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I am joined by my friend Gregg Pruett who is the President of Pioneer Bible Translators and has the important task of translating the Bible into different languages. That might sound simple, but Gregg explains how difficult that really is. In the podcast, Gregg shares about his time living in Africa and explains how messages can be lost in translations and misinterpreted at times, with a story about how John the Baptist’s story was translated. I ask that we partner in prayer and support Gregg in this challenging commission with translating the Bible.
Creators & Guests
What is Simple Faith With Rusty George?
Rusty George is the Lead Pastor at Crossroads Christian Church in Grand Prairie. Under his dedicated leadership, Crossroads Christian Church aspires to flourish as a vibrant community committed to guiding individuals in their journey to discover and follow the path of Jesus.
Beyond leading Crossroads Church, Rusty is a global speaker, leader and teacher focusing on making real life simple. Rusty has also written several books and can be heard weekly on his podcast, Leading Simple with Rusty George.
Aside from being a loyal Chiefs, Royals, and Lakers fan, Rusty is first and foremost committed to his family. Rusty has been married to his wife, Lorrie, for over twenty-five years, and they have two daughters, Lindsey and Sidney. As a family, they enjoy walking the dogs, playing board games together, and watching HGTV while Rusty watches ESPN on his iPad.
Rusty (00:01.235)
Greg, great to have you with us. That's Greg with only one G at the end and two T's at the end of Pruitt. Am I getting that right?
Greg Pruett (00:10.571)
That's right, and an E in Pruitt, which is not usually the way people spell it.
Rusty (00:13.619)
Oh, that's true. That's true. Okay, so for our listeners that don't know who you are, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Greg Pruett (00:22.443)
Well, I am currently in my 18th year as Pioneer Bible Translators President. It's a Bible translation organization. And before that, I was 12 and a half years with my family in West Africa translating the Bible and working on planting and multiplying the church and maturing the church in a context that where there was just one church when we started and it, uh,
was kind of surrounded by mostly people who read and follow the Quran instead of the Bible.
Rusty (00:55.539)
Why is the Quran so popular in Africa? Is it just because the Muslims are such good missionaries? Have they been there a really long time? That surprised me to hear that.
Greg Pruett (01:09.899)
Well, you know, there's I could do a whole lesson on that, but really just to kind of make it short across the Sahara Desert, there was a lot of of merchants going back and forth and caravans and those caravans brought Islam. And with it, the chance of perhaps advancing an education in a way that colonialism didn't offer. And so Muslims became very prevalent and popular.
in West Africa and you know probably starting in the 1200s and going all the way into the 1800s there was a lot of growth in the 1800s in Islam.
Rusty (01:50.547)
Fascinating. So, you know, for our people that don't understand Bible translation, it's not something you just do in a room, you know, with a hot cup of coffee and a dictionary. I mean, this is you're immersing yourself in a culture and then learning their language and then translating the Bible into it. This is a tedious and time consuming process. Just give us the nutshell of what do Bible translators do and what did you have to do in your
your 12 and a half years being in Africa.
Greg Pruett (02:28.299)
Well, you know, nowadays there's everybody's trying all different kinds of methodologies for Bible translation and the name of the game seems to be how much of the agency and responsibility can you transfer to local people? But in places where there's no church or maybe just three Christians, it's hard to get the church to do the translation themselves when they've just barely.
begun to scratch the surface of Christianity themselves. And so when we were doing it, there was a church of 20 to 40 people on site and they were at a pretty early stage in their understanding of Christianity. So we went in and as Pioneer Bible Translators...
you know, favorite way to do it. We went in and did what we call incarnational ministry, where we live with the people and learn their language and figure out how to write down their language. You know, if you've ever thought about going into a place where they don't even have writing in their language. So, you know, you want to come up with an alphabet that's right for their language. But.
That's not something we're just born knowing how to do. So we have to be trained in advance and all kinds of linguistic methods so we don't screw up somebody's alphabet. You know, like if you think about how how you spell in French or how you spell in English, our spelling is a nightmare because our alphabet is a nightmare because we borrowed it from so many different places. So, you know, you can do so much better if you know what you're doing. So coming up with an alphabet and building a team of Christians who are as educated as we could find to do the drafting.
So they have to come up. They'll look at the the French nearby French
Greg Pruett (04:10.539)
translations that are literal and some that are not not literal and more free meaning based translations. And they'll look at all that and try to come up with their own draft. And we help them evaluate, okay, how close is this to the original Greek and the original Hebrew in the Old Testament? And then, you know, we've got all kinds of processes for trying to to test to make sure that what we come up with in kind of the isolation of our team actually works out in public and means what we predicted it would mean.
