I wish to call your attention to the reading of God's sacred word, which can be found this evening in the book of Psalms, and the 12th Psalm, Psalm number 12. To the chief musician, upon Shemineth, a psalm of David, help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth. for the faithful fall, fail from among the children of men. They speak vanity every one with his neighbor. With flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak. The Lord shall cut off all flattering lips. And the tongue that speaketh proud things who have said, with our tongue will we prevail, our lips are our own, who is Lord over us? For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I rise, saith the Lord. I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him. The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord. Thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever. The wicked walk on every side. Shall we seek the Lord's help and blessing for this evening in prayer together? Gracious, good doing, and almighty Lord God of heaven and of earth, humble our hearts before thee. In this evening hour, as we are gathered together here, as members of the Trinitarian Bible Society, entrusted supporters, We are so thankful that we are able to meet together on a night like tonight and reflect on the truth of thy word, that thou hast left us with thy word, with thy witness, which is so pure, so glorious, so wonderful, so high, who could attain unto it? And that especially, Lord, in a world that is so desperately gone astray from being. Lord, we confess that our own hearts testify of that very same thing. We are prone to wonder, prone to error. We have the same Adam's heart who fell from Thee in the garden. And how many words do not come from our lips as we have just read. that there's much iniquity in what proceeds out of our mouths. O Lord, grant us then due solemnity before Thee. Humble us in the depths of our soul that we realize who we are and how one day we must give account also for every idle word spoken. O Lord, we need Thee so much. May the prayer of the psalmist be born in our hearts. Help, Lord. Help. Not only when we consider this evil generation in which we find ourselves, but also when we consider our own sin and undoing. The Lord, that we may also have our thoughts turned away from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, to Thee, the living God, who do us wondrously, in the midst of this fallen world. We ask Thee, Lord, that something of Thy work would be able to be recounted for us by our dear brother, a green egg this evening. Lord, we ask Thee that we would draw some encouragement also from how Thy word is going forth as Thou has promised across the length and breadth of this earth. and that no man can stop it, though many try. And though many try to corrupt thy word as well, yet thy pure word remains and abides forever. We do pray for thy faithful servants, and also faithful Bible translators in many different lands and nations, that thou wouldst uphold them in their very difficult work. and that Thou wouldst make what they do also fruitful and bringing forth blessing worthy of Thee, the Triune God. O Lord, but one word from Thy lips and everything is different. O Lord, we pray for that work also in our own land and nation here, we have fallen so far from Thee. We have but to read a few headlines and we realize that we are far from how things were in days gone by. When there were, it was still upheld in schools and in the public square. And now everything, it seems, is turned upside down. For men call good evil and evil good. Lord, we confess that we have no one to blame, ultimately, save faith, save our own human race. And the church also lies in a very low condition. Oh Lord, that thou hast yet, in wrath, remember mercy. That thou hast yet raised up thy servants who will set the trumpet to their lips and not hold back. and that Thou wouldst use Thy word as Thou didst in other dark times, and that Thou wouldst use it for conviction, but also conversion. Lord, so remember us in these few moments together. We thank Thee for this opportunity. Be with every single soul here. Be also with those who would wish to have gathered with us and were unable. Remember all that are sick and afflicted, also with this dreaded disease that is making its rounds throughout our world. Lord, many are laid low, but wilt thou help, and wilt thou sanctify also these things? Grant that the call and the warning that echoes so loud and clear in all these things, that it would not be lost on us. Lord, for if we deafen our ears to this, what yet can remain? So help us, Lord, we pray. In all this we ask of free mercy and the pardon of every sin. In Jesus' name alone, amen. Just a few brief words here as we open. This psalm is particularly suited to the work of the Trinitarian Bible Society. We thank you once again for your support and your prayers for the society. And also, Brother Greendyke, for all that the Lord is enabling you to do in this, our generation. We do pray that the Lord would uphold you each and every day, together with those who labor with you, not only the trustees, but also your staff, and also the head office in the United Kingdom, and all auxiliaries, and all those who make the work of the society their prayerful labor. We're so thankful for this organization that the Lord has raised up many years ago, that has remained faithful despite all the torrent of developments in our world. But just a few brief things before we hear from Mr. Greendyke. This psalm, as I said, is most suited to the society's mission, where we read here about how there's so much vanity that is spoken in our world. It says here in verse 2 that they speak vanity every one, with his neighbor with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak. So we see first of all man's words, man by nature, and we can include all of ourselves in that. We use this tongue that the Lord has given us for no good purpose. We were given this tongue to glorify God, and yet we glorify man, to glorify ourselves, we speak wickedly. God has given us, not only our tongues, but other things as well, to wrong ends. May the Lord show this, may He humble us. And certainly, I think we can all agree that in our time, that this is multiplied. Technology has allowed words to span our globe in seconds, and what many words there are. But how much of them would fit this description? So first of all, man's words, they speak great evil and great ill. But over against this, and this is the great comfort, comfort can never come from man, but the words of the Lord are pure words. As silver tried in the furnace of earth, purified seven times. Of course, this is not saying that the word of the Lord needed to be purified. pure from the very moment that the Lord spoke it and inspired men to write his inspired word. But it's comparing it here to the most pure silver and gold that you could imagine. Sparkling, radiant, splendid, bright, overpowering, capturing. Something that when you see, especially against the backdrop of much else that's just wicked and defiled, it just, It's overwhelming when your eyes are open to it. And when you see something of your own heart, and the wickedness of your own heart, and your own tongue, and how you use this also for great iniquity. The Lord makes room for his own word in your life. And this is the most amazing thing, that the Lord did not keep this as pure word just to angels. the holy angels who never sinned, but that he gave us this book in which every word is pure, gloriously pure. May the Lord forgive us for the many times we have failed to see that or own that, or simply read it flippantly over these purest of all words. And concerning those words, the Lord also says here that he shall keep them and preserve them forever. Despite what man seeks to do, this is a great covenant. The Lord did not only inspire his word at the first, but he preserves it until this very day, and to the very day of his return on the clouds. