Here are answers to some common questions about our free web sites: The Christian Steps, Bible Instruction, etc. To answer your questions about our Free Bible Study Lessons web site click here.
* Who sponsors your web sites, and what do
you believe?
* Can I receive your materials by regular
mail?
* Can you send us copies of your
materials so we can distribute them to others?
* Do you have free advanced courses
available?
* What translation of the Bible should I
use with your materials?
* What do I do when I cannot access
a page on your web site?
* Do you answer questions and respond to
comments?
* My color printer prints the background color.
What can I do?
* Can you provide me with a free Bible?
* Can we make a financial contribution to
help with your work?
* Can you help me find a faithful
church or a Christian to study with in my area?
Occasionally people inquire about the religious views and/or affiliation of those who sponsor our web sites (The Christian Steps, Bible Study Lessons, Bible Instruction, etc.).
These sites are all the primary work of David Pratte. Mr. Pratte is primarily responsible for the contents of the sites and wrote most of the articles, except as otherwise indicated. He is assisted in this work by several other Christians who help in grading the online lessons. Mr. Pratte is a gospel preacher working with the church of Christ in Round Lake Beach, Illinois.
All of those who work with the site consider themselves to be simply Christians, just like Christians you read about in the New Testament. We have no "Statement of Faith" except the Bible, since it is our only religious authority. We are neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish, nor are we Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. We believe all modern denominations are unknown to the Bible and are the result of men adding human doctrines to God's word. If people today will simply go back to the Bible and follow only its teachings, we believe we will be simply Christians and members of Jesus' true church, just like Peter, Paul, and other New Testament Christians.
Our web sites contain a number of articles that can help you learn more about basic Bible teachings. To learn more about the church in Round Lake Beach, you can visit the web site of the church at www.gospelway.com/rlbchurch/. There are many other local congregations across the world that follow God's word as we do. Each one is independent from the others, having no affiliation with any denominational headquarters or creed.
As a general rule our policy is that we send out materials only online and by email. Regular mail is comparatively expensive and time consuming.
Since we live in northern Illinois (near Wisconsin), we do make exceptions for people who live in Illinois and Wisconsin. Other than that, our general rule is to send materials only online and by email.
If you don't own a computer, one thing you might try would be to go to a computer (wherever you can get access to one, such as at a library or a friend's house) and print out a few of our online lessons. You can then study them at home and answer the questions. Then the next time you have online access, you can fill in the answers to those lessons and send them to us. Then you can print out some more lessons, etc.
We are sorry if this inconveniences you, but we operate on a "shoestring" budget. We hope you understand.
Unfortunately, for financial reasons, we are unable to send out free copies of our materials for distribution. If you know people who have access to the Internet, we would gladly have them take our online courses or email us and we will send them materials by email.
We do not offer our free courses with the intent of making money or even receiving contributions. However, for those who are really interested, some of our materials are available for sale in quantity. See our Light to My Path web site for more information.
We always wish we could do more, but we hope these alternatives will be helpful.
All the materials we have available are on our web sites. We have several Bible study courses available at our Free Bible Study Lessons web site at www.BibleStudyLessons.com. We also have free articles about various Bible study topics. These are available through our Christian Steps and Bible Instruction sites at www.gospelway.com and www.gospelway.com/instruct.
We are continually working to develop more materials for our Bible study sites. We encourage you to check back from time to time.
Also we have a monthly newsletter that contains a Bible study article each month and that informs our students of any new materials that we have recently placed online. If you would like to subscribe to that newsletter, please go to our Christian Steps web site and look for our Order Request Form.
The menu page for each online Bible course lists the recommended translations for that course. Any of those translations should work well.
With the computer grading system, however, other translations may not work as well, simply because we cannot program the computer to accept all the variations in wording that may be found in various translations. For further information, so our note explaining the automatic grading system.
Even with lessons graded by our human graders, however, some translations might not work well, such as the looser modern "translations" that simply paraphrase the Scriptures, rather than attempting to give a true translation. An example of this would be The Living Bible.