And then there's usually kind of a quality control step at the end to verify that our processes are the kind of processes that are gonna result in world -class translation. And so, you know, just to give you an example, the checking the meaning of it sometimes doesn't go the way you expect. Like...
we were doing one passage, I went out into the community and I sat down with a bunch of Muslim leaders and we read a passage and I said, and just to check it, you ask comprehension questions. So I said, so what manner of man was this John the Baptist about whom we're reading? And they said, Oh, John, the Baptist was a great sorcerer. And I was like, that doesn't sound right to me. So.
So I said, well, how could you tell from the text that he was a sorcerer? And they said, well, it says right there that John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking. And some said he has a demon. And in their culture, there's this whole category of sorcerers who learn techniques from their family for making their soul leave their body at night and consume the souls of other people.
and it causes chronic disease. And when they wake up in the morning, they, you know, and everybody invites them to come eat, they say, no, no, I don't need any food because you know, and everybody's terrified of them because they've been out eating souls all night. So when John the Baptist came, neither eating nor drinking, they just naturally concluded, you know, especially since it said right there in the text, he had a demon. He was some kind of a awesome sorcerer.
Rusty (06:10.163)
Wow.
Greg Pruett (06:26.315)
And so, you know, that brings a whole different perspective. When Jesus says, I have food, you know, not of it's like he's saying, I've been out eating souls all night. So you have to kind of add some, some little hint in the texts. Like, you know, you have to say, John, the Baptist came fasting, neither eating nor drinking. And then people understand what fasting is.
Rusty (06:32.179)
Wow. Yeah, that would.
Rusty (06:48.435)
Wow. Well, that's just so much more than most of us even think about when it comes to translating the Bible. You would just assume it's just word for word. But when you have to create an alphabet, create a, you know, the written text and then figure out all the nuances of what things mean there versus what they mean here, that's a very difficult job. So in all your time with translating on the field, was it all just with one people group and one language or did you have to do this with multiple groups?
Greg Pruett (07:23.403)
We have methodologies where one person works with multiple groups and I probably would have done a lot more of that if I had not become the president of Pioneer Bible Translators. Usually what we'll do is we'll focus in on one context and learn the techniques and the methodology and the context and then we'll also help surrounding people groups get their translation.
Rusty (07:29.075)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Pruett (07:46.667)
And the closest I came to that was the people that I trained. One of them was particularly gifted and we worked with the neighboring ethnic group to do an adaptation from Yalungka into the next language over that was Sankaran. And it was a computer assisted kind of adaptation.
And so that accelerated the translation project next to us. So we often will do multiple translation projects or people become consultants. But in my case, I became the president. So I mean, I guess you could say that we're working in 126 translations and I'm kind of providing support and leadership for that. Um, like.
Right as we're doing this podcast, I'm finishing an online class with nine students in it that are learning translation process. So those nine students will go out and empower multiple Bible translation projects. So in a way, I guess you could say I have an indirect impact now.
Rusty (08:43.891)
And that's absolutely. So I'm just wondering this as you're talking about computer assisted, will AI help you at all in the future?
Greg Pruett (09:01.515)
You know, the very first artificial intelligence software, operational software packages are finally coming out for Bible translation. And for the longest time, it wasn't really looking like we would be able to use the way other people have used artificial intelligence because usually it requires billions of lines of data from the internet.
in major languages that are operating on the internet. And these minority languages that don't yet have an alphabet, they don't have any data. So there's no way to get hundreds of lines of code, of data very easily, let alone billions of lines. So the answer's always been no. But we finally started to develop tailor -made artificial intelligence solutions for Bible translation. It's been pretty expensive, but we're finally getting there.
And the first to first to market right now has been this this artificial intelligence solution that when you already have a New Testament, it can take the data from the New Testament and help you begin to draft an Old Testament, you know, a couple of chapters at a time, and then it improves as it goes along. So by the time you get done with the Old Testament, it's quite quick.
Rusty (10:20.051)
Well, I mean I could geek out on this for a while. I find it to be quite interesting how you guys do this and I think we're all under educated when it comes to all it took to put our Bible together. Let me ask you, you and I were a few months ago and you were talking to your friend Rob Moppen about life in Africa. What do you miss about Africa? Because when I read your books, I pick up on things I can't imagine having lived through. The amount of
snakes and animals that you had to honor just in your typical walk to church. So, you know, what do you miss about those those days and what do you still think about fondly?
Greg Pruett (11:14.859)
Well, I would have to say the first first thing I miss is kind of the community of village life. You know, when you you wake up in the morning and you get your cup of coffee, you walk out onto your porch and.
