Olive Tree Bible software app

I discovered the Olive Tree Bible app for iPad and iPhone thanks to my agent, Wendy Lawton, and ever since I got it, I’ve absolutely LOVED it for my Bible reading. (It’s available for PC and Android, too.)

I can take notes and they can be as wordy as I want since it’s electronic and the notes are stored next to the verse as a little icon I can click to read it. I can also highlight in five or six different colors.

It’s especially helpful for church, because when I’m listening to the sermon, if I want to take notes on the pastor’s message, I can take notes directly in my Olive Tree Bible. Whenever I took notes before, there wasn’t space in the margins in my regular Bible, and if I took notes on the worship service program, I would never transfer the notes to my Bible later or do anything with them.

What’s even cooler is that you can have several different translations of the Bible. For example, I have both NIV and TNIV. It’s really fast to switch. I’ll usually use NIV for youth group but I like TNIV for my daily Bible reading.

And here’s something neat: when I take notes in one translation or highlight a verse, and then switch to another, the notes icon and the highlights transfer over to the other translation (as long as I “anchor” the note to an entire verse and not a single word in the text). So no matter which translation I use, I have my notes and highlights already transferred over.

Olive Tree has a very robust search engine that I use whenever I need to search the Bible for a verse. I’ve used it a lot for when I’m writing and need to look up verses for my manuscript.

You can also split the screen and upload other books like commentaries and maps or other translations of the Bible and the app will sync the verses of the two books to each other, so if I’m reading Job 1:1, and I have a commentary open on the other side of the split screen, the commentary will be on Job 1:1.

So anyway, I’ve probably gushed enough about this, but I have to say that this software app has really enhanced my Bible reading and made it absolutely fantastic. I’ve never been so into the Word of God.

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