All right. Welcome back to Mission Log Podcast. Today, we have Steve Cleary on the show. Steve is the founder of Revelation Media and producer of the Pilgrim's Progress film, as well as Torchlighter series. Steve is here, however, to talk about his groundbreaking new project called iBible. Steve, welcome to the show.

Welcome.

Thanks. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Hey, Steve, from the looks and sounds of it, honestly, this is pretty innovative and cutting edge. Let's start with Sharing with our listeners what the I Bible is and how the idea of the I Bible first came to you.

Um, the second question's a bigger answer, but I'll try not to bore your listeners and keep it brief. Simply said, I Bible is a visual presentation of God's word. So in the way that, the way it came about was actually in a dream, which is, I guess funny for me because I'm not. I don't, I don't go to a charismatic church. I actually go to Anglican church. I don't know if we're allowed to have dreams. You know, I did have this dream and, and God, believe God told me I had a project that he wanted me to do at the time. My wife and I were looking at semi retiring. we had purchased land in Costa Rica. We had plenty of trees, fruit trees. I mean, literally got everything ready. We had a small house designed, we were doing soil tests. So we had come quite far in what we were planning to do and spend half our time there. So when I had this dream, it kind of shook me up of this project. and I shared it with my wife and she asked me what the project was. And I said, I have, I honestly have no idea. And she said, what are you going to do? And I said. Absolutely nothing. I said, there is no way I want to do anything, you know, to think on my own. And this whole idea of a project that would impact world missions is beyond my comprehension. And some months later I was reading and I came across this article of the urgency of teaching the entire Bible as one story, and it was very intriguing to me, and it talked about the biblical narrative and that the gospel doesn't begin at Christmas and. end at Easter, it begins in Genesis and creation and fulfills in the second coming. And I was reading about the dangers of when we kind of disregard the whole story. And, and just present the New Testament. Obviously, the New Testament is where salvation is, but to know God's redemptive plan. And when we start disregarding the Old Testament, it becomes easier to disregard the second coming. Which is something, you know, that we're supposed to be longing for and this article impacted me as much as the dream did and I knew at that time, I went to my wife, Debra, and I said, I know what the project is. The project is a visual Bible from Genesis to Revelation, telling the one story. Of God's divine plan of his redemptive plan. And I said, that's the project God's calling me to do. And, you know, it's like, well, how do you do that? And again, my answer was, I don't know. We had, we worked in our living rooms. And when I started the ministry, there were 11, 11 people on our database. And so I had done some work, as you mentioned, I, I have worked on the torch lighters. It's not my production. It's my friend Bill Curtis, but I was the executive producer and the producer of Pilgrim's Progress. So I had some experience. I had done a couple other animations and I knew the power of animation and visual media. And so we started working on, we started working on iBible. It actually wasn't even called iBible at the time. It was called the animated Bible series. I actually thought I was going to put it on DVDs, which is kind of funny, right? Looking back, it's like, what are DVDs? And so it was actually another Thanksgiving that it's, it really hit me that we needed to focus on an app. We needed to focus on phones. And the other thing that hit me is the script needed to be, the script was the most important part. actually producing a visual Bible. The animation wasn't the most important part of the script was, and people had told us that you'll never be accepted in a Bible community. because you're not an authorized translation, your Bible story. And I'm like, well, what does it take to get there? Become an authorized translation. Again, I'm very new at this. You know, I mean, I've been around missions a long time, but this is my first step into Bible translation, Bible agencies, and they said, you need this gold stamp of approval. And I'm like, where do you find this? Where is this gold stamp of approval? You know, is it a Kinko's? Can I buy one? Where do I get it? And I know I'm being a little facetious, but they literally told me, don't worry about it. You'll never get one. wow.

And they said, I

would have to have the leading Bible translation consultants of the world, authenticate our scripts. And they said, and even if they agreed to, they're like 10 years behind. And so I don't know. I mean, the person wasn't trying to discourage me. He just being realistic. But in my heart, I really wanted our scripts, authenticated. I mean, I am not a theologian, I'm a filmmaker and I didn't want it to be my script. I want it to be accurate to the Bible. And this whole thought of being an authenticated Bible translation just overwhelmed me. And again, some months later, I was invited to visit with SIL, which is here in Dallas, their sister ministry to Wycliffe. They actually have the top Bible translated, translation consultants on their, on their mission organization. I mean, that's what they do. And we, we had a meeting with somebody in there that was looking at doing videos. A small new department. And the guy said he goes, Hey, he goes the CEO of sal is is here from Spain and he liked to say hi. I'm like, great. I thought he committed. Shake my hand, say hi and leave. It's not uncommon for us to experience that, but he sat down, he talked to me for an hour and took the whole meeting. And after the hour, he said, he said, we will review and authenticate your scripts. And I said, I mean, it kind of floored me. And I said, why would you do that? And he said that video visual is needed. He said, even in his own preaching, he can see the difference when he shows a video clip, the difference of younger people and the intention span they have. And I said, how much is this going to cost us? And he goes, we're going to do it for free at our cost. And I said, I heard this can take 10 years. How long is it going to take? He said, we already started before you came. So, yeah, I mean, it's, It's not that a dream is fulfilled. It's, it's beyond the expectations, right? I mean, for me to think that I've never been a Bible school, I've never been a film school, and all of a sudden here is the leading organization of the world of Bible agencies telling us that, They're going to review our scripts, edit them, authenticate them, and put us at the top of the list. So, we've actually already done that. And so, all of our Genesis scripts, every time we do new translations, it's all now been authenticated. They've given us a letter. I asked about the gold seal. He laughed. He goes, well, there is no gold seal. He goes, but we do give a letter. And, and the letter states that this has been reviewed, it's been authenticated, and approved by them. It was a huge milestone for us, and just huge. And so iBible began to take shape. And how do we do a visual Bible? How do we do a visual Bible that is scripturally accurate? How do we do a visual Bible we can share with the world? So, you know, that's when I was led to, to put it on a phone. I mean, I'm, I don't think you can see me on this podcast, but I'm holding a phone and in the 7 billion people around the world, holding a similar phone that they can watch a video on. So I apologize for the long answer, but it's just amazing to reflect back on what God has done.

