The World English Bible printed in 2005 by New Life Literature

Bible Translation Goes Viral!

Back before the Internet was common in homes, businesses, and pockets, I had a vision for digital Bible distribution. I started distributing the King James Version on a computer bulletin board. I started to write a Bible study program that would be free and have unlimited distribution. But I wanted to also use a modern English translation, for obvious reasons. I asked each of the main modern English Bible translation copyright owners for permission to use their Bible translation for that, and was denied. Some of them would let me sell copies of their Bible translation and pay them most of the proceeds, but nobody would let me just give God's Word away in their translation. The irony of having it illegal for me to distribute the Bible in this country with freedom of religion and freedom of speech was not lost on me. I was frustrated, so I prayed.

In March 1994, as I was praying about this, God told me to do a Bible translation. To make a very long story very short, I obeyed, and with the help of more people than I can count helping with editing, prayer, and funding, finished updating the language of the whole Bible plus Deuterocanon/Apocrypha on January 7, 2020. It has been in distribution, of course, since 1995, in various states of revision as the language was updated.

It gives me great joy to give permission to anyone who wants to distribute the World English Bible in any form, print or digital, written, audio, or visual, in whole or in part, quoted in other books or by itself.

Now, what about free distribution of God's Word for the rest of the 7,111 living languages in the world? God has a plan for that! We will talk more about that in our next prayer letter.