FULL TRANSCRIPT of TBS Update

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Recorded on the Day

Outline

0:03:31 Opening Scripture Message

0:05:47 Sprinkling All Nations

0:09:00 Peaching As God's Method

0:11:05 Word Of God As Seed

0:13:17 Church's Role In Evangelism

0:14:54 Translation Issues For Muslims

0:18:03 Doctrinal Distortions Across Languages

0:20:09 English Bible Text Concerns

0:22:24 Why Accuracy Matters

0:23:29 TBS Work Overview

0:25:06 India Overview And Needs

0:27:55 Idolatry And Gospel Need

0:30:26 Persecution And Languages

0:33:19 Strategy: Hindi And Sister Tongues

9:35:41 Need For Accurate Hindi Bible

0:38:24 dia Trip Reports And Impact

Full Transcript 

Brian Preston SFGH Church Elder 00:00:01

I wish there were more here, but we are fishers of men, but trying to grab people off the street doesn't necessarily always work, does it Craig? Not always anyway. So, from that point of view, we do give you a warm welcome to our meeting tonight, and, we'll give a special warm welcome to Craig, who's been here before, and we've had good fellowship with him before. So, from that point of view, we'll have a couple of hymns and a prayer, and then I'll hand over to Craig to give us a reaction.

Brian Preston SFGH Church Elder 00:00:32

We'll have a report on the work of the Trinity Bible Society, and he'll pass on a word to us. Don't forget the book store. So, when it's finished, please come out and attempt what you want from the book store, but please pay for it. We don't want to go away. From that point of view, please help yourselves to what's there, because it's all good stuff. So, from that point of view... I'm going to sing my favourite hymn, which is number 559.

Brian Preston SFGH Church Elder 00:01:06

We'll have another hymn as long as we can. That will be a way to do it. 559, to God be the glory, great things he hath done. So lovely the word that he gave us. I think if there's anything at all, any word that I'm actually thinking of, it is great, it is great. God has done great things for us.

Brian Preston SFGH Church Elder 00:01:38

I love this hymn, and I love the person who wrote it, Fanny Crosby. I didn't know her, but she was blind. And she says here, I'm seeing things. And it's amazing, just people seeing a mind you didn't need to see physically. To God be the glory, great things he hath done. you have done, and if you can stand this thing after the introduction, that'd be good. It'll give you more room.

Brian Preston SFGH Church Elder 00:02:08

I'm going to ask John now if he'll open with a word of prayer and commend this to the Lord, because it's not our meeting, it's his meeting. Shaun. 

Shaun SFGH Church Leader 00:02:25

We'd just like to take a moment to bow our heads in prayer. Father, we thank you for those who have gathered together to listen to Craig give us a message this evening, and we ask for your blessings not only on the people in this room and on the meeting, but we ask for a blessing, a special blessing upon Craig. And we just pray, Lord, that the words that he delivers are words of wisdom and words that are uplifting and in praise.

Shaun SFGH Church Leader 00:02:56

of your name. And we thank you for the work the Trinitarian Bible, society is doing especially translating the gospel message into people's mother tongue so they can understand it more deeply and we thank you for that work Lord amen.

Brian Preston SFGH Church Elder 00:03:14

giving us both a word about what the trinitarian bible society and where it's doing it also passing on the word to us when it's got to the end.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:03:31

i do thank brian for the words of welcome it's a joy to meet you again and be able to share with you fresh updates on the work of the pbs a lot of drive to cover how many miles around the world through tonight but we're going to begin in the word of god our focus as a society is the word of god so we would, like to neglect that this evening, but I would just like to read to you from Isaiah.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:04:05

52, if you have your Bibles, you can turn with me please, Isaiah 52, reading from verse 13, Behold, my servant shall be prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled and be very high, as many were astounded at thee. His visage was so large, more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men. So shall he sprinkle many nations. The kings shall.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:04:37

shut their mouths at him, for that which had not been told them shall they see, and that which they had not heard shall they consider. Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground. He hath no form, nor coming. And when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with Christ.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:05:12