Amen. There's so much in there. for listeners and for those of us who are wanting to live a missional life and wanting to do what God calls us to do. It's like, it began with a dream for you. It began with God speaking to you, what he had for you next. And then it took some time, right? So many people just want to hear something and they want to, they want to jump in. And sometimes it takes time for that to develop. And then beyond that, you, you began to put your hand to it. And it involved other people. You know, God's kingdom is about using people and interconnecting things. And, I love how in order to do it, it required more of God's people to be involved. And beyond that, when God gives person a project. He gives somebody a mission. oftentimes it really should be on his bill. It really should be him funding and he gave you the resources. He gave you the opportunity to interconnect with people that could help you make that happen. And so what a what a powerful testimony of just Continued faithfulness and continue moving a dream forward. And not only that, but just having had the experience of doing videos before and seeing the power of that and knowing that how that could transform into something different. oftentimes God takes what we've done before and then gives us a new project. You know, you said, seven billion people have often have a phone in their hand. How do you take that from, you know, a finished product into now making the consumer aware of what's going on? What you have created?

Well, you know, I'm glad you asked that. And it's, it is, it is very critical. And even when this week we're having meetings with people that are overseeing Bible translations in other countries and they say it's not enough to translate. It's not enough to produce. It's not enough to put online. You have to go where the people are, where the people in need are. And sometimes we see that sometimes people will do a mission or project and, and, and just do the project and leave it up to somebody else. And for us, the getting it in the hands of the end user is, is, is, is extremely important. You know, you, you, you mentioned the long road and the people and you're absolutely right. I mean, we've been at this for over seven years. And we, I've thrown away two versions of iBible already, because I just wasn't happy with it and we're actually on our third version now, that, that we're trying, we're using some new technologies, some new 3d technologies with new software that's out there with, NVIDIA boards and things we can do much faster, a little bit of AI, not too much. And, you know, now we're 50 people and, and hundreds of thousands of people on our mailing list and set up 11 people. Me and my wife and our living room. So God is grow, brings the right people here. He's much better at bringing the right people here than I am. And so we stopped advertising. we don't advertise positions. We, we, we, we, God brings people here and we're very thankful for that. But the distribution is, is once we started making it. So the first, the first phase of distribution is a member. I told you I threw away. Two versions already. Well, the very first version, it was just before COVID and my distributor put it on YouTube and I didn't know he did it. And he called me up and he goes, when are you going to have more of those? And I'm like, we're not, you know, we're going to do it over. And he was, he was really frustrated with me. And he goes, I need more of those episodes. And I, I finally asked him, why are you pressuring me so much? You know, we're really trying to get this right. Figure this out. What, why are you trying to pressure me to just deliver more and more episodes? He goes, haven't you seen what's going on on YouTube? I'm like, no. I says, what are you talking about? He says, we put, we put your first six episodes on YouTube. You never told me that technically he never even asked me and I'm glad he didn't because I would have said no, but he put them on YouTube. It was over COVID and we had 14 million views. And for episodes I threw away. and so you look at that and then we looked at the YouTube back office. We didn't, we didn't believe him and we looked at it and we said, okay, someone else's will. Are people actually watching the episode? Are they just watching 10, 20 seconds? And we found out the average person is watching like three quarters of the episode. And so we were getting a lot of complete episode views and it really kind of blew us away. And so I still didn't do that old style. We still went to the new style, but since then we've seen 24 million views. And it was about a year ago, it was 14 million. And then we said, okay, we want to do an app. So YouTube is a huge distribution opportunity. Then we did an app and we launched that at Easter. We've had 150, 000 people sign up for the app. Then we had other ministries say we could use your content. We just signed an agreement last week with Jesus film. So we're willing to give the content to anybody. the content doesn't belong to me. I've always believed it belongs to the church. So, we've completed 42 episodes. That brings us from, through the book of Genesis. And so we're doing it in chronological order. We're not following books of the Bible, but Genesis is laid out fairly chronological. And so we've released 42 episodes that average 7 minutes each. So we already have like five hours of content and we're offering, I think we've, we're talking to a child eventual fellowship, I wanna, we're talking to denominational leaders and anybody is free to put it on their platform as long as they just tell us. We asked them for reports back, but we seldom get them. we did put it on Redeem TV and they said it's one of the top. On one of the top, viewed content series on their platform. So now we're saying, then we, last year we released a special episode called the real story of Jesus, because while we're working on Genesis, people were saying, well, how do people know how to get saved? You know, it's great. They're gonna, when you're done the whole Bible, but until you finish talking about the New Testament, doing productions on the New Testament, how are people going to know how to be saved? And it really was heavy on my heart and we eventually produced last year this episode called The Real Story of Jesus, which is a narrative of Jesus from Genesis to Revelation. So again, it's not a Christmas to Easter story. It's a creation to second coming story. And it leaves you, it's only nine minutes long, and it leaves you with the decision that you have to make a decision. You can accept or you can reject. And that's, those are your options. There's no middle ground. And it was a little bit hard hitting. people looked at it and it was like you could see people silent after. And we distributed that and it just blew up around the world. And so I told somebody recently, I said, we've had 3. 5 million views. Watches of that short episode and they go. Oh, yeah. Yeah YouTube and I'm like, no, no, no, that doesn't include YouTube that's on our website people that came to our website and watched it and 241, 000 of those people told us they prayed for salvation Praise

