Ankerberg Show

Narrator (Male): Today, there are eight countries in South Asia with a combined population of over 2 billion people, containing over one-fourth of the world's population, making it the most densely populated geographical region in the world. But of the 2 billion people, only 30 to 40 million are Christians. Today, we will tell you the amazing story of how God is using women in a special way in South Asian countries to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to their families and friends. Join us for this edition of the John Ankerberg Show.

John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. I'm John Ankerberg and my guest is Morgan Jackson from Faith Comes By Hearing. We're talking about audio Bibles and we're going to talk about the importance of women in an area of the world that has one-fourth of the population of the world: 2 billion people.

Unfortunately, in this part of the world, unless you're very rich as a woman, you are not treated with a lot of kindness. You are almost cast away, like your opinion doesn't count. We're going to look at the Jesus of the Bible, how he looked at women, and how he treated women. He gave them esteem. He saved them. He forgave them. He knew all about them, but the way he treated them, they noticed. Morgan, I'm glad that you're here. This is a very interesting topic. First of all, we're going into South Asia that has 2 billion people and one-quarter of the world's population. One-quarter of all the people on the planet Earth are where we're talking about, and we're talking about how Jesus treated women.

Morgan Jackson: Well, John, one of the things that's interesting is when we started recording the Bible and putting it on the Proclaimers, my mom was the one that wanted to do the dramatized scriptures for children. But what we didn't recognize is the power of the dramatized scripture and the impact it had on women.

My dad was in South Asia and he was sitting in listening groups. They were playing the dramatized scriptures and it was a section that had women in it. Every time it finished, there would be a time for people to make comments or questions and answers, and the women participated. They went to a few other villages and no women participated. My father was wondering why, if it was a different community. When he asked the translators that were with him, they said, "Well, we got bored with that other section of scripture, and this section of scripture doesn't have any women's voices."

My dad called my mom because she was recording a South Asian language at the time and said, "Put as many women's voices as you can." In South Asia, we have scriptures recorded in the mother tongue for about 90 percent of the population.

John Ankerberg: Let me just say that the thing that you're holding in your hand that people don't know is a little black box and it's called a Proclaimer. It holds an audio Bible, so you can hear the words of scripture in 2,700 languages. On the Proclaimer itself, you can have up to four languages.

Morgan Jackson: This one, as you know, is loud enough, and in the villages of South Asia, often there are large populations. They use this for evangelism, so they'll play it loudly because even if they play it in their home, others in the community can hear.

Now, many places, 35 percent or so of the world's population, live in areas—and the areas we work in—where people are extremely poor and they don't have electricity. So this runs on batteries that recharge 3,000 times. The sun recharges it. If you don't see the sun, you can crank it for ten minutes and it'll charge it for forty. But this is an anytime gift because we go back in these communities 12 or 15 years later and they are still hearing this off the batteries and it still works perfectly. This is what they're requesting.

I was laughing because I was talking to a young girl, probably late teens, and she was telling me the story about how they heard the word of God for the first time. She said a pastor came to their village, an evangelist, to preach. Their village is of another faith, and so as he was trying to share the gospel, people were cursing him, they were spitting on him, they were slapping him, and eventually drove him out of the village.

But she said, "My mom was one of the most hated women in the village." She said from the time they got up in their hut to the time they went to bed, she made their lives absolutely miserable. The house was never clean, food was never available, my dad had died as a drunk, and my brother was a drunk now. So our house or our home, which is cheek to jowl with all the other huts around, was just a place of conflict and strife.

She said her mom started the morning off cursing them and cursing the neighbors. Every neighbor hated her. So just to infuriate the neighbors, she invited the pastor into their home when the pastor came to the village. Everyone else was spitting on him and of all people to pick him out, it was almost out of spite. She says, "Hey, they don't like you. Come on over here." So the woman that was hated the most invites the pastor to come over and have tea with her.

Now, what's interesting is we train leaders in order to plant churches that you go into an unreached community and you find the man or woman of peace. But so many times, it's been the drunk or it's like this woman, the hated or most rejected, that will accept. This young girl just said things began to change in our house over the next weeks and months. She said her mom went from this bitter, angry, biting woman to quiet. She started cleaning the house, she started being kind.

She said, "Of course, we were in the same house, so we were hearing the same scripture she was," although she was listening all day while they were out in school or going to work in the gardens. She was there listening. She said she changed so much that their house became peaceful. Her brother was listening. He was drunken, but the words of God pierced him.

