It will come as no surprise to you that people all over the world are hungering for the Word of God. We hear of their stories nearly every day, and because of the generosity of folks like you, we’re able to develop strategies to help get biblical truth to those who are asking for it.
Around 2013, we learned that another ministry had downloaded, translated, and recorded John MacArthur’s sermons into Vietnamese. That ministry organized a digital distribution network across the country. Listeners received the translated recordings on SIM cards that they could use in small audio players. Imagine a village of people gathered around one of those boxes, listening to John’s preaching in their native tongue.
That story gave birth to a ministry initiative called Grace Reaches Out (GRO). In 2014, we launched GRO to translate and record key sermons by John into non-English languages. We started with Arabic, French, Mandarin, and Portuguese for two reasons:
- The MacArthur Study Bible is already available in these languages, so we are able to support spiritual growth in them with our flagship resource.
- They represent high-impact, major world languages in need of strong Bible teaching. Over one billion people speak Arabic, French, Mandarin, or Portuguese as their first language.
Millions of non-English-speaking people now have access to verse-by-verse Bible teaching, thanks to you. It is support from friends like you that made this ministry effort a reality. Also, your feedback through years of listening helped us identify the 575 strategic sermons—representing a hundred different topical series—that make up the GRO vault.
We are now also translating John’s sermons into Italian, Romanian, and Russian; and in the future, we look forward to expanding into other languages such as German, Japanese, Korean, Swahili, and many more. We’re thankful for your prayers and for all your support, and we look forward to seeing how God uses Grace Reaches Out to build His church.