Rusty (11:28.307)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Pruett (11:29.835)
There's people walking by, they come by and greet you and you say hi to your neighbors. Whereas here, you know, it's really hard to even get ahold of your neighbor. They're racing into their garage and closing the door before they can even before you can go over there and start to say hi to them. You know, every day people would come by and greet us and talk to us for a while.
That was a real precious experience of being neighbors in that. And the other thing I would say is being outdoors, kind of an outdoors type person. And you underestimate how much you get kind of locked into this virtual world of ours. And I just love getting out and looking up at the sky and there's no lights to kind of keep it washed out. And you just get the full intensity of it. And...
Rusty (11:58.515)
Yes.
Greg Pruett (12:18.315)
you know, after a hard day at work, I'll go out and walk in the bush and see animals. And it's just a real pleasure to be in the presence of God's creation without it being mitigated by the city life that we have here. But if I had to really put my finger on the one thing that I miss the most, it's the, the significance of what you do when you're a missionary in Africa, because here we have a lot of things kind of covered.
by technology or a lot of things covered by medicine. And there it's a much more difficult life for the people. And there's a bigger opportunity to help people that maybe you wouldn't be able to help here. So like, for example, you know, being able to preach here, you'd better be, you know, you better be able to take the message.
Rusty (13:04.275)
Hmm.
Rusty (13:11.219)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Greg Pruett (13:13.259)
from 2000 years ago and make it sound brand new with new illustrations and you know you better you better be able to to just jazz it up because these people in this context have heard it so many times you got to make it seem entertaining and whereas over there it's all brand new i can remember this guy
Muslim man came in the back of the church and sat down on the back pew because he was waiting for help with some medicine He thought well, I might as well go in there and sit down I was preaching on the resurrection and when I got to the part where Jesus rose from the dead This guy in the back row is looking around like are y 'all hearing this? He had never heard anybody Say that Jesus rose from the dead. He was like stunned. He's looking around like is that is he crazy what? he just
Rusty (13:36.435)
Ha ha ha.
Rusty (13:53.683)
Yeah.
Greg Pruett (14:01.387)
This guy was just so astonished at this brand new idea that Jesus rose from the dead. I just loved the opportunity to be the first person to drop that news on this guy. And and and it's the same with like physical help. I remember there was a woman who came to us for help and her her unborn baby. It was pretty clear from the symptoms that that everybody thought this baby had had died and.
that we were taking her to the hospital to help resolve the situation. And we got to the hospital and they were able to save this baby's life at the hospital. And it caught, we had to help them because they didn't have any money. It cost us $5. I think it was five whole dollars to get this lady hospitalized. They saved the baby. The.
the family was so enthusiastic about having the baby saved that they said, we're going to name, if this is a girl, we're going to name this girl after your wife, who was the one who drove them to the hospital and helped them. And so the baby was born, the baby turned out to be a girl. And so they named her after my wife. They named her Madam. So.
Rusty (15:08.051)
So when you raise money and you say, listen, even $5 can help my goodness. It can help a lot.
Greg Pruett (15:17.323)
I mean, I mean, what's not to miss about doing stuff like that where you get to save people's lives and it costs you five bucks?
Rusty (15:23.219)
That's amazing.
Greg Pruett (15:34.635)
With as little as a nickel worth of chloroquine, we have saved people's lives.
Rusty (15:38.003)
Hmm.
Greg Pruett (15:42.251)
So, you know, that goes great. You go to church and you say, hey, y 'all think you don't have much to offer the Lord, but you know, when you give it to God, he works miracles with it around the world. Even a small, small amount, like a nickel, we might be able to save a young child with chloroquine from being killed by malaria. And that's pretty motivational when you think about it.
Rusty (15:43.891)
I'm believe -
Yeah, it really is. Change goes a lot further over there. That's great.
Rusty (15:55.443)
Mm -hmm. Right.
So you're over there for 12 and a half years, you get the call to come back and be the president of this great organization, Pioneer Bible Translators. But at some point along the road, you decide, I'm gonna write a couple books on prayer. I would assume the first one started off as, well, I'll write this, it's short, it's small, and it did well. I mean, people love it. And then you decide to write another one, which is just as good. I love both of these, and I'm ashamed that I hadn't read them before.
Greg Pruett (16:07.915)
Well, imagine being me, you know. Yeah, I mean, imagine being the person who sees all that. I mean, I just miss that being able to see that kind of amazing thing.
Rusty (16:28.435)
our lunch, but you were kind enough to give me a copy and I just consumed them. Tell me a little bit about prayer because we call this podcast Simple Faith. We're trying to make these steps as simple as possible for people, but what is it we often miss about prayer that we just either assume the wrong thing or we're doing it the wrong way? What have you noticed when it comes to our prayer life?