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord. Thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever. And this is a doctrine that the Trinitarian Bible Society holds very dear. Many other organizations, they'll say things like this, well, the original manuscripts are inspired, but we have to kind of dig our way back to those things. No, the Bible says they're preserved in every generation. And that is a great comfort. The Lord did not preserve. His own word and left it to us. But you know what would have happened. So first of all, we saw the words of the wicked. We see the Lord's very pure words. And then the psalmist here speaks of one more word. And this is a different word. For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing There is a language that can come from the heart of a sinner that the Lord hears because He's put it there. And it's called here, the sign. the Lord arises. You see something of the triune God in them. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who takes reasons out of himself and exalts his own great name, and especially the name of his Son, by arising to help and to aid and deliver and save the needy when they cry. May the Lord teach us that. May we know what that is. May we also know the answer from the Lord Himself. May the Lord give that even in these dark days. It is all His work. He is certainly able. And the Bible speaks of His great willingness. And we rejoice to be here this evening. Look forward to hear how the Word of the Lord goes across the nations also to a land such as Cuba. I'm sure I'm not alone. as we wait to hear what our brother will speak on this country. Lord help you. Five years ago, if someone had told me I would be in Cuba speaking about the preservation of God's Word and also making arrangements to have the Bible and Bible materials printed in Cuba, I would have said, impossible, because it was always a country that had closed doors for me. It was not allowed to go there, much less speak about the Word of God. So, yeah, and this evening we'll be focusing somewhat on Cuba. We also will be speaking a little bit about work done in other countries. So you all know, I think I've mentioned in almost every presentation I've given, that there are many languages in this world. There are over 6,700 recognized languages of the world. Of course, many of them have few speakers, as few as 5,000, 10,000, but still, these are unique languages that have their own alphabet, their own words, and people use them as their mother tongue. Of those 6,700 languages, I would say probably only about 500 have a full Bible translated, maybe about 1,500 have a New Testament translated, and that's questionably how it's been translated. For example, Wycliffe Bible translators were not here to disparage any other Bible society, far be it from that. but they use the NIV in English to translate it into the receptor languages of those nations. So that's already taking a paraphrased Bible and bringing it into a foreign language. So it's already, I would say, a distorted message. And the Lord can use that. The Lord does use that. The Lord is not restricted to a version in any way, shape, or form. He can use one word. such as the word god or blood but still with it so we see with all these languages there are so many languages and so few languages that still have not had the Word of God. And yet, as Dr. Wilkes mentioned, TBS has for years been working on translating and getting the Bible to peoples that do not have it. And the past couple of years have been very encouraging years for Trinitarian Bible Society. We have more than 45 translation or revision projects in process. And in the past year, 2020, we were able to publish various different new Bibles or New Testaments in languages that did not have the Bible in their language before. One of them was Chichewa. Who can tell me where is Chichewa? Who speaks Chichewa? Yes, in Malawi and parts of Zambia. Very good. Malawi and parts of Zambia, it's a language that's very, I would say, about 10 million people speak Chichewa. It's a very common language in Western Africa. And we were able to publish the New Testament. More than 30,000 copies have been distributed. And they've been depleted. So we're about ready to do another printing. What a wonder to see that there is such a hunger in a country so far and so remote as Malawi and Zambia. We were also able to complete the Bible in Simte. Who can tell me where Simte is spoken? That's a lot harder. Simte is spoken in the Manipur region of India, the southwest region of India. About 10,000 people speak the language. And yet, it's a unique language to that indigenous group. and we were able to complete the entire Bible in the Simte language. This is the work of Trinitarian Bible Society. Many people envision Trinitarian Bible Society as printing English Bibles, faithful King James English Bibles, and we have them in our pews, and that is a primary focus of our work. But an equally primary focus of our work is to translate the Word of God into other languages that have not had the Word of God, because the Great Commission said to go teach in all lands to all peoples, bringing the Word of God to all nations. And how can they have the Word of God if they do not have a faithful translation? So we'll go to the next slide, and you'll see a map of some of the work that we've been working, some of the projects that we're working on at the current time. I hope you can see this map. These are just some of the projects the Society's working on. You see that Simte, that's to the right, and the arrow points to that southeast part of India there. And there's also, we have the Chichewa in Malawi. So, as you see, there are many, many, many languages that do not have the Bible. I would say probably more than 5,000 languages that have never had the Bible in their own tongue. And yet we still continue to each year to many of these languages you see here are languages in which we have active translation or revision projects. We'll be introducing you to a translator who has come to us who is working on the Amharic which is spoken in Ethiopia. It's a language that is very widely spoken. It's a very large language, and we have one of our translators who is here. He has traveled from Indiana to be with us this evening. I'll be introducing him later. Last year, the Society was unable to distribute more than 7.6 million Bibles or Bible materials. When I say Bible materials, that would mean New Testaments, Gospels of John, scripture items. We only distribute and produce scripture items since our inception in 7, in, I'm sorry, 1831. So this year, this year we hope to have, it will be our 190th anniversary this December 7th, the Lord willing. 