The Bible: A gift of eternal hope
Oliver* is one of our partners on the ground in the Arabian Peninsula who knows the risk of sharing the Gospel in dangerous countries. In the silence of the night, he places Bibles on the doorsteps of every home in a small Arabian village where there’s no Christian witness yet. With every Bible placed, Oliver whispers the words of Isaiah 55:11, “My word… will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
After leaving the village, he prays for the people of the village every day. Four months later he returns to the village and enters a teahouse where many locals gather. People notice he isn’t from around there and soon he’s asked if he’s a Muslim. Stepping out in faith, Oliver responds: “No, I’m a Christian.” Hearing that he’s a Christian, one man asks: “Can you explain something about the Bible?” The man then shares that he had found a Bible on his doorstep a few months prior and had been reading it ever since but doesn’t understand all of it.
Not knowing that it’s Oliver that put the Bible on his doorstep, Oliver responds: “If you would be so kind as to bring your copy, I’ll be happy to study it with you.” The man quickly fetches his Bible, and soon other villagers join in on the conversation. And for the first time in their lives, a group of Muslims in an isolated area in the Arabian Peninsula read the Gospel out loud.
Oliver continues to visit the village, sharing insights into God’s Word and building relationships, knowing that God is using him to lay a firm foundation for Him to open doors to share the Gospel.
For believers around the world, the Bible remains one of the most important parts of deepening our relationship with Jesus. The Bible is how God often reaches into the darkness of even the most impossible situations.
Technology might have changed what it looks like today, but it hasn’t changed how God works through this powerful book. Whether in the form of a typewritten book, a smuggled item buried in a yard, a data file on a SIM card, a pirate radio broadcast listened to in the dark or a legacy from a grandparent, God speaks through it across time and cultures.
Which is why whenever and wherever people ask for Bibles, Open Doors will provide them. We will bring Bibles to God’s people, with the training to grow in faith and read His Word more deeply despite the challenges. We started in 1955, when Brother Andrew smuggled Bibles across the Iron Curtain, and today we continue to deliver God’s Word around the world.
Oliver’s story is one of the many examples of why your support is so important. Your support helps provide believers with God’s Word and helps them to spread the Gospel as they make inroads to build relationships with others so they can share with them the hope that we have in Christ.
Last year, thanks to you, Open Doors distributed more than 2 million Bibles and Christian books in countries where such things are prohibited or difficult to obtain.
These included:
More than 63,400 children’s Bibles
More than 272,000 Bibles and New Testaments
More than 1.6 million Christian books, children’s resources and training materials
Despite increased security control and restrictions, Open Doors provides contextualized Christian materials in minority languages. We also support believers from Muslim backgrounds in developing their own materials.
Learn more about the impact you made last year: http://www.opendoorscanada.org/impact-report/