Greg Pruett (17:15.723)
Well, the way that I got into this whole idea, like the first book is called Extreme Prayer, was when I was called back from West Africa to become the president of Pioneer Bible Translators. And, you know, first I was pretty flattered. I was like, this is really exciting. And then I started realizing, no, man, I'm in trouble. You know, this is bad.
because I knew how to hunt warthogs, you know, for food. And I knew how to fix a washing machine in the bush. You know, I knew a lot of stuff, but none of it was relevant to being the president of Binder Bible Translators. And so I was like, man, I, I, they're going to ask me for.
a strategy, you know, like the board is going to say, okay, the new president, he's going to come in with this strategy, it's going to be amazing. What is it? I had nothing to offer. So and you know, the problem when you're a leader of something is if your strategy doesn't work, everybody knows they can see that it's just painfully obvious. And so it's embarrassing. So I was pretty I was pretty I got pretty intense with the Lord. And I, you know, I said, Lord, I have to have a source of power here.
Rusty (18:08.339)
Mmm.
Greg Pruett (18:29.387)
And I said, yeah, I'm like a Bible translator. Maybe I should look in the Bible and see if there's something in there that might help me. And I started coming across all these promises. And that's what the answer to your question is what we miss is that Jesus really meant these sweeping, open -ended promises for infinite power that he just sprinkles through his teaching.
Rusty (18:56.979)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Pruett (18:58.219)
when we pray in certain ways. And so, one of the biggest ones, I think, is that God promises to answer with infinite power when we pray in Jesus' name, which I take to mean consistent with the meaning of the name of Jesus, consistent with his character, his nature, the mission that he's accomplishing in the world.
Rusty (19:18.067)
Hmm.
Greg Pruett (19:23.531)
And so, you know, when we pray for our own comfort, we get used to praying for our own comfort and our praying for our own healing or our own things that we love the most. And and maybe those things are not even consistent with the character of Christ at all in some cases. And so we kind of become accustomed to him answering prayer in a very uneven way.
Rusty (19:33.683)
Hmm.
Greg Pruett (19:48.107)
because he never promised that he would do anything we said for our own comfort, because sometimes our own comfort is harmful to us. But he promised that when we prayed in Jesus' name about the things that Jesus is passionate about, he would answer with unlimited power. And so just starting then to pray about things that Jesus is trying to do or doing in the world around me, trying to use my pitiful...
Rusty (19:53.043)
Mm -hmm.
Rusty (20:04.883)
Hmm.
Greg Pruett (20:16.747)
perspective in life to do. Praying about those things, suddenly that opens the door for God to begin moving in my heart and making me a suitable messenger and a suitable person to be deployed in his kingdom. And then, you know, it's the way God gets things done on earth is through this.
praying in Jesus' name for the things of Jesus. So that what we, you know, Jesus said to his disciples up until now, you haven't prayed for anything in my name. And I imagine they'd prayed a lot, but they'd never prayed anything about what he was passionate about. You know, they hadn't done that yet. He said, ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete.
So we miss the opportunity to labor in prayer with the Lord to see great, infinite, powerful expressions of the coming of his kingdom in the world around us. Because we're so busy praying for things that are important mostly to us and not important to the kingdom of heaven.
Rusty (21:05.779)
I love in the book you get very specific, for lack of a better term, about specific prayers. And I never really thought about how we all pray these blanket statements, bless our day, bless our kids, bless this job, whatever it is, but we don't actually say what it is we're looking for. And you build a great case in your first book.
Extreme prayer about focusing in on okay. Well, what would that be? What does that specifically you're asking God for? And I found that to be very challenging in a good way because I think I did some soul -searching and realized I think I'm scared to do that for fear. He won't do it and then I've made God look bad It's certainly if it's a public prayer and I almost you know kind of doing a little bit of
protecting God when he doesn't need that. I can be bold enough to pray something specific and then recognize if he chooses to say no, that's okay. Tell us a little bit more about that. What are some specific prayers that we should pray and how we should think about our, just even our word choices when it comes to our prayers?
Greg Pruett (22:46.923)
I think that's probably one of the least intuitive things for us is the importance of specific prayers. I first got that from the place where Jesus says, if anybody has faith, he can say to this mountain, go and cast yourself into the sea and that will happen.
You know, he's saying there are going to be obstacles. Mountains in that context seem to represent obstacles. There's going to be things that you really can't do if you're going to serve Jesus. And they're going to look like a huge mountain in front of you. You're going to lack maybe skill or maybe people, colleagues to work together with or money or something. You know, if you go to God in prayer and say, Lord, give me an assignment, he's going to give you something you can't do.