40 languages, 7.6 million, the Bibles are Bible materials, and to 100, and they were shipped to 111 countries. That's a lot of countries. So the Lord has enabled us to increase when we see over the past decade how we've been able to increase our work. And that is thanks to people like you who prayerfully and practically support the work of the society. It is very much appreciated. So tonight we're going to talk specifically about Cuba. You remember, just as a very brief summary, a summary of when we were, two years ago we were here and we had a man with us, Jatniel Perez, and you remember that he spoke about the hope that we would be able to go to Cuba and speak in Cuba and that we will hope to print in Cuba. Well, we eventually were able to, and that was, you will have read about that in the Quarterly Record magazine, those of you who read the Society's Quarterly Record. We wrote about our trips to Cuba that were remarkable, but we were supposed to have here with us tonight, again, Pastor Jatniel Perez. He came in August of this year, and he received a three-month visa. He was going to stay for the full three months. And he was supposed to be with me for the last week in September and the first week in October, in which we were going to do six presentations, one here, one in Iowa, one in New Jersey, one in Washington, the state of Washington, and two others in two different states. However, Pastor Hatniel not looking for it, received an incredible attention. He was met at the airport by a reporter from World Magazine, and later he was interviewed by even newspapers such as the New York Times, BBC, so he began to become a sort of a phenomenon. It was because, if you recall, about Three months ago, in July, there was an uprising in Cuba, and it seemed like they targeted specifically the government, targeted those who were in any way or shape protesting the dictatorship in Cuba. Pastors were being targeted, and several of Pastor Javier Pérez's students in the seminary he operates were put in jail. for doing nothing else than looking out their church doors to see what all the noise was about on a Sunday morning, and they were grabbed and put in prison for two months. Two of them are still under house arrest. So Pastor Antonio Torres Perez spoke to various news organizations. He was interviewed, I think, by Focus on the Family, and the Cuban government didn't like that. So the Cuban government called him back. And we were very disappointed. We were also fearful for him, but we were very disappointed because we had hoped to have him here with us tonight to share the enthusiasm and the hunger for the Word of God in the island of Cuba. So what we did, we did a second best. David and I flew down to Miami, and we interviewed him the night before he left. And I have never seen such fear in a man's eyes. Really, I think you'll see the fear in his eyes in the interview. We first invited him to go out to eat with us. He said, I can't eat. My stomach's in knots. He said, I'm afraid I'm going to be detained immediately as soon as I get back to Cuba. He was fearful for his life. He certainly was fearful for his life. Cuba has killed people for far, far, lesser things than speaking against their government. So he was very fearful. We prayed with him. But he shared the work in Cuba with us that very night and we interviewed him by video. So I will be explaining some of the work. We will show you a small video clip of the interview and then I will speak some more and we'll show you more of the interview just so you get a flavor of what is going on in Cuba. By the way Pastor Hatniel was able to get through customs remarkably and through the immigration without any difficulties. I was in contact with him just as recently as today, so that was answered prayer. We were much praying for that brother, because he had no idea what to expect, but he was summoned back to his country. They didn't like what he was doing. So now let's hear, since the last visit to Cuba. I was in Cuba in 2019. I was in Cuba from, yeah, it was two, it was from, I would say the late, the first week in March, the last week in March to the first week in April, we were in Cuba, and I did 15 conferences there. And since then, I'd like to have Mr. Pastor Perez speak to a little about first what, how, how, what's going on in Cuba. What is, a greeting from him and also, so that we'll play the first videos if we can, please. Thank you. Hello, my name is Daniel Perez. I'm a pastor in Havana, Cuba. It was a big pleasure for us to receive in Cuba for the first time brother Bill Grindike. It was a delight for us to have this conference. And it was really good to receive him and David just to start letting us know about everything that the Trinitarian Bible Society have been doing around the world. And we wasn't part of that. So it was really, really good to receive him in Cuba and start knowing more and more about the Trinitarian Bible Society and about everything that they have been doing. And they have been teaching us. They were teaching us in many days there in Cuba. everything about the Tectus Resectus and everything that we didn't know about the translation of the Bible. And for us that was something that we never knew about. So we were really thankful for him to come and share with us everything of this. It was a great visit. And we're really thanks to all of you who have been sending him to do this work in Cuba. And we want to continue receiving him there because we need to continue knowing and learning about the translations and how to bring many Bibles and everything into Cuba. So what had been happening is there is one Bible Society, United Bible Society, that has rights, so to speak, to bring Bibles to Cuba. And even they bring just any host of different translations, and they bring them very scarcely. Hatim al-Tawla said it's a token Bible Society, in the sense that many of the Bibles that are shipped from the United States, they're actually burned right in the airport, and they give a token amount out to look as if they're distributing Bibles. The Bible Societies feel at least some people are getting the Bibles, but the government is still very leery of having the Bible distributed to just anyone. So when we went there, our goal was to not only teach them about the, about proper Bible translations, because they were bringing in all sorts of different versions. The, the, you know, we have about 200 versions in the English language. Well, there are about 70 versions in the Spanish language and counting, just about a new one every year. They were bringing all these, some of these new translations, and these men were becoming very confused, so they didn't understand. Why is it that the Bible said this, and now it says this, and it used to say that, and now it says this? And the pastors were becoming discouraged. They said, what is truth? What is the truth of God's Word? This Bible, that Bible, this Bible says one thing, this Bible says another. So it was, as it were, a breath of fresh air for these men to hear about the preservation, and that's very important. The Lord has inspired His Word. Most Bible societies will say the Lord has inspired His Word. but very few focus on the preservation, how he has preserved it. The Lord would be a very weak God if he could not preserve the word that he divinely inspired. So he's preserved that, and we explain that in the conferences in Cuba to these groups of pastors where we met. And it was very encouraging. The reaction of the Cuban pastors was remarkable. And that's what our next video will be about. The past, the few pastors that we, each time we had small meetings, as I, if you read the articles, I would encourage you to do so in the quarterly record. Each time we met, we had small groups because we didn't want to draw attention to ourselves. If we'd had, even this