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In some areas in the Middle East, it remains a dangerous place to be a Christian. Worse still, there is heartbreaking evidence that anti-Christian persecution is growing more intense all the time.
Yet we can rejoice that God is at work in miraculous ways, opening hearts to know Him, to proclaim Him, and to translate His Word so that all may know! In fact, God is going to supernatural lengths to reach lost multitudes with the truth, including a believer I’ll call Amira to protect her identity from those who would beat, exile, imprison her, or worse.
Amira’s transformation by Christ began years ago with a dream in which God told her that she would become a follower of Christ. She didn’t believe it, of course. But the day came when she heard the Good News and was so moved that she committed her life to Jesus Christ.
Her faith and her hunger for God’s Word were so strong that Amira began working with our Bible translation partners, becoming the project leader so that others could come to know Jesus as well.
Her team works in secret, like all the other underground churches and translation teams we work with in volatile regions. Here, Christians must be ever alert because they truly risk all to translate God’s Word for their people.
It’s worth the risk, they say, to finally have the Scriptures in their own heart language. It’s an answered prayer for them . . . sometimes an answer to the prayers of generations of isolated believers.
We pray constantly for the safety and protection of our faithful translation partners because sometimes the worst that can happen, does.
So when we received a message a couple of weeks ago about Amira, our beloved sister in Christ and the project leader of a secret Bible translation project, we were devastated . . .
Amira, a Christian, was in court. In the Middle East.
Had Amira been arrested? Discovered to be a Christian? Had she been found with newly translated Scripture in hand? Had she dared to share her faith with someone who then turned her in? Were other translators arrested or at risk of exposure? Was our translation project shut down?
We didn’t know anything except that Amira was in court. So we prayed and waited to hear more because a Christian being hauled into court in the Middle East will rarely have a good outcome.
FACT: Amira lives in a place where it’s against the law to follow Jesus . . . where owning a Bible makes you a target . . . where authorities are always circling, always watching, always a threat, for Christians.
This is what Christians face every day around the world in regions that are hostile to the faithful. Amira has been released and is back at work translating God’s Word into a language where there is none . . . but she needs our prayers and ongoing support.
Please pray that God will protect and encourage believers in hostile lands and that He will shower His blessings on the translation projects that will bring His light and love into the darkness, forever changing entire villages.
And please give as generously as you can to provide the tools, training, and technology—like computers and tablets loaded with translation software . . . a satellite uplink that gets around control of the internet by hostile authorities . . . a safe haven where translators can receive training and do their work undetected.
Your generous gift will help provide all of this and more. Thank you for giving and for sharing this powerful story with other believers who need to know how God is at work in the Middle East, helping national Bible translators as they work in secret to see the Scriptures in the language of their heart.