Three months later, when the pastor came back, there was 12 of them that wanted to be baptized and accept Jesus Christ. He was still rejected by the village, they cursed him, but he had a place to come. She said then the next time he came three months later, during that time, her mom had been so changed that she started going to the neighbors. When somebody was sick, she'd make a meal. These neighbors were like, "Who is this person? This woman that cursed me my whole life."

Of course, they're seeing this change in peace and the quietness, and the drunken son becoming now a worker, money coming in. So they wanted to hear. They were gathering with her mom and hearing the word of God. Her mom was taking the Proclaimer and this is what happens is when you are a new creation in Christ, you want everybody else to hear the same words that you heard. So the next time he comes, there's like 15 or 20 more people that want to be baptized.

She was telling me the story. She said now it's over a year later. She said whenever the pastor sends a message that he's coming to the village, it's like a movie star is coming to the village. There's a feast that's prepared, people get flowers, they're all excited, and he's welcomed with this great rejoicing. Whereas a year before, they were spitting on him. You can imagine why a pastor would want a Proclaimer. In these areas, it's always kind of this way and oftentimes it's the woman.

There was a woman in one of these villages who heard the word of God through her church. They then loaned her the Proclaimer and she took it home. Her husband was an alcoholic, but as she heard the word of God, she made a personal decision that she was going to follow Jesus and that she was no longer going to offer sacrifices to the many idols that were in their area.

The husband came to faith in Christ and agreed to the same. When they refused to go to the festivals to do the offerings and they confessed Christ, they began to get cursed. The family rejected them. They were no longer invited for meals or for celebrations. They were cursed, they were abused in the town, and they would often at night go to sleep just weeping and sobbing because of the rejection.

Yet, they heard Jesus speak on the Proclaimer, "Peace I give you, peace I leave you. Not as the world gives, give I you. In this world you will have tribulation, but do not be afraid." And then the other one is, "Come unto me, all you who are weak and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you for I am meek and humble, lowly of spirit and you will find rest for your soul." So they just did.

She also heard where it said to be a peacemaker. "Blessed are the peacemakers because they will be called the sons of God." So when people would curse them, they would bless them. They would greet people, they would pray for people. There was always conflict in their village because people would drink, they would gamble with cards, and there would be conflict over somebody who lost, so there would be fights.

She, being a woman, was able to come and she would then try and create peace and would pray, and she was bringing peace. But then also when somebody was sick—and this is the thing of the gospel—in these karma areas where you have karma, you believe that people's trouble is earned from the sins of your past life and so nobody feels obligated to help you. That's your problem, your suffering, and so you just suffer.

All of a sudden, she's coming gently, bringing a meal. Of course, you're sick, so you're laying on a mat and she's wiping your forehead, she's cleaning up, she's preparing the meal for the family, she's praying for you, and God was answering her prayers and people were being healed. The word starts coming out that people are healed. Well, those people then also are wanting to hear the word of God. So people began to come.

Then she said there was a day that one of the elder members of her family, an uncle who was the most violent towards them, one day just came into her hut while they were listening to the word. He didn't say a word, he sat down. She's looking over watching at him, and for hours, he just listened. He got up and left.

But later on, he said the words of Jesus, his love, the peace and the wisdom of his words, affected him. It didn't change overnight, but slowly but surely the family around them began to change. They were reinvited to the events and those family members began to come to faith in Christ. Having traveled so much in most cultures in Africa and around the world, women are seen as less than. Some cultures say they're less than a camel.

In East Africa, a young woman who had been raped by her father, had a child by her father. Her father was so angry that she didn't abort the child. I mean, she was only 13 or 14. So he drove her out. She went to another village and she then was married by a man of their same faith. But he becomes angry—he knows the situation—and so he calls her a goat. He insults her all the time.

She comes by the church one time, hears the scriptures, comes in, and is amazed to see men and women sitting together. She sits, hears the word of God, and over time comes to faith in Christ. Her husband eventually comes to faith in Christ. She had borrowed the Proclaimer and took it into the home, played it, played it, played it. He would then, while she wasn't noticing, be listening and the word of God pierced his heart. He confessed, repented, and came to the church.

But she said there was a Sunday morning during Easter where they were talking about the resurrection, so they were listening as a group of women to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As they're listening, the women of course get up and they go and they say, "Who will open the tomb? Who will roll away the stone?" And they don't know, but they have faith to go and they go. They find the tomb empty and they meet Jesus. Jesus tells them that he is resurrected and to go and tell his disciples, "I have resurrected from the dead."

