The Beginning

AudioVerse began in 2005 as an idea by Tim Arakawa and Curtis Farnham, both graduate students at the time. It was spurred by increasing requests for sermon recordings from various ministries with which Tim and Curtis had been involved, including Advent HOPE Sabbath School, Restoration Ministry, and GYC Southwest.

They were excited about this idea not only because it would fulfill the immediate need — and make less work producing CDs! — but because they saw that these messages of hope, love, and the soon return of Jesus Christ could be a blessing to people worldwide who were seeking knowledge and wisdom about God.

Curtis put the idea into action and quickly began developing a sermon website. A contest was held at Advent HOPE Sabbath School to choose the name, during which over 100 names were submitted. "AudioVerse" was the winner, and the AudioVerse.org website was launched on October 22, 2005 — 161 years to the day after the Great Disappointment of 1844, and the birth of the Adventist movement.

Since that humble beginning, God demonstrated His providential leading many times. The initial bandwidth was donated by a friend of the ministry who operated his own Internet service provider — crucial in meeting the traffic generated early on. Later, an unsolicited donation enabled a full upgrade of the server infrastructure. Tremendous partnerships have also been developed with ministries like ASI, AMEN, and GYC.

Website traffic has grown tremendously. Now hundreds of thousands of messages are downloaded and listened to every month! The people accessing these messages come from over 230 countries from all corners of the world — including many closed or developing countries in the 10/40 window such as nations across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

As the website has grown, we have had the opportunity to feature recordings in languages beyond English. In an effort to reach as many people as possible, messages are now available in 7 languages and counting — with more to come.