many people, that would have been far too many, it would have drawn attention. We often, most often, met behind closed doors. It was kind of a word-of-mouth announcement, so we would have 25 to 30 pastors in a closed house or in a closed church building, so that no one saw us, and then we just went to the next village, did the same thing. We traversed about 2,200 kilometers, which you have no idea how many miles that is, but about 1,200 miles, and we were able to visit over 20 churches. So the reaction, the reaction to the, after we left the island of Cuba, Pastor Hotniel would share some of what the reaction of these Cuban pastors was to what they heard. I would like, we can have Pastor Hotniel tell us himself. For us in Cuba, before knowing the work that the Trinitarian Bible Society had been doing, for us it was something like, we didn't know where the Bible was going with all of these translations. So for us in Cuba, it was like, in Spanish, we started having one translation this year, another one next year. And we were looking that we were losing part of the Bible every time that we just went trying to read the Bible or just teach the doctrine from our confession there. So many of the parts that in our confession were trying to deal with some text at the time that we went into the Bible to look at that, we couldn't find the right text or the right verse how they did it. So then now, at the time that we start looking for the tectus receptus and the translation that the Trinitarian Bible Society is doing, then now we can find better meaning for all the doctrines that our fathers in the faith have been just writing down in all the confessions. And then for us it was like a delight. We were trying to find many of the words, in the Bible that, at that moment, we couldn't find them there. So it has been really good how God has been preserving the Bible from all of these years just into these translations and into the Tectus Receptus because it has kept the right words just there that we need for understanding better God's Word for us today. So yes, as you've heard Pastor Hotteniel very ably mention, that they were confused, because they would often find words in their confessions, for example. Pastor Hotteniel is a Baptist pastor who follows the 1689 London Confession, which is essentially the same as the Westminster Confession, except it differs on the part of Baptism, where these are Baptists, these are adult Baptists, whereas the Westminster Confession teaches infant baptism, but the rest is absolutely identical. The Baptists admit that they copied word-for-word the first part, and I don't think there was any objection to that at the time. I don't know of that, but... So, yes, they were becoming very confused, and so we explained to them the textual difference, that the text of Receptus is not one Bible, it's not one New Testament Greek manuscript. It's a family of manuscripts, sometimes referred to as the majority text, but that name has taken on a different connotation nowadays. Also the Byzantine, from the Byzantine era where these manuscripts were found and were held and were also produced at the time. So it's very interesting to know that when people go to seminary in Latin America or even in the States, most of the time they're not even told about that the fact that they received texts is what all Bibles were translated from, from the time that Bibles were put down, were written down on paper. The Reformers, all of the Bible, the Reformation era Bible translations, the Dutch, the French, the Italian, the Spanish, the English, were all based more than 30, 40 of them were based on the same family of Greek texts, the received. Textus Receptus means received text, that the church, that is the text that the church received, passed down, preserved over the years. It was only the late 19th century that a new, spurious, doubtful text, a very questionable text was produced by two so-called scholars in the late 19th century in England. That's called the critical text. All modern versions, bar maybe one or two of them, are made from that new text. And the same is done with the Spanish. So when we went down there, we explained to them this difference, and that kind of made a light go on for those who knew Greek. They said, ah, we brought copies of the Greek textus receptus with us so they could see, yes, these words are, this is what the word of God says in this text in 1 John 5, for example, what's known as the joining comma. So yeah, it's been very, very encouraging to see the interest in Cuba, but not only Cuba, all of Latin America. We are about, as you all know, I've been working with a team of four other men. We have a team of five. We've been working on the revision of the Reina Valera Spanish Bible since 2006. November of 2006, this project was begun. And we are near the end. By the Lord's goodness, we have been all spared. We've also been able to work together for a Bible team, translation team, to revision team, to work together for 14 years and not have a breakout is, I'm told, something unusual. We can only thank the Lord for that because he has all hearts in his hands. We are about to finish. We are in the Minor Prophets, which means that we have already done the New Testament and all the rest of the Old Testament. So we hope to finish, if the Lord wills, by the early part of next year, the final product of the Spanish Bible, which will be received with, we know, with joy in Cuba, but also all of Latin America. So I would like to just have Javier speak about also how this new Bible has shown much interest for it in the land of Cuba. When Brother Bill came there and started teaching about there's a Tectus Receptus and everything, dealing with everything of that, everybody started asking, how can we get a Spanish Bible with that translation? So he was telling us that they just finished the New Testament. So we were trying to get the New Testament in Cuba and we found, we got some of them and we started distributing some of them to the students of our seminary and to some other pastors. And with the conference and with the New Testament in Spanish, then right now it's like everybody's just trying to find a way of getting the new Bible in Spanish from the Trinitarian Bible Society. Everybody's like really anxious for this and they are just expecting this to come out and just get into the hands of the Cuban pastors and into the hands of the Cuban people. So we're just praying for that and we are, everybody's just waiting and waiting and praying because we need that in Cuba. Just to bring this Spanish Bible from the Trinitarian Bible Society into the mountains and everywhere in Cuba that people don't have access to Bibles. I think we can simply say that the words of Pastor Javier are a microcosm of all of Latin America. I receive each day hundreds of emails from pastors in Latin America saying, when will the Bible be finished? When will the Bible be finished? There is such an interest in this Bible because there still are strong strongholds, large areas where people still firmly believe that we need to use the Bible, the original, the reign of a letter, which is the, I would say, the equivalent of the King James in Spanish. It was, in fact, it was done before, I've often said this, it was done well before the King James Bible. In the epistle dedicatory to the English Bible, it says, when we had doubts, we consulted other Bibles, amongst them the Spanish Reina Valera, which was finished in 1602, a full, well, 1569 Reina, and 1602 the