And we hate, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed. Amen. May the Lord bless the reading of his word. I have a couple of messages in mind to bring to you here tonight. I narrowed it down to two, so there will be one at the start and one at the end. There are two different verses that I want to impress upon you. But for the opening, the words of verse 15, where the prophet Isaiah says,

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:05:47

Of the Lord Jesus Christ, this is all about Christ, so shall he sprinkle many nations. Now, as a society, we have a motto. And our motto is, The word of God among all nations. all nations. Now some people think that motto's overly ambitious. They think it's unrealistic. They've even questioned whether it is biblical, whether we will reach all nations with the word of God. But we have to ask the question, like the Apostle Paul, what says Scripture?

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:06:19

What does the Bible say? It doesn't matter what I say, what we collectively agree. What does God say? Well, in the Bible, there are many prophecies, many promises, that the gospel will go out among all nations. And this is one of those promises, speaking of the sprinkling of the nations. Now, as the prophet Isaiah wrote to primarily a Jewish audience here, that word sprinkle would be very familiar to the Jews. They would think of the high priest being sprinkled with blood and with water. They would think of the high.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:06:54

priest being sprinkled with water. They would think of the ceremonially unclean being sprinkled with water. They would think of the... sprinkling of the mercy seat whenever the high priest entered into the holiest of holies. The Jews would hear that word sprinkle and they would say well that's our word. That's to do with our system and our ordinances and our covenantal relationship with God. So when they hear that word sprinkle it immediately turns them to God. But here the prophet uses that word sprinkle not to refer to.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:07:25

the Jews but to refer to the Gentiles. So shall he sprinkle many Gentile nations we could say. And this is just one of many Old Testament prophecies showing that the Lord Jesus Christ would be a saviour to the Jews and Gentiles. A couple of quick things to notice about this phrase. The sprinkling of the nations. First of all who will sprinkle the nations? It says so shall he sprinkle many nations. But who is the he?

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:07:56

Well the answer is the Lord Jesus Christ. He will, sprinkle the nations. And he will sprinkle the nations because he's worthy to sprinkle the nations. He came into this world. He took our sins upon himself. He shed his blood to reconcile us to God. He rose from the dead and he has purchased salvation for his church. So he has the power and ability to sprinkle the nations. But he also has the desire to.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:08:28

sprinkle the nations. And before his ascension, or during his ministry, sorry, the Lord Jesus said, the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. He told them of his ministry. This is what he would be doing. Seeking sinners, saving sinners. Has that finished? Because the Lord has ascended into heaven? No, of course not. He is still seeking, calling, and saving sinners.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:09:00

And he has the power to sprinkle as well. Before his ascension, he said, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Some people have this image of Christ that he's sat in heaven, completely lacking any power to do anything here on earth, and unable to move in the heart of a sinner, unable to cause the gospel to go into the truth. He says all power is given unto him. So who will sprinkle the nations?

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:09:31

The Lord Jesus Christ will sprinkle the nations. And of course, we can look at another, we can ask another question of this verse. I have to be careful for time here. We can ask the question, how will he sprinkle the nations? That's a good question. How will he reach the nations? Will he send out choirs? Will he send out entertainers? No, he will send out preachers.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:10:02

That's what the Lord will do. In the book of Revelation, John had that great vision. He saw an angel. And an angel had something in his hand. It was the word of God. And what was the angel going to do with that word of God? He was going to preach it. And who was he going to preach it to? We are told he was going to preach it to every nation. And that angel is a picture of the gospel preacher. And John in his heavenly vision saw that that angel, that preacher, was to go out amongst the nations.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:10:32

And that is a picture of the advancement of the church. Preachers going forth amongst the various nations. And of course that's what happened the day of Pentecost. Peter preached. Three thousand souls swept into the kingdom. From there the church expanded and grew out. And what was the accusation brought against the apostles? These men have turned the world upside down. And they didn't do it with money. And they didn't do it with politics, and they didn't do it with fame. They did it with the Word of God.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:11:04

