may not care about moving those anyway. Next to resume updating chapter 12.

January 1, 2018: Touch-move of footnotes now works in Safari on iPad. Uses the ontouchstart and ontouchmove events, which do not yet work on Chrome (at least the version I have). Still haven't figured out how to make the width-resizing function work (in fact, it jumps around if you try to do it with your finger), but that never was an essential feature anyway.

December 31 2017, minor change in chapter 2; 12b was last revised 5/11/15, updates still in process. Will be learning about touchstart and ontouchstart event handlers for javascript, may work out better functionality for touch screen devices. I'm not a keen coder; the code for this book is really basic.

December 30, 2017: 12a update completed.

December 27, 2017: most of the scriptures in 12a updated. Note that sometimes the rendering is a hybrid of the 2013 and 1984 versions. Also added some commentary in the reference pane. Have noticed that some apps optimised for mobile use do not let the scripture pane scroll properly; this is probably a function of touch position recognition. It is unlikely that I will attempt to revise the code to overcome that defect.

December 25, 2017: minor adjustments to 11d (added links to two scriptures that had only been cited, made one word bold). Am beginning on the update to chapter 12, which may end up partly rewritten.

November 3, 2017: 11d finished.

Sept 23, 2017: Finished 11c updates.

Sept 16, 2017: 11b scripture updates completed, along with the usual minor additions and revisions. Progress into 11c body text.

Sept 12, 2017: Minor addition to 11a and progress on scripture updates on 11b.

June 23, 2017: Chapter 11a updated. Chapter 11 is divided into four shorter sections, a relic of the days many people had dial-up internet. So far I am keeping it that way. It does make updating seem to go faster. A few additions and adjustments as usual, but not substantial. By the way, have you noticed that the word "substantial" seems to have vanished from journalism, replaced entirely by "substantive"? I wonder why... As has the word "wrought" (now only "wreaked") and "pled" (now only "pleaded") and "try to" (now usually "try and"). If they are trying to abolish irregular past verbs, will "did" become "dude"?

June 22, 2017: All sidebar scriptures updated in chapter 10. A few added comments in the scripture pane, and minor changes in the main text. On to 11.

May 5, 2017: Scriptures updated in body of chapter 10. Adjustments in some paragraphs and a significant footnote added. Sidebar scriptures will be done next.

May 1, 2017: Chapter 9 scripture updates completed, along with other usual minor adjustments to wording and grammar.

February 7, 2017: Scripture texts in the chapter body of chapter 9 updated, along with other minor revisions; side-pane scriptures to follow soon.

January 20, 2017: Updating of scriptures in chapter 8 finished.

December 28th, 2016: Looked at site using Windows Edge browser and found the javascript used to show/hide the scripture text was blocked. Enabling pop-ups in Edge settings restored proper function, so added instructions to the scripture pane. (It shows only if needed.) Progress on Chapter 8 scriptures is about half done and will appear soon.

December 7th, 2016: Updates extended through the body of chapter 8; the scripture pane will be next.

December 6 2016: Updated chapter 7 scriptures, and some other minor improvements.

December 3, 2016: Finally finished updating the scriptures in chapter 6, and of course, adding a few comments (these appear in the scripture pane; revisions to the main body were done earlier).

October 12, 2016: added a scripture to Predestination subhead (4b).

September 14, 2016: migrated site to new server. Tried to not upload obsolete files, so if any links are broken it is due to that. Will explore more later to make sure all links work.

August 2, 2016: Finally finished updating the scripture texts in chapter 5, one of the biggest in the book.

March 13, 2016: I have finally begun to continue upgrading the scripture quotes to the newer, easier to read style, starting in chapter 5 where I left off a year ago. And as usual, I make some improvements to the chapter body as well. For example, a new footnote on Greek grammar in the discussion of John 1:1.

August 31st, 2015: Personal event—my wife of 33 years died suddenly of cardiac arrest while driving in her ministry. She had been pioneering for 35 years and never spoke of heart problems, nor had any doctor detected any issues. I am of heavy heart myself but hope to go on and am determined to be there to welcome her back in the new world. See http://www.nicholsfuneralhomes.com/home/index.cfm/obituaries/view/fh_id/10808/id/3294739.

May 12, 2015: Went to improve on the footnote code and found online a better way to do it. Now the code is more compact. The footnote cannot be made less than 30% of your window's width, nor more than 90%. A few other adjustments to grammar, spelling, and wording made along the way, particularly to a footnote about politics and another about Gog of Magog. Adapting the width code to the scripture frame is the next step to come, shouldn't be very hard.

March 19-30th, 2015: While updating scriptures in chapter 5, noticed that footnote move/resize code was not working smoothly. Studied javascript again and changed the code substantially, went through the whole book and updated them all (I think). Now works like this: click anywhere in the footnote body (below the box at the top) and drag to move. MUCH better than before. Scan across the box at the top to adjust the width. Now I can tell it where to first pop into view vertically (is always centered horizontally). Some footnotes got their contents improved along the way, as well as minor tweaks to chapter main text. Next: adapt the width adjusting code to apply to the scripture frame (presently fixed at about 33%). Note to self: the anchor code is showme(event,'footnote ID',width in % of window width,vertical position in pixels). Negative values for vertical position place the top edge of the footnote above the anchor link. Values between 0 and -50 may put the mouse pointer inside the width-adjust box when it appears, then the first twitch of the mouse will make the footnote change width, so avoid those. The main purpose of this is to prevent a long footnote at the end of a chapter from overhanging the end, so -200 to -300 is more typical. No harm to leave it off when not needed, defaults to +10. Even the width can be left off, defaults to about 50% if not given. Width can be given in pixels (anything over 100 is interpreted as pixels).