revision Valera. So it was finished well before the King James Bible. The King James Bible translators used the Spanish Bible as one of their reference Bibles. So that shows you that they had high esteem for it. So what we're trying to do is to bring back the Spanish Bible to the fidelity and the accuracy that the original Reina Valera Bible had. So going back to Cuba again, as you well recall, two years ago we talked about our hope of printing in Cuba. Well, that hope has turned into a realization where the Lord has enabled, in a most providential way, as you'll recall, I told you about meeting the men at the printing press in Cuba, I'm sorry, in one of the local printer, and they were from Cuba. And so they had a clandestine printing press we would call underground. It's not underground. It means it's not, it's, it's, it's, there's a, it's, there's a frontispiece. It's like a, like a hardware store. And also then there's a seminary behind it. And then if you go down the stairs a little bit behind where we would think would be a library, it looks like a library. They have in the back a, an old printing press that they've assembled by going back and forth, back and forth from the States with parts of the printing press. to put together this printing press. Obviously, they can't produce high-quality Bibles. They only work with bond paper, which is the only type of paper they can get their hands on. But that's okay. Having a Bible in your hands is not about the quality of the paper or the quality of the binding. Absolutely not. It's about having the Word of God in their hands. So we've been able to print hundreds of thousands of copies of the Gospel of John in Cuba. We've been able to print, I would say, maybe a half million scripture leaflets. These are small scripture leaflets that have simply scripture texts on them, and they're thematic. For example, one is the mercy of God, and then there will be 20 texts inside that are all dealing with the mercy of God. Another one is on redemption or salvation. These are all thematic scripture leaflets, which we print in English. We translated those to Spanish, and these have been printed in Cuba. many many hundreds of thousands of them. Paper is very cheap relatively when we think of other resources in Cuba. These funds come from people who send funds to the society and say we want this money to go specifically to the work in Cuba. So this has enabled us to print in Cuba far more than many other countries of Latin America. So that's the irony of it all. A place I never thought I'd be even dealing with is now printing and producing more scripture items than many other Latin American countries. So here, hot plaster, hot nail will now tell us something about what they've been printing and how they've been using their printed materials. After Bill's conference in Cuba, we were distributing to the pastors and to the leaders that have been at the conference tracts and some pamphlets, and they just brought that to their congregations. But the problem was that They had big congregations, and they were just receiving small quantities of everything like this. So after they just went to their congregations, and they started distributing this to them, and the people just started making evangelism on the street with these tracts and these materials, then I started receiving hundreds of emails, and I started sending everything like that to Bill. started receiving many of these emails just asking for more literature. And we started trying to make the contact with everybody and something that really amazed me was that we were doing a conference just in a place and then people from many other places around that one start writing and asking for literature. So we start printing again more tracts and more pamphlets from the Trinitarian Bible Society just to start distributing all over the island. Right now we're just distributing pamphlets and tracts to more than 600 churches and more than 68 municipalities in Cuba. So it's like we're covering the whole island with all the materials from the Trinitarian Bible Society. When he's speaking about pamphlets and tracts, he means pamphlets would be Gospels of John or the informational articles about which, what is the text of receptus, or why is 1 John 5 verse 7 in the Bible? These are informational articles, how the Bible came to be. When he talks about tracts, he means the scripture leaflets I was referring to you about. And also when he says he sent me hundreds of emails, I would say that's an understatement. But I have managed to find a way to delegate that, whereas these emails got, changed something because it was a bit overwhelming at first to receive sometimes in my inbox in the morning 200 new emails from Cuba. I said we've the he said Bill he said the whole island of Cuba is shaking after you've left because they've found out there is a bible text that's a greek text that supports the the original reign of the latin bible so it was a bit overwhelming and positive sense, but a bit overwhelming. And we said, how can we handle all these requests? But we have now developed a system whereby fellow colleagues of mine in Argentina and Bolivia and Colombia are handling all the requests that come from Cuba. So when you see the effect that this has, so he mentioned that they do evangelism, they use the scripture leaflets on the streets. What has been the effect? The effect that the churches are beginning to feel. When I was in Cuba in 2019, I was in At least, I was there two Sundays, so I was there, and we went to three services on each Sunday. Each of those churches had maybe 10, 15 people come to hear the Word preached on the Sunday. These were Reformed or Baptist churches. Now you have some of these churches that have 100, 200 members at a time. The effect of distributing this Word of God, the tracts, the leaflets, and the Gospels of John and parts of the New Testament has been We can only say by the Lord's goodness and in His sovereignty and in His grace has had remarkable fruit. We've seen churches filled. We've not seen it because I've not been back there, but we've seen, he sent us pictures and the seminary where he was teaching when I was there had eight students. It now has 108 students. So here two years later, he has to 100 more students who are learning the doctrines of sovereign grace, the doctrines of death in Adam, life in Christ. So in our last video from Pastor Hotniel, he will speak about the effects of the distribution, and he will also like to extend his thanks to all of you. Tracts are not available in Cuba. Pamphlets are not available there. And then when a church really f***s up in a mountain that they don't have access to any other material, they receive one of these. They just start writing and writing to us. So we just want to continue printing all of this to continue the distribution all over the island. So we want to print everything that we can from the Trinitarian Bible Society. Everything is about, we need more materials. And a lot of people are getting to know God and to know His Word through a small track. So if you're thinking how this is changing lives in Cuba, you can think that just a track or a pamphlet is leaving people to God's Word. People have been just going hunger for knowing more about God's Word. Every time that we just go into the street and we start like giving to some other people one of these tracts, people just start reading them and then they return to us to ask for a complete Bible or just for a New Testament. And that's