How can I do a search for every instance that God says "I will"?
Very difficult, since "will" is normally a helper verb which requires another verb to complete the sense. A quick look at a Clause Search in the Greek New Testament did not reveal anyway to accomplish this as "will" is not a separate word there. For instance, when Jesus said, "I will come and heal" the verb is "come", and "will" is just there to complete the sense in English.
In other words, you will probably need to know "I will…" what?
Jack is right.
Sermons based on seven "I wills" are basically roughly based on seven first-person future tense verbs that God utters, which are no different from other first-person future tense verbs that he utters.
In other words, there is no heightened, emphatic promise conveyed in the "I will" part of an English translation e.g. "I will come".
The I-will-ness, the fact that the term "I will" by itself does convey something in English, is not a feature of the original language.
If you still want to search for those "I wills", perhaps a search expression involving "I will" teamed with referent:God would work. Perhaps someone well-versed in the Logos 5 dataset searches can chime in here.
I confirm what Jack says is correct but would add that if you wanted to know how many times a particular version of the Bible says the expression "I will" you can simply search that version exactly like this "I will" (with quotes around the expression). Of course this will result in a large number of hits. For instance in the ESV 2,104 results in 1,635 verses. Of course you could look up every instance but I would suggest that you try to narrow down your search by trying to determine what you specifically want to accomplish.
Thanks guys. I will do the regular search and cull through all the results. I just thought there might be a faster or easier way - maybe God will open my eyes to something else while I do my research! Thanks for the help.
I confirm what Jack says is correct but would add that if you wanted to know how many times a particular version of the Bible says the expression "I will" you can simply search that version exactly like this "I will" (with quotes around the expression).
Bible search refinement:
"I will" -"Abraham said" -"she said" -"he said"
includes many verses where the speaker is not God:
One idea is saving search results to a Passage List then remove verses.
Keep Smiling [:)]
Very difficult, since "will" is normally a helper verb which requires another verb to complete the sense.
Since the sense tends to have future tense, clause search can find many verses:
Caveat: Logos 5.1 SR-1 on OS X 10.8.4 has a repeatable clause search crash after choosing verb-morph with Hebrew.
Anthony U,
Maybe a review of "Overcoming Life and Other Sermons" by D.L. Moody - Page 110 - "Seven 'I Wills' Of Christ" will help you with the "I Will...." what.
Thomas