March 2015: Began work on chapter 5 scriptures, which as usual led to some adjustments to the main text, most significant being a major footnote at subhead 1, paragraph 3, about the virgin birth.

February 26, 2015: Finally finished updating the scriptures in chapter 4. On to chapter 5...

November 3rd, 2014: Added "how to search this site" towards the end of the Introduction. Wanted to put in a true search box, but the free ones feed ads (I do not accept) and the paid ones are precious. So I found a work-around that is surprisingly effective.

September 3rd, 2014: Minor simplification of the subhead "Christian Sabbath" in chapter 14.

August 15th, 2014: Finished updating the scripture quotations in chapter 4a. On to 4b!

July 28, 2014: Still making progress on chapter 4 updates. In the meantime, some significant edits toward the middle and end of chapter 1. Mainly a friendlier tone and clearer wording. I had found a 2004 version and decided it was better, started editing the current version and ended up with something different from both.

April 15, 2014: Finished chapter 3 scripture updates.

March 26, 2014: About half of chapter 3's scriptures updated, and a subhead title added to chapter 1 (no added body content).

January 2, 2014: Revised the footnote on immortality in the supplement chapter 'Sons of God', and improved the javascript so that footnotes can be specified in percent window width (was in pixels only).

December 6, 2013: Finished the scripture simplifications for chapter 2.

December 3, 2013: added a link in chapter 11's discussion of democracy to an excerpt from the new book Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets by Peter Schweizer. Some progress on chapter 2's scripture updates.

October 31, 2013: Updated the NWT scriptures in chapter 1. Still a little customization, and preferred the footnote rendering in some cases.

October 14, 2013: Added a footnote to the discussion of Galatians 4:22-31 in the Supplement. The new clearer New World Translation is a real blessing, so the next project is to go back and rewrite all the scriptures to incorporate the simpler renderings. If you have read carefully you will already know that I occasionally simplified the wording on my own. Now the work has been done for me. This editing will take a while but should be enjoyable. Have also added to the subhead "What God’s Name Means" in chapter 4.

Sept 15, 2013: Tried to simplify the discussion of the Sabbath in chapter 14, along with some other minor changes elsewhere.

July 24, 2013: Added a new subheading "Anger Management" to the end of chapter 13.

July 2nd, 2013: Went through all chapters and removed brackets from insertions into scriptures if the insertion was necessary (the scripture was ungrammatical in English without it, or the original language directly implies the insertion). None of the insertions should be controversial, for example, "the man" instead of "the [man]", or "the true God" instead of "the [true] God". The brackets were left in place if the insertion was merely clarifying or explanatory, for example, "you will hear of wars [nearby] and reports of wars [far away]" (from Matthew 24:6).

May 13th, 2013: No revisions needed in chapter 12. Minor rewordings and punctuation changes elsewhere.

May 2, 2013: Reread chapters 7 and 8 to see if the new understanding of the Great Tribulation called for revisions. None found, but corrected a typo or two and enabled some neglected scripture links. Will look in chapter 12 for other possible places to revise.

April 3, 2013: added a picture of a weaver bird building a nest to the second footnote in chapter 1.

February 24, 2013: minor adjustments to the Sons of God supplement while preparing a layout suitable for printing. Print version will later be converted to ePub format. The website layout does not lend itself to automatic ePub conversion. All done by hand in spare time, so a slow process.

December 25, 2012: minor corrections and adjustments to chapter 12 (all three sections), some code correction in chapter 13.

November 26, 2012: added to the footnote near the end of chapter 1 about the purpose of living. Not many words, but I try to make words count. Somewhat earlier this month, added a photo to chapter 14.

October 18, 2012: Revised paragraphs in chapter 12 that discuss the "faithful and discreet slave" (Matthew 24:45-47) to reflect the recently published improved understanding.

August 16, 2012: Some recent tweaks to "What Is Time" subpage and a bad link corrected in this file (at March 3, 2003; it's apparently been there a loong time.)

August 3, 2012: Put a link into the discussion of predestination in 4b to an exploration of the nature of time itself.

July 7, 2012: Finally noticed that a spurious "quote" of Ghandi was still present in chapter 1. Thought I had taken that out a year ago. Now gone. Also revised chapter 14 and its supplement for clarity and accuracy, and added a few scripture references. Corrected a link address on God's Name in chapter 4.

May 10th, 2012: Added to the discussion of democracy in response to recent news items on the 2012 presidential campaign.

March 1st, 2012: The opening section of the Sons of God supplement had been transplanted from another location and as a result lacked a smooth introduction. Added today, with ripple effect through the first few paragraphs. Then went on to do some ironing throughout the whole document.

February 18, 2012: Minor edits to chapters 8 and 9, mostly changes in markup and layout.

February 16, 2012: Tried to make the discussion of mortality clearer, also moved it out of the footnote-footnote in 14 to a new footnote in the supplement, where it fits better.

