All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.
2 Timothy 3:16
Every time you open the Bible App, you hope to find something from God’s Word that will speak into your life. But, what if instead, you saw this?
Sorry, no Bibles exist in your language.
If that seems hard to imagine, then you may not have heard: more than a billion people still don’t have a complete Bible in their language. Most languages don’t have a complete New Testament. More than 165 million people don’t have even one Bible verse in their language. Why is this so important to us?
…people need more than food to live—they need every word that the Lord has spoken.
Deuteronomy 8:3
If you missed our last opportunity to help…
We hope you’ve already been hearing about #BibleForEveryone, YouVersion’s translation initiative with ministry partners, where we identify strategic projects that could rapidly get Scripture to huge numbers of people with modest additional funding. Life.Church committed to match contributions from the global YouVersion Community (that’s you!) toward Bible translation, up to $1 million.1 So far, your generosity has already covered three quarters of our current project: helping churches in Gabon, Africa, translate the Gospel of Luke into three languages (Kota, Obamba, and Teke).2 Thank you!
…we love this project for so many reasons:
To get Scripture circulating quickly, each time they translate a new chapter, these local churches will release it as audio recordings and print booklets. When they complete the final chapter, they’ll compile everything into a single book — which we’ll also offer in the Bible App. And, with less than $200,000 to go, these Bible translators are more excited than ever to finish! We saved our favorite 280,000 reasons for last: the people who will finally have the opportunity to experience the same life-changing power of God’s Word that we already enjoy:
“…blessed are all who hear the word of God and put it into practice.”
Luke 11:28
Don’t miss out on this historic move of God.
Translating the Bible into another language used to take decades. But visionary organizations that make up the illumiNations movement now project that with enough funding, they could have the New Testament translated for 99.9 percent of the world’s population by the year 2033. Incredibly, they should also be able to get the rest of the Bible translated for 95 percent of the world within that same timeframe (and at least some portion of Scripture for everyone else).3
Bible history is happening right now, within your lifetime.
This isn’t just some vision for a distant future. During 2017 alone, Life.Church and YouVersion’s generous community together contributed more than $655,000. The four projects they funded provided Scripture to more than 1.17 million people, in Zambia, Tanzania, Australia and Southeast Asia!4 What will happen when every person on earth finally has the opportunity to experience the life-changing power of God’s Word?
Join us. And let’s finish this… together.
Pray, and ask God to continue accelerating the process of releasing His Word into every language. Ask Him to prepare the hearts of those who will be hearing about Him for the first time. And give. Then one day, you’ll have the great joy of standing before God’s throne and seeing people that your gift helped bring there:
…in front of me was a huge crowd of people. …so many that no one could count them. They came from every nation, tribe, people and language… They cried out in a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God!”
Revelation 7:9
Notes
1 All contributions received through the #BibleForEveryone campaign will be used exclusively for the purpose of Bible translation. Life.Church is contributing $1 million over the four-year period from 2017-2020. During each calendar year, Life.Church is contributing $250,000, spread across different, high-impact translation projects. As each project is completed, any remaining funds are then applied toward the next translation project, as selected by YouVersion and its partners. (See original blog post for full details.)
2 Blog post, “Don’t miss your chance to take part in this move of God.”
3 See illumiNations’ website for details.
4 Original blog posts: Zambia, Tanzania, Southeast Asia.