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Link to Noll’s article: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/may/worldwithoutkjv.html?start=1

Shorter version of Clive’s story: Clive’sTestimonyBrief

A small group leader shares why she has been blessed by the Plain-Talk Translation: Karolina

Link to all our videos

And this is a neat little devotional video sent by a friend: Treasure: Christ in Us

Pronunciation key:

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Stubborn Saxon Seed Sower

Gottlob Bruckner of Germany and Indonesia

The greatest of all missionaries, Paul of Tarsus, once wrote: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (1Cor. 3:6)

This is the story of a missionary who planted seed. He was a stubborn Saxon from Germany who never knew when to quit.

Gottlob Bruckner was born in 1783. He was one of six sons of a farmer in the Saxon village of Linda. His very name tells of his parents’ faith, for “Gottlob” means “Praise God” in German. Often young Gottlob’s father sang hymns with his boys. In the evenings he read to them from Christian books.

When he was twenty, Gottlob Bruckner left home to seek his fortune. His father wept to see him go. “Remember Jesus Christ, who is risen from the dead!” Gottlob’s father reminded him.

Gottlob Bruckner had no money for easy travel. He walked the road northward for eight days till he came to Berlin.

As he met other young workingmen in the city, Gottlob began to doubt what he had been taught from the Bible. But he also met a preacher whose sermons made him think and pray. For the first time he became a follower of Jesus Christ on his own, not because of what his parents believed.

The Berlin pastor often read aloud reports from William Carey. Carey had once been an ordinary craftsman like young Gottlob Bruckner. Gottlob was still a boy plowing his father’s fields in Saxony when Carey the cobbler had left England to go as a missionary to India. For seven long years he had told the good news there before even one person would believe. Now reports reaching Berlin told of many Christians in India.

A voice deep inside Gottlob Bruckner seemed to say, “You must be a missionary, too.” His friend and pastor directed a missionary training school. That was a good thing because Gottlob probably could not have enrolled anywhere else for lack of schooling when he was younger. A year and a half he studied with the Berlin pastor. Then he was sent to Holland for more training.

It wasn’t easy for a Saxon farm boy to learn Dutch, even though that language is a lot like German. But Gottlob Bruckner was stubborn. He stuck to the task and studied for three more years.

By 1811 a mission society in the Netherlands was ready to send out Gottlob Bruckner with two of his fellow students. But how could they? The Emperor Napoleon with his wars had torn up the map of Europe. Holland was under the heel of France. No ship could get permission to sail, lest it help Britain, Napoleon’s great enemy.

At first the mission society sent Bruckner and his friends back to Germany again for another year of study. Then at last they thought of a plan. The three would be disguised as workingmen. (In fact they were workingmen, as well as being missionaries.) They would be smuggled from Germany to Denmark, from Denmark to Sweden, and from Sweden to England.

Bruckner never knew when he might need to run. So he couldn’t take a trunk or even a suitcase— just one small bundle. He never knew when his pockets might be searched. So the Dutch mission society didn’t dare give him a letter of introduction to Christian friends in England: He might get shot as a British spy!

German police in Hamburg made trouble for the three travelers. Finally they escaped across the border into Denmark. They sailed to Sweden, and then sailed again to England. Their roundabout journey took two months.

English Christians were happy to greet the three new recruits. But before appointing them as missionaries, there must be some testing done. Of course the tests were given in English… and of course nobody passed. “You must study some more,” the English mission society decided.
A less-stubborn man might have gone home to Saxony. Not Gottlob Bruckner. He studied English as hard as he had studied Dutch. After a year in an English seminary, he was ordained and appointed a missionary.

Where should he be sent? Some said Guyana, in South America. Some said the great island of Madagascar, near Africa. Some said Java, and other large island, with even more people than Madagascar. England had taken over Indonesia from the Dutch during the Napoleonic wars. Now the way lay open to send missionaries there.

By this time Napoleon had nearly been beaten. Peacetime travel was beginning again. So Gottlob Bruckner’s trunks could at last be shipped across the Channel to England. But the warehouse where they were stored caught fire; everything in it burned up.