our hope. Our hope is to bring to Cuba for all of those people hungry of God's Word. So in the past the churches, like the one that I have been a pastor, we were just more like closed inside of our building, but because now we have the access of these tracts to go and start distributing them to the people, our church has been just turning into the community. So now many of the person just coming to our church and visiting many other churches across the island is because they just received a tract or just received a Gospel of John and they have been just wanting to know more and more and more about God's Word. So that's our work, that's our hope to continue printing everything of this because the Cuban people, they need that. And I just want to thank all of you for supporting all of this work in Cuba. So yes, I would repeat his thanks to all of everyone who has been supportive of this work in your prayers, most of all, and also practically, because we pray each morning. I mean, this was quite striking so many times that we pray that the Lord will raise up people to support us, because we saw this great need in Cuba, and it was only, I had just heard from Pastor Jatiel, we had just heard about these printers, and suddenly someone sent us a donation, a large donation, and I had never met the man in my life, I had no idea who he was, he was from the state of Washington near Seattle, and he said, I would like to donate X thousands of dollars for printing in Cuba. So there came the answer to the prayer in the very same day that we had raised that prayer in our morning prayer meeting at the office. So we've seen the interest in Cuba, and I will repeat, all of Latin America. It's very encouraging. This is not only happening in Latin America with the Spanish, by the way. We're doing a revision of the French Bible that's being carried out in Spain and France by all French speakers. And that's mostly for... Not for France. France is a very secular, closed... country. I wouldn't say that, obviously, we would be glad to distribute that French Bible in France, but they seem to be close to it. But much of Africa is francophone. That means they speak French. So you have the countries like Ivory Coast, Senegal, where the French is their native tongue. So you have countries like that where they're a hunger and a thirst for the French Bible, which we are just revising as well. They could tell you similar stories about their project. So we're going to switch gears here. We're going to speak, because in our introduction, in our announcement, we said we would speak about distribution and translation. And I've given you a little glimpse, talk about how translation, how we do it and why we do it. The translation work is carried out in a way that we take the Hebrew Masoretic text and the Greek received text to translate from scratch. Now, we don't do that. That's those, for example, in the Chinese who are working from scratch. What we're working on in the Spanish is a revision, but we use the very same text. We take the Hebrew Masoretic text and the Greek received text. That's a family, so we'll look at Beza, Stephanus, and other versions of the receive text to those that Rainer and Valetta would have had at hand. Nothing posterior to that because that would be unfaithful to the translators themselves. So rather than me go into the details of that, I'll have some of my colleagues in London who will explain to you our principles of translated Bible translation at Trinitarian Bible Society. It is significant that on the day of Pentecost, although the people present could have understood the lingua franca of Koine Greek, the apostles did not preach and speak to them the wonderful words of life in Greek. The Spirit imparted the word to them in their own languages. And that is what we aim to do at the Society. We have currently about 40 active translation and revision projects. For our translations, we desire that the translation work is as literal as possible and as free as necessary. And we spend great time examining in each case whether there's already a translation that could be used, But where there isn't, and there are many languages where there is no longer a faithful translation, or there never was a faithful translation, we seek to work with people who speak it as their native tongue to produce these Bible translations. I am Haileleul Tafara Emmeru. I am from Ethiopia. And I'm undertaking a Bible translation in Amharic language. Amharic language is the official language of the nation of Ethiopia. We have a great burden when we think that there are over 6,000 languages spoken across the world. Of those, there are probably a scripture portion in about 1,500 of the languages, but a New Testament only in something like 1,000. and a Bible in only about 500 languages. And so the task before us is very great, but we seek to go forward on the principles that serve the Reformers and the Puritans so well, that we recognise the Bible is not the word of man, but it is the word of God. God breathed it out, he inspired it, he has preserved it in the Greek received text of the New Testament and the Hebrew Masoretic text of the Old Testament. And so the Society upholds a distinctive stand in the translation work in that it uses those biblical texts, the Hebrew Masoretic and the Greek received text. In addition, we also hold to the principles that the reformers and the Puritans espoused in the great European translations of the Dutch Statenverteiling, the Spanish Reina Valera, and the English Authorised Version, in that we translate in a formal equivalence manner. That is that we take the scriptures in the original Hebrew and Greek and we make sure that every word is represented in the receptor language. That we don't translate literally and woodenly word for word because we recognize that different languages have different sentence structures, different ways of expressing themselves, the grammar is different, the way in which nouns and verbs and participles are employed varies from language to language. But we make sure as far as possible that we follow the word order of the original Hebrew and Greek, as long as that fits into the receptor language. And we make sure that we use a biblical form of the receptor language to impart the underlying flow and the cadence of the underlying Hebrew and Greek, to make sure that what we give the people in their language is truly a faithful translation of God's Holy Word. We believe that all of the scripture is equally inspired by God. Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord needs to have all that God has given to us. And one thing that comes through when you meet these translators, these are often people who want to dedicate their lives so that the people of God who speak their language can have a faithful translation of the Word of God. And it is the great joy of the Trinitarian Bible Society to be assisting and helping for these Bibles to be published, that they might be distributed, and that churches across the world might have a faithful translation in their own tongue of the Word of God. so It is very nice to be here with you this evening. As it is mentioned, my name is Hailel Ul, longest in Miro. I came from Ethiopia originally and I'm involved in this amazing work of God to whom, to which I am called while I was in UK a few years ago. The Amharic language is one of the languages spoken in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is a nation where there are over 88 languages are spoken. And among these eight languages, the official, which was the official language and which is known as a working language of the country is my tribal language, Amharic language. And it is spoken everywhere. Originally, it is by ethnic group, it is spoken by around 30 million Amharic speakers, but since it is an official language and since it is also the only language in Africa with its own script, it is spoken by over 70 million people in Ethiopia as well as in other parts of the world. Ethiopia has different religious groups. Orthodox Christianity is the main religious group in Ethiopia, which is like Catholicism. And the Orthodox are hindrances for evangelizing the people because Orthodox religion is taken as an identity to be Ethiopian. So it is very deeply rooted in the mentality of the people when you evangelize them. The Lord is, by his gracious, amazing grace, is bringing people from even among those people. The next big religious organization or religious group in Ethiopia is Islam. And there is a big Islamization of the country. And there is also recent, amazing, bad revival in the country, revival of paganism. And pagan religion is reviving throughout the country, and it is another bad thing that is going on in Ethiopia. But there are few evangelicals. From evangelicals, most of them are charismatics, as you know. They are also, again, it's the true word of God. And there are few Baptists, very few in number. and church-wide, as well as a few Reformed true believers. The translation I am undertaking started eight years ago, and I have been able to translate by the grace of the Lord entire New Testament and the Book of Psalms. And the Book of Psalms and the entire New Testament is going to be printed this year before the end of the year 2021. God willing, it will be dedicated and start to be distributed in the beginning of the new year. But I want you to know that this is not the only translation in Ethiopian language. There are about eight translations in Amharic language, as our brothers were saying. There are many kinds of translations. Those translations, all of them, were made from modern critical text. And, of course, I have been saved when that, especially one of them, when it was preached by preachers. I can say that God, our Lord, can even use those corrupted texts to communicate his amazing grace to individuals like me. So I am saved by the preaching of that word. But when you examine what is written and when you see the truth of the Word of God, you can see so many fallacies inside it. So as a result of that, my heart was burdened and I asked the Trinitarian Bible Society in 2005 I met them and I poured out my questions to them concerning textual issues and they told me that there are true translations like King James Version. I was using to teach and preach King James Version. So by amazing grace of God and guidance of God I started translating the new translation from scratch, from Textus Receptus, Greek, and also the Old Testament, the Book of Psalms, from Masoretic text. So the others are not based on that. So this translation is highly needed in Ethiopia. I didn't tell you about the population of Ethiopia. Ethiopia has a population of 118 million people. And this, because of that, it is the second populous country in Africa, next to Nigeria. And it is also the biggest landlocked a country in terms of population throughout the world. So Ethiopia is a landlocked country. Recently, me and Trinitarian Bible Society are thinking about establishing TBS in Ethiopia. The reason, there are about five Bible Societies operating in Ethiopia. United Bible Society, the biggest and the wealthiest Bible Society in the entire world. UBS, United Bible Society, and there is Wycliffe Translators Association, and there is Biblica International, who translated the NIV into Amharic language, and there is a Living Bible Society operating there, Bible League, and Word of God. All of them are promoting the critical modern text which we call, which is also true, corrupted text. So when we bring this Textus Receptus new translation into Ethiopia, These five big societies wouldn't see us or wouldn't welcome us. So as a result of that, in order to distribute this translation and in order also to see the opportunities of translating the Bible into other languages, we have to establish Bible Society in Ethiopia. So we started it, and please pray for that, for the government to be willing, to give us license to operate having a legal status as other Bible societies. So things are really speeding up and I appreciate your prayers. Why we need the Bible Society? I mentioned one of the reasons, to distribute the Bible there, but also to promote translation in other languages. Amharic language is not the only language. I mentioned earlier there are 88 people groups. I wish I had some of the visual presentation of some of the people groups there. There is Oromo people group. The largest people group, they need Bible translation in their languages. And there are few strategic languages like Afar language, which is spoken partly in Ethiopia and partly in Djibouti. And there is also another language, a strategic language, Somali language. Six million people are living in Ethiopia, Ethiopian Somalis, and the rest are living in Somaliland and I am mentioning these two languages because they are highly dominated by Muslims and we need to reach them by the word of God, Somalis and Afar people. Tigray people, they live in Ethiopia and in Eritrea and there are South Sudan languages spoken in Ethiopia and in South Sudan as well as in Northern Sudan. So because of this, Because of the presence of these strategic languages, I have a desire, God willing, to establish this society in Ethiopia by the help of you and Trinitarian Bible Society, and train people to translate. based on textus receptus and taking or understanding the true system or policy or philosophy of translation, formal equivalence or literal equivalence, that form of translation principle to translate into other languages. So please pray for this because we Ethiopians need a true Bible that can help people to understand the true way of salvation. I should read one verse which is very, very common for all of you and very well known by each and everyone here. 2 Timothy 3, verse 15. and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. The only instrument that can make people or that can make people to be wise unto salvation is the Word of God. So the Word of God should be given to people for them to be wise unto salvation through faith by Jesus Christ our Lord. So please pray for that and for the Lord to help me. and Trinitarian Bible Society to achieve this great work in this day and in this generation. Thank you very much. Good evening. Okay, it's a pleasure to be here to share with you tonight. As Brother Bill already told you, I live in Colombia. I am part of the work team in the Latin American Reformed Seminary, SRL, in Medellin. So the Trinitarian Bible Society is an organization that God has used to bless the seminary and the work he does in Latin America. I am currently the biblical language teacher for the campus and the virtual programs students. And thanks to the SBT, SBT is in Spanish, TBS, okay, to the TBH students, I received a copy of the Bible text in Greek and Hebrew to study. It's interesting because a student can compare the version to the Textus Receptus in Greek and they can compare the difference between the Textus Receptus, the version of the TBS and the critical text. That exercise is