Easter is around the corner. I love this time of year at the best of times.  This year, the Easter weekend is a triple celebration for me. We commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus. But on Good Friday I will celebrate my own spiritual resurrection, for it was on that day that I first made a response to the gospel as a young child. I thank God for what he did in my heart that day, and for his hand in protecting me ever since.

On Monday April 5th, I will also be celebrating what I could argue is the last birthday of my youth. At 39 this year, I still have a whole twelve months to enjoy being “young, restless, and reformed.” I won’t worry about what to call myself when I have turned 40 until 2011!

Those who know me will be able to imagine how welcome this week’s sudden improvement in the alpha of the Logos Bible Software Mac program has been to me. I had previously consigned the early Mac alpha version to the trash since it was, at that time, completely useless on a “real” computer. At long last, this week I no longer have to envy PC users. This week’s step up in the Logos 4 Mac program was almost like a resurrection! The passage guide works. The indexing worked and didn’t take five days. Searching rocks. Basically, I can just put in a phrase or a string of key words and it searches all my thousands of books (or a subset of them) and finds the best “ranked” results almost instantly rather than churning them out randomly. It’s like Google for commentaries, lexicons, and theological journal articles.

To celebrate, I decided to treat myself to a three-celebration present. I have selected some of the new Zondervan titles just coming out on Logos. They happen to be planning to deliver this on my 39th birthday via automatic download. This is likely to be my favorite birthday present I have ever bought myself as I will be getting some great new resources, including the Life Application series which I have wanted in Logos form for a long while. The full collection contains a number of standard works, including NIDOTT and NIDNTT.

By way of disclaimer, I have bought this one myself, and unlike the special 15% saving offer on a base package, I do not receive any financial reward if you purchase this. But buy this you should if you can! Especially if you ever bought any of these books on Zondervan’s previous software. Even if you no longer have proof of purchase, call Logos at 800-875-6467 or +1-360-527-1700 and they should be able to give you a whopping 40% off the pre-pub price, even of books you didn’t own, and they have a pre-payment plan.  You will need to move fast (i.e. before the Easter break) if you want the heavily discounted prices. You can even use any of these collections as a stand-alone item without any other books or the base package, although it’s going to work better the more books you have.

Oh, I almost forgot, I have also updated my Theological Journal Library to include more items. The journals are considerably cheaper than some of the Zondervan titles, but will, at times, prove even more useful, I find myself looking at the ones I have fairly often.

Crossway have this week released a rather neat Bible app. You can highlight text, make notes, favorite Bible verses, and browse the history of which passages you have been reading.  It is a very nicely designed, easy to use interface. The app is free, and it stores the Bible offline.  There is really no reason not to pop over right now to the iTunes store and buy the ESV Bible app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

Logos Bible Software are offering my book on their pre-pub program. You can pre-order a copy of Raised With Christ: How The Resurrection Changes Everything to add to your electronic library now.

Since Logos Bible Software played a major role in assisting me to write the book, it seems somehow appropriate. I would go so far as to say that I would have struggled to write a book at all without the time-saving nature of this wonderful tool. I can’t recommend it highly enough, and am glad that blog readers continue to receive a discount on the base packages.

A few thoughts based on my own experiences and on some reports from others around the web. Most of this relates to people who already have the old Logos.

Logos Bible software has long been my primary tool for bible study, sermon prep, and book writing. Now it just got even faster with a radical new search engine, and an iPhone app that can read my books.

I couldn’t have written my new book Raised With Christ without Logos Bible Software, so imagine how excited I was to hear that Logos 4 would be even faster at searching, and could now fit in my pocket with an iPhone app that reads the books I own!

You can read other endorsements at their Website. Dan Phillips of Pyromaniacs has the most complete review of Logos 4 that I have seen online, he also highlights the minimal cross-grade link which is the cheapest way to upgrade. As in previous logos upgrades, the standard upgrades give you a collection of books alongside the software update.

I just downloaded the brand new and totally FREE Logos Bible Software iPhone application. It is truly astonishing. Even if you are not yet a Logos user you can read and search and read 30+ Bibles for free. It has a typically awesome iPhone interface and just in case you missed me saying this, it is totally free!

But the app comes into its own when you give it your logos username and password. You can do a passage guide search, and even read many of the books you already own. Considering I tested it over a mobile phone data-link rather than wifi the speed was absolutely incredible. I really liked the simple reading interface as well that somehow makes it seem more inviting to read one of your electronic books than on a computer screen.

Remember that readers of the Blog get a 25% discount on purchases of collections.

If you own an IPhone, then downloading this new software is a no-brainer as you cannot lose since it is free! Just search for “Logos Bible Software” in the App store or visit the Logos iPhone page!

If you are a Mac and Logos user, you might want to delay installing the Snow Leopard update of Mac Os X by hopefully just a few days or so. Apple’s publicity for this version of its operating system over the last few months can’t seem to decide whether to describe this almost as a minor update or as a whole new operating system. The truth seems to be that while there are not very many new features on this upgrade, the whole code has been rewritten [UPDATE: this is actually not correct, tho the system has been updated significantly to take advantage of 64bit processing]. PC users are used to being very anxious about installing upgrades. Mac users tend to be eager to do it ideally on the first day it is released. 7GB extra hard disk space and a faster leaner operating system with even better video handling and video iChat that will leave PC web chatting even further behind in the dust (full 640×480 video chat without stuttering over even quite a modest broadband speed is what we are being told!). A Mac is worth the purchase for its ability to video chat over the internet alone.