Gottlob Bruckner forgot about his disappointment and loss. On New Year’s Day 1814, he sailed away toward the mission field. His ship nearly went down in a storm near the equator. Then it limped into port in South Africa. There Bruckner and his friends preached to white people and black, till another ship took them on toward Indonesia.

The three missionaries landed at Jakarta, the capital. A British governor welcomed them. Then Bruckner sailed on alone toward Semarang, a large seaport on the north coast of Java. Twice his ship was attacked by pirates. After going ashore again, he had to hike through forests where tigers roamed.

In Semarang he became pastor at a great stone church, built by the Dutch long before he was born. His church members were mostly Dutch, too, or people from mixed Dutch and Indonesian families.

Only four months after he arrived in Semarang, Gottlob Bruckner married the daughter of an old Dutch pastor. Children came into their home one by one, till there were eight of them in all. But tropical fevers often strike little ones, and there were no miracle medicines in those days. Four of the Bruckner babies died.

While Bruckner was visiting other cities in Java, a new missionary family arrived in Semarang. They were Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Trowt, Baptists from England. Gottlob Bruckner and Tom Trowt were the same age. Soon they became best friends. Bruckner admired Tom’s keen mind and the way Tom set to work learning the Javanese language.

Bruckner himself had learned the Malay or Indonesian language by now; he found that many of his church members didn’t really understand sermons in Dutch. What was worse, many of them didn’t really understand what it meant to be a Christian at all. Bruckner became more and more sad to see people who lived like the devil all week and yet came to church on Sunday. And he had to welcome them at the great stone church as if they were the truest believers on earth.

Bruckner talked with Tom Trowt. He thought more and more about what baptism really means. He studied what the Bible says about it.
Finally he made up his mind. On the last Sunday in March of 1816, he climbed the winding steps to the high wood-carved pulpit. From the great Dutch Bible there he read his text: “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is those that bear witness of Me.”

Then he gave his congregation a shock. “I plan to be baptized,” he announced. “I now believe the Scriptures teach baptism by dipping, after a person believes in Christ and not before.”

The next Sunday, Tom Trowt baptized Gottlob Bruckner in the river that runs through Semarang into the sea. Many Dutch church members came to watch. But the Sunday after that, the great stone church was half empty. It wasn’t long before Bruckner was turned out of his pulpit.

He still had a house, and he invited the Trowts to share it with his own family. But only six months later, Tom Trowt was dead of a tropical fever. No new missionary could come from England to take his place. The wars were over now, and Indonesia had been handed back over to the Dutch.
Bruckner wrote letters to William Carey in India and to other Baptists in England. In due time he himself was appointed to take Thomas Trowt’s place.

The new Dutch governor of Java ruled, “All English missionaries must leave.” But Bruckner could prove he was a German who also spoke Dutch. So they let him stay.

Tom Trowt had started working on a dictionary and a translation of the New Testament into Javanese. He hadn’t gotten very far, and a lot of what he had done was lost. Now Bruckner, the stubborn Saxon, took up the task.

Javanese was far, far harder than any other language he had ever tackled. Morning after morning he struggled with books and teachers. Evening after evening he tramped through the villages, trying to make sounds that people could understand.

No Javanese people would listen when he told them the Good News. Java seemed to be an even harder mission field than India had been when William Carey first went there. Bruckner realized more and more that he needed to have the Good News in writing. So he kept plodding away on his translation. By 1819, the four Gospels were done; by 1820, the whole New Testament; by 1823, he had revised it all and felt it was ready for the printer.

But how to get it printed? The Dutch governor would not allow anything that might stir up the natives or cut profits from the great plantations on Java. Christians in England sent Bruckner a printing press, but no one on Java knew how to make it work. Besides, the Javanese language used letters different from any other language on earth.

Even the stubborn Saxon was about ready to give up. Then one day he received a letter from India. William Carey was still serving there, after thirty-five years. Carey invited Bruckner to come see him … and to bring along that precious manuscript of the New Testament in Javanese.
In 1828 Bruckner said good-bye to his wife and his two little daughters. With his two sons, he sailed away toward India. He never dreamed he would be gone for three long years.