February 14, 2012: Did some major "polishing" on the addition about Revelation 12 so it is more readable. This may complete this section.

February 11, 2012: Touched up the new supplement, mainly grammar and punctuation. A little easier to read. Added a scripture to the related footnote in chapter 14 and a picture to 11b. Then stayed up late and wrote a lengthy discussion of Revelation 12, connected to the previous subhead about Jerusalem. Heavier still. Pull one thread, see what ravels. This new section needs some polishing, but it is readable so it is published.

February 4, 2012: Added a section "Who are Sons of Jerusalem?" to the new supplement. A heavy read, well beyond the original intended scope of this primer. If you wish to object, please do your homework carefully first. I am open to correction— if it is well presented.

January 22, 2012: Added a paragraph to chapter 8 about Christian relationship to governments in the last days. Added to the discussion of the meaning of "mortal" versus "immortal" in the footnote to the footnote in chapter 14 that was the prototype of the new supplement created January 13th. Got that?

January 14, 2012: Due to overlap with the new supplement, reread chapter 6 and made minor edits there, mostly correcting layout errors and updating a link. Chapter 6 had not had any content update for several years.

January 13, 2012: Published a supplementary chapter "Who are Sons of God?" linked out of chapter 14 (not at the end). Replaces footnote removed December 27th.

December 26, 27, 2011: Simplified sections on baptism and Sabbath in chapter 14; removed extensive footnote commentary on Abrahamic covenant (to be restored when better prepared).

December 2, 2011: Expanded and adjusted the last footnote in Chapter 1.

November 25, 2011: After reading this web page, expanded the footnote in 11c added Oct 21st. (second footnote link under the subhead "Democracy and the Kingdom")

November 2011: Began work on a simplified html version suitable for conversion to ePub and Mobi editions for e-readers. The home page, chapter 1 and chapter 2 appear to be ready, but for mobile formats the entire book should be converted together, so this may take a while. This version will dispense with the invisible scripture texts and footnotes; everything is "flat", with the scriptures and notes appearing stacked at the end. The links will simply jump the reader to those points, and returning to the body will be by the reader's "back" or "bookmark" function. Some chapters have very many scriptures, with links to more within those, and footnotes within the scriptures also. NoteTab, my html editor, allows for automation (find and replace scripting), but I will have to test for imperfect conversion. Since all the css is in two files, most of the stylesheet editing is already done. The "mobile html" edition will retain colored backgrounds; most of the photos should still be present in some way in all versions, although not as a background.

October 21, 2011: Added footnote in 11c comparing 'Wall St' speculators to villagers that rush to leaking gasoline pipelines with buckets and lit cigarettes. Added a parenthetical statement to chapter 1.

October 12, 2011: modified the footnote in chapter 4 mentioned below. Concerns the correct pronunciation of the name of God.

Sept 23, 2011: Added a link in the first footnote of chapter 1 to the Echoes of Creation movie trailer.

Sept 15, 2011: Expanded a footnote on God's name in chapter 4, also corrected some punctuation throughout the chapter.

Sept 11, 2011 (early AM): minor revisions to Why This Site Exists (facing panel→).

September 5, 2011: revised first few paragraphs of chapter 10, and touched up the wording of some of the rest. Minor corrections in chapter 11. Links to wikipedia deleted, as the quality material once there has been destroyed. Once you know the truth, you begin to notice how intense the hatred for it is out there, and the levels to which some will go to drive it out of public view.

March 30, 2011: shortened the Site's Purpose page, several other minor improvements throughout book. Note that the "print-friendly" versions are not automatically updated and are several iterations back.

February 10, 2011: Added a reference to Ezekiel 34 in chapter 12, first section; other adjustments throughout chapter 12.

February 5, 2011, footnote to a footnote added in chapter 2, about dinosaurs. Although there is no dedicated chapter or section about creation versus evolution in this book, there is some attention given to that issue in scattered (and usually parenthetical) places.

February 1-4, 2011: Many adjustments to chapter 14. A footnote brought out to the main body and reworded, an extensive comment added to one of the scripture links, some smoothing of grammar here and there.

January 25, 2011: section added to Chapter 14 about baptism as a "bath". Other minor tweaks for readability and clarity.

January 21, 2011: Chapter 14 finished. Besides the last subhead, some added in a footnote and a scripture reference pane. There is a little more planned for chapter 13.

January 17, 2011: Added much more to chapter 14. The book is nearing completion. Of course, it is never complete, I will always be tweaking it. But no other major projects are planned.

January 9, 2011: Added a feedback form to the contact us page (this screen, right panel, bottom). It uses off-site scripting supplied by the host server and may have limitations, but it's too much work to design from scratch like all my other code is. Eventually I will learn enough PHP to do it myself.

December 30, 2010: Chapter 14 renamed "Choose the Way of Life" and lengthened considerably.

December 26th, 2010: Added two paragraphs and an image about unsustainable population growth as a sign of the times to chapter 7. Also clarified and simplified a section in chapter 12.

December 11-19, 2010: Minor revisions to the opening paragraphs of chapter 1, plus some corrections and improvements to style and flow, scattered in several chapters.

December 10, 2010: New section at end of chapter 13, Risk Taking. Also another outlink added to a footnote in chapter 3, about pre-Flood civilization.

