Bible preaching

This is more information from the Mongolian State census of 2020 which showed 87.1% claim Buddhism, and 4.2% shamanism as their religion.

That census also shows that in 2020, 2.2% of the population claimed the Christian religion, whether Catholic, Moonie, Orthodox, Jehovah Witness, Mormon, or protestant. The 2010 census had 3.5% of people claiming Christianity. This was a massive drop of 37.1% in just ten years. The percentage of Muslims and other faiths grew over the same period. These statistics are not lying. For nearly 20 years missionaries have been commenting on churches in a downward spiral, as many leaving as coming, including ministers. It means that Christendom is in heavy decline.

Doubtless God provides for those who truly want him, depend on him, and heals when people turn to him. He said: I am the LORD, your healer (Exodus 15.26). I was preaching to a church of people who hold that God has ceased to work in miracles as he did in the New Testament. The congregation was the exact opposite of Pentecostalists or charismatics. I asked people to raise their hands if they were certain God had miraculously healed them. I expected one or two to do that with red, embarrassed faces. I was amazed to see a sea of raised hands, many with both hands raised up high, others standing up, all with faces glowing, beaming and thanking God. It was at least 98% of the congregation. That is the grace and power of God.

When missionaries seen as rich poured into poverty-stricken Mongolia from 1990 onwards, many Mongolians were attracted in the hope of receiving vast foreign wealth. Burhan Jesus was portrayed as always loving, forgiving, healing, making people rich. Many mass meetings focussed on health and prosperity, but left many blind and deaf people unhealed, many lame people pushed away in wheelchairs, the poor still grovelling in poverty.

It is no surprise Mongolians turned away, convinced Christianity had nothing to give them. They spurn what they have seen first-hand in Christendom. They now see that secular business, swindling, the s*x trade, drug-smuggling and other crime is more profitable and builds vast blocks of flats all over the place.

Little do they realise the judgement seat of Christ awaits every one of them.

God gave us the job of proclaiming the truth. How much we need God’s wisdom and help in that. We are completely dependent on God to work in hearts, to turn people to him. Please PRAY.

"Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth." Psalm 124.8

Although this is about Mongolia, the Bible translator we relate to in Bhutan, is a national of that country and cites the exact same problems in the languages of the Himalayas, including Tibetan, where missionaries of the past decided to use Tibet Buddhist terms for God and much else, although they did not at all fit the Bible. He says the error has created confusion there.

Please pray over this whole scenario.

History of Bible Translation into Mongolian
Mongolian culture has no concept of:

The unique supreme personal intelligence, the Spirit who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, infinite, eternal, immutable, self-sufficient, the knowable creator and preserver of all things, perfect moral ruler of the universe, utterly sovereign, wholly just, altogether true, completely loving, merciful, and gracious, eternally and vitally connected with His creation.

People ignored: what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them […] ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made, […] they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Romans 1.19-23

Mongolians did not know Jesus Christ who stated that God the Father is known solely through him (John 14:6). Not knowing Christ means they were without hope and without God in the world (Ephesians 2.12). Thus, Mongolians worshiped occult shaman spirits of the sky or tenger. Shamanism is the traditional Mongolian worldview, and its pantheon of demigods is widely revered today, as in the days of the Mongol Khans of thirteenth century who invaded Euro-Asia. From the fourth century onwards, Buddhism came to the area of Mongolia.

According to the Mongolian State census of 2020 of those aged 15 and above, 87.1% claim Buddhism, and 4.2% shamanism as their religion. 2.2% claimed the Christian religion, whether Catholic, Moonie, Orthodox, Jehovah Witness, Mormon, or protestant. This was a drop of 37.1% from the 2010 census, which had 3.5% of people claiming Christianity. The percentage of Muslims and other faiths grew over the same period.