Rusty (23:34.003)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Pruett (23:36.107)
that you will learn how to do with him. And so consequently, there's gonna be all these barriers to the accomplishment of whatever it is. And he's saying, look, when you pray specifically, you're going to see those barriers removed. And because a mountain, it's very tangible, right? When that thing pops up and does a cannonball into the ocean, you notice that, hey, that specific thing happened.
And I think reinforcing the idea of specific prayer is when blind Bartimaeus goes to Jesus, he hears Jesus is passing and people say it's Jesus and he goes over and he says, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And it's the exact kind of prayer we always pray.
Rusty (24:14.035)
Hmm.
Rusty (24:18.675)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Pruett (24:24.427)
Jesus bless me have mercy on me have you know bless my people bless the missionaries God bless this God bless that we never really get much more specific than that and Jesus comes to him and says hey what do you want you know he's not going to take he's not going to take general prayers even off of a blind guy he's like what do you want and then he has to say out loud I want to see and then he can see
And so that Jesus responds when we vocalize in faith, the thing that we really want to see. And so for me, that that has been a huge lesson because just like you said, I feel like out of compassion for God, we try to keep things, you know, within reason. And we don't want to embarrass him by asking something in public that he doesn't do.
Rusty (24:53.491)
Mm -hmm.
Rusty (24:59.763)
Right.
Rusty (25:04.147)
Right. Yeah.
Greg Pruett (25:14.187)
You know, imagine how awkward it would be for God, not to mention us if we prayed for some big thing and nothing happens. He looks bad. We look bad. You know, that's kind of the human way we view it. None of that is good. That is not not the way that isn't of faith at all. So I now have seen that probably the most beneficial application of my books about prayer.
is when people in a community of faith gather together and seek the direction of God and they come up with what they believe is really God's direction for them with specific measurable goals involved. And then they begin to make specific prayer requests that they're gonna all pray together in unity. We call it a strategic prayer request list. And it's a simple idea, but I think...
It's the biggest game changer that we've discovered for any organization or church that has ever applied it because of the faith involved. You know, you're saying here's something that doesn't exist right now. It's a mountain and you know, here's what we're praying and it's impossible. That's why we're praying to the right to God himself for this. You know, if it was possible, we wouldn't need to pray about that. And then you put that out there and everybody sees it and we all gather around it and pray. Um,
Rusty (26:28.627)
It's interesting because you would tend to think that, yeah, you tend to think that the only reason we pray is to get stuff done or get things from God, but there's a lot of other stuff going on as well, which is really a direct result of, you know, our continuous desire to pray and to have faith in God with this, which brings about the need for persistent prayers. You mentioned that as well. We pray in Jesus' name. We pray specifically.
Greg Pruett (26:43.019)
When you've persisted in prayer over something like that and then seen it happen, everybody's faith is built. That's the only way I know to build somebody's faith. So I think that's why it happened.
Rusty (26:57.939)
but we also pray persistently. So how long is long enough? At what point do you stop praying for something specific? Is there a point where you say, it's obvious God is saying no? Did Paul eventually after three times say, I'm never going to pray for this thorn to be removed or think you brought it up again or was he not persistent enough? What would you say about that?
Rusty (27:31.155)
Hmm.
Greg Pruett (27:49.547)
Well, I think there have been things that we realized God was refusing to do because they contradicted his character. And so sometimes it's just as important to figure out what God will not do because then you're learning about what God is doing among you and what his character and his nature is. And, you know, if you pray for more, more people on your staff and then in the process God refuses, but he's doing so many other things you're praying for.
And then you realize, well, maybe it's because we can't, we don't have the infrastructure in place to take care of these people if he did give them to us. And, you know, so you begin to address those things and then suddenly you see him release power and answer to your prayer and you realize, okay, he's, he's showing us, he's teaching us in the process. So, you know, the idea of what he won't do is important.
Rusty (28:34.067)
Hmm.
Rusty (28:39.763)
You just know it's longer than eight years.
Greg Pruett (28:41.323)
But then that does beg the question, how long do you pray for something? And sometimes when we have prayed for something and just kept having the sense that this was something God did want to do, we have prayed for as much as eight years and then seen God move in power. So I know the answer is more than eight years. I don't know how much after that.
Rusty (28:49.299)
Okay, let me ask this question because I just want to put on my skeptics hat for just a second. And there's people out there thinking, why? Why do we have to talk God into something? Why do we have to rally together, hold hands, be unified, pray magic words in Jesus' name persistently for over eight years to somehow twist God's arm?
