I Bought a Digital Bible... and Somehow Fell Down a Rabbit Hole

Do you ever look something up because you have ONE little question... and somehow, hours later, you're researching something completely different? Please tell me it's not just me. Because that's pretty much how my weekend went.

It started with a digital Bible. I had just bought a beautiful digital KJV Bible to use on my iPad. It had all the things I love—hyperlinks, journaling space, Bible study pages, sermon notes, verse mapping… basically the kind of thing that makes me want to grab my Apple Pencil and start highlighting immediately.

I already had a couple of physical Bibles too. One is an NIV that I bought years ago, and another is an older New King James Version Bible that belonged to my mom. So after buying the digital one, I almost immediately started wondering if I'd bought the right one. Not exactly the kind of question you expect to consume your entire weekend. But here we are.

Except then I started thinking... Wait. What's really the difference between KJV, NKJV, NIV, NLT and ESV? I knew they were different translations, but I couldn't have sat down and explained exactly how they were different. So I looked it up. Which answered one question... and gave me five more. You know where this is going. One Question. Then Another. Then Another.

As I was trying to figure out which Bible translation might be best for me, I remembered that my great-great-grandpa had been a preacher. And my brain immediately went to wondering what kind of Bible would HE have used? So I looked that up. Except you can't really answer that without knowing when someone lived, where they lived, what denomination they belonged to, when they preached... And suddenly I was doing genealogy.

One question about a Bible turned into researching my family tree, old church records, newspaper archives and denominational history. I learned things about my great-great-grandpa that I'd never known. I learned more about the church he preached in. I started separating family stories I'd heard from things I could actually document.

Then one family name would make me wonder about another. Wait... who was her mother? Look that up. When did they get married? Look that up. Was he already preaching then? Look that up. The more I learned about my great-great-grandfather, the more questions I had.

My great-great-grandfather was born in Missouri in 1899. He married my great-great-grandmother in 1921. And the more I researched him, the more fascinating his story became.

According to stories passed down through my family, he served in the U.S. Army from 1916-1919. There's also a family story that his military service connected him to the period when American troops were pursuing Pancho Villa. Excuse me? Pancho Villa?! Now I'm definitely not closing the browser, or the text threads and phone calls with family members.

I also learned about his service as a chaplain. Then came the story that really caught my attention. At some point in his life, he became extremely ill. The story passed down in our family is that he believed he was dying and made a promise to God... If God allowed him to live, he would spend the rest of his life serving Him. He lived, and apparently he meant every word of it. He became a minister and spent decades serving in the Free Will Baptist church. By 1933 he was active in Free Will Baptist church work in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Then by August 1940, records show him serving as a Free Will Baptist Minister in northwestern Arkansas. In November 1940, our research found that he was a pastor in Oklahoma.

At this point, I had completely forgotten that I originally came here because I wanted to know which Bible I should buy. But the rabbit hole was nowhere near finished.

Wait… He Founded a Church?

The next piece came from family history. According to what has been passed down to us, my great-great-grandfather founded a Free Will Baptist church in California.

Okay. Now I need to find the church. Then I learned that men in our own family helped physically build it. Not “helped build the church” in the metaphorical sense. I mean actually built the building. They were husbands of his wife's granddaughters—men connected to the family who apparently helped put that church together with their own hands. And because genealogy relationships apparently require an advanced degree once you get a few generations back, I spent a ridiculous amount of time figuring out exactly how everyone was related. At this point, I had a whole list of family stories.

That's When the Research Got Really Fun

There's something incredibly satisfying about finding an old record that connects to a story you've heard in your family. We started digging through historical church information and newspaper archives. Then we started finding him.

Old newspaper church listings connected him with a Free Will congregation meeting in California in the early 1950s. Other records identified him as a pastor. Later Free Will Baptist records continued to show his involvement with the denomination and with church leadership in California. And suddenly he wasn't just a person in an old family story anymore.

There he was, in records, in church directories, and in denominational history. The more we found, the clearer it became that he hadn't simply been a preacher who happened to be part of my family. Historical Free Will Baptist material remembered him as an important early figure in the development of the denomination's work in California.

Basically… my great-great-grandfather was apparently kind of a church legend. And somehow nobody thought to lead with that information!? Haha

Now, I'm still researching. Some of the things I've learned—like the story of his illness and promise to God, parts of his military history, the Pancho Villa connection, and some of the details surrounding the founding and building of the church—come from family history. Other pieces I've been able to connect to historical records. And figuring out the difference between those two things has become part of what I love about the research. Every answer gives me another question. And every question sends me somewhere else.

At some point I had so many questions going that I couldn't even remember which question had started the whole thing. Oh yeah. I was trying to figure out if I'd bought the right Bible.

And Then I Started Researching My Digital Bible

Eventually my questions wandered back around to the actual Bible. Except now I had more questions than I started with. While comparing translations, I started learning about different types of Bibles too. Study Bibles, journaling Bibles, chronological Bibles, and more.

That's when I learned something I genuinely didn't know... The traditional Bible isn't arranged as one continuous timeline. Hold on. WHAT?! LOL. I really thought Genesis was first because it happened first, Revelation was last because it happened last, and everything in between basically happened in the order I was reading it. Nope.

The Bible is organized more like a library. There are books of law, history, poetry and wisdom, prophecy, Gospels, letters and more. Some of the events overlap. Some books cover the same periods from different perspectives. A chronological Bible rearranges passages according to approximately when the events happened.

Well, that sent me down yet another research trail. Of course it did.

Why is it arranged the way it is?

Why are certain books together?

Where do the prophets fit into everything?

Why do some events overlap?

What's the difference between the order the books appear in and the order the events actually happened? And that made SO many other things click. But, naturally, it also gave me approximately 100 more questions.

At This Point, I Needed Notes.

The more I learned, the more I realized I wanted something really simple beside me while I read. Not another giant study guide. Not something that assumed I already understood all the Bible terminology. Just something that answered the questions I kept asking.

Who are these people?

What does that word mean?

Is this happening before or after that other thing I just read?

Basically... Can somebody please give me the cheat sheet?! And because apparently I cannot simply wish something existed—and apparently I also don't know how to make ‘just a little cheat sheet’—the more I researched, the more I added, and the bigger it grew. Of course it did.

The Funny Thing About Curiosity...

I've spent a ridiculous amount of time researching over the last few days. And you know what? I've loved it. This whole thing has been completely unplanned. There was no research project. No big goal. No moment where I decided, “This weekend I'm going to research Bible translations, genealogy, military history, Pancho Villa, old California churches and Free Will Baptist denominational records.” I was just curious. And somewhere along the way, I realized how much I missed that.

Learning something simply because I want to know. Following a question without knowing where it's going to lead. Discovering one little piece of information and immediately wanting the next one. And occasionally looking up from my computer and thinking... How the heck did I get HERE?! Hahaha

I still don't know everything about Bible translations. I definitely don't know everything about my family history. I'm still figuring out how all the books of the Bible fit together. My cheat sheet keeps growing. My list of questions keeps growing. And I have a feeling I'm nowhere near the bottom of this rabbit hole. But maybe I don't need to be. Sometimes the best part isn't finding the answer. It's discovering the next question. And apparently all it took to remind me how much I love doing that... was buying a digital Bible. 💗