Bible Ministry Makes Scriptures in Arabic Available Online
by Allie Martin
July 26, 2004
(AgapePress) - The Internet is proving to be a valuable tool for people in Muslim nations to download and read God's word. The International Bible Society (IBS) has placed recorded portions of scripture in Arabic on its Web site. IBS officials say people in Muslim countries are downloading the word of God at record rates.
Dwight Anderson is a spokesman for IBS. "If people hear the word in their own language and their own dialect, I think it has more impact," he says. And, he adds, it gives Muslim believers a fine tool for sharing the gospel with others, since a person who is "very technically literate" can take a CD with an MP3 file on it, and "play it to a number of other friends or associates that don't have the technical capability or the literacy to do that."
The IBS spokesman, who made his comments on Mission Network News, says there are more than 20 hours of Arabic resources online. He noted that the accessibility of these scriptures via the Internet is having a major impact on Arab-speaking communities.
"We make these resources available so they can be downloaded and copied onto a computer, and then people can print them off or listen to them without having to go back online," Anderson says. "It's our hope and prayer that people would know where these resources are and that they would be able to use them and make them available to people they run into."
In addition to making portions of the Bible available via the Internet, IBS is also working to distribute more than one million pieces of Christian literature in the Middle East, including Arabic Bibles, New Testaments, children's Scriptures, and audio recordings for those unable to read.
