Hope in harrowing times
As the world worries over the horrific events in Israel and mullahs call for global jihad, a hopeful fact remains. The more Islamists promote jihad, the more average Muslims are open to the gospel.
In a recent interview with Life Today TV, Transform Iran founder and unfoldingWord Whole Bible Whole Nation partner Lazarus Yeghnazar illustrated the point. “In the time of the Shah, the economy was flourishing, and nobody was interested in the gospel. Nobody came to know Christ. We prayed and fasted, and in a good harvest year, one or two Muslims would come to Christ. Forty-three years ago, Ayatollah Khomeini came and gave an infusion of true Islam, and within a year or two, hundreds started coming to churches.” Since that time, hundreds of thousands of Iranians have become Christians! Today, eighty-eight million people still remain unreached in Iran. Transform Iran is translating God’s Word for the more than 40 million people speaking 39 Iranian languages that still don’t have a Bible. This will impact Iran like nothing else in all of history.
Pastor Tut, Director of unfoldingWord’s Sudanese Bible translation partner, witnessed the same phenomenon. The more violent jihadists waged war against their fellow citizens, the more Sudanese hearts opened to the gospel. Tut leads a team that is making the scriptures available to 133 people groups totaling more than 44 million people.
Matthew* leads a small Middle Eastern Bible society that is translating unfoldingWord’s suite of Bible translation tools into Modern Standard Arabic, a strategic Gateway Language to hundreds of millions of Middle Eastern people. He explains, “The situation in the Middle East reported in the media is not the whole reality.” Muslims are often excited to learn that the Bible is available for them to read in Arabic.
“Imagine,” says Matthew, “these people are our neighbors, but they didn’t know the Bible is available in their language!” He looks forward to the day when Church-Centric Bible translation is possible for all the languages connected to Modern Standard Arabic. He believes deeply in the partnership with unfoldingWord. “We can do much more together than we can do individually. One plus one doesn’t equal two. One plus one equals three. We want to talk to the people’s hearts, and the right way to talk to their hearts is to talk their heart language.”
Hope remains in dark times. As Luke reported the first persecution in Acts 8, “Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.” The more Islamists perpetrate jihad, the more the average Muslim is open to the gospel. The greatest thing we can do is give Scripture to them in the language they know best.
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