November 2010: Edits and additions to chapters 1, 4, 11 and 13. In chapter 13, a new paragraph under "Parenting"; chapter 11, section c, new paragraph in footnote on democracy; in chapter 1, new picture in first footnote, and a few revisions of wording here and there; In chapter 4, section a, new paragraph under "Is Jesus Jehovah?". Also revised "Why This Site Exists" (on facing panel).

October 9, 2010: NEW FEATURE: After much javascript experimentation and research, I finally added icons for moving and resizing the footnotes. Click, release, then move to get the action. Click again to release the cursor. (Click, hold and drag I could not figure out; that action is assigned by the browser to text selection. In Opera, if the icon happens to get parked over a scrollbar, the scrollbar, although hidden behind the footnote, takes precedence. You have to move the icon to get it back into play. Since there are two icons, one will always be clear of any scrollbar, and it can be used to recover the other.) If you move too fast the cursor will escape and the action cancels. Faster CPU's will keep a better grip. If you tear loose, come back and click again to resume. If javascript is turned off, the footnotes are stacked at the end of the chapter, without icons. With javascript, footnotes start by showing one line below their links; you can move it from there. Took a little extra work to get it looking right in IE, but finally worked it out. It is truly a mess trying to get all browsers to work alike. Chances are good that some quirk has slipped by unnoticed. Some of the content got edited as well.

Sept 4, 2010: Added a footnote to a footnote in Chapter 2, a digression into a discussion of evolution. Not actually germaine to the chapter subject. This also added two scripture references to the chapter.

August 25, 2010: Revised all the footnotes so that each has a "close" icon. Before, footnotes would close when anything in it (many have links) was clicked; now it will stay open when a link is chosen. Try it in the links in the other pane.→
Along the way revised a few words and added a few scripture links. Close icon obtained from http://www.iconfinder.com.

July 16, 2010: As usual, spoke too soon. Using HTML Tidy, found numerous minor flaws and spent a day cleaning it up. I obtained the free (2004) edition of HTML-Kit and find it very useful. I like the tabbed file approach of NoteTab better but disabled its Tidy because it "corrects" what it dislikes without asking. Often the "correction" is damaging. So I read the error messages from Kit's Tidy and used NoteTab to apply the correction I wanted. Then, more issues with Internet Explorer being persnickety, but that did lead to finding errors that Tidy did not notice.
The "Print Preview" in Opera is really bad, Firefox is flawed, IE creates 600 pages and counting out of chapter 1 (should be no more than 7), there is no print preview in Chrome, Safari created 7 pages well formatted but lacking all images, and no way given to adjust anything. Looks like my pdf project (see March 22 below) is necessary. Before that I will provide simplified pages utterly lacking all scripts and reformatted for html printing (five chapters already done). IE works correctly with the script gone, Opera does well with the side-by-side format removed. The side scripture pane cannot be printed correctly, so they appear at the end of the document. Some commentary is interspersed with the references. Footnotes appear variously, short ones as indented paragraphs inline or as parenthetical remarks, longer ones on the last page.

July 13, 2010: After testing standards compliance, made some adjustments and corrections; also demoted DTD from xhtml 1.1 to 1.0 transitional. Now no errors. Cleaned up some broken links in the process. Finally, I can get back to content enhancement.

July 6, 2010: The entire site has been rewritten using css instead of framesets. This is the modern way to go, I'm told, and indeed it is easier, once learned. The body, scriptures, and review files of each chapter are combined into one, divided into "divs", each assigned by css to different positions and appearances. The javascript needed only minor modification (mostly paring down). You lose the ability to resize the scriptures, a feature I rarely used myself. I also scrapped the "background color" selector on the top toolbar, another feature I didn't find useful. The chapters now have lightly patterned backgrounds rather than plain colors. The Navigator has been simplified into a chapter selector. As the scriptures are now in the same file, the Google Translate script is now only placed once. I have conserved the framed version in a subdirectory (manually enter "/framed/" at the end of the hostname to visit it; it will not benefit from future revisions). The home page now has the four themes in one file, switched by css and javascript, instead of four separate complete files. Those with scripting turned off can no longer change themes, but the links to the chapters will still work.

May 1, 2010: Added a Google Translate script to my js files, which places a translation widget onto every page that uses the toolbar. It is not flawless, but it is quite useable. The widget didn't understand my frames, and the scriptures use a distinct js file, so they have their own selector. I don't yet know how to get rid of the annoying "Original Text:" popup. Just park your cursor over the scroll bar and it will go away. I cannot put this widget on my opening page, it competes destructively with the way I have the background image positioned and sized. In Norwegian, chapter 11 "Loyalty to the Kingdom" (meaning God's Kingdom) gets translated as "Loyalty to Norway." Not quite.

March 22, 2010: The first three chapters edited to easily printed pdf versions, accessible from a new link on the opening menu.

February 22, 2010: Part of new script didn't play well with internal page added Feb 1st, so adjusted its script; if you can't access it, your browser is trying to use the old cached version; to get past this you can either flush the cache, or right-click the link (in the 3rd chapter 1 footnote) and select Copy Link Address (Opera and Chrome) or Copy Shortcut (IE8) or Copy Link Location (FireFox) or Copy Link (Safari), then paste it into the main address bar (open a new tab first if you want to keep Chapter 1 open) and hit Enter. This will load the new version and replace the bad cached version, so you only need do it once. Only visitors between Feb 1st and today will encounter this problem.

