Mistakes and miracles – how God’s Word reaches Iranians

A couple of years ago, Biblica completed the first translation of the whole Bible into modern Farsi, the official language of Iran. In one recent year, 300,000 Bibles were received by Iranians hungry to read them… despite the fact that it’s against the law to distribute the Bible in Farsi.

Our brave distribution partners tell us one incredible story after another about how Jesus is speaking to Iranians and miraculously providing Bibles to people seeking them.

The taxi driver and the box

In one Iranian city lives a man who works as a taxi driver.

One day, he picked up a passenger who had a box sitting next to him on the back seat. As this passenger left the car, he forgot to take his box. The driver thought he would contact him to pick it up the next day. He took the parcel home with him for safekeeping.

The thing is, this taxi driver was also a house church leader. That night, the secret church meeting would be at his house. For many years, these ten believers had gathered regularly, sharing one Bible between them – the one belonging to the taxi driver. The ten of them had been praying for months: “Lord, we would each like to have our own Bible.”

This particular night, when it was time to pray they said, “Let’s pray for Bibles again!

As they prayed, the group leader suddenly wanted to know what was inside the box that had been left in his taxi. He got up very quietly and walked into the kitchen where he’d put it. He opened the box, and, astonished, brought it out to the praying group.

What was inside the box? Ten Bibles! The group was so, so happy.

The Lord delivers!

The man who left that box of Bibles in the taxi was one of our partners’ delivery guys. His role in getting Bibles to Iranians who need them is to collect the Bibles from a secret, safe warehouse and then carefully deliver them to house church leaders. Sometimes the delivery guys are just guided by the Holy Spirit about where to take the Bibles.

We don’t think this brother meant to leave those 10 Bibles in the taxi – he didn’t know the driver was a house church leader. But God knew very well. Our partner said:

“It gives me goosebumps to think about the Holy Spirit working together with people, fallible humans, and even using their mistakes.”

Your impact is huge

Our partner in the Middle East has a message for everyone who gives to Biblica:

“I want to personally thank you for making the financial investment in Biblica to make the Farsi Bible translation possible. God is using your gifts and multiplying them, sometimes more than tenfold.

“Now the translation is done, we need funding to print more copies. We can’t start printing Bibles until the money’s in. Anyone reading this can make it possible for more people in the Middle East to read the Bible, which for many will be their first time.”

A ‘lite’ Bible app reaches 70 more countries

Although technology has made it easier than ever to share God’s Word around the globe, most smartphones are less powerful in the developing world than they are in developed nations, and most users have a lot less data to use. This means the average person has remained cut off from digital Bible apps like YouVersion.

Until now, that is.

This year, YouVersion partnered with Biblica to design, pilot, and launch Bible App Lite — a lightweight Bible app specifically designed for people in developing communities.

“Lightweight” means that the app is exponentially smaller in terms of megabytes while still offering key Bible engagement features in an offline context, including the full text of the NIV.

More downloads than TikTok

After a pilot in Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria, Bible App Lite is now used in over 70 countries around the world. More than 16 million people have installed Bible App Lite in the last 12 months. More importantly, there’s over 1 million people using it every single day. And in multiple African app stores (Kenya, Uganda, and DRC), this digital Bible has even ranked as the No. 1 overall app —more popular than TikTok and Facebook!

“God is using this app — not just to get the Bible into people’s hands, but also into their hearts,” says YouVersion Founder and CEO Bobby Gruenewald. “Our desire is to reach every person, in every part of the world, with God’s Word in their heart language.”

Bobby adds, “Our team loves Biblica. We couldn’t do what we do without you.”

The stats

The new Bible App Lite:

  • 16 million total users
  • 1 million daily users
  • The number 1 app in multiple African app stores

We keep innovating to share the Bible everywhere

Technology like this is a gamechanger in getting the Bible to previously inaccessible places. In many countries it’ s much easier to download an app than get your hands on a paper Bible. Last year, we launched 53 more single language Bible apps for basic smartphones.

Read more about the impact of your support
over the last year in our inspiring annual report.

Dionne Mutambisi

Finance Officer

Dionne joined Biblica in January 2023. As a detail-orientated accounting and finance professional she has been meeting the accounting needs of companies, not-for-profit organisations and individuals for over 12 years. Dionne lives in Bournemouth with her husband and three children, Heavenly-Joy, Daniel-Jesse and Josiah-James. Together they attend City Gate Church. Dionne serves as a governor for two local Church of England schools.