First, he had to teach William Carey’s printers how to make type faces that looked like Javanese letters. Then he had to check every page they printed: No one else in all India knew what those strange-looking squiggles meant. His oldest son, a boy of thirteen, caught a tropical fever and died— far from mother and home. Bruckner himself got so sick he had to take a cruise to Malacca and rest awhile.

Finally the great job was finished. With his one remaining son, Bruckner set sail for Indonesia. The hold of the ship held precious cargo: two thousand Javanese Testaments, twenty thousand tracts, bundles of paper for printing, and a set of type faces with Javanese letters.

Near the island of Kalimantan (or Borneo), a typhoon struck the ship. Bruckner and his boy had to hug the mast to keep from being washed overboard. Even the hardened sea captain screamed, “There’s no hope!” But God heard the prayers of a Saxon seed sower that day. A battered vessel crawled into harbor on Java.

Gottlob Bruckner hardly had time to greet his wife and daughters. The next five days were full of excitement. Seven thousand Javanese tracts were passed out into the brown hands of people who seemed eager to read them.

But the Dutch army had been fighting in Java for five years. The colonial government had just put down a rebellion led by a Javanese prince. What if these new leaflets roused the people up again? Soldiers seized the rest of the tracts and all but a few of the Testaments. They locked Bruckner’s lifework inside a safe in Jakarta.

Yet the stubborn Saxon never knew when to quit. He still had his paper and his Javanese type faces. Quietly, a little at a time, he still printed tracts. And thus the good news in writing still spread through the land.

Bruckner also took two of his remaining Testaments and mailed them far away. One he addressed to the king of the Netherlands and one to the king of Prussia. The king of Prussia sent Bruckner a gold medal for his great achievement. The king of Holland did something even better: He used his influence to change the Dutch colonial government in Indonesia.

Little by little the contents of that safe in Jakarta were sent back to Semarang. And Gottlob Bruckner saw to it that those Testaments and tracts reached the people of Java.

Still, so few of them would believe! The Baptist mission society in England kept telling Bruckner he should give up and move to India. Yet the stubborn Saxon stayed on, sowing gospel seed in stony soil.

Finally he began to see the harvest. Strange … the first fruits came not in Semarang or nearby, but far away in East Java. When Gottlob Bruckner was nearly sixty years old, he sailed along the coast to Surabaya. In that great port city he found a few believers. When he traveled inland, he found even more.

“How did you come to know about the Lord Jesus?” Bruckner asked an old man who led a village congregation.

“For twenty-four years I was the Muslim priest here,” said the old man. “Then one day someone gave me this.” And he handed Gottlob Bruckner one of his own Javanese tracts.

What joyful days Bruckner spent with those village Christians! How thankful he was for the seed that had sprouted and grown!

To the end of his life Gottlob Bruckner never saw many direct results from his own faithful preaching and teaching. And for nearly a century after he died in 1857, no other Baptist missionary from anywhere helped spread the good news in Indonesia.

But other helpers came. Near the end of Bruckner’s long life, the Dutch government began to change its attitude toward missions. Before he died, he welcomed many new missionaries sent out from Holland by other churches.

When they arrived, they found a field prepared for them. They found the New Testament already in the Javanese tongue. They found gospel tracts, and hymns, and word lists and dictionaries, so that they could quickly start talking with Javanese people.

Today there are hundreds of thousands of Christians on Java— more than in any other place on earth where Islam is the strong majority religion. And this has come to be because in the beginning there was a stubborn Saxon seed sower named Gottlob Bruckner.

from
Bold Bearers of His Name
by William N. McElrath
Broadman Press, Nashville, Tennessee, 1987

Broadman Press has returned the copyright to the author, but does not have the address of Mr. McElrath.

Our first book!

1300 copies of our first book have arrived in Oreo Province!

