Scripture Portions to be Sent to Sudanese Believers

Even though the concentration and focus of International press and media are currently on putting a stop to Sudan’s bloodshed in the West and Darfur region, persecution of Christians in the South have continued.

The 25 million people living in Sudan are of two distinct cultures. Arabs in the north and black Africans in the south. These two areas have diverse ethnic, cultural and religious identities with the majority of Arabs speaking Muslims, but nowadays Christianity has become the fastest growing religion with a growth of up to nineteen percent Christian in the population now.

Despite the long term war being devastating and with persecutions rife, Christians in the southern part are now gaining great hope as the church in Sudan continues to grow at an amazing rate. Persecutions still exists, but the Christian movement has passionately gone on.

"We are suffering, but God has not abandoned us. Be strong, do not despair. Give thanks to God, for his mercy is great," expressed Bishop Nathaniel Garang. (Sudan’s church)

As Christianity is spreading, one obstacle to growth is the lack of Scripture portions available. Consequently, the World Bible Centre’s John Anderson expressed his wish to distribute 250-thousand Arabic New Testaments to Sudanese Christians.

They need to be small enough to get through, that is important, Anderson says, because "...not only can they get confiscated because there’s a strong Muslim presence there, but they can get even confiscated going through customs. We’ve tried to be very careful about who we send them to, how they’re packaged, so that they don’t get immediately identified as Scriptures, and also just send them in smaller numbers."

Dale Randolph, CEO for the Translation Centre stated that for more effective evangelism in this specific culture, the New Testament was released in portions. Faithfully, the Centre plans to spread at least 250,000 copies of the New Testament across the Middle East and northern Africa over the next three years.