Archives on Bible translations into Mongolian dating from 1785 to the mid nineteenth century show missionaries concentrated on Mongolian groups in Russia as they were more accessible from Europe than Mongolians elsewhere. Moravian missionaries went to Mongolian Kalmyks situated between the Black and Caspian Seas, near today’s Volgograd, and British missionaries went to Mongolian Buryats in Siberia, to the east of Lake Baikal.

The Moravians went first as traders. Before engaging in Bible translation, they thoroughly studied the Mongolian language, culture, and religion. In 1827 they published the New Testament. They avoided Buddhist terminology, as that conveys entirely non-Biblical meanings so between 1815 and 1820, they published parts of the New Testament using the word gegen (the light) for God. In 1821 and 1822 they used the word degedü (the highest) for God, but in 1827 for the New Testament they reverted to gegen for God. When a Mongolian nobleman suggested they called God Burhan, the word used since at least the ninth century connected with Buddha, they were sad as it meant the person had not understood the Gospel.

Burhan, as found on birch bark documents dated at the end of the ninth century AD or earlier, refers explicitly to Buddha, those documents showing it means ‘Lord Buddha’. Throughout history, as noted by thirteenth century Marco Polo, Burhan referred to the Buddhist religion. Burhan is merely a human innovation. There are thousands of documents, written over hundreds of years which show the nature of Burhan. None are in any way connected with the Biblical God. There is no evidence to the contrary. Today, in whatever Mongolian language, Burhan is used in connection with Buddhism.

Though the word Burhan is a Buddhist term, it is also colloquially used to describe any religious idea, but throughout Mongolia the prime meaning of this word today is Buddhist, and very widely presented as such on the Mongolian mass media by Buddhist monks and many others.

From the 1810s, British missionaries to Buryat Mongolians in Russian Siberia used Buddhist monks in Bible translation as they were literate. Archives show the monks saw Christianity as another form of Buddhism. It was natural they used Buddhist terms, calling God by their own term Burhan. English words were often transliterated so the New Testament was called the Shine Tistament. Shine means ‘new’, but the English word tistament is comprehensible only to an English speaker. Archives show the missionaries had major disagreements and contentions between them, one using violence on a Mongolian such that the Mongolian needed to go to the monks for medical attention.

British and Foreign Bible Society were criticised by S.C. Malan, an Oxford scholar and Anglican minister, for publishing the Bible in Buryat. MALAN, S. C. 1856. A Letter to the Right Honourable, the Earl of Shaftesbury, President of the British and Foreign Bible Society; on the Pantheistic and on the Buddhistic Tendency of the Chinese and of the Mongolian Versions of the Bible Published by that Society. London: Bell and Daldy. Malan compared the terms for God used by Moravian and British missionaries and states that Burhan is merely a Buddhist term.

Throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century criticism and censure in Siberia and China continued against using Buddhist terms in Mongolian as telling someone Buddhist Burhan is not God and telling them to believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of Burhan (Mark 1.1) makes little sense.

In Mongolia itself, mission was first done by a Norwegian in the nineteenth century. Then there were the visits of James Gilmour from Britain in the last quarter of that century and Swedish missionaries to 1924. The Mongolian ‘Communist’ State terminated that. No missionary saw anyone converted from Buddhist Burhan to Jesus Christ, the Son of Burhan.

Mongolian Peoples’ Republic (today Mongolia) was politically associated with the former Soviet Union and tightly closed to the west. By 1971 Mongolia had been Socialist (‘Communist’) with Marxist ideology for 50 years, yet very many Mongolians secretly had strong animistic or shamanist worldviews together with those of Buddhism, from Mongolia’s history. There was no one professing a faith in Christ. There was no church, or any Christian book available, and no missionaries. Mongolians had not even heard the name of Jesus Christ.