the Lord.

It's about eight or nine hundred people every day are telling us they prayed for salvation in a year ago We released in one language when we released, I was in Greece and I remember the first time we had a thousand people tell us they prayed, we were all rejoicing, you know, now we're just about to hit quarter million, in probably the next 10, 15 days and we have, we've released the episode in a hundred languages, and so we went from one to a hundred in a year, donors stepped up and they wanted to sponsor languages, again, it was completely overwhelming. and I'm so proud of our team that to get through 100 languages was such a monumental task. We have Think 30 more in production and we're trying to raise money for another 30. we just recorded today in this room, a language of Bangladesh that I confess I can't pronounce, but an important language nonetheless. And, and I want to talk to you guys about that heart language, as we continue sharing together, but the distribution God has led the way he showed us how to distribute social media has been a huge, huge. ability. I know how social media, how bad it can be. But I look at it like the printing press, you know, a printing press can print a Bible or it can print pornography

and

we can't shy away from it because you can print bad stuff on a printing press. We have to print more and more and more Bibles and gospel literature. It's the same thing with social media. We can't shy away from social media because it's full of fake news because it's full of pornography because it's full of violence. Social media is not going away. We have to invade social media with the gospel. And we realized I Bible is just an example of how we can do that. And earlier today I was with a man who is a missionary in, in areas of the Taliban. And we've had 4, 000 people from Afghanistan in the last six months, tell us they prayed for salvation. You're talking a country of probably, you know, 40, 000 Christians in 4, 000. new people have said they prayed for salvation. So it's just amazing to see the power of social media. And even, even, even right in the, even right in the midst of Taliban control, we do a lot of social media in Iran. We do through the middle East and, and of course the countries where it's free, where it's free as well. It is such an opportunity. I don't think we're doing 1 percent of what we could be doing. And, and just sharing the gospel through social media.

Incredible how you shared social media, you know, and so many times people think of social media as bad or all these other things are bad, but so many tools are actually just neutral. And it's how you use them kind of like what you said with the printing press. And so I think when we automatically label something as bad and not really investigate kind of its usefulness, we're missing opportunities to share the gospel. And I love how you highlighted that. I'm kind of thinking about the stories of, that are within Genesis. And I'm just wondering if they're As you're looking at kind of the, I would guess the metadata or whatever you want to call it. Are there some stories that people are watching more? And then along with that, with the data that you're getting back, are there certain regions You're seeing a higher viewership.

Yeah. The, if the one episode, which I'll share with you, that is the most watch outside of the first six. So it's not fair to compare the first six because they came out, you know, a couple of years ahead of time. So looking at in the last year, we only launched our app, at Easter. So, you know, it's only been like six months. We launched our app. Or less than six months. So looking at episodes that are the most watch, and I don't think anybody would ever guess which one it is. But if you look at why it's this episode and I don't think I'm trying to get people to guess in their mind, I am, I am, I'm thinking about all the stories, you know, from, from creation and then you have Nimrod and the tower, you have Noah and you have, you have, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, through all these stories. The number one episode watched, which is probably two to one over the others, maybe three to one, is the story of Dinah. So, did you guys guess it?

That was the first one that came to my mind, honestly.

