FREE/BARGAIN — Christian Interest

[GtrsRGr8]

Ligonier Ministries advocates the Reformed (very Calvinistic) position. The Ministry was both founded and headed by the recently-deceased R.C. Sproul.

Every Friday, Ligonier offers a bevy of $5 specials. Some are paper-based books, but most are either ebooks, or digital audio or video.

This morning I happened to notice a _free_ ebook at Ligonier. It is quite exceptional for them to offer a digital book for free, at least based upon my experience.

The _free_ ebook is _A Reformed Approach to Science and Scripture_. I failed to notice the retail price; I'll try to update this post with that information, in an hour or two.

When I think of topics on the Reformed tradition that interest me, their position on science and scripture is not one near the top of the list. However, I'm curious about some of the things that the book will have to say about the matter. And the fact that a book is free automatically increases my interest in it.

Go to one of the following links to get the ebook in your preferred format:
ePub: https://www.ligonier.org/store/a-ref...cripture-epub/.
mobi: https://www.ligonier.org/store/a-ref...cripture-mobi/.

Sorry, PDF fans, the ebook appears either not to come in that format (most likely), or is not free.

[GtrsRGr8]

Doing a little bit of probing and rummaging around, I see numerous other _free_ ebooks and other e-material on Ligonier's site. None of them appear to be very obvious anywhere. Does anyone (other than me) have any interest in knowing what goodies that I might find? If so, I'll do what I can to share them.

[GtrsRGr8]

Olive Tree Bible Software is having one of their periodic sales.

They have a lot of titles on sale; I won't mention all of them, but I will mention one that jumped out at me. It is Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels of the IVP Bible Dictionary series.

The initial edition was published in 1992. This one is the thorougly-revised ("reconstructed") and most recent, second edition.

I own the entire set; I am most familiar with this volume. What parts that I have used of this volume I think are great. While very informative, Olive Tree's write-up doesn't really deal with how good that people think that the set and this particular volume are. For that, I recommend that you read the first part of Amazon's description of this particular book and the whole set.

The price of this massive 1120-page tome at Olive Tree is only $9.99 through today (Saturday). At Amazon, the Kindle mobi is $13.49, and I think that that is a steal.

This product from Olive Tree is not a standalone product. And I think that Olive Tree's products may be only app-based right now. But the app is free. Personally, I hate having so many ebooks on so many platforms and in so many formats (and many of them DRM-Protected at that), but I am also hyper-frugal and I know that the less expensive that I can get a book, the more of them that I can buy. And one benefit of adding Olive Tree to your repertoire of Bible programs and apps is that Olive Tree currently has 70 free books, some of which I haven't seen free anywhere else.

Linky to the sale's landing page, the page where the book just discussed is listed:
http://links.olivetree.mkt6659.com/s...NAS2&mt=1&rt=0.

[GtrsRGr8]

That's Just Your Interpretation: Responding to Skeptics Who Challenge Your Faith, by Paul Copan, is free through March 17.

Rating at Amazon: 4.0 stars, from 19 ratings. At GoodReads: 3.83, from 69 ratings. Those are very good ratings, I think, especially considering the fact that the subject is so polarizing.

The ebook has 240 pages.

Since the ebook is free, I took the opportunity to grab the ePub (DRM-Protected) at Christianbook.com as well as the Kindle mobi at Amazon. No doubt the ebook is available at that price at other vendors.

ADDENDUM:
I just checked Google Play and it is free there. I went ahead and grabbed it from there.

I checked eBooks.com, and the ePub of the book is available free there, also. It seems that I have heard that the ebooks that they sell are not DRM-Protected. Can someone in the know either confirm or deny that?

[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

The _free_ ebook is _A Reformed Approach to Science and Scripture_. I failed to notice the retail price; I'll try to update this post with that information, in an hour or two.

This book is also free at Amazon. https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00H19A4FY.

Scrolling past the reviews showed a listing of other books customers looked at. Most of those were free. A lot of these I'd already gotten.

I'll only list a few of them.

ESV Global Study Bible

Application Commentary of the Gospel of Matthew - 2017

Holy Bible - New Testament: New Life Version

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Fluribus

This book is also free at Amazon. https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00H19A4FY.

Thanks for giving the link to Amazon.

I suppose that you would get the exact, same ebook from Ligonier as you would from Amazon, if you got the book in mobi from Ligonier. But if you don't have an account set up with Ligonier, it would save you the trouble of setting up one in order to get the book. Come to think of it, ebooks that you buy from Ligonier go into their own, proprietary library for you (they call it the "Learning Center," or something to that effect) by default. If you want take an ebook that you've bought from them out of their own, proprietary library, it might present some annoyance to do so (or may not even be do-able, I don't know).

BTW--As I mentioned Ligonier, has $5 Friday deals every Friday. Some of the ebook deals are, well, "meh." However, where you can really score some deals are on sets of videos when they have them, which is quite often. The ones that I've seen just have some guy standing at a podium and talking. Kinda dull to watch. You might just want to ignore the video and listen to the lectures (which I've found to be quite good) as you would listen to an audiobook.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Thanks for giving the link to Amazon.