After theological college the man who was to start Bible translation into Mongolian was minister of a church in London and engaged in street evangelism. One day in 1968 he came across: I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named […] but as it is written, “Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.” Romans 15.20-21 His mind immediately went back to having read: DOUGLAS, W. O. 1962. Journey to Mongolia. The National Geographic Magazine, 121(3), where Douglas wrote: The Mongolians are so removed from Western culture, so distant from the influences of Judeo-Christian civilization, so unaware of the West's great books, and humane letters. He knew nothing at all about Mongolia but at the church prayer meeting that week he prayed that if God was calling him to Mongolia, God would cause something to come from there showing they needed the Gospel. Some days later, a man whom he barely knew, said he had been at the meeting. He had just started work at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London and happened to sit at the Mongolia desk. He flicked through the letters on the desk and happened to find one from the Mongolian Academy of Sciences requesting the British government to send them, two copies each, of the Bible in English, Russian and Mongolian. It later came out they sent Bibles in just English and Russian. Thus, the man went to a university and studied Mongolian language, history and culture. He also studied Bible translation at Wycliffe Bible Translators. The work of translation began in 1971.

At university he happened to meet several Mongolians from Mongolian Peoples’ Republic who were studying English for six months in Britain. At the mention of the Buddhist term Burhan, they said it could not possibly refer to other than Mongolian Buddhism.

In 1972, after translation of the Bible had started, lecturers at the Mongolian State University in Ulaanbaatar were asked by the translator what Mongolians would call an entity which has the following attributes:

• Spirit with no physical body
• That Spirit alone existing
• That Spirit possessing all power
• That Spirit creating the whole universe and everything in it from nothing
• That Spirit being present everywhere at the same time.
• That Spirit with supreme intelligence, knowing all

The lecturers were asked if Tenger, the shamanist pantheon of demigods venerated by Mongolians, including the thirteenth century Khans of Mongolia, would fit that. They were also asked if Burhan would fit. The university lecturers replied that both Tenger and Burhan are just traditional Mongolian religion and that neither fitted the concept of the being Whom had been described. They concluded that neither could be used for that.

Following this discussion, the term yertöntsiin ezen (Lord of the universe) for “God” was discovered in: NYAMSÜREN, S. 1968. Angli - Mongol tovch tol'. Ulaanbaatar: Mongol ulsyn ih surguul' (English-Mongolian Concise Dictionary, published by the university). The university lecturers concurred this fitted the attributes which had been described to them.

As translation work progressed over years, involving Mongolians, each stage was thoroughly checked by Bible Translation Consultants of Wycliffe Bible Translators and United Bible Societies. The New Testament was published in Hong Kong by United Bible Societies, in August 1990, just days after the first free election in Mongolia. Copies arrived in Ulaanbaatar and was read by tens of thousands of Mongolians who had never seen any part of the Bible. The Bible Society of Mongolia was first started there in December 1990 and officially registered in 1991.

In 1990, Mongolia had stepped away from a one-party system but faced many political and social changes. Mongolian nationalism flourished, bringing with it a strong new wave of traditional Mongolian Buddhism. Later, traditional Mongolian shamanism experienced an extensive revival.

Political change in Mongolia meant that foreign missionaries who did not know Mongolian poured into in a very poverty-stricken society, which was largely isolated from the rest of the world and had many low waged and unemployed people. Being often the first time Mongolians had met people from the rich West, they flocked to them, wanting to learn English; wanting to be paid; wanting visas to go abroad. Missionaries did not understand what they saw so naively called it spiritual hunger and a revival. They paid poorly educated Mongolians to interpret for them. Papua New Guinea had the greatest saturation of missionaries, one to many thousand nationals, with Kenya next. By 2000, Mongolian missionary saturation had moved into second place in the world with over 1,300 missionaries for a 3 million population, barely any of them knowing the language.