amazing. We can know the difference, and students can learn a lot. The distribution of the New Testament and materials that TBS has increased greatly. This year, we have distributed thousands and thousands of New Testament, the Gospel of John, documents about the doctrine of the preservation, and the text of Receptus, and the problem of translations. And maybe most of people don't think about it. the version that they can use and they cannot. But now, yes, because the documents of TBS that we send to many pastors from many cities in Colombia. Now we receive many emails and calls from pastors asking for more and more material from TBS. This year we have distributed 20,000 calendars and TBS materials have reached all the remote corners of Colombia. That is amazing. And we pray of God. We give glory to God for that. When we hear that TBS, we will have an office of TBS, or the TBS office was going to open on campus, we were very happy for two things. First, thousands of people will be able to access the TBS content. And also because it will finally open a place to organize the hundreds of boxes that they occupy the corridors, you know? The hallways. If you go to Medellin to the campus and to go open the seminary, you will take care when you walk because there are so many boxes in our campus because we send every day a lot of boxes to many pastors in all the country. Many boxes. That's amazing. So there is a great expectation in Colombia and Latin America for the complete Bible in English that will be published by TBS. And this is a great project, brothers, for Latin America. This is a great project. We have so many translations, bad translations. And people use it. And when we will have that version, that will be great for the church in Latin America. That will bless the entire church in Latin America. Let us continue to pray for the TBAs for each day to be a much more blessing for the world and for Latin America, much more than it is up to now. God bless you. Well, thank you. Christian for those kind words. And I can say that it was really remarkable that we met with Christian. And two weeks ago in Orlando, we were at a meeting of the seminary, the seminary's board of directors. We had a meeting there with them. because they had offered to us several years ago that we could use, free of charge, see where the seminary is in Columbia, it used to be a Roman Catholic convent for nuns. So the first floor was used as a bookstore. So that since, ironically, a Reformed seminary bought out the premises of a Roman Catholic convent that closed up, the area where they used to have the bookstore was empty. For years they had been offering TBS to use this service this area, and we were reluctant because we already have a distribution center in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Mariela Guardi, whom some of you may have known and met, works there, but after a while we began to realize that shipping from Bolivia, which is toward the southern cone of South America, is very expensive, for example, to reach Venezuela, to reach Ecuador, to reach Panama, and other countries like that. So Colombia, if you look at it, is the heart of all of Latin America. Bolivia is the heart of South America, but Colombia is the heart of Latin America. If you go from Mexico down to Argentina, Colombia is right in the center. It has two oceans. It has the Caribbean and the Atlantic. Very few countries are privileged to have two oceans from which they can ship. It's a very key focal shipping point. and not least of all has a very high level of people interested in the Reformed doctrines and also the faithful Bible versions. North of Colombia is Venezuela, where we've been having much difficulty getting Bibles and the New Testaments into. but thanks to our friends at the Reformed Latin American Seminary, they worked tirelessly sending to Cucuta, which is a city in the north, and walking boxes over a... there's a bridge you can walk from Colombia to Venezuela, walking the boxes over into Venezuela, other people from Venezuela sending it to Caracas, where we have a very active center there as well, a very active distribution center. So for three years, we had not been able to send one item to Venezuela because of all the sanctions. You remember during the Trump administration, there were sanctions put upon Venezuela. Nothing could be sent there, and companies that did so would be penalized, so we could not send anything to Venezuela. Now, through the help of the seminary and the seminary people working volunteering for us at the seminary. They have gotten these materials just today, just this afternoon. I got a voice message from Pastor Julio Benitez, who is the president of the Reformed Latin American Seminary. He said they just sent another 35 boxes, which is about So that's about 3,000 copies of the New Testament to Venezuela. These take about two months to get there. They go a long, torturous route over the Andes Mountains, get to the border city of Cucuta, and then are walked across the bridge, and then again sent from there domestically north to Caracas where we have Pastor Plinio Orozco whom we've known for many years. So it's a fascinating way and you see again in all of these ways the Lord's remarkable hand over all opening doors where we would have never expected those doors to be opened. And we can only believe that he does that for a purpose. He has promised that his word will not return unto him void, but that it shall prosper according to his proposed, that he has willed. So we may believe that there is this hunger and also these open doors we see as it were a revival, or perhaps a reformation. in Latin America. Because if we were to say revival, there was never a strong reformed Christian foothold in Latin America. So that would not really be a revival, it would be a reformation. But if I were to show you some of the letters people send to us, you would be astounded. The language with which they write, acknowledging a sovereign God and saving them through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ by the applying work of the Holy Spirit, a triune God working in the heart of a sinner. It's encouraging, friends. It's very encouraging. We can be very discouraged in our own country. Sometimes, I think, but I always say, I can go back to my work if I need encouragement, because there are many, many motives of encouragement. Often, in the morning, I can't wait to get to my work, because I will see these emails. And sometimes, the emails can be a lot, many, and they can be a bit overwhelming. But then again, I think, what better thing to be working on than to be working on the precious Word of God? I would close with these final words, which we've often said at these conferences. Remember, we have the Word of God. Not only in each of our houses, but probably in each of our rooms. What do we do with it? Now, we have heard of countries where there are very few Christians. We have heard of countries where they have no Bible at all. Languages where they don't even have one page, where the name Jesus Christ has not been translated or heard of. That one name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved. But what do we, as Christians from generation after generation, having Bibles in our hands, in our houses, what do we do with them? Too much is given, much shall be required. May the Word of God be blessed to you, to the people whom we've been speaking about, and may we be seeing many more Bible translators also, as well, be raised up for this work.