They preached Christ. That's what they had, and that's what God used. The Lord promised that he would be with them. And it says at the end of Matthew, they went everywhere preaching the Word of the Lord. So that is how it has happened. And we can think of another question here. It says, socially sprinkled, many nations we have to sprinkle. It's the Lord Jesus Christ we have to hide. Now, is he going to sprinkle? He's going to use preaching.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:11:36

But what specifically is he going to use? He's not going to use the arguments of men. He's not going to use the amusing tales and anecdotes of men. He's going to use the Word of God. As the Apostle Paul says, Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. So the Word of God is the very seed. If God is going to use, we can think of the parable of the sword. And the seed is the word of God. It falls on different types of ground.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:12:08

And some falls in stony ground, some falls by the wayside, some among thorns. There's always a seed that falls in good ground. But here's the message of that parable. You're getting a lot of sermons at once here. Here's the message of that parable. If the seed isn't sown, there won't be a harvest. If that farmer sits with that bag of seed in his barn and does nothing with it, he's not going to have a harvest at the end of the year. And so, if we don't sow the seed of God's word, we can't expect a harvest.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:12:44

We can't just sit back and expect God to save those who have never heard. The Apostle Paul asked the question, how can they believe on him of whom they've not heard? It's a rhetorical question. It's trying to get people to see. They can't believe. in Jesus Christ if they've never heard of him? How can we expect them rationally to believe in Jesus as they've never heard of Jesus? They need to hear of Jesus, to believe in Jesus, and the instrument that God uses is his church, his people. He could have commissioned.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:13:16

angels to do evangelism. He could have given it to corporations, but he didn't. He gave it to the church. We are the instruments. We are the seed sowers, coming back to our reality. We are those responsible for the sprinkling of the nations. That's a very solemn task. We're not just told to sit down. We're told to go. Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every. So as we think upon the work of Bible translation, this is a ministry.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:14:00

That provides the word of God so that the Lord can raise up preachers. So the Lord can work in the souls of men through his word. Many people today, they don't believe in giving people Bibles anymore. They don't believe in handing out Gospels of John or Gospel tracts. They say we need more modern ways, we need more entertaining ways, more amusing ways. Well you can do that, but it's not what God has ordained. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. The psalmist says that the Lord has magnified his word above his name. So men might downplay and minimise and relegate the word of God, but God doesn't. He is magnified. So we should magnify through us.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:14:54

Well, that's sermon one, sermon two. We'll be coming a little later on. I'd like to move on now to the mountains of northern Pakistan. And in these mountains, there's several million people who live. They come from a number of different tribes and communities, but they all speak the same language. It's called the Hindko language. Now this language has its own history, and it has its own richness in the language as well.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:15:26

But this language has a very serious problem. They have the Quran translated for them. They've had it translated for many, many years. They've never had the Bible translated for them. There are Hindko believers, but they can't read the Bible in the Hindko language. They have to learn another language, Urdu or English, to be able to read the Bible. They got their hopes up earlier this year. They were very excited, because another organization, not us,

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:15:57

another society, they... He promised them to translate the four Gospels into the Hindu language, and they were foolish. But whenever they received the final draft of it, there were some serious problems. Their heart began to sink. Terms like Father and Son of God had been left out. And whenever they went back to this organisation and said,

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:16:29

Why have you taken out terms like Father and Son of God? The organisation replied, Well, we don't want to offend any Muslims. So we have edited the Trinitarian terms, the familial terms of Father and Son, so that we don't offend Muslims. And the Christians responded and they said, Well, you're worried about offending Muslims, but you've offended us.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:17:00

we don't have a Bible that accurately reflects the relationship between Father and Son. And they warned them against printing it, but they went ahead and printed it, and the Christians outrightly rejected it. How can you evangelize, communities and present Christ if you don't have a Bible that teaches the truth? How can you explain to people that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and then hand them a Bible that doesn't tell them that?

