Missionaries in Vienna, Austria, launched Eastern European Mission in 1961 to smuggle Bibles in all the languages of the Soviet World — Hungarian, Romanian, Polish and Russian, to name a few.
Farsi wasn’t on the list.
Nonetheless, the 65-year-old ministry, supported by Churches of Christ, has experienced a sharp spike in demand for God’s Word in the languages of the Middle East. Waves of Iranians and Afghans took dangerous paths to reach Turkey and Greece in 2016, and additional waves are expected in the wake of new attacks on Iran by the U.S. and Israel.
On top of a Farsi-language Bible open to the prophet Isaiah, Miriam flips through her own copy of a Farsi New Testament. She has highlighted the parable of the Pearl of Great Price in the Gospel of Matthew.
Workers with EEM are preparing not only to supply more Bibles for Iranians in Europe but also to send God’s Word into Iran itself.
“We cannot wait for that moment and then start deciding what to do,” said Bob Burckle, EEM’s president. “The Bible already exists in the languages many Iranian people can read,” and depending on the outcome of the current conflict, “the need could be far greater than anything we have seen before.”
The ministry has produced almost 90,000 Bibles for various age groups in Iran and is working on the first-ever New Testament in Gilaki, a language spoken by an ethnic group that lives in northern Iran near the Caspian Sea. EEM works with Transform Iran, a ministry focused on strengthening Iranian believers in the country and reaching new believers through radio and digital media. Transform Iran also invests in Bible translation.
Lana Silk
Iran’s 93 million people speak 39 languages, but a full version of the Bible exists in only four of these languages, said Lana Silk, an Iranian-born Christian and president and CEO of Transform Iran. Nonetheless, Iran has one of the fastest-growing Christian communities in the world, she said.
“For many here in the West, it is so much easier to write off this nation as a lost cause — to close the door on caring about these beloved people and justify that God either doesn’t care about them or that they’re out of his reach,” Silk wrote in a column for Today’s Christian Living. “Yet, I’ve seen God move radically in the hearts of the Iranian people, hungry for hope, freedom and justice. …
“Iran is changing, and consequently, so will the greater Middle East.”
Bart Rybinski
Bart Rybinski, vice president of EEM’s European operations, asked Christians worldwide to pray.
“This is a dangerous and deeply uncertain moment for the people of Iran,” Rybinski said, adding that believers should “pray for peace, for protection and for the Lord to move powerfully in the midst of crisis.
“But we also have to be ready. If a door opens for more people in Iran to receive the Bible, we must be prepared to respond without delay.”