There has however been some reports from the developer community of incompatibilities between Logos Bible software and Snow Leopard. Some have spoken about books causing crashes, and of font problems.

A Logos spokesman said, “The release code for Snow Leopard isn’t available to anyone outside of Apple yet, so we have no way to test it to make sure Logos for Mac will work without incident. However, we have been testing it on beta builds, and it seems that there is one issue with the Charis SIL Italic font that will probably require a version 1.2.1 to fix. Before we fix it, we want to make sure that it’s still a problem in the release code–it is possible Apple may have changed the code that was causing ours to misbehave–and for that matter, that nothing else surfaces. Once we’ve been able to test it on the release version of Snow Leopard, we’ll get a new version out ASAP. The fix should be pretty simple, so we will probably be able to have the update out very shortly after release.”

I am shocked that Mac don’t let developers like Logos have access to the release code early. I would have thought that it would be a no-brainer to help prevent compatibility problems. It does make you wonder about any possible issues with other software, and there is a line on the Snow Leopard website that as part of the install process “Snow Leopard checks your applications to make sure they’re compatible and sets aside any programs known to be incompatible.”

So, speaking personally, you bet I have bought the family pack version of the upgrade and am eagerly awaiting that shiny disk and beautifully designed package. You bet I will be installing it on my wife’s machine immediately. But, I will wait just a little while before doing so on my logos machine. If you do decide to be brave and get access to the release code, sounds like Logos will be eager to receive any bug information. Visit the Logos Bible Software and Snow Leopard thread in their community forum and let them know.

Logos Bible software is fantastic software. It might not be cheap, but thats because the number of resources it includes would stress your bookshelves if they were in print. I have had a special offer of 25% off base packages for readers of my blog. Logos are kind enough to give me a referral fee which goes some way to offset my costs in running this blog.

Now, Logos have a special offer for one month only of a FREE download of John Piper’s latest book, Finally Alive. I described this book in my review as Piper’s most important book yet.

Follow this link for instructions on how to claim your copy. Note that you do not have to order the Bible Study Magazine in order to do so.

It’s the New Year, and maybe you have some Christmas money left. You could do a lot worse than treating yourself to something that will help you in your Bible study. Obviously, at the top of my list would be a Logos Bible Software package, which, as always, is available via that link on my website here offering a 25% discount. Logos now offers the same packages for Mac, and they will also very soon be available by following the above link with the same discount.

I am really enjoying using Logos on my Mac. Admittedly, it is slightly more basic than the PC version, but to be honest, most of the missing features I never used anyway. All you need to do is set up some extra collections, add them to your passage guide, and then you can study a passage easily by simply putting the reference in and hitting “go.” If you set your preferred Bible to ESV reverse interlinear (or open the interlinear direct from your library) you can right click a word and do a search of that resource for the lemma and you get a list of verses in English which have the same Greek or Hebrew word in the original. Adding the exegetical guide and the ability to search collections, an open book, or the whole library for a word or phrase makes a Bible geek’s joy complete!

Once you have a good selection of commentaries, one way for Logos to really come into its own is for you to buy the Theological Journal Library. Here you have access to a wealth of surprisingly readable articles. Heard of a long complicated book on a subject you’re interested in? If it was written by an academic, then chances are they wrote a short punchy paper on the subject first! Puzzled by an obscure verse that the commentary doesn’t really address? If you include theological journals in your passage guide (or do “search whole library for passage”) then you can find everything written in major journals on that verse. This will give you more geek pleasure than almost anything else you can get your hands on! Pop over to Galaxy now and buy volume 11 and volumes 1-10 right away. You can get over $15,000 worth of journals to carry around on your laptop for a fraction of the cost. I can also confirm that it does work with the Mac version of Logos.

The age of paper is far from over, however. As well as buying yourself any book published by Crossway (they are all fantastic!) why not subscribe to the new Logos Bible Study Magazine? Watch the video introducing it here:

John Barry Introduces Bible Study Magazine from Logos Bible Software on Vimeo.

The magazine is packed full of interesting content, such as interviews with theologians and pastors—the next edition includes an interview with Mark Driscoll. Articles are also included which will help you develop the tools you need to study the Bible well. The layout is modern-looking, and on their website you can see sample articles. At $14.95 for a year’s subscription, it’s a worthwhile gift for any busy pastor, or indeed any student of the Bible. With the tools that are available to us today, every Christian has the potential to be highly skilled and informed in their Bible study. What a tragedy that we are the most biblically illiterate generation of Christians since the Reformation.

Its not complete. Several important features do not work yet. BUT, you can now get Logos Bible Software to work on a mac! I really, really like the interface. If you own a mac, and either have a second PC or run parallels there is no no reason NOT to buy a logos package of your own as you CAN use your unlocked PC books on the new mac version.

Dont uninstall Parallels yet as its still early days. If you are like me, and don’t want to waste too much hard disk space you can get parallels logos to look for its files in the shared folder that is actually your documents on the Mac, you can tell Mac Logos to look in the same place for its book files. Works just fine. Searches are FAST! Collections can be copied across also.

Its possible to drag say a bible window into a different workspace or even monitor and make full use of the flexibility of the mac screen.

All is sweet. As they add new features it will get sweeter still!!

Thanks Logos!