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:17:30

They will say, well you're lying because your Bible doesn't say that he's the Son of God. But there's also problems as well. How can you present Jesus Christ in his fullness and glory if you're not presenting him as the Son of God? We could even go further and say they're in danger of not just presenting another gospel, they're in danger of presenting another gospel. whenever they do things like this.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:18:03

Now, I would like to tell you that this is an isolated incident, but sadly it's not. This is a problem that stretches across many languages, many continents, and many countries. For example, the baptismal formula of baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is quite often changed. In one Arabic translation from 2008, they have it, baptizing in the name of God, so they don't have Father, they have God,

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:18:34

His Messiah, they don't have Son, because the Muslims, they are quite happy to reject, or quite happy to accept that Jesus is the Messiah, they have no issue with that, they have no issue with the term God, but they will not have Jesus Christ presented as the Son. It's the same in the Bengali translation, only they go further. They have Allah, His... Messiah and the Holy Spirit and these are prominent organizations that are doing this.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:19:08

and they are well known in evangelical circles as well. The Indonesian Bible Society rather than using the phrase son of God they use the phrase the son who comes from God. Now we can go into this at length but it's presenting the idea that Jesus Christ could have become the son either at creation or his conception or at his baptism.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:19:38

They present the idea that he could have become the son but that is wrong. That is why that word begotten is so important. That word begotten teaches us that Jesus Christ is the son of God from all eternity. To quote the hymn, not that we get our theology from the hymn but the hymn has the theology right from the Bible. The hymn is the son of God. Begotten, not created. There's big problems today. An evangelical church is teaching that Jesus Christ was created, or he became the Son.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:20:09

We, that cannot possibly be true. If that were true, then there's serious issues in the Trinity. But this isn't just a problem in some foreign languages. In the past 150 years, this has started to creep into our English Bibles as well. Well, since 1881, many Bibles have been translated, and verses and parts of verses have been taken out. Here's one example. I'm not trying to offend you. If you use one of these versions, I'm just making you aware of this.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:20:42

The references to the Trinity. The Father, the Word, that's the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost have been taken out from 1 John 5, verse 7, in many English Bibles. And many people are unaware of it. But because they may be being raised, reading the end. NIV or Goodyear's Bible, and they don't even know that these words are missing. But it's only since 1881 these verses have been taken out, and not just in 1 John 5-7, but in dozens of verses.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:21:14

References to the Trinity have been affected, and there's a larger problem with that as well. Well, why does all this matter? Well, it matters, dear friend, because all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. Every single word comes from God. Well, it's not just that God gives a general idea to the writer. He gives them every word. Now, some people say, well, it doesn't matter. Well, let's ask the question, does it matter to God? Does it matter to God if the word Father is taken out? Does it matter to God if the word Son is taken out?

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:21:47

I put to you that it does. God cares about His Word. In fact, He gives an explicit warning in Deuteronomy 4, verse 2. We're not to add any words to this book, but we're not to take away any words. Now, some people are saying, well we don't want to offend Muslims. Well, the Apostle Paul said the preaching of the cross is an offence to them who will not believe. It is not our duty to worry about who is or isn't going to be offended by the word of God. It is our duty very simply to translate it and let God deal with those issues.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:22:24

And perhaps with the truth God can do more than he can do with some Bibles that have been watered down. But it matters also, as I said a few moments ago, because all scripture leads us to Christ. The whole purpose of God giving us this book is to lead us to Christ, to believe upon him, to trust him, to serve him, to obey him. The whole purpose of the Bible is to show us Christ in his fullness and glory. So we're not to obscure it, we're not to hide it.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:22:54

We're to present Christ to these sinful people, to these... Well moving on to share with you some of the activities of the society. These are the main things that we're involved in. We translate the Bible, we publish the Bible, we distribute scripture, we promote faithful and accurate translations and we defend the doctrines of inspiration, inerrancy and infallibility.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:23:29