Our team members, Jim and Judi Olson, have shared bits and pieces of news with us about starting to distribute this book:

It has been a very eventful week. We sold about 500 of the books we published, which include John. One missionary friend bought 25 one day, and we also gave him one of the Messenger players. He tested portions of the book on people from the part of Oreo Province that has been most untouched by the gospel. They could understand it and were so excited. So he came back the next day and bought 50 more, and we gave him 20 more Messenger units (which the people also understood and loved). Then on Friday, he asked if we had more books and said he thought he could afford 50 more (at $1 apiece) for the students at the Theology School. So we told him if he bought 50, we’d give him 50 free. He came within 10 minutes and brought Yuli, a young man who is trying to translate the Bible into his own language. Yuli was thrilled to get this book! He has been struggling with translating Romans, and when he got the book he went straight to Romans 2-3. He could understand it so well, that he immediately went back to retranslate what he had already done! He said to me, “We don’t normally read books (including the Bible) because we can’t understand them. But this is so easy to read and understand that we just keep reading it!” He brought enough money to buy 50 more books, so we gave him an additional 50 free also. He wants to be sure that each of the pastors and church leaders in his home area have one. Then Yuli said,“You should really do more of the books of the Bible!” When I told him we have done 16 and 2 more are nearly done, he just couldn’t contain himself! He can’t wait until the New Testament is published [hopefully by the end of this year]! Please pray that this book will begin to bear fruit and create a hunger for the finished work!

Even though this was all very encouraging, there were some discouraging words said by a former colleague. But I believe the Lord allowed that to humble us, as the encouraging words had us riding pretty high!

Anna and Gabe open the box

The missionary translator who makes several comments is an old friend. One of the Kimyal men who worked with her in the last stages of the translation is now the head of the translation department in the denomination that sponsors my visa into the country.

There are 160 other language groups on the island still waiting for their day to come, and around 520 in the whole nation. But most of them will have to wait many years, since no one has even started their translations. The Easy Translation we are doing will be much easier for such groups to understand in the national language while they wait for their own translations, and it will help those who will someday translate into those languages.

The first shows various scenes from showing The Hope video in seven Oreo villages. The video gives a panorama of Bible history, especially focusing on events that prefigure Christ and his sacrificial death. The video script was recorded by three Oreo readers on my last visit to Oreo land last year. You will see that the video made a big impression on the viewers! They were also very proud that in all of Nabisco nation (over 700 languages), the Oreo people are the second group to have this presentation in their own language.

The second video shows various scenes from translation checking. On my last visit, I checked the translation with three pastors, with high school educated people, with seminary students and teachers, and with factory workers. These checks are very important in making sure the Scripture communicates well to all levels and will be received well by different groups within the population.

The third video shows the reaction of lay pastors to the book of Colossians in our Easy Translation. These men from the interior of Oreo Province and taking part in an 18 month training program.

God is working! And please uphold us in prayer— including Gale and I, our children and their families, and our team members and their families in Oreo Nation.

All the videos should be viewable at this link.

Let’s compare the situation with English:

The United Bible Societies say that the average life of a Bible translation is 15 years, and certainly no longer than 25 years.* Yet virtually all Christians in Nabisco Nation are using a Bible that was already somewhat archaic in style in 1974.

I hope that this makes clear how important it is to publish a new translation for Nabisco Nation. This is also a prayer request. Given the history, any new translation will come under heavy scrutiny, and bear in mind that the Nabisco Nation is NOT predominately Christian.

Please pray for us! We are in the final manuscript preparation for this Bible, which should be printed late this year. This new Easy-Reading translation has great potential for use in evangelism, and it will be a great help to people who undertake translating God’s Word into 520 tribal languages in this country.

*The UBS policy referred to above simply takes normal language change into account. Obviously, archaic language translations have, in some cases, had longer usefulness.

We are under new management! Due to security concerns, we will not give the name of our new organization on this web page. The vision of our organization is “Transformed lives through God’s Word in every language.” Because of that vision, our new organization recognizes that there are people-groups that are listed as having a Bible in their language, but where that Bible is now archaic, or not available, or not currently used for many other reasons. While it may be said that such a group has a Bible, they are blocked from experiencing “transformed lives.” In the country where we work, there are clusters of people within the national language community where their existing Bible is very difficult to understand. God’s book is sealed to them. They are effectively Bible-less.

