Using e-Sword confirms the mighty I AM

When I was in Bible college, I went with a small group of students to a Jehovah's Witness convention that was being held in Coconut Grove.  We endured the boring meeting and then we all fanned out through the crowd to pass out gospel tracts and engage in conversations with dedicated JW's.  Later, when it was time to go, I looked over to a small huddle and saw Kay, a frail slender student, surrounded by 4 large older guys who were obviously leaders.  She was holding up her Bible and pointing to John 8:24 and telling them over and over that they were going to died in their sins because they did not believe that Jesus was God in the flesh, the mighty I AM of the old testament.  They were getting pretty mad at her and I thought they might do here some harm.  So a buddy and I went over, took her by the arm and said, "Kay, it is time to go."  

In John 8:24 and again in John 8:58 Jesus claimed to be the I AM.  These are the same words that God used to describe Himself in the Old Testament (Ex. 3:14).  Christians are quick to point out that the word "he" is in italics and not in the original.  The Jews got mad because they thought Jesus was claiming deity, and He was.  That is what we were taught in Bible school and that is what "Greek scholars" such at A. T. Roberson say.  If you tell that to a JW, they will just come up with their own competing scholar and chose to believe him.  So now what do you do?  Dig out your copy of eSword or some other Bible software and research it yourself. (For this article I will use the iPad and the KJV).

Turn to John 8:24.  Lets start by running a search for "I am he."  Highlight the word and then click on search.  eSword will run a "Phrase" search and you will find that this phrase occurs only 18 times in the KJV.  Read each verse and you will find that in 12 out of the 18, the phrase refers to the almighty God Jehovah. It would reasonably follow that when Jesus used the phrase, he was claiming deity.  Those references are: Isa 41:4, Isa 43:10, Isa 43:13, Isa 46:4, Isa 48:12, Isa 52:6, Joh 8:24, Joh 8:28, Joh 13:19, Joh 18:5, Joh 18:8, Rev 1:18, Rev 2:23

But wait, there is a problem.  Remember that the word "he" is in italics and not in the original.  So, a determined person could still wiggle out of this argument.  So, lets do a search for "I am" and see if we do any better.  Follow the same procedure, highlight and search.  Oh my!  We find 737 matches in 693 verses and the phrase is used in lots of ways.  This is no help at all.  In fact you might think, "Gee, I AM is used so many times, why is John 8:24 such a big deal?"

Click to enlarge

Lets dig a little deeper and lets use the Greek text.  In e-Sword, install the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint).  This is a Greek translation of the Hebrew text and it was familiar to the Jews during the time of Christ.  It was written about the 3rd century BC.  If you have not done so already, you will also need to install the Greek New Testament and the KJV+ (with Strong's numbers). In "Lexicons" you need to install "Strong's Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries"  All of these things can be found if you click on "Resources" at the lower right corner of the screen.

Install extra stuff

Go back to the Bible view, go to John 8:24 and select the KJV+ Bible to view the verse with Strong's numbers.  It looks like this:

KJV+ with Strong's Numbers

Click on G1473, the number for "I", and then on G1510 for "AM".  Take careful note what the Greek words look like. (You do not really have to know Greek to do this and this is not meant to be a scholarly study.)  The words are ἐγώ εἰμι, (ego eimi).  While you are still on John 8:24, switch to the Greek NT, highlight the words "ἐγώ εἰμι" in the Greek text and run a search.  You will find 42 matches...but since you can't read Greek, this isn't much help.  You can TAG the verses and then read them in KJV.  Here is how.

a.  Copy ἐγώ εἰμι in the Greek Bible John 8:24

b.  Click the 3 lines in the upper left corner

c.  Select "Custom Categories" and add a new category called ἐγώ εἰμι

d.  Run the search again and then click on "Tag All".  Select ἐγώ εἰμι as the Category.  (It helps to turn the standard categories off.)

e.  Now switch your Bible back to KJV so you can read in English.

f.  Click the 3 lines again and select "Tagged Verses".  Then select ἐγώ εἰμι.

g.  You can now read all 42 verses in English

 

As you scroll through, you will find that most of the uses of ἐγώ εἰμι in the NT refers to Jesus or God.  This form is emphatic.  Normally in Greek you do not have to use the pronoun "I" because it is sort of included in the verb.  For example, "luo" means "I loose".  The word "I" (ἐγώ ) is often used to add emphasis.  (You may notice that John 8:58 is not included in the 42 hits.  That is because ἐγώ εἰμι in John 8:58 adds an accent mark to the end causing the search to fail.  So actually there are 43 verses, not 42.  Accent marks were not used in the original Greek.