February 5, 2010: Moved the css common to the four home pages to a shared css file and removed some inactive vestigial code from the scripts. Set the cursor to show a pointer hand when hovering over anchor text.

February 1, 2010: Added a footnote to a footnote in chapter 1, an online version of a public speech on the origin of man. Also updated the navigator subpage to include the expanded chapter 13.

January 25, 2010: Completed rescripting so that no-frames and/or no-script both simply reconfigure the view rather than requiring you to change any settings on your browser. Not yet fully tested. Let me know if it has defects.

January 23, 2010: Began work on scripts that allow the site to be used with frames turned off (although only Opera easily allows this) and improving the messages and links that visitors see when javascript is disabled (most browsers allow this). Almost all the pages will need some editing, only a few have it so far.

January 14, 2010: Added a 4th home page background choice, courtesy of High Country Surveying, NC (no affiliation with this site). Also some addition to chapter 13 and caught up the review questions to the new content. Edited the home page so that the .net and info sites now use identical files. The visitor counter on .info now only shows if the hostname is www.lifes-purpose.info. Will eventually find a way to put an adfree counter on .net.

January 8, 2010: Added a link to a pdf file in chapter 11d (timeline of adoption of Christmas from non-Christian sources), a link to a book about the Rwandan genocide to chapter 7, and numerous tweaks to the new chapter 13.

January 7, 2010: Added a "Themes" option to the home menu; now the old Sky theme (with a much more compact image, which will load about 20 times faster) is one click away, and added a Forest theme as well. Note, these only apply to the home screen; the rest of the book is all the same. May extend it to a few other pages if I find a way not to have multiple whole versions of the same page. (Javascript should be able to select later page images based on the theme selected here, but I don't know how yet. Not a high priority.)

January 6, 2010: Learned a little more elementary html and changed the background for the home page. Now widescreen and high-resolution monitors should show the background full width, and the menu is semitransparent. What a difference just a few words of code can make.

January 2, 2010: Three major sections added to Chapter 13. Far from being finished. Due to the broad subject matter, this could be a big chapter.

December 18, 2009: Google Chrome to the rescue again; tried out an update of Chrome by visiting my site and promptly found broken links in the subhead drop-down of chapter 12, plus part A pointing to the wrong scripture file; corrected. There is a substantial addition to chapter 13 coming soon.

October 27, 2009: Moved a long section from chapter 11 to chapter 12, and split 12 into three sections, which makes it easier to scroll. This required a revised introduction for the moved section, resulting in a few more scripture references. Other paragraphs were also edited.

October 20, 2009: Improved wording in a few places in chapter 11D, added to a footnote in 11C, and added a scripture to 11A.

September 15, 2009: Minor revision to footnote in chapter 1, and added one scripture, with a comment, into chapter 10.

September 1, 2009: Minor tweaks to colors and menu positioning on front page.

August 31, 2009: Improved the menu toggle on the opening page. The code is actually more compact.

August 26, 2009: Improved the wording of parts of the new section at end of chapter 11.

August 22, 2009: Website reorganized, although you may not see any evidence of it except for broken links if I missed any. I put the chapters into separate folders, each with its own images, which meant many internal links had to be revised. Previously all the html files were in one folder and all the images in another. Now only the common files (such as index, framesets, css and js) are in the root folder.

August 21, 2009: Some bad html markup corrected.

July 14, 2009: Complete new section at end of chapter 11: Would You Risk Your Life For God?

June 25, 2009: A paragraph added to chapter 2, under the subhead Why Has God Permitted Satan Such Power?.

June 24, 2009: An apology: the February 6 update to chapter 6 apparently didn't get uploaded. I installed Google Chrome to evaluate it and wandered my site to look for bugs; soon noticed missing scripture links and outdated wording. The correct files were here, so a quick upload and all is well.

June 14th, 2009: Corrected a outdated link in chapter 3, and minor improvements to the scripture file. Reworded a paragraph about the Flood.

June 10th, 2009: Cleaned up scripture files for chapters 2-4 (some text sloppiness)

June 3rd, 2009: Stumbled across defect in script file that forced loading the wrong subhead list. It's "==", not "=". Computer can't read my mind. While doing some tweaks on the recent 11d update.

May 30, 2009: Chapter 11, Part 4, first subhead ‘Guarding the Kingdom’, substantially expanded.

May 25, 2009: Finished scripture links for current chapter 12. NOW all the links are done. Also added a picture to chapter 1 and changed another picture. Hope to have some new sections added to chapter 11 shortly.

May 23, 2009: Minor revisions, and substantial increase in chapter 12 scripture links.

March 24, 2009: Upgraded to Internet Explorer 8 (from 6) and immediately the debugger found a fault in my Introduction page: it invoked the script for the chapters (despite having no need to) which refers to variables not declared in the introduction page; IE was not tolerant of that. Solved by deleting that call to the js file. All is well again. (Note, IE6 did not display the new home page picture well, as it does not support png transparency.)

February 18, 2009: added the tern back as an overlay on the cloud; dial-up visitors can click on it to go to the original lower-resolution start page. (Since it is not in the background with the clouds, I moved it over and made it smaller to not interfere with the menu.)

