Giving the world a free mobile Bible that is safe to use in any country.

Short Sands, LLC, publisher of the "Hear Holy Bible" App

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Hear Holy Bible

Read, Hear, Note, Highlight, Share & Do.

Features

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Free

The “Hear Holy Bible” app includes many copies of the Bible, and all are free. It does not advertise within the App. And, it does not use the App to sell other products or books.

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Protects Your Privacy

The “Hear Holy Bible” app is designed to insure each reader’s anonymity. It collects no information about any user, or about any user’s device, or user’s location, or about any user’s use of the App.

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Persecuted Christians

Some governments, who are opposed to Christianity, attempt to block access to the Bible. They are not able to identify “Hear Holy Bible” communication on the Internet as Bible content.

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Easy to Use

The “Hear Holy Bible” App is very easy to use. Anyone can use it to study God’s Word without spending time learning to use the App.

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Concordance

The “Hear Holy Bible” app includes a concordance of all words in the Bible, and can be used for the search of one or more words. It responds instantly to any search.

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Poor Eyesight?

For the benefit of those with very poor eyesight, The “Hear Holy Bible” app is able to present text in very large sizes, especially on larger devices.

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Many Languages

The “Hear Holy Bible” app is designed to make it easy to publish the Bible in many languages. We plan to publish the Bible in as many languages as possible.

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Notes & Highlight

The “Hear Holy Bible” app allows you to highlight words, phrases, and verses of the Bible, and also to keep notes. It also enables you to share your notes with others.

Privacy Policy

The “Hear Holy Bible” App is designed to insure every reader’s anonymity. It collects no information about any user, or about any user’s device, or any user’s location. Nor, does it perform any transactions over the Internet that can be blocked or monitored by a government opposed to Christianity.

The App does not require the user to login or register any information, nor does the App use cookies or any other mechanism to track users of the App. The App does not collect any information about its readers. For example, it does not collect device serial numbers, or other device identifiers, or Internet addresses. It does not collect user’s GPS location.

To best of our knowledge, the “Hear Holy Bible” App is the only Bible App, which provides users with this degree of privacy. In fact, most other Bible Apps collect and store all of the information described here that our App does not collect.

Censorship of the Bible

Pray for the Persecuted Map from Voice of the Martyr

The persecution of Christians and even violence is a growing problem in many parts of the world. The “Voice of the Martyrs” has listed 44 countries where even the government of those countries suppress Christianity or persecute Christians¹. The map displays those countries in red.

One of the ways that many of these countries attempt to suppress Christianity it to block the public’s access to Christian materials over the Internet. They are filtering the Internet with a variety of tools. For example: Smart Filter by McAfee is used by Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iran, and Oman. Websense is used by Myanmar and Yemen. Netsweeper is used by Qatar, the UAE, and Yemen².

While we have not been able to get information about exactly which of these countries are successfully blocking downloads of the Bible over the Internet, it is clear from anecdotal reports that the Bible is blocked in some of these countries.

Short Sands, LLC has developed a secure means to download Bibles over the Internet, which make it possible to download Bibles that cannot be blocked by these governments. Nor, can these governments monitor readers using the “Hear Holy Bible” App.

1 2016 Global Report, The Voice of the Martyrs, http://www.persecution.com/pdfs/Global_Report_2016.pdf

2 Internet Censorship, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship

News

Release 1.3.12

Aug 12, 2016

The Your Bible App security was improved so that its use could not be blocked or monitored. In some countries, where the government seeks to discourage Christianity, almost all Bible Apps will not work, because those governments have blocked those Apps from accessing Bible content over the Internet. Those governments will not be able to block this Bible App. It is also possible that some governments who consider Christianity a threat are monitoring the use of Bible Apps to identify those people who are reading the Bible. Those governments will not be able to monitor this App.

Release 1.2.9

Jul 5, 2016

“Your Bible” now includes an Arabic and a Persian translation of the Bible.

Release 1.1.1

Jun 1, 2016

The first production release has just become available in the Android store today, May 31st, and is expected to be available in the Apple store in approximately one week. This release contains two English language translations. We hope to add many non-English translations soon, and with them open up App pages in those languages in the Apple and Google App stores.

Beta Test Starts

Jan 17, 2016

The beta test of “Your Bible” commences on January 17, 2016. We welcome the thoughtful input from those who are skilled in using technology. But just as much, or even more, we value the thoughts of those who find technology awkward to use. Imagine at some future time that some aboriginal person might use “Your Bible” on their newly purchased tablet or Internet enabled TV. We want the app to be sufficiently easy to use that such a person will have no difficulty. We need your help to make this possible.