This woman went, "Aha! So women have value." It was like there's a whole lot more behind that. The men are afraid. They're hiding away. But the women have taken courage. They have the courage to go, though they don't know what's going to happen. They go and they are the first ones to find that Jesus has resurrected from the dead. They are the first ones that are being told, "Go tell others, go tell my disciples that I have risen from the dead." When they tell them, they don't believe them. It's interesting how so many times in many of the places we go in the world, it's the women that hear the word of God first. And then when they hear the word of God, they take courage and take it out.

We've been talking about Romanel and in the mountains, there was an older lady, Abuelita, which is "little grandmother," probably about four foot six, and she was dying. The Quechua pastor had gotten a Proclaimer and they were listening to it in the church in Quechua. So the daughter of the Abuelita, the grandmother, invited the pastor to come over and to pray over her because her grandmother did not know Jesus and she was concerned. She was in a coma.

So the pastor brings the Proclaimer and he just sets it beside her, pushes the button, and plays it for her. They don't know whether she's listening. But like three days later, she comes out of the coma and evidently the whole time she was in the coma, she had been listening to the word of God. She comes out of the coma and wants to be baptized and has accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.

She's now started attending the church, which she had never attended before. But the pastor's using the Proclaimer just a couple times a week because he had broadcasted it over a little loudspeaker and played it in the church. So she asks him, "Can I borrow the Proclaimer throughout the middle of the week when it's not being used in the church?" He said, "Yes."

So she is in her 80s and she's walking these high mountain Andy trails going village by village, gathering the people together to hear the word of God. She's going from village to village over and over again and her children are saying, "Mom, Abuelita, you're going to die on these trails. You almost died a while ago. Why are you going?"

And she said, "I want nobody to die having not known the Jesus Christ that I know." But they said, "What will happen if you die on the trail? How will we, what will we do?" And she said, "Listen, when I walk on the trail, I play this very loudly. So if I don't come home, just follow the trail until you hear the voice of the Proclaimer and that's where you find my body. And I will be happy because I was bringing God's word to people."

John Ankerberg: I want to end this program by asking you... We started with South Asia, 2 billion people. Statisticians say that there's only about 30 to 40 million Christians out of the 2 billion people. I'm saying, how many audio Bibles do we need for pastors that are going into these areas, they have no audio Bibles, or Christians that are waiting to have an audio Bible because they don't know the scripture, they haven't got a Bible. This is the only Bible they're going to have. The fact is they learn from it, but they play it for people and people get saved. This is how it's happening. How many do we need?

Morgan Jackson: There are 1 billion Christians in the world today who have come to faith in Christ that don't have a Bible because of poverty, restricted access countries like in South Asia. Many of those areas fit all of it. They're restricted, they're remote, and they have religious persecution many times. But one of the things that is exciting to me is that the church is exploding in South Asia. Listening groups are generally 35 to 100 people. This can be heard by 300. It also can carry four languages. So they'll often times have the national language and then their trade language. I need hundreds of thousands, but right now this year the goal is a minimum of 50,000 for South Asia. But if I had 100,000, they could all be used right away immediately.

John Ankerberg: Absolutely. Folks, we're going to give you a report of what your money does when we hear it when Morgan comes back. You know there's a lot that's going on in the world right now. We're going into some of those countries. We'll give you a fuller report as we get toward the end of this year. I just want you to know that I appreciate you in what you have done. We have 21 million people in listening groups in 85 different nations listening in 253 languages right now.

We want more than that. That's just scratching the surface. We do it because you have been so generous. I want to say thank you. Morgan says thank you to you and we just need your help. We ask you to pray about it. Now next week, we're going to tell you some more, but please stay tuned because I've got a personal word for you in just a moment.

Folks, can you imagine not having access to a Bible? Approximately 70 percent of people worldwide learn primarily through audible communication, meaning that around 5.7 billion people need to hear the gospel to understand and accept it. Shockingly, over 1 billion people still do not have access to God's word in a format that they can understand.

You can help with this. Would you help provide audio Bibles to those who need to hear God's word in their own heart language? If so, please visit JAshow.org/audiobibles or call 1-800-805-3030 to send an audio Bible today. That's JAshow.org/audiobibles or call 1-800-805-3030. Now, if you're in Canada, please visit JAshow.ca/audiobibles or call 1-866-746-5803.

Now thank you for listening to the John Ankerberg Show. We're a listener-supported ministry and your gifts help us continue to share the gospel with millions of people worldwide. To learn more about our resources or to support our mission, visit JAshow.org or please call us at 1-800-805-3030. If you're in Canada, please visit JAshow.ca or call us at 1-866-746-5803. Or you can subscribe to us on YouTube. Your support makes a difference in spreading God's word.