Examples of Search Queries
This page is designed to give you some examples of how you can use the powerful search engine on this site to find the information you are looking for. Remember that the engine indexes all the information on the site - in site pages, in sermon titles and descriptions, in preaching notes and all the documents that have been uploaded!
The text that appears in blue below is what should be typed into the search box at the top left of the web site page in order to conduct the indicated search.
Simple Search
Type any word into the search box and hit the "Enter" key. The engine will find all the instances of that word that are on the site.
Multiple Word Search
Type words into the search box, separated by spaces. For example, providence redemption. This finds all entries that have either "providence" or "redemption" in them.
Phrase Search
Type a phrase in quote marks into the search box. For example, "Our Father" will find all the entries that have the phrase, "Our Father" in them.
Wildcard Search
You can replace any single character in a word with "?" and any group of characters with "*". For example:
- searching for provide? would find all the instances on the site of "provides", "provided", "provider" (note that you can use several "?" characters in a search word - e.g. ?ai?).
- searching for provide* would find all of these but in addition would find "providence", "provident", "providential" etc. The "*" character can be used at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a search word.
Logical Operator Search
You can include the terms, "AND", "OR" and "NOT" in your searches as follows:
- searching for providence AND sovereignty finds all the entries on the site that contain both of these words
- searching for providence OR sovereignty finds all the entries on the site that contain either of these words
- searching for providence NOT sovereignty finds all the entries on the site that contain the word, "providence" but not the word, "sovereignty".
You can string any number of these operators together. For example:
- justification AND sanctification AND redemption
- justification OR sanctification OR redemption
Nested Logical Operator Searches
You can use combinations of the logical operators, but will need to use parentheses to make sure the site will understand what you are looking for. For example:
- searching for (providence AND sovereignty) NOT sanctification will search for all the entries that contain both the words, "providence" and "sovereignty", but not the word, "sanctification".
Logical Operator Searches with Wildcards
Combining the ideas we have seen so far, you could search for (provide* AND sovereign*) NOT sanctif*
Date Searching
Dates are stored in the web site in the following format - YYYY-MM-DD. YYYY indicates the full year reference (i.e. 2008 and not just 08). MM is the month number (January is 01, February is 02, etc). DD is the date number (dates up to the 9th of the month must have a leading zero - 01, 02 etc).
When you want to search for material with specific dates on the site, you can use this date format. You can also use the wildcard characters within the format, as we will see below.
Suppose you wanted to search for all the entries from the year 2008 that contained the words "providence" and "sovereignty". The following search entry would give that result - providence AND sovereignty AND 2008-??-??
To narrow the search to June of 2008, change the final term to 2008-06-??
Searching for Specific Types of Information
Title
You can search for sermons and other items on the site that have words or phrases in their titles. For example: title:salvation will find any sermon with the word "salvation" in the title. Likewise, title:"God's salvation" will search for items with "God's salvation" in the title.
Series
You can search for sermons and other items on the site that are in series that contain certain words or phrases. For example: series:redemption will find any entries that are contained in a series with "redemption" in the title. So if you wanted to see all the messages preached in June 2009 from our series on the history of redemption in the Scriptures, you would enter series:redemption AND 2009-06-??
Categories
You can limit your searches to find only those items that fall into one of the major categories of information on the site (e.g. Morning Sermon, Evening Sermon, Discipleship Class). For example, you can search for all the morning sermons that dealt with justification in 2006 with the following search text: justification AND category:"Morning Sermon" AND 2006-??-??
Conclusion
As you can see from the above, it is possible to construct some very precise and detailed searches for information on our site - this should lead you quickly to information that is exactly what you are looking for.
There are some other features of the search engine that you may wish to use from time to time - the ability to search for all articles that contain one word within a given proximity to another word, for example. Click on the more information link on the main search page to find out more. You get to this page by clicking on the "Search" submenu item on the Home page.