Greg Pruett (29:11.211)
I know it's longer than eight years. If you haven't prayed for eight years or something yet, you should keep going.
Rusty (29:17.907)
to get him to do something that we know is good and benefits people and is a blessing. I know there are skeptics out there that have this feeling of the whole prayer thing seems like trying to talk God into doing something that would actually be good for a lot of people, but he's just not interested. What would you say to that?
Greg Pruett (30:08.811)
Well, I would say that, you know, prayer is how God accomplishes his plan on the earth, but it's largely about modifying us in the process. You know, as we begin to pray, he's changing us. When we start praying, we're not that useful, it turns out. You know, the Bible says in Second Chronicles, I think, is it...
16 chapter verse 9 or something like that where it says the eyes of the Lord are roaming the earth Looking for somebody whose heart is fully devoted a person whose heart In the word in the Hebrew there is the same root we get for peace a heart at peace And you know most of us our heart is actually a war because it's divided
Rusty (31:04.531)
Hmm.
Greg Pruett (31:09.547)
partly between God and partly between aspirations of pride or sex or something else or drugs or you know, just our heart is split in half and it's like a civil war going on inside of our heart. And he's out there searching for anybody whose heart would suddenly be at peace, but surrendered to him.
You know, and then that that heart at peace is translated as holy wholeheartedly or holy devoted, you know, and he can take a person who's like that once he gets them that way. Well, how does a person get fully surrendered to God? You know, it starts when you have a passion for serving him, but you're at war inside and then you begin to kind of focus in in prayer and say, Lord, I would like this thing that.
seems consistent with the kingdom of heaven to be accomplished. And at first you've got very small faith. You know, it takes a seed mustard seed worth of faith, but to get up to that mustard seed size of faith is really not easy. And so the, I think the praying is how people learn to, to have faith. You know, Jesus had such an emphasis on faith and a person, um,
He said, he said the probably the saddest verse in the Bible is when Jesus says, when the son of man comes back in the, in the Greek, it really, I think what should be translated as he's not going to find faith on earth, is he? You know, so Jesus is big emphasis. He was amazed at some people's lack of faith and he was amazed at other people's faith. And it was all about faith for Jesus.
So in a sense, I think this whole thing of prayer is growing us as people of faith so that we can be useful. And, you know, if we were, take the concept of persistent prayer. If we did not have persistent prayer in our lives and God just answered any prayer we threw out there once, you know, what would happen to the church? Well, you know, somebody in your church, Rusty would say, Lord,
Greg Pruett (33:29.163)
help Rusty to be a great preacher and double the budget, bring in 300 people or 500 people to get baptized and in Jesus' name, amen. And they don't think about it, that's the end of their prayer. And all of a sudden, boom, Rusty doesn't know what's happening, but the budget is doubled, 500 people walk in the door and demand to get baptized. What's everybody gonna say? They're gonna say, wow, Rusty's a pretty awesome preacher.
Rusty (33:30.227)
Mm.
Greg Pruett (33:54.315)
You know, we have some pretty good leaders and our church is kind of special. We're kind of a big deal around here. And God in answering our prayers would harm us because it would build up our ego instead of our faith. But if we all, instead of that, if the whole church had said, you know, we really sense that God wants us to move in our community and bring in.
Rusty (34:00.691)
Mm, that's really good.
Rusty (34:11.891)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Pruett (34:17.355)
hundreds of people to get baptized and you set some, some objectives in that direction. And you said, let's just pray that God would do this. And a year of prayer goes by where everyone is uniting in prayer together to persist and pray these specific things. And then God moves in power in your church. Nobody would be foolish enough to say anything about the preacher. They would all say, wow, we serve an awesome God.
Rusty (34:35.571)
That's so good. Well, the book is extreme prayer and the second book is extraordinary hearing. Are there other books I'm not aware of?
Greg Pruett (34:46.187)
So prayer is how God makes us suitable tools for his use in his kingdom. And if we're not praying, we have a tendency to be puffed up instead and abusive and harmful in our service to him. So that's my answer.
Rusty (34:53.459)
you
I would say so. So what's next for PTE? Are we close to having the Bible translated for all people groups? Where are we with all of that?
Greg Pruett (35:16.171)
No, that's pretty much it. I've got other ones. If I didn't have my day job, I would have already written two more, but being president of finer Bible translators keeps me very busy.
