Why This Site Exists

Christ’s command is clear: We are to witness for him to the most distant part of the earth. Powerful clergymen tried to stop the first apostles, but these had to answer "We cannot stop speaking about the things we have seen and heard." They had seen Christ raised back to life, and had seen him ascend into the clouds. Then the holy spirit had been poured out on them, giving them power to speak boldly in many languages about the magnificent things of God. From that day forward they used every appropriate means to spread this glorious news of salvation to all mankind. They spoke before crowds gathered in market squares, they ran alongside chariots going down the road, they knocked on doors, they sat down with people in their homes, they sought out people gathered by riverbanks, they wrote letters. If they had had telephones, radio or internet, they would have used them. —Acts 1:8, 4:5-20, 2:1-11, 17:17; Jeremiah 20:9.

Close Acts 1:8:
You will receive power when the holy spirit arrives upon you, and you will be witnesses of me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the most distant part of the earth.
Acts 4:5-20: (edited for length)
The next day there took place in Jerusalem the gathering together of their rulers and older men and scribes . . . and they stood them in their midst and began to inquire: "By what power or in whose name did you do this [miracle]?" 8 Then Peter, filled with holy spirit, said to them: "Rulers of the people and older men, if we are this day being examined, on the basis of a good deed to an ailing man, as to by whom this man has been made 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 impaled but whom God raised up from the dead, by this one does this man stand here sound in front of you. . . . 12 there is no salvation in anyone else, for there is not another 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 men unlettered and ordinary, they got to wondering. And they began to recognize about them that they used to be with Jesus; and as they were looking at the man that had been cured standing with them, they had nothing to say in rebuttal. So they commanded them to go outside the Sanhedrin hall, and they began consulting with one another, saying: "What shall we do with these men? Because, for a fact, a noteworthy sign has occurred through them, one manifest to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and we cannot deny it. Nevertheless, in order that it may not be spread abroad further among the people, let us tell them with threats not to speak anymore upon the basis of this name to any man at all." With that they called them and charged them, nowhere to make any utterance or to teach upon the basis of the name of Jesus. But in reply Peter and John said to them: "Whether it is righteous 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 2:1-11:
Now while the day of the [festival of] Pentecost was in progress they were all together at the same place, and suddenly there occurred from heaven a noise like a rushing stiff breeze, and it filled the whole house in which they were sitting. And tongues as if of fire appeared and were distributed about, one upon each one of them, and they all were filled with holy spirit and started to speak with different tongues, just as the spirit was giving to them to speak. As it was, there were dwelling in Jerusalem reverent Jews from every nation on earth. So when this sound occurred, a crowd gathered and were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Indeed, they were astonished and began to wonder and say: "See here, all these who are speaking are Galileans, are they not? And yet how is it we are hearing, each one of us, his own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, and Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and the [district of] Asia, and Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya, which is toward Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them speaking in our tongues about the magnificent things of God."
Acts 17:17 — He began to reason in the synagogue with the Jews and the other [non-Jewish] people who worshipped [with them], and every day in the marketplace with those who happened to be close by.
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 initially contacting people at their houses is reasonable, if they would only stay home enough. Unfortunately, today neighborhoods are often up to 90% empty during the daytime (and a nighttime knock on the door is unlikely to be well received). Surely the early Christians would not have blindly emphasized methods that became less effective. They would have continued door-to-door insofar as it worked, but they would have also sought out 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 ways to witness. 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.

Any method can be used badly. Christians want to "preach the word, be at it urgently" but at the same time they want to 'do all things for God's glory, and not be stumbling others.' —2 Timothy 4:2, 1 Corinthians 10:31-33. Here are some things to be careful of when publishing on the internet:

First, anyone who writes has to beware of copyright law. In a free country, you can comment on and develop other's views freely, which includes quoting them as needed. 'Fair Use' statutes permit excerpting for educational purposes. But you cannot republish another's substantial work without permission, even if you attribute it to them properly. The perversity of the law is that if they allow you to do that without protest, they may lose their control over that work. (Of course, God holds the copyright over His word, and grants his people full rights to publish it anywhere. Modern translators cannot hold it hostage just because they have produced a better translation of it.) So if you wish to give witness to your faith by website, be aware that you must write your own copy. This site follows that rule.

Second, anyone who writes wishes to be read. So do your best. Study the art, learn to spell, understand grammar. Hopefully you have some natural talent too. And if God is pleased, he will help. Above all, be humble. If you would do it for attention, don't. It isn't about you.

The internet also allows for interactivity. Some have tried witnessing by chat or debating in forums. That is not much different from conversing with a person face-to-face (in a very public place), except for one thing: in person, you could read the situation more accurately. Online, some have been caught up in lengthy and fruitless discussion with spiritual perverts whose aim is at least to waste your time, or even worse, to corrupt your heart. So realize that online is usually not a good way to witness at length to strangers one-on-one. For that reason, we do not engage in prolonged email exchanges. We do respond briefly to sincere comments, suggestions and questions. Beyond that we refer the visitor to those who can visit them in person.

If you like this online book, we hope you will recommend it to others. You may also print out any part of it for yourself and for persons close to you. (Print-formatted PDF versions are under construction for your convenience.) Of course, include a note as to where you got it. If you add any commentary, make what is yours clearly distinct. There are no plans to print a bound version at this time; if you wish to publish it contact us first. ©1993-present by Stan Jones.

About the author: After doing a Google on "Stan Jones" I thought it prudent to add this disclaimer: No, I am not the blue senator in Montana; I do not write mystery books in Alaska; I have no Ph.D and haven't written any books other than Finding the Purpose of Life; I haven't written any music. I am just a blue-collar workman in rural Alabama with about 40 years of experience teaching the Bible at the layman's level. I read the scholarly arguments, but believe the Bible is best understood and taught simply. One does not have to be a sophisticate or an expert in dead languages to understand it correctly, provided one is careful, reasonable and humble before God.

I welcome thoughtful suggestions and appreciate expressions of support and encouragement. Write to: letters@lifes-purpose.info or comments@lifespurpose.net. Be sure to use a meaningful subject line, as 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

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.