You can now use emojis to search the Bible on Bible Gateway

Following on from the success of the Emoji Bible, it's now possible to use more than 330 emojis to search the Bible on Bible Gateway, a popular Scripture website visited by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Stephen Smith, senior director of digital products at Bible Gateway, announced in a statement on Wednesday that the site would translate emojis into English and conduct a keyword search in celebration of World Emoji Day.

"It's important to note that we're not changing any words in the text of the Bible – we're simply letting you search using emoji that you type yourself," Smith said.

Searching for the 'love heart' emoji results in more than 700 results for the word 'heart'.

The 'crown' emoji offers 71 results, and the 'wine glass' more than 200.

The church building with a love heart above it returns 19 Bible passages about weddings.

In May, a new translation of the Bible was published using picture emoticons for the first time ever.

The 'Emoji Bible' was marketed as "Scripture for millenials".

Speaking to The Memo, the author of the book – known only as the smiling face with sunglasses emoji – said they want their version of Scripture to open up the Bible to new readers.

"What's amazing about emojis, and what's made them so successful, is that they're language-agnostic – they allow you to convey an idea to anyone, regardless of what language they speak," they said.

"A major goal of this whole process was to take a book that I think is very non-approachable to lay readers and try to make it more approachable by removing a lot of its density."