Buddhism has existed from the fourth century AD in what today is Mongolia and was re-introduced in the sixteenth century. There are many specific Buddhism words to refer to such as the Buddhist concept of a temporary ‘hell’; the eternal emptiness of nirvana; being ‘born again’ or reincarnated into another body on this earth; entreating a god by chanting; expressing to a god regret for continued human failure which has to continue due to karma, and so on. All these are hold specific Buddhist meanings and all are still used in Buddhist teaching today. None are relevant to the Bible. These were the terms used by the interpreters paid for by missionaries. Missionaries had no idea what the Buddhist terms meant, how they were used and understood, nor that the terms specific Buddhist meanings which do not fit with the Bible.

The interpreters had no Bible knowledge and broken English. The interpreters did not know who God is and ignorantly used the term Burhan and a plethora of Buddhist terms. Because of government strictures on religion over 70 years, they knew little about Buddhism. Following these interpreters, missionaries used the Buddhist term Burhan for God, concluding from the ignorant interpreter it was right. Missionaries then told Mongolians the New Testament in Mongolian was false as it did not use these terms. Thousands of Mongolians abandoned Christendom as a result.

As is clear from the records of nineteenth century mission to Mongolians, Mongolians predominantly believe that all religions are different cultural expressions of the same thing. This belief is still widely held today. Many missionaries were unaware of this. Many Mongolians believed missionaries did not understood what was happening

The whole led to a movement against the work of Bible Society of Mongolia and the people attached to it. In April 1993 a Translation Workshop was run in Ulaanbaatar by Bible translation consultants of Wycliffe Bible Translators and United Bible Societies. Over thirty Mongolians attended it. They were from every church. The Translation Consultants exposited the Bible showing what the Bible reveals about the attributes of God. They then took a vote. The attendees unanimously agreed that neither the Buddhist term Burhan nor the shamanist term Tenger fitted the Biblical attributes of God and that a term better than Yertöntsiin ezen could not be found as it fitted exactly.

However, that same year foreign missionaries with a very limited grasp of the Mongolian language and lacking training in theology or Bible translation decided to do another Bible translation using the term Burhan for God, and Buddhist terms. They paid Mongolians who held the view that Burhan should be used as it fits with Mongolian national identity.

Bible Society of Mongolia continued to work on translating the Old Testament into Mongolian. The work was based on the Biblical text in Hebrew and Aramaic. The New Testament, based on the Biblical text in Greek, was also revised. Bible Translation Consultants of Wycliffe Bible Translators and United Bible Societies completed a detailed check of the whole Bible against the Biblical texts and wholeheartedly approved it for publication. In July 2015 the complete Bible in Mongolian language went on sale for the first time in bookshops and online. It used no pagan terminology as those human religious notions fail to accurately express the concept of God and his teaching given to humanity. It has Yertöntsiin ezen for the one true, living God.

Over the years, Bible Society of Mongolia has carefully researched, studied, analysed, tested and found approval for the God honouring, clear terms it uses in translation. Bible Society of Mongolia consistently avoids any form of syncretism, seeing God as holy, detached from human religion. Bible Society of Mongolia avoids the usage of language which would express Bible concepts through the terms of traditional Mongolian paganism.

At the same time, the movement which sees God as Burhan is widely popular amongst many who profess Jesus. Some claim that word has changed meaning. The Bible never shows paganism being redeemed but shows it as unchanged and wicked. For the 87.1% of the population who see themselves as Buddhist, Burhan has not changed meaning. The truth is that the tiny percentage of the population who see God as Burhan have just become accustomed to that. No present-day movement can re-write the history of hundreds of years.

Warren Willis, the late director Campus Crusade in Mongolia, asked the missionary from USA who had pushed for God to be called Burhan, why he saw that at right. Willis stated the sole reason he gave was that it is popular. The Old Testament Bible shows that a mix with paganism is always popular. That is even more the case when the pagan term Burhan is seen as connected with national identity.

God granted wicked King Manasseh the chance to humble himself and to repent of all attachment to paganism:

"He entreated the favour of the LORD his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD was God." 2 Chronicles 33.12-13

Only God can move people to turn from the paganism of their nation to turn:

"To God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come." 1 Thessalonians 1.9-10

Би бол Мөнхийн Эзэн.
Энэ бол миний нэр.
Яруу алдраа би өөр хэнтэй ч хуваалцахгүй.
Надад өргөх магтаалыг бурхан шүтээнүүдэд өгөхгүй.