Greg Pruett (35:41.259)
Well, for some time now, you know, when I came back from West Africa and started doing this president job 18 years ago, or 17 and a half, I guess, I didn't know if this was like a, is this like a million year Bible translation movement task? Is this like a hundred year, thousand year? How long is this thing gonna take us for everybody to get scripture in their language? So I have a civil engineering degree.
in my background and my love language is spreadsheets. So I made a spreadsheet and I did some math and since then, you know, everybody's done the math at one time or another and said, okay, everybody, every language on earth can have the new Testament at least by 2050. And that's been the kind of the trajectory for a while that we would start the projects that are needed by 2035 and finish them by 2050.
And so for a long time that we were we were working on those on those grounds and pioneer Bible translators set our objectives That we would have a total of 300 Bible translation projects. We started that back In 2011 when we had 50 projects and we said we're gonna have 300 so that was kind of a big stretch but the idea was that we would do 10 % of the Bible translation work because we're part of an alliance now and
of the 11 most dynamic Bible translation organizations that have unified together to try to do this thing together. And none of us have been satisfied with this 2050 idea. And so they all said, what if, you know, sure, pioneer Bible translators, all by yourself and each individual organization all by themselves, they can't change the math on a task this big.
Rusty (37:28.883)
Wow.
Greg Pruett (37:34.347)
But what if we gathered together and we tried to make new tools, new methods, new ideas, better collaboration, better digital tools for making sure we don't overlap and collaborate? And could we instead of 2050, could we make it where we finish where 99 .96 % of the world's population gets the New Testament by 2030, three, instead of 2050. So.
Rusty (37:53.619)
Ha ha.
Greg Pruett (38:02.603)
That has been getting us out of bed earlier in the morning and getting, we're all pretty much just foaming at the mouth to see this thing happen. And so we've been working on that now for more than 10 years. And we have changed the trajectory from 2050.
all the way to 2048. So part of it is we haven't been able to collect the data to show the change. But you know that what what has been happening though that has dramatically changed is on the front end of it starting projects has gotten much faster. And so we haven't been able to measure the change on the chap chapter completions yet. But
on starting projects, you can, you measure that immediately. And so we went from years ago, I have a PowerPoint that years ago was like, Hey, we're as a whole movement starting 50 translation projects a year. And someday we could start 150 a year and that would make it where.
Rusty (38:50.739)
Wow.
Greg Pruett (39:08.459)
By 2025, we could have them all started. And that was kind of the dream back in the day, that someday we would start 150 projects a year. Last 12 months, we started 400 Bible translation projects as a movement.
Rusty (39:08.627)
Wow.
Rusty (39:12.755)
Right. That's incredible.
Greg Pruett (39:23.467)
So we didn't just double. We've gone into this insane momentum of starting projects worldwide that puts us on the trajectory of even before 2028, we could see all the projects started. So that's gonna change when they complete, right? It's just, we haven't got that measured yet. So.
Rusty (39:31.571)
Wow, that's incredible. So if we if we take the words of Jesus who said that, you know, he's not telling us when he's returning at the time he didn't even know. But there would be the season when all would know the good news of Jesus and then he would return. Some people would say that that means if the Bible is translated in all languages, then Jesus is at the doorstep. It's time for him. Are you of that?
Greg Pruett (39:45.227)
Instead of starting all the projects by 2035, we're on this trajectory to start on by 2028 or maybe 2027 depends on some of the some of the countries in the world are going to make it virtually impossible if not impossible to start some of the projects.
Rusty (40:00.627)
Oh, we lost internet.
Greg Pruett (40:40.011)
I have a little bit of internet instability here, I think.
I hope you can hear me, you're frozen. I hope I'm not frozen as well.
Greg Pruett (42:35.23)
Okay.
Rusty (44:02.095)
Hey man, sorry we lost internet.
Rusty (44:09.487)
Yeah, it was on our end. Okay, let me just start that last question over. So Greg, based upon what we read in Scripture, that the Lord will not return until all have heard or been given the resources to hear, are you of the inclination that once we translate the Bible into all languages, then Jesus will return?
Greg Pruett (44:21.918)
I think we had internet over here, but I'm not sure that somewhere in the connection.
Greg Pruett (44:51.678)
Right, okay, so that's a pretty, it's like an intuition of the body of Christ whenever we tell them about this and we say, you know, God is doing this new thing since really, you know, there was a time when there was just the translation, there was just one translation of the Bible, the Old Testament into Greek for a long time. And then, you know, by the time it was in the 1500s, we started getting these translations and the whole rest.
Reformation movement was happening because of those translations and so there's kind of this intuition that if all of a sudden We go to the point where literally thousands of languages are suddenly getting the Bible in their language pretty much everybody seems to say is this is I mean Jesus is coming back and To that I would have to answer that that's above my pay grade I I know that you know when Jesus said
all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations. You know, we're to teach them to bat, to obey all that he commanded and we're to baptize them. And, uh, you know, so we have this responsibility of disciple making, but he ends with this really cool idea. He says, and I will be with you even to the end of the age.
