TRIALS OF A BIBLE TRANSLATOR

Imagine you are like me, a Bible translator.

But go further with my metaphor and imagine my translator's workspace as an old Gothic castle situated on a high mountain. However, in y our imagination you have to see that the castle is dark, and darkness makes your scriptorium work impossible. Worse yet, while you dither, demons prowl at every castle window like video game monsters trying to suck your soul into hell.

So you must be always worshiping and walking in the light.

Please indulge my metaphor.

And outside the mountain castle you hear the roar of vast throngs perishing in the darkness and falling from the mountain, like souls swept into a black abyss by a giant Tsunami tidal wave.

You are under incredible pressure to finish the Bible translation because, as the only Go'el Redeemer warned (Mk 13:8) [and He gave this warning to those who first rejected His untranslated Hebrew and Hellenistic Synagogue Greek Scriptures]: never-before-imagined, globe-tilting earthquakes are finally bringing the Chaos of the Last Days just before the prophesied Moshiach's Great Assize.

Back to my metaphor of an old Gothic castle situated on a high mountain as a picture of the Bible translator's mind. So pretend you are me and carry my burden in prayer. While you peer into the fearful dark night shrouded under a demonic full moon, you see black water in a high wall of death, and you see it is fast approaching.

I'm describing an end-time tidal wave flood no Noah's ark can weather, bringing with it a cloud with the stench of death so great it fowls the entire cosmos. And there in the world-shaking tidal wave you see heaping up the rotting carcasses of false Messiahs and their accursed false prophets along with the debris of their doctrines of demons, their Kabbalistic deceptions, their zchus delusions of pseudo-salvation, all of which have beclouded Yiddish-speaking and Russian-speaking Ultra-Orthodox Jews in oceanic depths of gloom and eternal darkness for millennia.

Then the Devil himself raps on the castle door and demands, "Do you think that you alone possess wisdom, and countless generations of rabbi geniuses who studied night and day are wrong and you and your 'Orthodox Jewish Bible' are right?"

I'm describing the interior of a Bible translator's spiritual struggle, using a metaphor, yes, but pointing to real demons that fly through the air and bang against the castle windows of the mind.

One demon said, "You've fallen afoul of the L-rd and He is going to remove you from this scriptorium and the keys of the kingdom will be snatched from your hand."

Then, I saw, when he finished his accusation, another thousand Ultra-Orthodox Jews fall into hell.  I wept and wept. 

Then I saw a dragon flying with legions of demons being stationed at every castle window.  And a lying spirit told me I was losing my mind.

I hurried to the roof of the castle and cried out to the L-rd, "Why is this demonic deluge falling on me now?"

The L-rd said, "Your intercessor has died and no one has taken up her mantle."

Mary Hannah died November 18, 2004. She prayed 6 hours a day for this AFII ministry for over 20 years. I was a grave-digger at her burial on December 29, 2004. With every shovel-load of dirt, I wept. But I wept for myself. The Holy Spirit said, "You have died, but the old you is not fully buried (Ro 6:1-4). This grieves the Holy Spirit, so keep weeping through her funeral until your own funeral is complete. Your stubborn heart and its darkness, which is a cause for stumbling, must be buried, dust to dust, ashes to ashes."

Linda is ill now all the time, because her Mary Hannah, her precious intercessor who prayed thousands of hours for her, has departed and has not been replaced. Will you stand in the gap and enter this castle of prayer to daven day and night in her stead?

On the way to Ms. Hannah's funeral, I drove past a snow-covered frozen cemetery, and I had a vision. Shammashim and Zekenim wearing shrouds of death were digging a grave. I was 12 years old and it was time for my tevilah kever. They placed a coffin in the grave hole and commanded me to get in. I drew back in fear. Then they relented and said, "You can take your Bible, but nothing more, except its Author, the lover of your nefesh."

So I was buried with Moshiach the lover of my nefesh (Ro 6:4; Shir Hashirim 1:12-13), who had warned me not to love the world or the things of the world, but to guard my heart and to keep myself from elilim (idols). Some girls guard their heart: they get a 'crush' on a boy and suppress it, temporarily or permanently. But with Moshiach our burial partner we must not have a passing 'crush' but burning tested true love, for Moshiach alone shares each believer's casket that empties out into chayei olam (eternal life).

My Bible looks so chewed on and tear-soaked that the margins can hardly hold any more desperate prayers of burning love for the Author, the lover of my nefesh. Yet even now I am writing furiously. Bible translators are famished, gluttonous eaters of Scripture, and "out of the eater comes something to eat" (Judges 14:14), something in Yiddish, or something in Russian, or something in Hebrew.