February 17, 2009: Changed the opening page background to a png photo, retiring the tern. This photo was taken from my front yard and has been my home desktop background for a while now. It is 1280x960 for best fit to the most common screen size, but looks good in lower resolutions; you just see less of it. (I use 1024x768.) (In Opera and Firefox press + and - to resize the page to see more/less of image.) It is 1.9 meg, so for visitors on dialup at 56k it will take about 18 minutes to load. If you do not want to wait just hit your "stop" button; the rest should work.

February 6, 2009: Historic event: All chapters now have complete scripture links! Now all I have to do is finish the chapters... Oops, spoke too soon, found chapter 12 scriptures unfinished.

January 16th, 2009: Added a picture footnote to chapter 1; completed scripture references in chapter 6.

January 14, 2009: Added a footnote with link to news item about sudden climate change in "upper Dryas", in chapter 3 (Do a "find Noah" to locate). (Shouldn't that be "upper Wetas"? :-b)

January 10, 2009: Added a nice commentary on war, courtesy of another author. The link is in the footnote at the beginning of chapter 11, part 2 (subhead "Self-Defense").

January 6, 2009: Got the "stauros" page (from lost newworldtranslation site, see below) repaired, linked (in a 4b footnote; do a "find stauros" to locate), and hosted locally, and found bad css in the 4a scripture section, repaired.

January 4th, 2009: FOUND! on http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/newworldtranslation/pageindex.htm the lost website defending the New World Translation of the Bible. There is far too much material there, with complex detailed argumentation about the exact meaning of Greek words and grammar, so it is not for the faint of heart. My site referred to one or two of its pages, so I was disappointed when it vanished. I have pulled those pages off www.archive.org and will make them available locally, adjusting any links within to point you to www.archive.org. so you can visit the rest, as long as they keep it. I also found the lifespurpose site archived many times, back to September 2002. And the prototype site www.geocities.com/purposeoflife2000, earliest copy May 2001. (I think I started online in 1999 or 2000, but can't recall.) Very interesting! Be careful what you put on the web, it never goes away!

January 3rd, 2009: put parts of Gerard Gertoux's NAME OF GOD documents back on line with repaired html. There are still some broken links and unclear characters, but many graphical "letters" (some of which were very rough) are now real font characters (when I could make out what they were). I also removed masses of redundant or deprecated markup, and compacted 24 files into 3. I do not claim to understand everything Msr Gertoux says; some parts seem contradictory, although that could just be his lack of clarity. Note: the ONLY link to these pages is in this update log at March 03, 2003, below.

December 24th, 2008: completed scripture links for chapter 11; minor updates to chapter 5.

December 8th, 2008: more simplified code; more scripture links for chapter 11; some text for chapter 14, fully linked to its scriptures. Found King James references not showing, corrected code.

October 29th, 2008: Revised code in front menu to reflect simplification learned in recent days.

October 28th, 2008: Revised "noscript" messages and reactivated an old Navigator file to make moving around site without javascript a bit easier. Then added a new button on the chapter toolbar to give access to the Navigator for those using javascript. Added some information to one of the scripture links in chapter 3. Note: a few scripture links have commentary.

October 27th, 2008: All scripture links recoded, script made more efficient. Site now does not allow non-framed viewing. It detects incorrect framing and reloads the page correctly. If you have framing disabled, you will see a short message describing how to read the book the hard way. Added a small footnote in chapter 11 and fixed a few other errors sitewide. IMPORTANT: if you get improper operation (in my case, scripture links kept resetting the scripture pane back to the introduction), all that means is that your browser has not updated the script file(s). Hitting the reload button did NOT help in FireFox. Right-click the page and choose reload from that menu. That refreshes to the current script file, and all will be well again. There are only two script files, so you need do it only once in each pane at most. (That was a moment of panic. It worked just fine at home...)

October 25th, 2008: Was not Opera's fault, of course; found my code that positioned the footnote. It seems ONLY Opera was paying attention to it! Adjusted code for better positioning. Am working on radical recode of scripture links so that Opera will work.

October 24th, 2008: More evaluation, found deprecated and defective code structure, revised. Retested in Opera 9.61, discovered it insists on positioning all footnotes shifted right by 10%, so I had to adjust the width of the wider ones to prevent them from being cut off on the right. If the scriptures do not show properly on first load, just reload and it should work. Opera seems to have minor issues with the javascript that sets the default view when the scripture frame first loads.

October 8, 2008: Did a site validation and found links gone bad, updated. Of primary interest is link in March 3, 2003 below.

March 7, 2008: Added a picture to chapter 1. You will have to dig to find it, it's in a footnote. There have been a few other minor changes since last year, but not much.

Aug 5, 2007: Installed Opera again and as usual tested my site. Had to correct some css, also stumbled across some old stuff that should have been removed, a broken link, etc. And did a few minor content edits. Opera 9.22 is nice, might become my default browser. Back in January Windows 98 choked on my new tuner card, so I upgraded to XP and lost (looong story) Opera then and had forgotten to put it back.

July 15, 2007: Added a picture of the Hebrew letters for the Name of God into chapter 4. Corrected a filename error that affected the Next and Previous chapter toolbar buttons.