And so what he's saying there is, you know, I'm going to give you this task. And when you accomplish it to my satisfaction, as I'm there with you doing it through you. By the time it's over, that's the end of the age. This is the gospel age. This age only has one purpose, and that is that we would, we would.
disciple, we would make disciples of all the nations of the earth. So we don't know when Jesus is going to come back. He could come, he could say, yep, you're done. This is it. You know, you've satisfied my desires and my will. He could do it in the morning. In the morning, we could look out and see everything's changed. Or if he decides not to, it's pretty clear why not. We know what we are supposed to do. That's just Jesus way of saying church, you've got one more day.
Rusty (46:58.575)
Hmm.
Greg Pruett (47:14.494)
You know, you've got another opportunity to do what it is I've told you to do. And so he prophesied that the day is going to come when we will have completed his work. But until he comes, we still have opportunity to complete his work. So I look at this as a huge milestone in the work that Jesus gave us to do, because how in the world can...
Rusty (47:28.911)
Right. Exactly.
Greg Pruett (47:39.23)
people learn to obey all that Jesus commanded if they don't have the word of God in the language they can understand. So, you know, this is a huge element, but then there's still the opportunity of all these unreached and unengaged people groups that I think Jesus is working among them as well to establish his church with scripture in a way that...
Rusty (47:57.487)
Hmm.
Greg Pruett (48:05.95)
they can use those scriptures to transform lives in their community. And that's the leaven that's gonna go throughout all of the nations. And eventually then the end will come. So I think we're a big step forward and any day he could decide to come back. And this is obviously, you know, prophesied that, you know, when Daniel talks about the...
Rusty (48:19.055)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Pruett (48:30.014)
the coming son of man and he describes him as being worshipped by every language on earth. So that's his way of prophesying that someday a generation would come that would make it where every language on earth would worship Jesus.
Rusty (48:45.615)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Pruett (48:52.478)
but until that day comes, then that prophecy hasn't been fulfilled yet. So the one, one reason why I know this is fulfillment or prophecy is that I just see this is what God is doing in the church today. Today. Uh, you know, if you look in, um, Isaiah 66, having the opportunity to translate Isaiah was amazing. I highly recommend, but, uh, you get to the 66th chapter.
And he's going along and he's talking about even the distant islands that have never had the opportunity to hear of my glory are gonna, they're gonna, it says they're gonna be brought to Jerusalem. And it goes into all this detail about vehicles.
Rusty (49:23.055)
Hmm.
Greg Pruett (49:37.278)
I remember reading that and thinking, what in the world is all this, you know, horse drawn carts and emphasis on all these people coming from all these distant islands and places that you've never heard of coming together in Jerusalem? How is that even a thing? How is that going to be fulfilled? And then I actually went to Jerusalem and I just saw tour bus after tour bus from Korea from.
South America, Argentina, all these people from all around the world touring Jerusalem to see these sites. And I was like, this is Isaiah 66 happening right in front of my eyes. And I realized, no, we are in a, we are in this in times trajectory and you can see it in the signs of the end times.
Rusty (50:09.647)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Pruett (50:28.35)
that things are happening. Jesus talked about in different places, he talked about wars, rumors of wars, unrest and plagues. We look around and we see all that stuff happening, but that's not the end. It specifically says, that is not the end. What's the end? Jesus, he says, this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed in the whole world.
as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. So we don't know if that's tomorrow. We don't know how granular he expects this disciple making to happen. We just know that if we wake up in the morning and Jesus didn't come out, you know, look up at the sky, look around, no, I don't think he came back last night. You know what you're supposed to do. You've got another opportunity to make disciples of all nations.
Rusty (51:04.559)
I love that. Perfect way for this to end. Greg, for people that want to know more about Pioneer Bible Translators, what's the website? Where can they go?
Greg Pruett (51:34.43)
They can go on pioneerbible .org. You can Google pioneer Bible translators, find our website and it's a good website and you can get all kinds of information, more information there. If somebody wants to get a hold of one of these books, pretty much they're sold everywhere on the internet. So.
Rusty (51:49.487)
I highly recommend it. Greg, thank you so much for what you're doing to advance the kingdom. And thank you for being on the podcast today.
Greg Pruett (51:56.126)
Tindale's gotten really good at marketing these books on the internet. So just look for Greg Pruitt, Extreme Prayer or Greg Pruitt Extraordinary Hearing and you will find those for sale.
Greg Pruett (52:17.662)
My pleasure.