To mention translation. We currently have 92 translation projects ongoing. When I started with the society six and a half years ago, we had 44. The Lord has more than doubled our projects. I don't know if you would like your workload doubled in six and a half years. I can tell you there's quite a burden on the society at the moment. You can't double your amount of projects without doubling the amount of other work that you are doing.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:24:00

engaged in as well but as well as those 92 languages there's another 45 languages where we're looking to get projects going so we're not just doubling our workload in fact we're nearly tripling our workload if those 45 languages become full projects and dear friends we're going to have a mammoth task when i started um six years ago we were asking people to pray because there haven't really been any translators coming forward for a while we asked people to pray and the lord has multiplied that number greatly to the extent.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:24:34

of our bosses are starting to panic well are we going to have to start turning people away we don't want to have to do that you wouldn't want to have to turn people away from the church because there wasn't enough seats you would try to get some way to get them in well we're starting to wonder how how many more projects can we take on realistically so so do pray that the lord will understand and we'll see you next time, for the various, I'll not mention all 92 projects here, it will be a very long night if I do.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:25:06

There's two countries I want to leave with you for your prayers. The first one is India, and India is a massive country. It has the largest population, 1.4 billion people. It has the fifth largest economy. It's the seventh largest country by area. It is absolutely massive. And in terms of religion, most people are Hindu. About 8% of people. 13% are Muslim. Only about 5% profess to be Christians.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:25:38

There's some religions that began in India, such as Buddhism, Sikhism. In fact, Sikhism is really a branch of Hinduism. Quite often they will take perhaps their oldest son, or only son, or maybe even favourite son, and they would dedicate him to be a Sikh, and they would have that distinction of, from wearing the turban and so forth. I often, and not that it's similar really, but in the way that in biblical times.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:26:09

some children were dedicated to being Nazirite from the womb, like Samson and so forth. But anyway, in terms of religious sites, India has put up shrines everywhere. People are leaving out bowls with food in them to feed their god. What sort of god is that if they're dependent upon their creatures to feed them? And that food just gets eaten by the rats or the pigeons. Unless the pigeons, their god, it's a completely futile effort. But many in India are very proud.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:26:40

They believe that their culture is older than the Western culture. Therefore, it must be better. Therefore, their religion must be right. They see Christianity as a Western product. And the pride that's within them won't let them hear of the gospel, let alone believe in the Lord Jesus. There are many religious sites. One of them is the river Ganges. Now this river begins at the foot of the Himalayas and runs for 1500 miles throughout India. Absolutely massive. I was there in January and at the foot of the Himalayas the water is lovely and clean. It's beautiful. But the further you go down the river the worse it gets.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:27:23

This year is a special year for Hindus. They celebrate a festival and it's estimated that 700 to 800 million Hindus will go into that river, the river Ganges, for a spiritual cleansing. They hope that the water of that river will wash away their sin and reconcile them to God. And dear friends, surely that's heartbreaking for us. That there are 700 to 800 million people more in fact.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:27:55

Brilliant 32. Eternal hope in the water of a dirty river. Many will go to that river and die because of the pollution in it, especially further downstream. They're putting their hope in water. The Bible tells us there's only one thing that can wash away our sin. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the message we have and that is the message we need to get out to those who are lost in darkness and this sin of false religion. In terms of Christianity, they estimate about 5% of people would be Christian and that would be 73 million people. If that were true, there's more Christians in India than people in the United Kingdom, just to put it into perspective for you.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:28:40

But the reality is that around 2% would fall into the evangelical Christian category. The term Christian can be very broad. It can include Roman Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and others. But around 2% would be Christians. The reality is that around 2% would fall into the evangelical Christian category. The term Christian can be very broad. It can include Roman Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and others. An Indian has a big problem. Most Indians have never heard the gospel. Most Indians have never heard the name of Jesus Christ. We call it the unreached. Those who have never heard the good news of the gospel.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:29:19