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Publishing

Short Sands has developed a very thorough process for validating the Bibles it publishes, so that not even a “jot or tittle” is added or removed. The sections just below, written for the technically minded, describe that process.

We publish a Bible by converting it into a form that can be directly rendered by very well-tested software on tablets and phones. This rendering software was developed and tested by Google for Android devices, and by Apple for iOS devices.

Bible Text Validation

The process for converting a translation of the Bible into the form rendered on devices is proprietary. In order to validate that all bugs are discovered and removed, we have written a validation program that reads the translation in its published form and generates a copy back into the form that we received from the rights holder. We compare this generated copy of the translation with the original translation from the rights holder, and only publish the translation after every difference is corrected. Not even a difference in “space” characters is permitted.

Concordance Validation

We generate a concordance from the Bible and validate that our concordance is correct by a similar process. We have written a validation program that reads the words and references from the concordance, and uses this information to generate a copy of the Bible putting all of the words, verses, chapters, and books in their correct sequence. This Bible generated from the concordance is compared to the original translation we received from the rights holder. The copy generated from the concordance must be identical except that punctuation characters are removed. The concordance is published only after we verify that the translation generated from the concordance is identical, except that it is missing punctuation characters.

Text-Styling Validation

The Bibles we receive for publication all contain codes that describe how the text is to be styled. All of these styling codes are also included in the proprietary form that we use to publish the Bible. To ensure that our Bible App has the ability to properly format the text according to each of these instructions, we have written a validation program that identifies all of these formatting instructions, and checks that the Bible App has been programmed to handle each of them properly. The translation is published only after we verify that the App has the ability to correctly style each of the style codes in the translation.

Revision Validation

It happens from time to time that we receive a translation that contains features that translations we received earlier did not have. For example, we have received some translations with hyphenated verse numbers, e.g. 23-24 or verse numbers in brackets, e.g. [24]. Sometimes these unexpected features required us to revise our publishing and validation software in order to prepare the translation for publication. Whenever these changes were done, it is essential that we prove that changes made do not cause any other unexpected changes to any translation. We do this validation by reprocessing all other translations and running a program that compares the original copy of each translation with the most recently generated copy. Changes to the publishing process are only approved after it is verified that no unintended changes have occurred.

What we believe

We believe the Bible is inspired by God; as a result it is free from error and is the supreme authority in matters of faith.

We believe there is one God, creator of all, who exists eternally in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is both fully human and fully God, and has lived a sinless life.

We believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross as a substitute for the punishment that is due all people, because of their sin.

We believe that through His death, He has given everyone their only opportunity of eternal salvation by putting their trust in Him.

We believe that the Holy Spirit dwells within each person who has put their trust in Jesus Christ, and is there to teach, and help believers lead a life that is glorifying to God.

We believe that all, who have put their trust in Jesus Christ, without regard to religious denomination, are part of the Church.

We believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ three days after His death on the cross.

We believe that all those who have placed their trust in Him will also be resurrected to eternal life with Him, and those who have not will be resurrected to judgment.

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History

January 2015 – The Lord was leading us to build a Bible App, which would deliver the Bible for free in as many languages as possible, be easy for old and young to use, and would protect the identity of those who used it in this world of growing Christian persecution.
April 2015 – Short Sands was accepted as a Bible publisher “Library Card Holder” by the Digital Bible Library.
January 2016 – The “Your Bible” App was available in beta test for both Apple and Android phones and tablets.
April 2016 – The organization was changed from Short Sands sole proprietorship to Short Sands, LLC.
June 1, 2016 – The first version of “Your Bible” went into production.
July 5, 2016 – Arabic and Persian versions were added.
August 12, 2016 – Security features were added that make it possible to download Bibles that cannot be blocked.
November 11, 2016 – The Bible was added in 25 more languages.
April 25, 2017 – The feature film “King of Glory” by Rock International was added to the App.
June 3, 2017 – Three feature films from the Jesus Film Project were added to the App: Jesus, Magdalene, and The Jesus Film for Children.
July 28, 2017 – The name of the App was changed to “SafeBible”.
March 2018 – An audio play is added to “SafeBible” allowing people to listen to the Bible.
August 2018 – SafeBible was modified to improve performance, reduce battery usage, and improve startup speed.
March 2019 – The App is totally rewritten on Apple devices, adding features of note taking, highlighting, and sharing.
April 2019 – The name of the App was changed to “Hear Holy Bible”.