Austin-Sparks.Net
was created by a husband and wife
team in September 2001 in
Wellington, New Zealand, with the
intention of making available the
complete works of Theodore
Austin-Sparks on the internet. There are
others who also make the works of T.
Austin-Sparks available, including
Emmanuel Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma
and the Golden Candlestick Trust in
the Netherlands. Austin-Sparks.Net
is not affiliated with these other
groups. Nevertheless, we co-ordinate
our work with them to ensure that T.
Austin-Sparks material continues to
be available through a range of
media to the entire world.
Austin-Sparks.Net makes the works of
T. Austin-Sparks available in a
range of electronic forms. This
includes copies of the original A
Witness and A Testimony
magazines in Searchable PDF format.
Most of the original published
material by T. Austin-Sparks from
the magazines is also now available
in HTML format on the website.
E-books in ePub and mobi formats are
available for reading on portable
readers from the website as well as
on iTunes and Amazon.com. Please
note that on Amazon.com we are
forced to charge a minimum fee of US
99 cents each (from which
Austin-Sparks.Net receive a royalty
of 35%) as they do not allow us to
publish titles free of charge. To offset
this, in the description section of
each book we have drawn
attention to the fact that the
book can be downloaded for free from
Austin-Sparks.Net. We also
have over 340 audio messages
available in MP3 format.
While we are physically in New
Zealand, due to the majority
of website traffic being from the
USA, the website is hosted
on a server in Florida, USA.
We continue to add articles and
books from the A Witness
and A Testimony magazines to
the website, along with previously
unpublished works of T.
Austin-Sparks sourced from those who
have access to his original
documents. These have been
transcribed from handwritten or
typewritten notes, or from audio
messages. This process is an ongoing
work. Two articles or chapters of
books are added to the website each
week.
Our approach to editing is straight
forward. We endeavour to provide a
duplicate of the original text
wherever possible. Our
"editing" on the website consists
only of correcting punctuation and
misspelled words, translating Roman
numerals (some folk can't read
them), breaking long paragraphs or
sentences into more than one, and on
rare occasions inserting small words
if they are obviously missing (such
as "the", "and", "in", "is"). If a word
is not clear in the original and we
have to guess, we put these words in
[square] brackets so that it is
clear it is an
addition/interpretation by us. Some more
recent publications are in American
English, but where the original was
in British English, the British form
of spelling and punctuation is
retained as this was what Mr
Austin-Sparks requested. When the
website first began, words in
italics were changed to capitals due
to italics not showing up in email
at the time. We plan to change these
back to italics eventually.
Where multiple versions of a work
exist, we prioritise making
available the final version of a
work that was edited by T.
Austin-Sparks himself. As time
allows, other earlier versions of
the material will also be made
available. We will only use material
edited by other parties when the
originals are not available to us.
Where possible we have sourced
material edited directly by Mr
Austin-Sparks himself. Where only
secondary sources are available, the
source is referenced. All messages
that say "from unpublished
manuscripts" are from the Golden
Candlestick Trust in the Netherlands
and are edited by them before being
sent to us. The nature of the
material they have is in manuscript
form, and therefore often need
minimal editing/correcting by them
and us, just to make them readable.
The Daily Open Windows messages are
an exception as they are excerpts
that we took from a wide range of T.
Austin-Sparks works. The excerpts
are unedited, but the selected Bible
verses (from various translations)
have been included by us to
accompany the excerpts. The
selection of many of these verses
were made by Austin-Sparks.Net and
not by T. Austin-Sparks.
The HTML versions of the A
Witness and A Testimony magazines
in
the period from 1968 to 1972 and all
eighteen volumes of the Toward the
Mark magazines on the website were
prepared by Paul Redin.
Dating of works on the website takes
the following approach:
- Where a work has been
published in written form, the
date of publication of the first
chapter (if known) is used.
- Audio is dated (if known) by
the date the audio was first
recorded.
- Previously unpublished works
are dated by the date that the
work was given in spoken form if
this date is known, otherwise it
is dated by the date the work
was first published.
Translated versions on the
associated foreign language websites
at Austin-Sparks.Net are the
responsibility of the individual
translators. We are thankful for
their tireless and unpaid work in
bringing these translations to the
website for people whose first
language is not English. Enquiries
regarding translated works should be
made to the email address provided
on each of these language sites.
We respect the privacy of our
website visitors. The server
collects basic information on all
visitors to the website, as with all
webservers. This includes your
IP number, the country in which you
accessed the website, the details of
the browser you are using, and
records the date and time of all
pages that you accessed on the
website. This information is
aggregated into a statistical report
of all visitors to the website
available only to the operators of
Austin-Sparks.Net. A cookie may also
be used to record whether you are
using a mobile browser, so as to
prevent issues when accessing the
mobile version of the website and
returning to the main website. Email
addresses which are subscribed to
the email lists are not shared with
anybody.
We never ask for funds. We are one
couple with no staff, one of us
works full time on the website, the
other works in full time employment
through which God has graciously
provided for the costs of the
website over the years along with
appreciative readers who have
contributed without any
encouragement from us. The website
is both a Witness and a Testimony to
God's abundant provision and we are
very grateful witnesses of this! As
TAS wrote: "God only takes
responsibility to supply and to
carry on that which is essentially
heavenly, and in the measure in
which a thing is heavenly, and only
in that measure (but surely
in that measure), God takes
responsibility for it. If it is in
any way linked with this world,
becoming a part of this world
system, related to this earth, it
has got to take responsibility for
itself to carry its own weight, to
find its own resources, to see its
own way through... Only that which
the Father is doing can carry His
resource."
We continue to witness the truth of
this and delight in our Father's
faithfulness! We have always
considered this to be His work and
not ours. While we offer the
messages on the website free of
charge, we do ask that you give the
messages freely to others without
making any changes to them, in
accordance with Mr Austin-Sparks
wishes as stated in this statement
on each page of the website:
In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks'
wishes that what was freely
received should be freely given
and not sold for profit, and that
his messages be reproduced word
for word, we ask if you choose to
share these messages with others,
to please respect his wishes and
offer them freely - free of any
changes, free of any charge
(except necessary distribution
costs) and with this statement
included.
Before we began this
website, we sought, and received,
permission from those we had
received the books from (Emmanuel
Church) to publish them on the
internet. The advice we have
consistently received since then
from those that were close to the
work at Honor Oak was that Mr
Austin-Sparks intended that his
works be made widely available to
all, but that they should never be
changed. He was adamant that his
messages be reproduced word for
word. His main reason for not
wanting his material to be copyright
seems to have been so that they
could be freely copied and freely
distributed. He wrote,
"It has always been our
desire to make the ministry
through this little medium
available to
ALL of
the Lord's people; not regarding
it as our personal property.
'Freely ye have received, freely
give' has been our principle."
The costs of the magazine were
covered by unsolicited gifts from
appreciative readers.
Please note that all of Mr
Austin-Sparks messages are covered
by moral rights under the Berne
Convention. For more information on
this, please visit the page on Copyright
and Moral Rights. Please note
that this website and its logo are
also copyright and may not be copied
and used elsewhere without
permission.
Austin-Sparks.Net
7 August, 2012
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