I'm truly not. So if you know the story, and you know, most people that have read through Genesis know the story. So Dinah is the only daughter of Jacob. Jacob has 12 sons. He's got one daughter, Dinah. Dinah goes into, they settle, Jacob and his family settles outside of a city called Shechem. And Dinah goes into Shechem to basically hang out with people her age. Hang out with her friends. Dinah is a teenager. At least, we don't know for sure. But most people place her 16, 17 years old. And Dinah goes into Shechem to hang out with friends. And she is, she is, she is brought in and by the king's son. And she is sexually assaulted. very, very difficult story. And when the sons of, and then, and then this king's son falls in love with Dinah. So he assaults her, he rapes her. But he falls in love with her. So he goes to his father and says, I want to marry her. So his father goes to Jacob and he says, you know, my son wants to marry your daughter, please let us marry and offers all kinds of stuff. And, and then the sons of Jacob come and they say, we agree. That will intermarry and you can marry Dinah under one condition. He says, you all must be circumcised. you know, it's part of our culture. We're circumcised. You must be circumcised. So they go back to Shechem and the king gathers all the people together. And he goes, Hey, he says, you know, Jacob and his family and all these people are going to do business with us. We're going to, we're going to trade and we're going to intermarry. We just have to be circumcised. So all the men of Shechem get circumcised. And while they're all laying in pain, the sons of Jacob kill all the men. So, if you're familiar with the story, I mean, it's quite the story, we find in Genesis. I've asked teachers, I've asked theologians, I've asked book authors that have written about Genesis. How do you handle this story? And the number one answer I get is, we don't touch it. If they're honest, they say, we don't talk about it. We don't touch it. I was presenting to 200, Anglican. I mentioned earlier, in my church, my Anglican church, they were hosting a meeting with 200 bishops and they were archbishops there of other countries and the archbishop of North America was there and at my church, and they gave me a few minutes to share, and I showed a clip of that episode. And I knew I was either, I knew something was going to happen. I thought maybe I'd never. Be invited back, showing a clip of that episode. But, and, and people, the bishops came up to me after and they said, Thank you for doing that. Thank you for giving us a tool of a subject matter. We can't talk about. He says, in all my years of being a bishop of Anglican churches, I've never heard, I've never heard this preached on. And I had a man, a friend of mine in Africa who called me up. He goes, Steve, he goes, thanks for putting that episode out there. And like, he goes, my kids are asking me more questions. And I'm like, I thought he was upset with me. And I said, I'm sorry. you know, I'm sorry if I cause problems, you know, I can imagine this kid saying what circumcision, you know, and asking all these. And why did God allow them to kill everybody? It seems very violent. And I said, I'm really sorry. And I started apologizing to him and he goes, no, no, he goes, don't apologize. He goes, my kids are talking to me about the scripture.

He goes,

I'm a youth leader. My own kids don't talk to me about the Bible. My kids are talking to me about the Bible and they want to watch that episode. Over and over and talk about it. And I think that's the secret. And I think that's what youth today is. They're going to church and the church is not willing to talk about things they're reading on social media. And so have, are we failing the next generation if we're not willing to talk about it? I mean, it's in the Bible for a reason, right?

Correct.

And I'm not condoning. I'm not, we don't give an opinion as to what's right and wrong. And that whole story, it ends with this should never have, which we agree with. This should never happen. Dinah should have never been sexually assaulted, but it ends in this, in this, and it actually comes back later in scripture. we don't have time to go into, but it's a critical story. And there's another story similar on, on, Tamar Judah and Tamar. It's there for a reason. And I think. I think if we're afraid to talk about these things, I think the youth, it's so easy for them today to go home, pick up their phone, borrow their parents phone, and just type this in, and they're going to get tons of information. And what information are they going to get? They may have somebody criticizing the Bible. Say, look at the Bible, it's full of violence. How is that God's love? Or are they asking their pastor? Or are they asking their youth leader? And my challenge to youth leaders has always been, talk about the hard parts of Scripture, and I guarantee The youth are going to come back. I guarantee they're going to ask questions. And iBible becomes a tool, becomes a tool for a pastor, for a youth leader, for a parent to talk about scriptures. And I have yet to talk about that story with anybody who doesn't immediately engage in asking questions and discussing the Bible. Why are we shying away from the number one thing youth want to talk about and youth are willing to talk? If Bible engagement is down among the youth. Is it because we're providing the wrong content is because we're shying away from the content They're embracing and i'm not talking about embracing just so we can talk about things like, you know sexual assault and violence, but they're facing this stuff every day You just put it just turn on the news. You're facing it turn on social media facing it this From real news to fake news to accusations. It is everywhere And if they're not going to get the truth from us there you can guarantee The enemy is going to be happy to feed them a lie someplace else So, that's the long answer to the most watched episode of currently a Bible.

Well, I think that's so interesting because I grew up in a Lutheran school, the Missouri Synod Lutheran and, you know, kindergarten through eighth grade. And, you know, you start with this Bible storybook that's full of these cute little pictures of Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark and all these things. And then all of a sudden you get up to middle school and you start reading directly from the Bible and like, what are these stories? It's almost, it's just so surprising when you actually read the word itself, just like you're saying, seeing it through iBible and all these tough subjects that, there's a reason that they're difficult to talk about because, you know, a youth pastor may not want, one of the kids to you know, tell their parents and the parents say, Hey, why did you talk about this? So it's such hard topics that I love that there's a soft way to show what happened. especially for that age group.