June 13, 2007: Got the new Safari beta for Windows. Fonts don't look so good and doesn't yet use "padding" in css, but in running tests did find a few errors in my html, fixed that.

May 28, 2007: Found that IE7 doesn't show everything correctly, so did some tweaks, and revised the appearance in other ways. Also improved some wording in the "contact us" page.

April 14, 2007: Added a favicon. You may need to "refresh page" to see it. If you want it in your bookmark list that too may need to be refreshed. Completed scriptures for chapter 8.

Mar 26, 2007: minor revisons to Contact Us page. Added scripture popup also.

Mar 10, 2007: revised introduction to chapter 4.

Mar 9, 2007: new picture added near the end of chapter 10. Adjusted footnote nearby.

Feb 14-17, 2007: Added a picture to chapter 10, also some paragraphs; the first 13 scripture links activated in chapter 8.

Jan 26, 2007: Uploaded revised layout to lifespurpose.net. In the process found some typos, corrected lifes-purpose.info as well. The two sites are now identical.

Dec 30th, 2006: Chapter 7 scripture links added.

Dec 29th, 2006: Published upgrade begun Nov 29th. Includes minor improvements to wording in a few places and scriptures for chapter 9 (6-8 will follow shortly).

Nov 29th, 2006: Found why my unframed version doesn't work well in the newest tabbed browsers: window.open() code has fallen out of favor due to popup ads, so newer browsers refuse to transfer focus to it on command. This keeps the scripture window out of view behind the chapter, which is not very handy. (See Feb 17th below) After some thought decided to try having each scripture page open in a frame alongside its chapter, while eliminating the frames on the home page. The four auxiliary pages (Introduction, Usage Notes, Contact Us, and this Update Log) are moved to their own frames. Eliminated the brightly colored buttonztilez buttons.

October 17th, 2006: Improved presentation concerning "Cross" in last subhead of chapter 4.

June 23rd, 2006: Added a link to this book from OyMap.com (specifically Alabama at OyMap.com - a world directory)
Sometime since April added some content to chapter 3, but neglected to note it here.

April 11th, 2006: Added a link to these sites at the small search engine Zepti.

March 4th, 2006: New website Lifes-Purpose.info opened. It is the same as lifespurpose.net except there are no frames. All scriptures, review questions, and auxiliary pages open in their own window or tab. This simplifies the code and should work well in tabbed browsers. Slimbrowser allows the tabwindows to have different sizes, which looks good. While checking the new variants, found that Firefox doesn't always update correctly: an revised file is not fetched when either the Update button or Reload icon is pressed. It reloads the file from its cache, not from the source folder. The only way to force a true refresh is to exit and restart the browser.

February 17th, 2006: Added some scripture links to chapter 12. By the way, if you are using the unframed site in a tabbed browser, the best way to see the scriptures is Window|Tile Vertically, then resize the windows to your liking. This way you can see both the chapter and the references at once. If you use normal tabs, the scriptures come to the front only the first time they load. I don't know the code to force the tab to the front without reloading it.

February 16, 2006: Added footnote about UN to chapter 8.

February 6, 2006: The update is the button you just clicked on. Credit a freeware program called "buttonztilez". The original source link is no longer valid, but it can still be obtained online.
Also updated the non-frame introduction. It uses a legacy toolbar which I had overlooked for over a year.
Firefox users: if you can't see the refresh button in the chapter toolbar, you are reading an outdated version. Rightclick on the chapter, DO NOT CLICK RELOAD, go down to "This Frame" and select "Reload this frame". (If you use the browser toolbar reload button, it may pop you back to the opening page, and not refresh the chapter at all.)

January 23, 2006: Finally finished the scripture links in chapter 5. That was a big one! (The scripture file is bigger than the chapter text file.)

December 24, 2005: added a footnote to the Contact Us page, and discovered a better way to code the footnote action. Now to dismiss a footnote, you have to click it directly, and only that note will vanish. (Before, any click anywhere would close all footnotes.) If the footnote has a link in it, it will work, but the footnote will be gone when you return to the page. Just touch the anchor again to restore it.
FireFox 1.5 users: Reloading the page while in frames doesn't seem to reload the js (code script) file. If your footnotes won't go away, go back to the opening page, click Remove Frames, then open any chapter. This will refresh your cached js file. Then the footnotes will behave correctly. You can go back to the framed version if you prefer, it will also be OK (they use the same js file).

December 21, 2005: Finally gave up and removed document.lastModified code. The server doesn't send that information, so all the pages were showing either today's date or 1970, depending on the browser. Will just let this file alone be the record of updates. Minor adjustments (typo corrections, little rephrasing here and there) will not be mentioned.

November 19, 2005: Added thoughts on why this site exists to the "Contact Us" page.

October 8, 2005: Upgraded the scripture code for the unframed version of the site; solved the off-scroll problem with a single word of code. Duh! And added about a dozen scriptures to chapter 5.

October 2, 2005: Had changed scripture javascript, then found Opera didn't work, so changed most of it back. If you visited in the midst of that and have the old copy cached, your scripture clicks may fail. Just "Refresh", it will load the corrected code back to your cache and start working again.