We could say that 95% of Indians live in communities that are classed as unreached. That is, the amount of Christians there are so small, it would be impossible for them to evangelize the whole community. So there's a tremendous need in the land of India. Now the Lord has blessed down through the recent centuries. The father of modern missions, William Carey, went there in the late 1700s.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:29:50

And the Lord has blessed down through the recent centuries. The father of modern missions, William Carey, went there in the late 1700s. And the Lord has blessed down through the recent centuries. The father of modern missions, William Carey, went there in the late 1700s. And the Lord has blessed. There are churches growing and flourishing throughout India. The Lord is building his church there, but persecution is on the rise. The current president, President Modi, wants to meet India, a Hindu nation, and that has opened the floodgates of persecution on the church. Last year alone, 160 Christians martyred for being believers.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:30:26

More than 2,200 church buildings like this attacked or destroyed. Quite often during services, Hindu extremists will come and attack the church, break the windows, throw in fire, chase the Christians, and perhaps even kill them. More than 62,000 Christians forced to relocate. I met with Christian refugees in New Delhi. They were living in flats in New Delhi.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:30:57

They had lived in the north of India. And Hindus had come along, chased them out of their house, seized their home and seized their land, told them to go and live somewhere else. And they went to the police and complained. The police refused to do anything. In terms of languages, India has more than 780 languages. English is one of them. In fact, English is in many ways the unifying language. It is spoken from north to south. But in terms of indigenous languages, Hindi is the most widely known, primarily in the north, and it covers the largest geographical area.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:31:37

When the missionary William Carey went to India, he had a strategy to give the Indian people the word of God. Should the missionaries die or be put out, God's word would continue in the land of India. So he translated around 35 different languages for the Indian people. Sorry, scripture in those 35 languages. He also noticed that many of the Indian languages are very similar. Many of the words are shared. So, for example, a Hindi speaker and an Urdu speaker can converse at a very basic level.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:32:12

They share similar vocabulary and grammar as well. So, he categorized the languages and found that one Indian language can be easily translated into another Indian language. And if you ever meet Indian people, you can ask them how many languages they speak. And nobody speaks seven different languages. In fact, I was at a meeting in Carlisle earlier this week. And there was an Indian student over studying at the university. And I asked her afterwards, how many languages do you speak?

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:32:43

And she says, five, six if you include English. Of course, we do. So, she speaks six different languages. And she says, many of the languages, as I have said on Tuesday night, are so closely connected, it's not hard to learn. another one, not like us having to learn French or German or Spanish, but we are seeking to follow the pattern of Kerry, our mission for India is to give them the word of God. And we are following his strategy of translating in language groups. So Hindi, for example,

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:33:19

we are doing a project in Hindi, we would consider it our main project, but we are also translating at the same time into some of the connected languages for Hindi. So far we have translated in John chapter 1 into 14 of the sister languages of Hindi. And it was very easily done, not by me, but by our Indian translators. So these are some of the closely connected groups. Oh, and we estimate, so Hindi, maybe on to the next slide, Hindi.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:33:52

has 609 million speakers, the third most connected. So Hindi has 609 million speakers, the third most spoken language in the world. We estimate that... When we get our Hindi Bible completed, it can be translated into 200 languages. And if we can get that translated into those 200 languages, that will give us the potential to reach 1.1 billion people. That's 80% of India's population. Now, some might say, well, that's a bit of an unrealistic dream or ambition. It's not. We're already working on it. In the years to come, if you continue to follow our work, you will hear of these projects flooding off the printing press.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:34:36

Brian might even be at a printer. He's already seen some of our work at a printer. You might see some other of our work at a printer in years to come, because we are committed to this. So, Hindi has been influenced. By English, they've adopted some of our English words, and we've also adopted some of our Hindi words. You might not realize it, but you know a little Hindi, boys and girls. I'm not sure if you do. You know some Hindi words. So, do you know words like shampoo, and bungalow, jungle, guru, avatar?