Now lets check on the Old Testament.  Still on John 8:24, copy ἐγώ εἰμι from the Greek text.  Switch to KJV and go to any verse in the Old Testament.  Now, while in the OT, switch to the Septuagint Bible.  Click on the hour glass to run a search and paste in ἐγώ εἰμι and see what you get.  You should find only 30 occurrences in 28 verses.  Tag them using the same ἐγώ εἰμι tag.  You can now switch back to the KJV version and look at all the tagged verses.  When you examine the 28 verses, you will find that in most of them, ἐγώ εἰμι, refers to the Almighty God, Jehovah.

ἐγώ εἰμι (ego eimi) is used 43 times in the NT and 30 times OT for total of 73 times.
It is used as a clear reference to GOD in 47 of these verses, 36 of them in the NT.  Significantly it is used in Ex. 3:14, and in Isa. 45:18

In conclusion, it is pretty obvious that when Jesus referred to himself as "I AM" in John 8:24, 58, He was making no bones about the fact that He was God in the flesh.  Full Deity clothed in humanity.  The 2nd person of the Trinity.

I know all this key clicking is kind of tedious but my point in this study is two fold.  I want you to see that you can state with confidence that Jesus claimed to be God.  I also want you to improve your skills at using e-Sword, no matter what version you are using.

e-Sword - An Awesome Bible Library

Have you ever gone into a pastor's study and been impressed with his large library of impressive books?  The same would apply to lawyers, or doctors, or educators. After you get over the 1st impression, you then begin to think..."I wonder if he has read all those books?"  Probably NOT.  When I look at my own life and ministry, I am guilty of the same thing.  I have lots of impressive books that I have never read.  Of course, some books are only purchased for reference, meaning, you only use them to "look up something".  You don't read them, you read IN them.  Nevertheless, the saying is true, "It is not how many books you own, it is how many books you have read."

I said all as a warning.  When you download and install e-Sword or any other Bible research program, it is very easy to quickly accumulate a large library of impressive stuff.  Accumulating stuff, can quickly take the place of USING the stuff.  With e-Sword, it is easy to download 20 or more versions of the Bible.... but the important thing is "do you read the Bible"?  Do you study the Bible?  e-Sword is meant to be a "tool" not an "ornament".  Buying a whole bunch of impressive automotive tools does not make you a mechanic.  Taking the tools that you have and getting greasy does.

Having said all that, I want to show you how to add stuff to your installation of e-Sword.  I will be using the iPad version as an example but the same applies to all 4 version with minor differences.

On your iPad, startup the e-Sword app.  In the lower right hand corner click on resources.

The resource screen  will appear showing all of the Bibles, and other material that is already installed.  If you click the "i" that is to the right of any resource, a popup box with give you info about that item.  If you click the "?" at the top left, a help screen will appear.  In this lesson, I will deal only with installing Bible versions.  Click on the word "Bibles" in the menu.

A new screen will appear showing all of the Bibles that are available to install.  Most of them are free.  Some must be purchased due to copyright considerations.  We will deal only with the free ones here.  Any Bible in the list that has a check mark next to it is already installed.  Any one that has an icon of a pad lock next to it must be purchased.  Highlight the Bible version that you wish to install and then click on the "download" button in the top menu.  Wait for it to download.  It should then appear in your list of available Bibles.  If you wish to DELETE (uninstall) a Bible, go back to the "Installed" screen, highlight the Bible that you wish to remove and click on DELETE in the upper right corner.

In addition to Bible versions, you can also install Commentaries, Dictionaries, Lexicons, References, and Devotional works.  Follow the same procedure using the top menu.

Remember, take it easy.  It is not how much your have, but how much you use that is important.