I am the LORD;
that is my name;
my glory I give to no other,
nor my praise to carved idols.

God spoke. Isaiah 42.8

Intercede now - written by John Gibbens -

Intercede now - written by John Gibbens Please join me in prayer for a burden that has been on my heart for many years. In 2018, I shared the Gospel with a bright Class Nine girl, a gold-medal student. She accepted Jesus with great joy and became a believer. But soon after, she went to be with the Lord. Because Bhutan has no Christian gra...

Intercede now - written by John Gibbens -

Intercede now - written by John Gibbens It was quoted by Jesus. His love for the Father was perfect. The sight of the house of his Holy Father being treated as just common caused his zeal to rise.

When I was trying to learn to ride a two wheel bike as a child, with my father helping me, I thought I was doing OK, so my father advised to me, quoting: “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” (1 Corinthians 10.13) I can remember that verse to this day.

Peter was certain he was ready even to die for Christ, but Jesus said he would deny Christ, and that God had given Satan permission to sift the apostles like wheat. He was one of three people who faced the fire of temptation. Christ was another, Paul fell into sin persecuting God’s people. In the case of all, it was at the start for them.

Paul needed that. As he stated, all depended on God’s grace. Peter had been shown by God the exact same thing, the grace of God dealing with his sin. In these ways God gifted Peter and Paul humility. That was essential for their lives and ministry.

John Owen on the Mortification of Sin in Believers has a section on temptation, “The nature and power of it; the danger of entering into it; and the means of preventing that danger.” Owen shows that for all sorts of reasons a person can think it cannot happen to them but that is not reasonable due to the weakness of the human heart and the fact that: “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” (James 1.14-15) No one has exemption.

A godly elder of a body of believers told me about his heart, which he said, as a human, is capable of any sin. It is the reality and meekness we all need.

In Leviticus 11.1-47 God instructs about what is clean and unclean. God permits no trace of the unclean. That law was that even accidently touching a dead mouse made a person ceremonially unclean. It shows us that God commands that the least connection with sin must be completely avoided. There are no exceptions, no excuses.

How frail we all are. How watchful we must be. How much we need God’s grace. Let no one think they are strong enough. That is pure foolishness. We all need: “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and c the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1.5-10)

We have no excuse. We stand only on the work of the cross of Christ which means: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The cleansing is complete due to Christ.

At the same time, sin is a personal choice. It is not inevitable we sin as 1 John was written: "so that you may not sin". (1 John 2.1)

Jesus on being near to God emphasised not faith, the Holy Spirit, pray, 'worship', enthusiasm or emotion. Instead he talked of obedience:

"WHOEVER HAS MY COMMANDMENTS AND KEEPS THEM, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. [...] IF ANYONE LOVES ME, HE WILL KEEP MY WORD, AND MY FATHER WILL LOVE HIM, AND WE WILL COME TO HIM AND MAKE OUR HOME WITH HIM. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.' " John 14.21-24

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... ирээдүйд итгэж найдах юмгүй ... Хүн бүр амьдралын хѳл үймээн дунд хутгалдан явахдаа бүтээсэн эзэнээ таг мартан ѳѳр ѳѳрсдийн зорилго руу тэмүүлсээр явах боловч үхэхдээ ийм нэгэн эзгүй хоосон...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRLD9Pg3tqM

Christ saved you to overcome your sin The talk is on the Bible way Christ saved you, resulting in how you must live with victory over sin in your life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNPCc1Wt1VI

The resources God has given for dealing with continued sin. Due to Jesus Christ dying on the cross, God accounts all who believe in Christ as not guilty of sin, but in a right relationship with God. Anyone who believe...