What facilitates people coming to know more about the Bible?

In Gentile times, how do we answer the question, what facilitates people coming to know more about the Bible? I am thinking of turning points in history. We might start with the invention of the printing press and the translation of the Bible into the vernacular. These two turning points are the foundations that paved the way for Bible knowledge to be found by ordinary working people and for them to reject what was being promoted as the gospel by the established church.

These two turning points have grown over the years and we can add other turning points such as the faster means of travel and the growth of disposable income in the pockets of the lower classes facilitating widespread preaching. However, it is only in the last two decades with the advent of the Internet that cost-free promulgation of the gospel nationally and internationally has become possible and been realized.

Of course, the Internet might not be cost-free in the future (if there is such a thing), and there are small costs sometimes even now with e-mail, websites, print-on-demand, using PDFs, forums, etc. But my point is that the Internet is as revolutionary as the invention of the printing press in being a watershed event for people understanding the Bible. Just as the printing press and the translation of the Bible into the vernacular took away the monopoly the church had on the gospel through its clergy, so too now the Internet has taken away the monopoly that church publishing houses (organizations with money) have had over the dissemination of Bible knowledge ‘in print’.

One example of this is the ability to print books on demand. Prior to the Internet, there were considerable costs to getting books printed. Publishing companies controlled the market; you would have to get a book approved by commissioning editors and review readers. This set-up still exists, but it no longer prevents publishing. Within the Christadelphian community there has been an explosion of information online and through print-on-demand publishing. The Internet is a giant printing press that is, at the moment, pretty much cost-free.

There is advantage here but dangers as well. As it was after the invention of the printing press, we should expect less authority and greater plurality. However, there is also the possibility of better understanding of the Bible shared more widely and more quickly—and a better distribution of the responsibility for understanding the Bible in the community.