 

Greek word study using e-Sword

You can use the power of e-Sword to do some light weight Greek research.  For example, lets look at John 1:1.  Here it is in the KJV

 (Joh 1:1)  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

When the Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door they may show you that there is NO definite article in front of the second word GOD so it should be translated "and the word was A god".  They may even show you their own Greek interlinear "translation".  Based on this they conclude that Jesus was A God but not the Almighty God, Jehovah.  They also concluded that the doctrine of the "trinity" is false.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god. (New World Translation)

So, later, you take a look, and sure enough there is no article.  They seem to be right at first glance.  Using e-Sword, you can look up the verse along with the Strong's Numbers.  It looks like this.

When you click on G2316 you find out that the Greek word for God is θεός (theos).  So far this doesn't help much.

Now you can install a Greek NT into e-Sword and you can research a little further.  You might think, "I don't know Greek".  That's OK.  Its time you learned a little.  Click on Download (Resources on the iPad version), then on Bibles.  Scroll down and install the Greek New Testament. Find John 1:1 and then switch to Greek NT.  The verse looks like this.

Joh 1:1  ᾿Εν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος, καὶ ὁ Λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος. 

You have τὸν Θεόν (the God, translated GOD) καὶ (this is the word for AND) then you have Θεὸς.  Notice that there is nothing between AND and GOD...their is no definite article.  You might think, "My goodness, they are right.  It could be translated a God"

BUT WAIT...... using your Greek NT, highlight καὶ Θεὸς and run a phrase search.  You will find only two matches.  Here is what I found.

Joh_1:1  ᾿Εν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος, καὶ ὁ Λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος. 

 

2Co_1:3  Εὐλογητὸς ὁ Θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὁ πατὴρ τῶν οἰκτιρμῶν καὶ Θεὸς πάσης παρακλήσεως,

Now, go to the internet and look up 2Cor 1:3 in the New World Translation (NWT) and see how they translated καὶ Θεὸς.  Here it is.

3  Praised be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of tender mercies and the God of all comfort, (NWT)

Notice:  Not only did they not put an "A" in front of Θεὸς  (God) but they added the word THE.  In other words, in John 1:1 they translated καὶ Θεὸς "A GOD" but in 2Cor 1:3 they translated it "THE GOD".  Interesting. Which is it?

You can push this a little further using e-Sword.  Highlight the word Θεὸς and run a search.  You will find 246 matches.  Now do the same with the phrase ὁ Θεὸς and you will find 206 matches.  Subtract the two and you will find 40 possible occurrences of the word Θεὸς without the article.  If you manually scroll through the 40, you will eliminate some of them because the "ho" is in a different position.  This will leave you with 17 occurrences of Theos without the definite article.  You can use the internet to look up all 17 of these references in the NWT.  You will find that they put the article "A" in front of the word GOD only twice.  In all the other references, they translate Theos as "the God" or "God."  Here are a the references.

Mat 22:32, Luk 20:38, Jon 1:1, Joh 8:54 Acts 15:8, Rom 8:33, 1Cor 8:4, 1Cor 8:6, 2Cor 1:3, 2Cor 5:19, Gal 2:6, Gal 6:7, Eph 4:6, 1Thes 2:5, 1Tim 3:16, Heb 11:16, and Rev 21:7

In conclusion, it is easy to see that the JW's fabricated their view of John 1:1 in order to support their false doctrine.  The fact is, when the word Theos occurs in a text without the definite article it is for the purpose of emphasis.  Emphatically speaking, Jesus is God.  He was there in the beginning with God.

(Note:  This is not meant to be a scholarly study of John 1:1 or Greek usage.  It is a just handy way to use e_Sword to do a little basic research.  The Greek word "ὁ" is not pronounced "o", it is pronounced "ho" because it has a rough breathing mark.  If translated, it is most often translated "the".

 

The power of e-Sword partial search

One of the reasons people can't find things in any computer search function is that they type too much information into the search slot.  Sometimes, less is better than more.  Here is an example.

