Wycliffe Associates Plans Secret Session to Help Christians Risking Their Lives to Translate the Bible
Wycliffe Associates, a ministry focused on Bible-translation work that recently suffered a terror attack on one of its officers where four workers were killed, has announced that it is scheduling a training session for Bible translators working in the most dangerous places for Christians on Earth.
"There is no place on Earth where God's Word is more urgently needed," Bruce Smith, president and CEO of Wycliffe Associates, said in a statement shared with The Christian Post Tuesday. "This is a place of terror, oppression, violence, death, and heartache. To be a Christian is to be a target. Yet the few Christians living there are pleading for Bibles to share secretly with the many, many people around them who are hungry for the truth."
Wycliffe Associates said that four of its workers were killed at an office in the Middle East in March, but did not reveal the exact location due to the dangers associated with the work.
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Two of the workers, killed by suspected Islamic radicals, reportedly died by gunshots, while the two other victims were beaten to death after laying on top of the lead translator to save his life.
"The remaining translation team has decided to re-double their efforts to translate, publish, and print God's Word for these eight language communities," Wycliffe Associates affirmed, following the attack.
The group has scheduled the first Mobilized Assistance Supporting Translation training session at an undisclosed location in order to help Bible translators working in areas that are under terrorist control and where Christians are being routed out.
The training sessions will use new translation strategies that could significantly shorten the time needed to translate the Gospel for the mother-tongue speakers in the region, with portions of the Bible available in weeks or months rather than years.
Smith told Fox News last month that despite the danger that comes with the work, the nonprofit will continue to operate abroad, rather than in the safety of its Orlando headquarters.
"Yes, there is a tremendous cost. But as Tertullian, an early Church father, said — the blood of martyrs are the seeds of the church," Smith said.
In order to help translators in hostile regions, Wycliffe Associates Scriptures for New Frontiers Fund also said it will be providing computer tablets with software, other technology and equipment, shelter, meals, and basic day-to-day support.
"God's Word will be placed in the hands — and the hearts — of people in multiple nations, nations I can't name because the risk is so great," Smith added. "Our response to the terror and tragedy is to flood the area with God's Word, in the language of the local people."
The goal is to facilitate MAST teams starting in projects in at least 500 additional languages in 2016, the group noted.