Our decision to translate for those people is controversial: How difficult must the Bible be in a language in order to justify making a new translation? How many people are there that don’t understand? The most controversial is: Will it offend those who are happy with the current Bible to make a new one for those who cannot understand that Bible? We are in a ministry where we cannot make all the people happy all of the time.

On my last trip to Oreo Land, I had the pleasure of sharing our Easy Translation with lay pastors from the interior. These are pastors who minister in places where their congregations really need a translation into their tribal languages. (The province has 160 language groups which are still waiting for God’s Word. If they worship at all, it is using the National Language Bible.) These pastors needed no convincing that their Bibles are hard to understand. They were thrilled to receive the portions I gave them.

Here’s a new picture of our team. There have been some changes, and a couple of members will be back in a few months.

• Judi, in blue, will be going of furlough soon. Please pray that the team will continue to work productively without her. Pray for decisions relating to sponsorship for Jim and Judi’s visas after furlough.
• Anna, in pink, is helping us temporarily, and not yet a full member of the team. She has Bible translation experience in Oreo Province and has already made some very valuable contributions in Colossians and 2 Thessalonians.
• Front left, is Elsa, who is currently working on Luke’s Gospel.
• Front right is Lynda, who is working on Hebrews.
• On the back and left is Isaak. He no longer works actively in the translation, but is helping to promote the translation.
• And Boas works with the Oreo people and in recording of both Oreo and Double Stuff Scripture.

Judi often reminds our team of this saying, and this has been an encouragement to us:
“Pure gold fears no flame.”

Gale with friend, after henna party

We were able to make both village visits we had planned, but Gale, Hannah, and Ava did not stay overnight. They came to join Brandon and me in the morning.

Hannah and Brandon’s work in Pakistan is to encourage mobile literacy schools for a semi-nomadic “Shepherd Group.” One highlight for me was when I met one of the school supervisors that Brandon works with. I asked him if it is a good thing that their people learn to read, and he gave very good answers. (So they can read medicine labels, so people don’t cheat them at the market and in contracts, etc.) Then I asked him if he thought their language was dying. He said, “It was… until we started to have books in our language.” And immediately he got his backpack, and pulled out a nicely bound green book. It was the Gospel of Luke in the Shepherd Language, which he opened and read to me. He is proud of the book and is hungry for more like it, but he seems to not be yet a follower of the One the book is about.

Both Hannah and Brandon did amazingly well translating for us in all sorts of situations. If you pray for Hannah and Brandon, a major prayer request is to continue to make good progress in language learning. They are doing great, but ask for wisdom and strength to learn more, especially since they are working with two languages. Currently Brandon is concentrating on pursuing more fluency in the national language. I asked the school supervisor, “Do you think Brandon should learn your language?” And he quickly said “Yes, because he works so much with us.” Because Shepherd women don’t speak the national language, Hannah has already started to learn the Shepherd Language, but is also a full-time Mom. It is easier for Brandon to get out and about to have conversations daily. Hannah is much more house-bound because of the cultural restrictions for women, so will need extra creativity in finding ways to learn.

Other prayer requests include to pray for Brandon and Hannah for endurance in a country where they will face constant culture stress. The stress comes in multiple forms, such as frustrations in shopping, the extra time necessary to get things done, beggars at the door or marketplace, demands from friends, house helpers and language teachers, sickness, and a very dusty environment. Please also pray for wisdom in working well with coworkers. Another important request is that more books of God’s Word be translated into the Shepherd Language.

...some seed fell on good ground

Dr. Luke's book

Everywhere we went heads turned to get another look at Ava! If we were out walking, people frequently pulled out their cell phones to snap a picture.

life of the party

Don’t miss it!  link to slideshow with 30 pictures.

Or if you want to have more time to look at individual pictures, here is a link to the album. Click on a picture to enlarge it, then use the navigation window at the upper left to choose other pictures.