The Bible app YouVersion has partnered with 10 leading Bible translation organizations to make the Gospel available to 95% of the world’s population by 2033.
The collaboration, which some initially deemed impossible in this lifetime, will also aim to see the New Testament available in 99.96% of the languages available.
Ideas for the illumiNations partnership have been brewing since 2010 at an organized launch gathering. The association was created as 3,732 languages of the world’s over 7,000 languages have little or no translated Scripture.
YouVersion Founder Bobby Gruenewald told The Christian Post, “The Bible transforms lives, and we want to give back and bring awareness. It’s important that people know that God speaks their languages too.”
Gruenewald created YouVersion, commonly known as the Bible app, in 2008 when he was struggling to establish a consistent pattern in the time he spent reading the Bible. Since its inception, the app alone has been installed on more than 400 million unique devices and downloaded in every country on earth.
Gruenewald said that while the app has seen millions “draw nearer to the Bible”, the ministry realized that it needed to expand to other languages, including smaller languages that have never heard Jesus’ words.
He said they are “committed to making the Bible available in everyone’s heart languages”.