Yeah, 100%. And I just wanted to jump into that. You know, I love how your addressing questions and you're providing answers. You're providing content for, like you said, answers that people are really asking. And so we kind of think about And I think about Instagram and all these places you can have, you can have filters and we've filtered the Bible in so many different ways. And there's reasons for it. and they're not all bad, but at the same time, our youth and the people of today are, are hungry for authenticity, they're hungry for realism and they're hungry for answer to questions because what they're seeing on media and they're seeing in the world is not lining up with their worldview. And so what an amazing tool to be able to do that. That said, I want to flip that question a little bit. It sounds like you guys are willing to go to different places and share some of those stories. Are there any stories in the Bible? You know, if you're kind of mapping this out, like, man, maybe we should not do that. When is there, are there any, you guys have been kind of among your staff kind of said, maybe we should just over, overlook that one. You don't have to go all the details, but I'm just, I'm just kind of curious,

you know, we finished Genesis and now we're working on life with Christ. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We know we're going to come across people ask me all the time. How are you going to handle this? How are you going to handle that? And my answer is, I don't know. And I will prayerfully, I say I write scripts two ways. I pray and I ask for forgiveness. obviously I'm never going to get it perfect. I hope other people write a script of the biblical narrative and I hope they get it authenticated. We're the first ones. I'll do the best job I can. Will that be the best? Probably not. actually, I hope it's not the best. I hope more talented people that our team come along and do a better job, do a better job. And they can learn from the things we do right. And they can learn from the things we do wrong. There, there are things in the Bible that we questioned. we don't question like, is it in the Bible? We question Will it do more harm than good? Will it alienate people? Will it? I don't want to say the Bible is a stumbling block There are things in the Bible that are very difficult. There were many things in Genesis that we debated I can tell you we included every single one. We include, you know Tamar and Judah. It's a hard story But if you know the story Judah ends that story by saying she is more righteous than me And to me, that's the scripture that sums it all up. You know, Job, I have scripted Job. Job we've had to, shorten. obviously, you know, it's 40 something chapters. It would go on and on and on. So we condensed, we condensed Job. And it's a very difficult story. Because, you know, God basically has a dialogue with Satan at the expense of Job, right? And, and it went from my least favorite book growing up as a Christian to my, to my favorite book of the Bible working on animations, because Job ultimately answers the question that we all have, which is the question, why? People say, you know, if God has got to love, why do people suffer? And Job answers, the book of Job answers that question. And I think it's the only place in the Bible you get an answer to that question. And so we've, we've learned to embrace some of this. You, early on when I was working on this, I took out the story of Noah getting drunk, and so Noah, you know, Noah's a biblical hero, right? I mean, he's the only righteous man, and he saves, he saves his family, he saves mankind, with the ark. I grew up learning that Noah tried to convince people to go into the ark with him. I don't know if you've ever heard that growing up, but I, that was common. so Amanda, you're, you're shaking your head. Yes. it's kind of nice, right? I mean, to think about this man building an arc and asking people to save themselves from a impending flood from drowning in, you know, the floodwaters, what it calls the floodwaters, and that's how I grew up. Always believing that Noah tried to save people. The Bible actually says only eight people would be allowed into the ark. So if somebody was literally pounding at the door saying, let me in, it wouldn't have happened. Not according to the Bible. God shut the door after the animals and Noah's family were safely inside. And the Bible repeats a couple different times that eight people shall be saved. names who they are. it's not, not just, not just eight people by chance. It's Noah, his wife, three sons, and their wives. And they will repopulate the earth. Then I learned that Noah gets drunk, and is naked, and one son talks about his nakedness, the other two sons cover his nakedness. Noah wakes up, hears about it, and, and curses his grandson. That's his only words in the Bible, is cursing. There's no words of him inviting people into the ark. There's no words of him warning people of an impending flood. The only dialogue of Noah in the Bible is cursing his grandson. And I'm like, well, that doesn't sound very nice. And so I thought I'd cut that part out. And I was so convicted. And I read the story of, I don't remember. There was this village. They were very poor. And all the men in the village were alcoholics. And the kids just. Had no hope. The sons had no hope of watching their father spent all the money on alcohol because they were so depressed. I was so poor. They had nothing else. They would buy cheap alcohol and spend all their money on that. And they were alcoholics. And I'm like, I'm not saying Noah was an alcoholic. I'm saying Noah did get drunk and he did something that doesn't sound very nice, but it was God in Noah's life. God chose Noah. God blessed is part of the story. No is not perfect. And I actually read a curriculum. Of a major denomination where Noah's wife said chastised Noah and said, your grandson didn't make you drink. Why are you cursing him? That's not in the Bible. Noah's wife doesn't have any dialogue in the Bible. So our goal is to just tell the story. And so I pray we find a way to tell every single story and do not have to leave anything out. I was so convicted I went back and I added the part about Noah getting drunk and cursing his grandson back into the script. Does that episode end on a happy ending?

No.

Noah lived a long life. and, and, and that's his story. And he had his weakness, just like Moses had his weakness, just like King David had his weakness, just like Peter had his weakness, just like Jonah had his weakness. And I think it's important goes back to what you said, Dan, is that the youth want authenticity. And if we create an American social gospel, that's no longer authentic. It's going to bite us. You know, it's going to sound nice in church. It's not going to work for us. It's certainly not going to work for the next generation.