Sept 11, 2005: I should read my own work more often. While reading chapter 4 I discovered bad scripture links due to careless capitalization of anchors. Then I found the site navigator outdated, referring to the old unsplit chapter 4. If you find blank scriptures, first make sure you are scrolled to the top of the scripture frame (it sizes to the longest element in the group, so shorter passages appear at the top of a long window). If it is blank even at the top, do a "refresh": you are using an older copy from your cache. If that fails, please email, you've found more bad code.

Sept 3, 2005: A new paragraph added to chapter 8 in response to the devastation of hurricane Katrina.

Aug 6, 2005: Removed the "make a donation" link from the Contact Us page. Was, shall we say, "very ineffective." I was laid off in June, am starting my own business (not related to this website) so updates may become less frequent for a while.

June 8, 2005: Just found out that Norton Internet Security removes the javascript code required to access the scriptures, footnotes and toolbar, and puts in its own code instead. So if you cannot access these features, you will have to disable your Norton popup blocker and reload the web page. These features are not popups, so it appears Norton is using a sledgehammer to kill mosquitos. You might want to use another product, such as AVG (grisoft.com) or Zonealarm for security, and Opera, Firefox or Slimbrowser to block popups.

June 7, 2005: New subhead added to chapter 3, about logic, science, and the Bible.

May 12, 13, 2005: re-validated xhtml on site (corrected many accumulated minor errors) and added some scripture links to chapter 6. Used HTML Tidy to correct many more minor script errors. Even found one Tidy missed, present in most scripture files. We hope those odd rare script-error screens are gone for good. (Most browsers had worked well anyway, but we like things to be right.)

May 5, 2005: Polished new subhead and added minor subhead "Environmental Activism".

May 3, 2005: Added most of a new subhead to chapter 11, on "Social Activism." It is in Part 3 rather than at the end.

Mar 23, 2005: Added a small photo to chapter 1 and increased the clickable scriptures in chapter 5. Found that mamma.com metasearch lists this site favorably, and discovered that my old site at geocities.com/purposeoflife2000 still exists! (Geocities closed in 2009, so what it looked like in 2003 is no longer available.)

Mar 2nd, 2005: completed scriptures for chapter 4. Caught mistake in chapter 2 scriptures that prevented proper display. "We appreciate your patience."

Feb 20th, 2005: split chapter 4 in half, added more clickable scripture references. Minor revisions to chapter 1 footnotes. Noticed that Avant browser seems to think my butterfly picture in chapter 1 is a pop-up: it blocks it (even with pop-up blocker off??). Slimbrowser, IE, Firefox, Opera all happy to show it.

January 12th, 2005: recoded scripture files so that creating them is less work (so more should be added shortly) and they are now visible for those with javascript turned off. HTML links to the scripture files and the review questions have been added so that they are accessible without js. The footnotes are still set hidden by css so those w/o js must still "view source" to read them.

December 18th, 2004: Split chapter 11 into 4 sections to make it easier to download. It was almost 90K and has more to come. In time chapters 4 and 12 will be split (in half) as well.

December 11th, 2004: Major addition to Chapter 11; minor adjustment to beginning of chapter 4.

October 26 2004: Revised introduction again. Added a picture to chapter 11 and revised code in firstpage.html to make it practical to read the book with javascript disabled.

Aug 5 2004: Moved chapter-button code out of chapters, to the js file. This saves 2.3K per chapter.

June 8 2004: Revised introduction and added links to prototype chapters 13 and 14. Signed up for Amazon Honor System so appreciative readers can support the site.

April 30 2004: Added subhead "Guarding the Kingdom" to chapter 11 and "Should Women be Preachers?" to chapter 12, and 1 picture each to chapters 7 and 9. Checked compatibility to Avant Browser, good.

Feb 14 2004: Improved opening background. Got Knoppix, corrected defective rendering of chapter 1 in Konqueror due to sloppy html. A few scriptures made clickable in chapter 10.

Dec 4 2003: New background for opening page (framed version only for now.) Also about half of chapter 4's scripture links activated.

Nov 1 2003: Introduction rewritten. (Other places edited constantly, these are not mentioned here unless rather substantial.) A new background for the table of contents is in the works.

June 10 2003: All chapters validated xhtml 1.0 compliant. (Many minor errors corrected.)

May 27 2003: The long-delayed Chapter 12 (first half) uploaded! Minor adjustments to 4 and 11.

March 03 2003: Revised discussion of God's Name in Ch 4 to reflect information found at this site (from http://gertoux.online.fr/divinename/faq/question.htm, but home page abandoned; these remnant Q&A pages now copied to local folder).

January 03 2003: Review questions added. Buttons at top of chapters improved and animated (rollover). Major revisions of existing text may be in green font (for a month or so) to help you find it.

January 2003: What's New? page created. Obviously a lot happened before that, but no calender record kept.

January 25, 2019: Decided I should say here that this book was begun in the early 1990's (can't recall exactly when) before I bought my first XT computer. Written in longhand on paper, it was. Pencil, not quill pen. Then in the late 90's on the XT in DOS I wrote many more chapters (up through 7 if I recall correctly) and then around 1999 got dial-up and learned enough html to upload it as web pages to GeoCities. Sometime before 2002 I decided that some of the ads GeoCities was inserting were unsuitable and bought my own address, lifespurpose.net. By 2003 I was up to writing chapter 12. It took several more years to finish with chapter 14 (in 2011), plus the addenda. "Finish" is relative; if you read through this update log, you will see I will never really finish.