In Their Heart Language


If you're like me, one of the first things you did this morning was get out your Bible or your devotional or your Bible journal and spend some time in God's Word. Maybe you don't have a daily habit of reading God's Word, but if you are a Christian, chances are you have at least one copy (if not more) of the Bible in your house somewhere. Anyone who does not personally own a Bible in America can easily pick one up at any bookstore or thrift store, the latter often selling them for less than a dollar. And, of course, even without money, you can find a Bible in many public places, like hotels and hospital rooms, thanks to the efforts of Bible distributing groups like the Gideons. We are blessed to live in a time and place where God's Word is readily available to us, not only in printed hard copies, but also in various digital and electronic formats. But it was not always so.

A thousand years ago, most of the world was illiterate, and the only Bible readily available was in Latin, a language spoken only by the wealthy and the clergy. The average man had no concept of God or Christ other that what he was told by those in power during church services; the precious treasures of Scripture were deemed too difficult to understand for the average layperson, and any translation into the common language of the people was not only heavily condemned, but even destroyed, and the translators excommunicated, personally threatened or even killed.

Early translators of the Bible into English faced great persecution--John Wycliffe, one of the first to translate portions of the Bible into everyday English (1370s), was placed under house arrest, and though he died a peaceful death, the Roman Catholic church ordered his body dug up and burned 32 years later; and William Tyndale (responsible for the first New Testament printed in English) was burned at the stake in 1536 in Antwerp, Belgium. But the work of these brave men lived on in their writings and followers, and the cry for Bibles in the common languages of the people of Europe grew in vigor and zeal, throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. 


Martin Luther completed the German Bible in 1522; Miles Coverdale finished Tyndale's work with the Matthew Bible (the first complete English Bible) in 1536, and as the Protestant Reformation grew, other European countries soon followed suit: 

  • Old Belarussian--1519
  • Dutch--1526
  • French--1530
  • Czech--1549
  • Polish--1563
  • Spanish--1569
  • Slovene--1583
  • Welsh--1588
  • Lithuanian--1668

By the time of the great missionary movements of America and England in the 19th century, Bible translation was considered an essential part of a Christian missionary's work. Robert Morrison spent 25 of his 27-year ministry in China translating the first complete Chinese Bible, which is still in use today. Adoniram Judson, the first long-term missionary to Burma, made translating the Bible into Burmese a priority; his grammar and dictionary have been the basis of every Burmese one written since, and his Bible translation is still the most popular Bible in Burma today. Missionaries to Africa, Asia, and North and South America all followed their example, working to bring the people they evangelized God's Word in their own mother tongue. But Bible translation really moved up in speed with the work of a man named William Cameron Townsend.


Cameron Townsend was a missionary selling Spanish Bibles in Guatemala in 1917, but he soon discovered that most of the people he was trying to sell these Bibles to couldn't even read them because they didn't speak Spanish--they spoke Cakchiqel, a language that had never even been written down. Alarmed by the spiritual needs of these people, he decided to learn their language, create a Cakchiquel alphabet, and translate the Bible into their language. He completed the New Testament in 1931, but by then, his eyes had been opened to just how many more languages around the world still lacked a Bible in their own language, and he became committed to training others to reach those without even a written language and giving them a Bible in their heart language. In the 1930s, he started the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) in America to train others in Bible translation work, and then in 1942, he officially founded Wycliffe Bible Translators with the goal of reaching every language group in the world with the Word of God.

Since its foundation, Wycliffe Bible Translators and other similar organizations have worked tirelessly to reach the most unreached language groups in the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and in the last 75+ years, they have completed over 500 Bible translations! But there is still so much work left to do! To put it in perspective, let me share the following statistics from Wycliffe's website:

7,360 total languages in the world
Total world population: 7.8 billion people

Languages with Scripture
  • 3,415 languages with some Scripture – 7 billion people
  • 704 languages with a complete Bible – 5.7 billion people
  • 1,551 languages with a complete New Testament (some also have Old Testament portions) – 815

    million people
  • 1,160 languages with some translated Bible portions – 458 million people
Languages with no Scripture
  • 3,945 languages with no Scripture – 255 million people.
  • 738 languages have work in progress – 65.4 million people
  • 1,193 languages are not vital enough to plan translation work – 20.8 million people
  • 2,014 languages need translation (or preparatory work) to begin – 167 million people
Bible translation need
1.5 billion people, speaking 6,656 languages, do not have a full Bible in their first language.
167 million people, speaking 2,014 languages, still need translation work to begin!
  • Africa – 597 languages, 20 million people
  • Americas – 120 languages, 2.6 million people
  • Asia – 836 languages, 141 million people
  • Europe – 60 languages, 2.9 million people
  • Pacific – 401 languages, 0.44 million people
[Regional numbers corrected 13 October 2020. Data as of 1 October 2020.]

Bible translation in progress

2,731 languages in 167 countries with active translation or preparatory work begun – 6.2 billion people

You may be asking after reading all of this: "Why is this so important?" and "Why are you telling me all of this?" 

Imagine if you were a new Christian who wanted to learn more about God and the only Bible available to you was, say, in German. Or French. How much of God's Word would you be able to understand? How well do you think you would grow in your understanding and knowledge of the Christian life? As an unbeliever, how comfortable or interested would you be with a God Who only spoke in other people's languages but not in yours? To truly reach peoples' hearts, you have to speak in their heart language--the language they learned as a child and have thought and spoken their entire lives. This is why Bible translation is so important--interest and growth in a Christian life cannot happen effectively without it! 

And that is why I am so passionate about it. I love languages--playing with words, learning different ways of thinking and speaking--and I love God's Word. It is truly the most important book that I own (and I own quite a few books 😏), and I can think of nothing better than being a part of  a ministry that is committed to sharing something that I love and that has made such a difference in my own life with the rest of the world! 

Going and being personally involved in Bible translation (though long a dream of mine) is not where God has called me right now, but I can support the work in other ways. I can give money toward different translation projects that are active right now. I can tell others about the ministry with the hope that God will move on their hearts to become involved in some way as well. And, most importantly, I can pray:


so that one day, every person in the world will be able to read the Bible in their own language and understand just how much God really loves them. Just imagine that day!

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
                                                               Revelation 7:9-10

If you want to learn more about Bible translation and the various organizations involved in it, check out the following websites:










You can also join the Bibleless Peoples Prayer Project started by Wycliffe in 1982. Sign up and commit to pray for a Bibleless people group by name as often as you want. You'll receive periodic e-mail updates about your people group as language translation progresses among them.

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