No. And that story with Noah, our pastor back in the U S actually talked about that and the, just the value of honoring showing honor, you know, which the one son did not, but the other two did. And I just remember thinking to myself, Oh my gosh, you've been on a, an arc for how long, you know, 40 days, 40 nights waiting for that water to go down. You know, sending out a dove, finally comes back with a twig, and then all the people you once knew are completely gone. It's, it's like a whole new world, a whole new way of life, a whole new everything. And, I've often wondered what would people, what would anyone do in that situation? I love that you included that because it does show that Noah was not perfect, but also I think that the sun's covering him, it almost is a picture of Jesus covering us with his grace, you know, and his mercy and our mistakes and our mess ups, you know, where the accusers like, Oh, look at you. You're not so righteous, are you? And yet, you know, as God says through Jesus Christ, you are righteous.

That's good. Well, and I, from my own life, I mean, someone was, you know, complimenting me and on the work and which, which I really don't like. And not because I have my sense. And usually when someone, if they're talking about, I'm okay. If they talk about the project and the importance of the project, but whenever they start talking about me, I, I like review the sense of my life. It's just something I do. And because I never want to be any better than anybody else, just because I'm doing a Bible. And so it's always important for me. I'm like, if I, if I can get to heaven and sweep the floor of a great man, I'll be, I'll be so happy. Cause I am worse or no better than any of these other people. And I think that's really the message. And they were on the arc for a year. Yeah. I mean, it's like, we're all familiar with 40 days and 40 nights, but they were on the arc for a year before. Before, before they came off and starting everything over. And some people say that Noah may not have even known, how much alcohol would, you know, make them intoxicated. I mean, it's, it's, it may have all been new. We, we w we don't know. I think the fact is just the lesson is that God forgives. I love the lesson of the covering of the tool of the two older sons. We really enjoyed animating that. And I honestly believe every part of scripture points to Jesus. And I think as you, as you go through the Bible, maybe every time you go and you reread an event, You see something new and you see it pointing to Jesus and if I can just share one that was recent for me is in working on Genesis when Jacob is on his way to see Laban after he's afraid Esau is going to kill him for stealing his birthright. He has he he has a vision and I think we're all familiar with it is angels are ascending and descending from heaven. And God is at the top and these angels are going up and down a ladder. When we animated that, I had no idea what that meant. I've asked many people, what does that mean? You know, and people just say, well, it's just showing God's glory. But he specifically saw angels going up and down a ladder, up and down. And I didn't know. Really what that reference or what that meant we animated it. It was fun to animate now. We're jumping forward to Doing the gospels doing the life of christ then we're going to jump back to exodus So we're kind of doing a parallel track but while working on the new testament the life of christ I came across this passage that when jesus calls his first disciples and one of them I Don't even I don't know for sure if i'll get the name right and who which disciple it was But jesus sees him under a tree And, and Jesus reveals that he saw him, you know, really from a different sermon, a vision that was a different, different village. And the guy says, you must be the Christ. And he goes, you believe me just because I said, I saw you under the tree. And he said, I'm telling you, you will see much greater things than these. And he follows it with, you will see the angels ascending and descending from heaven. He quotes word for word, the dream. And I realized, Oh my God, God gave us a vision of Jesus. Jacob probably didn't know what it meant, but when we embrace the entire story of scripture, we see Jesus over and over and over again. And then we realized that the Bible is. Even the Old Testament is the most evangelical book in the world. And we just need to be sticking to that more. My producers are holding up a glass sign saying Nathanael. It was Nathanael that said, surely you must be the Christ. And Jesus told Nathanael and the other disciples, there was four other disciples at the time. He said, you will see the angels of heaven. Ascending and descending even says it in the same order ascending and descending and I believe every story points to Christ And I think we find new ways of discovering that which is such a joy to be working on the complete Bible Because if you'd have asked me ten years ago, I would have said I'm a New Testament Christian You know, I just stick with the New Testament, which, unfortunately, the New Testament means the Gospels, Acts, maybe Paul, and you kind of leave out Revelation, and you leave out Genesis and the Prophets and, you know, Jonah and David and all these stories, but it's, it's the complete story that God has given us, and I think that's how we relate to God better, is I think we become much smaller when we realize how big God is.

And that's the amazing thing about scripture is that throughout millennia, among many people, the same story is being told. And, and there's so many interconnections and confirmations and the interwoven ness of scripture, it's, it's mind-boggling how accurate and how confirmational the scripture is of itself throughout scripture. And so I, as you were sharing it, there's so many things about living a missional life and I was thinking. First of all, as you're saying, I don't think of myself as any better. And so I think I want to also encourage you don't think of yourself as any less either. Right. because when we live a missional life, When God gives us something to do, when he, when he calls you to make a movie or when he calls you to do whatever it is, our job is obedience and his job is the outcome. And I love how you're being obedient to the call that God has put on your life to produce this. The outcome really is, is God's. And so you're, doing it. You're sharing the story. And that's really what the gospel is. We go and we share the story and we let the spirit do what only the spirit can do. And I love that you're creating a new tool that allows the gospel to be presented and invites a response and invites response to the spirit that has been released into, into that. And so what a powerful tool that you guys have created. And I wanted to circle back just real fast and I know we're, being conscious of your time, but where are you seeing more views of this? Is there, is it? Middle East, is it Africa? Is it Asia? Are you seeing any kind of concentration of views and responses to the iBible?

