Hi, Rowland

I appreciate you contributions to the Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list.

You may like to check the following:

YBIC

Ian

Our Multilingual World.

The instruction is to < "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.>. The Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:4) showed the gospel going out to the world in languages the world understood, effectively reversing the “tongues confusion” that had existed from the tower of Babel. The invention of printing enabled many Bible translations to be recorded, and modern media allows spreading the Gospel to the world in many languages.

While English is widely promoted as a universal language, the facts reveal quite a different planetary reality – that of a thriving multilingual world. English is the mother tongue of only 6% of the world’s population. Spanish is the mother tongue of 15% of the world’s population. More people in the Americas speak Spanish than any other language. From the Indian sub-continent, the Hindi language is the first language for 183 million people world wide; the Gujarati language is the first language for 39 million; while Punjabi is the first language for 20 million.

In Asia and around the world there are many more millions for whom Chinese is the mother tongue. Then there is the Japanese – English is spoken by only 2% of the Japanese. There are some 20 main Asian languages, and millions of people who speak them. In Europe, there are 15 main European languages. The Middle East, Africa and the Pacific Isles have other tongues, too.

We live in the Information Age and do business in a global economy. It’s a familiar refrain, but nonetheless true. With the phenomenal growth in Internet, intranet and electronic mail use, information has never been so accessible.

Within this constantly evolving world, one reality remains unaltered: people feel much more comfortable and efficient reading, learning and operating in their native language. As a result, the need for translation has never been so great.

With Language Kits, WorldScript and Unicode all making writing the world’s languages easier, and with modern, fast biblical search engines available, there still remains a most urgent need for online, quick and easily searchable multilingual Biblical databases, accessible and catering for all modern computers, from which Bible verses in any language are as readily selected as we now select from the KJ, NKJ, NIV or other Bible versions!

This would surely help hasten the time when “…the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”

To “Tongues” World Outreach Page – <

http://beerwah.netaccess.com.au/~wcg/Tongues.html >

< http://www.netaccess.com.au/~wcg >

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