Lets say you want to find every occurrence of the word "believe" in the Bible but you also want to find other forms of the word believe.  You want to find "believes", "believed", "believing", etc.  All of them.  You can do this easily using the basic search functions of e-Sword.  Of course you could do several searches using each word and then note the results.  But that would be tedious and what if you forgot one form of the word?  In this case, less is more.  Here is how to do it using the iPad version of e-Sword.

Click the hour glass

In the upper left corner click on the magnifying glass.  This is your search function.

This will bring up your search dialog.  Now type a partial word into the search slot.  In this example, type "believ".

Make sure the you flip the "Partial" switch.  Here is what it should look like.

Flip the Partial Match switch

When you have all of your options correct in your search box, go ahead and run the search.

Here is the result that I found using ESV.  I have scrolled down to a point in the results that shows at least three forms of the word believe.  

In this example you can see "believe", "believes", and "believed".  Different forms of the word.

This kind of search can be very handy in your studies. It would take you hours to do it manually using an old fashioned concordance. 

(To enlarge the picture, click on it.)

Strong's Concordance Bible Search

 I remember the good old days very well.  By that I mean the days before 1990 when Bible Software was not readily available and the little that did exist was not all that great.  Now we have a plethora of Bible software apps at our fingertips and some of the best programs are free or very low cost.  I have tried many but I am going to be commenting on e-Sword because it works so well on many operating systems.  (platforms)

When I was in Bible college and for years after, if I wanted to research a Bible verse, Strong's Concordance was an important tool.  Only problem was, it was BIG.  You just didn't carry it around in your pocket or brief case.  Using it was a bit tedious too because the print was pretty small.  You could easily spend hours looking up Greek and Hebrew words and researching their meaning, and uses.

All that is over now thanks to e-Sword and other Bible research programs and apps.  Here are a few very simple things you can do and you can do them very quickly.  This is by no means an exhaustive explanation.  Just the tip of the iceberg.  

Lets take a verse, Colossians 1:16 - (I don't even have to type it out.  Just cut and paste.)

(Col 1:16)  For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:  (KJV)

Here it is in NASB - it is easy to compare them.

(Col 1:16)  For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.

If I want to see the Greek words using Strong's I can simply click on KJV+ or NASB+ and magically, the Strong's number appears with the text.  Here is an image of KJV+

Now the fun begins.  All I have to do is point to one of those Strong's numbers and the Greek word from Strong's pops up in a little window.

This is what the pop up window looks like.  Personally, I don't like pop up windows and prefer to have that feature turned off.  

If you double click on a Strong's number, then the word appears in the Dictionary window of the program.  (see below)

More options are available when you use the Dictionary window.  (see below)  Other resources are shown at the top of the window.  You can click on any one that has a (i) icon and see more information.

One more thing about Strong's as it is used in e-Sword and most other Bible apps.  You can do an actual search using the Strong's numbers and find verses that you may have missed by searching for the English word.

To do this, type or cut and paste the Strong's number into the Search box and then run the search.  Every occurrence of that Strong's number will be found.  This works using the iPad or any other platform.  If you have a computer version of e-Sword, even more search options available.

eSword and other Bible apps

Bible search software is fun.  I have been using Bible software since 1985.  I often use e-Sword which is available for Windows, Mac, iPad, and iPhone.  It also works well with Linux using Wine.  You can do all kinds of stuff with a good Bible study app that would take hours and hours to do manually and a lot of stuff that would just be impossible.  Here is a simple example...

Comparing the KJV with the NASB, I looked up how many times the word "Jesus" occurs.  Here is the result.

                             NASB                        KJV

Matthew                182                            172

Mark                      103                              97  

Luke                       104                            100 

John                        245                            256

Total                        634                            625

And just for fun, from Acts through Revelation, there are only 353/358 occurrences.  

Is this super important, I doubt it.  It does go along with John's stated purpose for writing.  See John 20:30-31

This is just a simple example.  When it comes to Bible research, the possibilities are endless.  There are lots of Bible resources online, but when it comes to speed and power, there is no substitute for having a full featured Bible research app installed on your computer that does not require the internet.  Other programs I have tried include: theWord, Bible Analyzer, Quick Verse, Logos, Xiphos, Olive Tree, and a few others.