I mean, we're seeing a great move of God in Africa. I mean, for sure. And some people talk about the global South. So, Portuguese is a new language for us, for Genesis. And, and, and we know that's going to blow up fast. so you look at South America, you look at Africa, you look at what people call the global South. And it's a term you probably, you know, use in missional term, and we're seeing God move strongly in the global South. the opportunity is certainly, is certainly there, and I think that, you know, what you said about the scripture invites a response. I had somebody define, somebody asked me, what's the definition of Bible engagement? And, you know, I wrote some definition, and I was proud of it, thought it was good, and, that I was in a meeting with this guy who was very missional, very well versed in scripture. And he says to me, Bible engagement is where no heart leaves unchanged. And he goes, it may be changed negatively. It may be changed positively, but no heart leaves unchanged. And so scripture not only invites a response, scripture creates a response, right? So people are going to need to, they're either going to harden or they're going to soften. again, there's, there's kind of no neutral in, if I can quote you guys, there's no neutral in missional life because the gospel is the gospel. It's God's word and it penetrates and it reveals, right? Even Simeon, what does Simeon say about Jesus? He says when Jesus is born and Simeon is so thankful, he gets to see the savior before he departs. He says, Jesus reveals the hearts of mankind and, and Jesus, when he's starting his ministry says the same thing. He talks about what the hearts can receive in the hearts of mankind. So the word of God impacts the hearts and it reveals the hearts of men and it reveals our need for a savior. It reveals our, our own, you know, longing in our own sinful nature. And so I do accept your words. you know, allowing what God is doing, through me and through the team here, but it's just pride scares me, so much and, you know, I remember listening to a sermon by CS Lewis that said, you know, the person who says they're not prideful is the most prideful of them all. And I pondered on that, you know, cause I don't want to consider myself a prideful person, but that is the trap of pride itself. And so it's, we, you know, we go through this, we do, we depend on God and we're thankful and we give God the glory, the honor. we try to be obedient. and, and I tell people my gift is not filmmaking. My gift is not. A visual bible. My gift is not technology. My gift is not preaching. My gift is God giving me the ability to be obedient. That's that's that's my gift is a willingness to a willingness to obedience and Maybe maybe my obedience and maybe even I fail in my task But I think I think a willingness to be obedience and even admissional. That's the number one thing, right? it's just first of all you have to decide You That you're going to be obedient. you're going to raise your hand. You know, God says, whom shall I send? And if you're going to volunteer for God, you don't have control over what he tells you to do. I have often said, when you align your talents with God's will, there's exponential power in that. But sometimes maybe we have our own talent. We run with it. And I never would have done animation. Never. I never would have done filmmaking. I never would have done public speaking. I grew up with a speech impediment. There's no way I'd sit in front of a microphone and do interviews. There's no way I'd go on TV. There's no way I'd go on live radio, or even a podcast. And now we're leading our own podcast. God's blessing came with obedience, not even with talent. so I think even in missional, it's like, what is God leading you to do? And to spend time discovering that. And then it's about, it's about obedience. And some people is what they've always loved to do is what God blesses them and calls them to do. But sometimes it's not. Sometime maybe God is calling you something you don't know. That's it's, it isn't your heart. You know desire in life. it's not your calling and so finding god's calling I think is so critical and so important I think it only comes through being obedient the small things Being in the word of god being in prayer and figuring out How god wants to use you in the kingdom and I do believe god wants to use people In a much more powerful way than people realize I often challenge people to see that they have tremendous abilities, but where does god want to use them? And it's not to live a comfortable life and have two cars and two kids in America. I'm sorry, it's not that's a blessed life, but that's not missional. Mm-Hmm.

keep on thinking. Faithful is a little faithful if much, and you've been faithful and you're seeing the more. And, and I'm just wondering, as we bring this to a close in honor of your time, what is the much, what is your hope? What are your dreams for I Bible, where do you hope to go with this? in the next two to five years,

