It is hard to imagine a world in which we didn't have access to the Bible in our own language and the ability to read it for ourselves. But that is the reality for many people around the world to this day.
It wasn't until the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century that the average Christian began to have the Bible in their own language along with the education to be able to read it for themselves.
Luther and other reformers were convinced that the life giving words of the gospel was contained in the scriptures. Like the Apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy 3, they were convinced that God spoke to his people through his word and hearing God's voice was essential for the follower of Jesus,
'All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.'
Hence they embarked on a campaign to translate the Bible into the language of the people (rather than exclusively in Latin) and along with this was a movement of education so that the average person could read God's word for themselves. [Fascinatingly, the influence on education can still be seen across the world with higher levels of education and literacy in historically Protestant countries - have a look here.]
But this reformation work is still not complete. There are still billions of peoplearound the world who don't access to God's word because it hasn't yet been translated into their language. That doesn't include those who they cannot get their hands on a Bible because it is illegal or because they lack the education to read it for themselves - you can read more about this here.
There is still so much work to do to reach the nations with the good news of Jesus. That is why we're passionate about supporting our external mission parters as well as sharing the gospel here in Wellington.
Matthew & Felicity Bayliss are our mission partners who are working with Wycliffe on Bible translation. Matthew is using his linguistics training and IT skills to harness the processing power of computers to speed up the translation of the Bible into new languages.
Recently Matthew was interviewed for a podcast about his work. I can highly recommend it and you can listen to it here and access more podcasts in the series here.
Please be praying for our mission partners and if you would like to support Matthew's work with Wycliffe you can here. Please also be praying for our own witness here in Wellington as we continue to share the good news of Jesus to those who don't know him.
Grace & peace,
Andrew