A Bible software program has become one of the most popular recent offers for computer users in Poland.
Produced by young programmers of “nadzieja.pl” (hope.pl), a Christian online company affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the e-Bible CD-ROM version was distributed by ComputerWorld and other computer magazines and listed among the best 10 applications in the area of “education, hobby and home.”
According to Joe Smoczynski, president of “nadzieja.pl,” 300,000 copies of the e-Bible, or electronic Bible, software have reached computer users as an insert in the ComputerWorld and Chip magazines. Editors of the ComputerWorld EXTRA wrote that “With this program we may not only read the Holy Bible, but study it deeper.”
Smoczynski also explained that the CD-ROM includes several Christian books that may help the user to study the Bible and “go back into history or deeper into what apostles have said, and we can study these books together with the Bible.”
Smoczynski hopes that over the next year the e-Bible, the “nadzieja.pl” Web site, and other online productions will be able to reach many millions of Poles internationally. “‘Nadzieja.pl’ is a charity, an Internet charity, which has over 40,000 individual hits each month, one-third being Poles that live abroad, and the rest in Poland. We have contacts with people in Iraq, Iran, Syria, in all the world’s troubled spots where Poles live and are looking for God,” he explained.
Arkadiusz Pietka, Webmaster of “nadzieja.pl,” says that the initiative and its first programming began in 2002, and was largely the work of Daniel Hatala, a programmer who worked on a voluntary basis. Pietka explains that the program will continue to undergo new updates, especially when new Bible versions become available.
Currently the Miscrosoft Windows-based program is available in only one Bible translation, a classical Protestant “Biblia Gdanska” version; copyright issues are being resolved to add two others, a Catholic “Biblia Tysiaclecia,” and a recent ecumenical, “Biblia Warszawska” translation. A planned commercial version of e-Bible will also include a “Biblia Warszawsko-Praska” version, as well as Old Testament in Hebrew and New Testament in Greek. Multimedia options will include short sermons.
“We have prepared the Bible [programming] in three versions. If someone doesn’t understand a text in one translation, perhaps another translation will assist him in understanding and interpretation,” Smoczynski added.
Apart from CD-ROM media, those with access to the Internet can get the e-Bible online at the “nadzieja.pl” Web site.
Commenting about this new and popular venture in Poland, Roman Chalupka, communication director of the Polish Adventist Church, said that his church supported the development of the software because “we are interested in reaching people, just delivering the message to their homes. Some for a long time have closed [their] doors and the only way in is through the computer.”
Reports indicate that usage of the Internet is one of the most expensive in the world, and only 20 percent or 6 million Poles between the age of 15 and 75 use the Internet for entertainment, education or information.
Referring to these numbers, Jan Kot, a television producer and local church leader from Warsaw, told Adventist News Network that Christian “presence on the Web is a must.”
“The church must take a multimedia direction in order to meet the young, educated and professional consumer, without forsaking the other, traditional methods of sharing the gospel,” he said. In reference to the release of e-Bible he says that the “interest by the Internet user in this project will be equal to its professionalism, which, according to competent circles, is guaranteed by ‘nadzieja.pl.’”