Also free at Amazon UK

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reformed-Ap.../dp/B00H19A4FY

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

BTW--As I mentioned Ligonier, has $5 Friday deals every Friday.

Here's the link directly to the $5 Friday deals.

[TrevorViking]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Here's the link directly to the $5 Friday deals.

I’ve been going there every Friday for a few years now, and own pretty much everything in their catalog, mostly on DVD and physical book, since buying them that way puts them in your account digital cloud as well.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by TrevorViking

I’ve been going there every Friday for a few years now, and own pretty much everything in their catalog, mostly on DVD and physical book, since buying them that way puts them in your account digital cloud as well.

So what other websites with bargains have you been holding back from telling your friends on MobileRead???

I didn't realize that they had a "buy a hardcopy, get a digital copy free" policy. That's good to know. Every now and then I see a company having a promotion like that, but not one with that as a standard policy. But I'm trying to trim down my paper-based book library, and I also just hate having to pay postage to get anything. My quirk, I guess.

Thanks.

[TrevorViking]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

So what other websites with bargains have you been holding back from telling your friends on MobileRead???

I didn't realize that they had a "buy a hardcopy, get a digital copy free" policy. That's good to know. Every now and then I see a company having a promotion like that, but not one with that as a standard policy. But I'm trying to trim down my paper-based book library, and I also just hate having to pay postage to get anything. My quirk, I guess.

Thanks.

To be honest, when I think of Ligonier I think of their sermon series on DVD and CD. I still consume much of my content in physical form to be honest. I’ve pretty much never read an ebook in my life. But it should have clicked in my mind earlier, and I should have posted the info here.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by TrevorViking

To be honest, when I think of Ligonier I think of their sermon series on DVD and CD. I still consume much of my content in physical form to be honest. I’ve pretty much never read an ebook in my life. But it should have clicked in my mind earlier, and I should have posted the info here.

I hope that you know that I was kidding; I tried to convey that. No apology necessary! I don't remember there being any rule about how much we have to post in order to keep from being kicked off of the website! I appreciate the posts that you do make.

There are things that I hold back on posting, myself, all of the time because of one reason or the other--mostly because of having other posting priorities in my limited supply of time.

I don't know that I've ever gotten one of Ligonier's sermon series. And, because of my aversion to paying postage, in part, I rarely have gotten a paper-based book from them. One time, I did take advantage of a promotion from them to get a for "whatever you want to pay"paper-based version of Sproul's The Gospel of John.

Sproul sure wrote in a way that was easy to read, and concise. And what a prolific writer he was! And that was on several very diverse topics (although most of what he wrote seems to have been doctrinal defenses or expositions of the Reformed tradition). He was a talented, overachieving man.

[TrevorViking]

I know you were just teasing; but really do try to share every deal I stumble across.

Sproul will be missed; a tireless preacher who, as you said, had a pretty good knack at making even complicated topics somewhat easy to understand.

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I checked eBooks.com, and the ePub of the book is available free there, also. It seems that I have heard that the ebooks that they sell are not DRM-Protected. Can someone in the know either confirm or deny that?

I buy quite a bit of stuff from eBooks.com and everything I've bought has had ADE DRM.

One of the main reasons I started buying from eBooks.com is that if the publisher allows PDF sales, then eBooks.com includes PDF as a download option. Most publishers have switched to epub only, but a few (Oxford University Press, for example) still sell both epub and PDF.

[GtrsRGr8]

I've got my morning's work cut out for me.

Several months ago, I ran across a website for the theological/Biblical studies journal Themelios. I bookmarked the site to investigate it later. I got around to doing that this morning.

The names of writers in/for Themelios (full title: Themelios: An International Journal for Students of Theology and Religious Studies) are like a "who's who" of evangelical scholars. From just a casual, very cursory look, I saw the names of D.A. Carson, J.I. Packer (in one of the early years of the journal--he's been deceased for quite a few years now), G.K. Beale, R.T. France.

I bought a bundle--advertised as being comprehensive--of electronic conservative theological journals a couple of years ago. For some reason, however, this prominent journal wasn't included. However, it appears that every one of the issues that have been published--45 quarterly ones (by my count), in their entirety--are available free from The Gospel Coalition's website.

The homepage for the journal is themelios.thegospelcoalition.org. From there, you can download the current issue (at this moment, it's Volume 42, Issue 3 (December 2017)). You can download not only the PDF, but also one formatted for the Logos Bible Software (several of the basic versions of Logos are free also, such as the one offered here). Clicking on the "Archive" link at the top of that webpage will allow you to do the same thing for the other 44 issues of the journal that have been published.

I know that an electronic journal of any kind stretches the definition of "ebook." However, I'm sure that every one of the more recent journals have well over 100 pages each. There's not much difference between one of these journals and, say, a festschrift or other book of essays. I look at these journals are being like a set of ebooks. I hope that the moderator(s) do, also.

I'll have to remember (or bookmark) to check every three months or so for a new issue. In the meantime, my job this morning is to download the current issue and all of the issues in the archive. As we all know, so many times nice things that are on the Internet are "here today, and gone tomorrow."