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:35:08

Those are some Hindi words, so there you go. You've learnt some Hindi words here tonight, so you can impress your family and friends with that. So we've adopted some of their words as well. This highlights for you the vastness of our project. 24 different languages that are up there. You might say there's only 23 languages there, but some of the languages, like Punjabi, have an Eastern and a Western, so there are two different languages that we are working on.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:35:40

But sticking with the Hindi, I don't want to overwhelm you with all the names of the different languages here tonight. There's a real need for an accurate Hindi Bible. They do have the Bible in them, they have it from the days of William Carey, but the modern Hindi Bibles are suffering from some of those problems. Subtitles by Subtitle Workshop, And the Indian people would ask me, very courteously, why are you giving us another Hindi Bible? We have the Bible in Hindi. So what I would do is I would take them to the Word of God. And I would ask them to open their Bible and read to me from John 6, 69. Now the best of their translations is the Hindi Old Version, the Old Bay. And they would read to me and translate it into English.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:36:25

We have come to know ye are the Holy One of God. I would say, well, let me read to you from my Bible, which is 400 years old, but the text of my Bible can be traced all the way back to the first century. And I can show you that can be traced all the way back to the first century. And I would read to them from my Authorized Version, where it says, we believe and are sure that thou art not Christ, the Son of the Living God. And they would say, well, how come yours says Son of God and mine says Holy One of God?

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:36:55

Well, I would explain to them when Henry Martin, William. Perry and others translated the Bible into Hindi. It had Son of God. It had that Christ. But in the last hundred years, men took those words out of your Bible whenever they produced the old version and so forth. So what we are doing is putting these words back in. These words that men have taken out, we're putting back in for you. To make it the most accurate and reliable. And then another thing I would do, I would read to them from 1 John 5.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:37:32

7 and 8 and I would read to them of the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost. And I would ask them to follow along with their Bible and then they would always say stop. Why doesn't our Bible say the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost? Why don't we have that? And in fact they would quite often say yours makes more sense because without the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost, without the whole of verse 7 really there, it doesn't make any sense. It makes sense with the words that you have. I said, that's because they're supposed to be in it. We would go through several other verses. And then they would always say, sir, when will our new Bible be ready? When will you have our new Hindi Bible? So I was there in January to help promote. We had finished the Gospel of John, so we printed it. We're nearly finished the New Testament, so we'll be getting ready to promote that in India.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:38:23

So in the three weeks I was there, this is just a snapshot of what we did in the three weeks. We held pastor's conferences. We visited Bible colleges. We held a youth conference. And in total, more than 1,500 people were introduced to the work of the TBS. The Delhi Bible Institute was started 70 years ago by a man from Northern Ireland. They get everywhere. And he started the Delhi Bible Institute.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:38:56

And they now have 13 staffers. cross the north of india preaching the gospel and for the training of students and that was 70 years ago one man went to india and started sowing the seed and look today at what the lord is doing he could have sat in comfort in northern ireland throwing us potatoes or whatever you can do but the lord called him to india and the lord is and we were there for their 70th anniversary and many of the pastors who went to college came back more than 500 of them for a teaching.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:39:30

conference so it's phenomenal to see the growth of that institution but they receive scripture from us and they're very interested in the many different projects that we have ongoing, we visited the bible college i was invited to address the students and the faculty and there were more than 120 people at that meeting these are some just some of the pastors conferences, and the youth conference with more than 70 young people come out for a whole day of me, sermons. Each of us were given an hour each to preach, so the young people had a full.

Craig Dennison, TBS 00:40:05

day of messages and loads of questions at the end. And at this conference, we were told there would be 200 people. We thought, that's fantastic. We've never been there before. They've never heard of us. There ended up being 330 people. They had to get a lorry to deliver more seats, but what a great problem to have. And it's the same in some of the other places. We had a great amount of people. At this conference, they were expecting 100 people.

Article recorded by Shaun Fereday, Prison Chaplain (Sessional) and Leader @SFGH Church