we, we estimate, I mean, our goal is to finish iBible by 2033. So I don't really give a lot of credence to, you know, to dates. We wanted to reach a great commission by 2000 and then 2020 and the next big year is 2033. 2000 years since Pentecost and it'll be a great celebration. It's something to look to. I do have a goal of finishing iBible during that time. I'm not. You know, I'm not the youngest person doing this. I've had some heart issues. my cardiologist would tell me to do it quickly. And so we have a certain time on earth and God has given me a certain time on earth. And my goal is to finish it from Genesis to Revelation. Now, will it ever be done? No, But I, I need to lay the groundwork and I've prayed. I've asked God to give me the days. I've asked people to pray for me that I live long enough to see all the episodes produced and somebody can fix them and do them better and tweak them. We can do that continually, but I really want to see Genesis revelation. It's going to be about 300 episodes. We're going to translate it as we go. And I hope to see it in a spinning language as possible. But my goal is to finish. The production, the first, the first version of a visual Bible. Beyond that, the big goal is to see people bombarding social media with the gospel. Is to start thinking differently. In a short story, there was a pastor of a local church, and he told his congregation. It's a great church, by the way. We, we have people volunteer from there, and we love the church. But one Sunday, he told his people, he said, let your kids see you reading the Bible. Bring your Bible to church, your printed Bible. Let your kids see you reading it when they walk down the stairs, when they peek around the corner, and, and encourage them to read it as well. I thought that was really cool, but it's not, it's not what I would have said. I would have said, parents, you need to get with your kids, pull out their phone, and pull out a devotional. And watch their phones with them. So, are we trying to bring the next generation to do what we do? Are we trying to bring them into our heart language? And we didn't have time to talk about heart language, but I believe visual is a heart language. If you don't believe me, just watch what kids are doing. They're watching things online. And so, or do we go to their heart language? If you had a deaf child, you would learn sign language. You wouldn't force the child to hear or to lip read. Hopefully you would learn sign language first so you could talk in the heart language of your child. And social media, visual, digital content is now the heart language of our children. And so, are we trying to pull our children out of that, or are we trying to, to guide them in that, and to sit with them, and to watch a devotional, to say, look, you can find good content on a phone. So iBible's one of those tools. My goal that, is that the church wakes up to this. When the printing press was invented, Over 500 years ago, we printed the Bible first, and we still print Christian books astronomically. Millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of Bibles. But we haven't done the same with social media. We haven't said, okay, social media is a communication. It's a way to reach people. So let's bombard it with the gospel. Let's do the devotionals. Let's do the conversation. Let's do the engagements. Let's do iBible. And so my big goal is that we influence other people to do things bigger and better than we can. And that we think different about social media and reaching you. you know, we can almost learn from TikTok. TikTok rules Africa and it's horrible. It really is horrible. you'll see people dancing in the street. They're practically getting run over by a car because they're filming themselves for a TikTok little dance routine. And while I was meeting with some African leaders, I says, maybe we should have a contest that's called Dance Like Miriam. And let everybody dance like Miriam and put it on TikTok. And I literally set it off the cuff and they were like, yeah, we need to do that. And we're actually thinking maybe that's a good thing to do. How do we approach this? And I think we're really, really behind. I think it's really dangerous. And I hope in a little way that what we're doing influences people that have more resources, have more talent and ability to embrace the opportunity to bring a digital visual message to the next generation and speak in their heart like,

I meant, awesome. You mentioned how your, your, your mailing list is growing and it's in the hundreds of thousands. How can our listeners join your mailing list. How can they connect with your mailing list? How can they get your app? Where can they, share with us how our listeners connect with, can connect with, Revelation Media and the iBible.

You can find our app on the Apple app store or the Android store. Look for iBible by Revelation Media. And it's free and you can register for the app. You can go to I. bible, which is our website for iBible. You can watch all the episodes there. You can join our mailing list there. You can write to me there and you can add comments and we're getting ready to update the website on i. bible. There is also links to Android and, Apple store and it's, it's i. bible. There is, it's not. com it's. bible. And so if you type that into your. You know, your browser, your phone, your computer, i. bible, or simply Google us on, you know, ibible on Google and you will find us. We always have opportunities for people to contact us. We want to hear from people. We want people, I always ask for people first and foremost to watch, to watch the episodes. And then sit down with your kids or grandkids and go through some resources. We have great discussion questions on there. We put an interactive quiz on the app, use the content and then give us feedback. Tell us what's working, what's not working, how you're able to use it, how you're benefiting from it, how you're able to engage the next generation with it, because I don't believe. American Bible Society put out their 2024 report on Bible engagement, and it's really sad. It's showing like a 36 percent decrease over the last five years on Bible engagement for youth. I really don't believe that has to be that. I really believe if we rethink how we engage youth, we can actually see more engagements with youth. and so iBible is a tool that wants to do that. And so we want people to use it and give us feedback, but yeah, download the app, give us feedback, go to i. bible, sign up for our email list. We give a lot of updates. We get behind the scenes, we show production. We send out devotionals. We, we, we write a lot of content for online use.

Well, I know our nine year old daughter has truly enjoyed the torch lighters. She's been through all of them on RightNow Media and she has watched Pilgrim's Progress more than one time. So we are super excited to see the iBible and to check that out. So just encourage listeners to take a look in that and see how you can get involved. Amen.

And we just want to thank you for the opportunity to have you on the show, Steve. And we just want to, you know, commend and say thank you for being obedient to what God's called you to do. And that's just a challenge for all of us to rise to, to the call of God on our own lives. And so, we just speak favor and blessing over what, what you're putting your hand to. And we are excited to see the fruit that God, bears, through the iBible.

Well, thank you both. Thank you for having me and taking the time to, to unpack some of this. I really enjoyed it.