When a file does not completely download to your computer, the reason is usually a problem somewhere in the Internet. As you know, the Internet is a conglomerate of millions of computers, and problems can occur anywhere along the line as our file is transfered to you.
If a file does not transfer properly, you can attempt the following steps to solve the problem:
1) If you tried to access the site by clicking on a "link," try typing the URL address directly into the appropriate line of your browser. Some have told me this will work even when clicking the link did not.
2) If still no results, try clicking on the "refresh" button in your software. This will attempt to download the file to your computer again.
3) Try closing as many programs on your computer as you can. I have found that sometimes lack of computer memory slows a browser down so much it cannot access a web site.
4) If you still have problems, you may try again at a different time. Sometimes the Internet is just "busy" and cannot complete a request until later. This is especially a problem during the evenings.
5) If you have tried the above approaches and still have problems, then please send us an email naming the file you were trying to download. See below to email us.
The purpose of our web sites is to provide serious Bible students with quality materials to help them study the word of God for themselves. It is not our purpose to provide chatrooms or discussion groups. Other sites may provide that service, but that is not our purpose.
So we encourage our students to benefit from the materials we provide online. We have literally thousands of students taking our online Bible courses every year. We try to respond to their serious questions and brief comments about our online materials, but this of itself takes a significant amount of our time. All our graders are volunteers who have many other serious responsibilities. They grade lessons and respond to students in their "spare time." This means their time is limited.
Occasionally we receive emails requesting that we read, study, and/or respond to lengthy statements, frequent questions, published articles, or that we engage in other lengthy exchanges about religious topics. These discussions or materials may or may not be of serious religious value. However, while we have no desire to be unkind to anyone, quite frankly we generally do not have time to respond or to engage in such lengthy discussions or exchanges.
Again, we do not mean to be unkind, but if you would like to receive a response from us, we request that you please do the following:
1) If you are responding to something you read in one of our online courses or articles, please read and study the online material carefully and look up the pertinent passages cited before you send us your question or comment. Often the material we have published will answer the questions people have -- that is why we have published it! If your question or comment indicates to us that you have not seen our published materials or have not read them carefully, we will simply respond by referring you to our published material and urging you to read and study it carefully.
2) Please keep your question and/or comment brief and to the point.
3) Since the purpose of our sites is to examine the text of the Bible itself, please restrict questions and comments to the Bible text, rather than to religious history, quotations from theologians, etc.
4) Please focus on studying our online materials, rather than on lengthy, ongoing correspondence with us.
We try to do a service to our students by publishing materials for your benefit. But we regret that we simply do not have time for lengthy exchanges and communications. Thank you for being understanding.
Most browsers have a fix for this problem. If you look through your options or preferences you should have an option that tells the printer not to print the background at all. If you select this option, the background color should not print.
Unfortunately, for financial reasons we are not in a position to give away free Bibles. Inexpensive Bibles can be obtained at most large department stores (KMart, Walmart, etc.). They are generally available for less than the cost of a month's online service.
You can also refer to many Bible texts online by going to the following site: Bible texts.
We consistently advertise the materials on our Christian Steps and Free Bible Study Courses web sites as being "free," and we sincerely mean that in every way. We neither solicit nor accept funds for the materials on these sites. We have no desire whatever to be offensive in this. We just believe this is the best way for us to demonstrate our sincere commitment to helping people learn the truth without charge. We feel abundantly rewarded because we have been able to help souls learn the truth.
There are, however, some things our students can do to help in the work. (1) Students can continue to study the other materials we offer. (2) Students can tell their friends and loved ones about our materials and encourage them to participate. This would help us accomplish even more good by our work.
(Please note that not all of our sites offer materials for "free." In those cases, we specifically state what price we charge for our materials.)
We are glad to try to help. However, we live near Chicago, Illinois (USA). We may be far from you and can only find churches or Christians by "word of mouth" (actually e-mail). We may or may not be successful in your area, and even if we are successful it may take some time.
So if you wish us to help, please contact us. We will do what we can, but please be patient.
Thank you for your interest in our free Bible study opportunities.
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