В Иране запущена масштабная программа перевода Библии на 20 забытых языков

Iran (MNN) — For many ethnic languages in Iran, Bible translation projects are on the cusp of breakthrough. The prayers and support of the global Church can help push them across the line. Transform Iran has already completed a New Testament audio dramatization for the Gilaki people of northern Iran, and the Old Testament is in progress. Already it has been helping to point people to faith in Jesus. “It’s really, really critical to be speaking to people in the language that they connect with,” says Lana Silk with Transform Iran. She explains that for many Iranians, the national language (Farsi) represents oppression, control, and subjugation. This creates walls in many people’s minds to any Scripture or other resources in that language. It’s critical for the Bible to reach Iran’s ethnic languages, as Silk points out. Iran is often referred to as the fastest-growing church in the world. However, there’s a footnote about that statement. “That sort of awakening and openness to the gospel is happening almost exclusively in the Farsi-speaking or Persian-speaking part of Iran, and that is less than half of Iran’s population,” she says. “We have 39-plus different languages — depends how you count them — from maybe more than 79 different people groups. These people, these languages, still don’t have the Word of God in their language. A handful do, but the majority don’t. “And these people groups that don’t have Bibles in their language are effectively completely unreached and still quite closed to a Persian language evangelistic effort.” This is why Transform Iran’s network has begun gathering translation teams for about 20 other ethnic languages. These men and women are native speakers who will create authentic content, despite the great personal risk. “We’ve had people arrested. We’ve had people who we still haven’t had word [from] that are unaccounted for. There is a serious cost to being engaged in this kind of activity,” Silk says. “We need our Western brothers and sisters to be praying for us and with us as God starts to use these people to break new ground and penetrate real, dark places with the light of Jesus Christ.” Find your place in the story! Prayer is the first step. “Pray that there would be blind eyes and deaf ears [in the government] to what the Lord is doing, so that the Church that is being built will continue to be built and be built strong,” says Silk. “Pray for visionary partners to join us on this mission.” Financial partnership is a much-needed next step. Connect with Transform Iran at their website to learn more. “We could go ahead and get active and translate at least the New Testament into these [20] languages,” says Silk. “Literally the only limiting factor now is someone coming alongside us and saying, ‘I have vision for this. Let me fund it.’” Header photo is a representative stock photo from Markazi Province, Iran, courtesy of Javad Esmaeili via Unsplash.