God's Book

I recently had the privilege of sharing about our ministry with a class of high school students at the Christian school I attended. I asked them when they thought the Bible was first translated into English, and as it was my very first time sharing about Bible translation with a group of ninth graders, I was surprised at the range of answers they gave. One guessed in the 1800s, another in the 1900s; one or two may have guessed the 1500s. They were surprised to learn that John Wycliffe was the first person to translate the Bible into common English and that he did so in the year 1384. That was about 630 years ago and several decades before Gutenberg invented the printing press, so every copy had to be written by hand! I remember learning about John Wycliffe in my high school history classes, but the truth is I was probably more concerned about what I was having for lunch that day than the fact that John Wycliffe was the main precursor of the Protestant Reformation. Had I known that one day I would be employed with an organization named after him, perhaps I would have taken a little more notice. :) Wycliffe was allowed to die of natural causes, but years after his death his bones were dug up and burned because of his heretical belief that God's Word was for the common man. In 1536, William Tyndale was strangled and then burned at the stake for translating the New Testament into English. His dying prayer was, "Lord, open the king of England's eyes!" Two years later, the king of England made Tyndale's Bible widely available to the common man.


It's important to realize that we English speakers haven't always had the Bible in our language. It's tempting to take it for granted because if one version doesn't seem contemporary enough for our liking, we have dozens (if not hundreds) of other versions in our language to choose from. We don't have any trouble finding a Bible we can clearly understand because we have a feast of versions. However, while we enjoy a smorgasbord of Bibles in our language, about a quarter of the language groups in the world are starving for God's Word. Currently there are about 1800 language groups that don't have a single verse of Scripture in their language. That's close to 180 million people with zero access to the Bible.


There was a missionary named Marilyn translating the Bible in a small village in Papua New Guinea. One day she had visitors from a distant village. They came because several of them were sick and they had heard there was medicine in this village. The headman with this visiting group began to notice that this village was different from any village he had known. There was a school. Children and adults were learning to read and write in their language. He saw a big church where everyone worshiped and they didn’t seemed worried about any ancestral spirits. The villagers told him it was all the result of having God’s Book. Before he left, the headman went to Marilyn the missionary and asked her to come to their village and give them God’s Book. Marilyn said she wished she could, but she still had so much work to do where she was. The headman said, “Then someone else can come and give us God’s Book.” Marilyn said that was possible, but there were still hundreds of languages like his in Papua New Guinea, all still waiting for translations of the Bible. So the headman asked if she could at least come visit his village soon. Marilyn said “Yes, I’ll try.” The Christians in Marilyn’s village wouldn’t let her forget her promise, and within a short time they organized an expedition to visit this other village. As they arrived, one of the first things Marilyn noticed was a new building in the center of the village. She was curious about it.

The headman said, “Oh that’s God’s house.”

Marilyn said, “God’s house! Has a missionary arrived here?”

“No, no missionary has come.”

“Well is there a pastor coming through here?”

“No, nobody tells us about God.”

“Then how is it that you have built a church?”

“We believe someday soon someone will come and give us God’s Book. We want to be ready. We are just waiting.”

Not all people are waiting so eagerly for God's Book. There will be great hostility and opposition in many places around the world as strongholds are broken and the Light pierces the darkness. But as we each do the part God has called us to in Bible translation, we can trust that He is preparing hearts and nations. Bible translation is about the glory of God among the nations. May the Nations Praise You, O God! (video)