This is how it has been: when my strength had almost failed, the Holy Spirit appeared and tossed me a sword, the Chassidic expression for water immersion,golden words, pure gold of light, saving words from heaven shining down on my tears into the dark castle of my mind, ZIKH GE'TOYVL'T IN DER MIKVE ("immerse oneself in the ritual bath").

Bible translators devour the Scriptures in order that they themselves will not be devoured. The Devil goes around like a roaring lion seeing whom he may devour.  Better to be an unhappy semi-crazy Bible translator and devour the Bible as if one's sanity depended on it, and yet at the same time feed millions with the fruit of your eating ("out of the eater comes something [for millions on the Internet] to eat?"Judges 14:14), than to abandon Bible translation and pursue selfish happiness and then have a tearless, fruitless life. They that go forth weeping, bearing the precious seed, will doubtless come again with the harvest.

The Devil will come to you when you are least prepared, just when you think you are whole and pious and firm,just then, right at that time, in your sanctity, Satan will appear and cut you down almost to the point that you want to die in ignominy (I Kings 19:4). Once the Devil came to me and said, "You can be done with all this weeping over the Word of G-d. You can go back to Indiana, leave New York and its vicissitudes, and find a little house with a picket fence and be happy the rest of your days." But, begone, Satan, for Moshiach said, "Better to suffer with the People of G-d than to enjoy the Olam Hazeh for a season." Better to have the L-rd's joy than the world's happiness (Ps 16:7-11). Better to suffer than to miss the will of G-d. Mt 7:21; Ro 12:2; Mt 6:10; 1Yo 5:14. Job as a foreshadow of Moshiach said, "Even though He slay me, yet will I serve Him (Job 13:15); and on that point Isaiah said of Moshiach, "It was the L-rd's will" to crush Moshiach and to sacrifice his life for sin (Isaiah 53:10). Every day we need to have a Garden of Gethsemane prayer meeting (Lk 22:42), since so much is "up for grabs" in our ministry, and "to whom much is given, much is required" (Lk 12:48). So I'd rather have the "Hades" beaten out of me by the L-rd than to miss His "Im yirtzeh Hashem" [if the L-rd wills]). Don't take ANY cup from me, L-rd, if missing that cup means missing your will.

So, when the Holy Spirit unveiled to me the secret, that the First Epistle of Yochanan (John) [1Yn] is a tract to ward off temptation following Messianic immersion burial, then I began to quote it to the Devil. For days on end I thought I was losing my mind. Sometimes I had to pulsate one verse of 1Yn into my brain all day long in a constant pulse of concentration, closing every rat hole of the mind, every vermin thought of the Devil, keeping the corridors and staircases filled with songs of deliverance, drowning out the Devil with loud anthems of praise, praying in the Spirit, singing in the Spirit, shouting Scripture at the Adversary, reminding the wicked Pharaoh of the Olam HaZeh about the Moshiach Seh of kol Kehal Adat Yisrael into which I have been ingrafted and about my mikveh Exodus and about His purchase of my redemption and how He bought me and made the temurah (exchange), that is, my receiving my justification through Moshiach Tzidkeinu (Jeremiah 23:5-6) and Moshiach taking over my sins, and how Moshiach carried me out of death and even through the wilderness of my old nature toward my new life in Him. Yes, Satan, begone! Every castle window must be bound shut, and the Devil's thoughts must be locked out.

Satan, that cunning one who quotes Scripture so piously, comes and says something like, "Those who endure to the end will be saved, but you cannot endure ______________ (you fill the blank in terms of your own weaknesses, sins, or demonic temptations), so you will not be saved." Satan that pious slanderer then looks triumphantly at you and says, "Since I raised this lying specter of temptation in front of you, and you WERE tempted, you then cannot be saved." But this is a lie.  Temptation is not a sin; YIELDING to temptation is a sin.  Moshiach never sinned but was tempted in all respects as we are, yet never yielding. 

But if you don't resist the Devil and counter him with Scripture, this cunning lie, injected into the mind, will hinder your ministry of the Word, an outcome Satan desires, so every thought must be brought captive to obey Moshiach Tzidkeinu. 

You surround yourself with songs of deliverance day and night.  You remember that one man (Moshiach) died for all (Isaiah 53:8), and so in Moshiach's temurah (substitution, exchange), all died.  This means it is no longer I (in my old nature) who lives.  I in my old nature died with Moshiach, and my life, since my new birth, is hidden with Moshiach in Hashem.  In this new life I do not make room for the Devil and I make no provision for the flesh (the old nature unredeemed in the Ruach Hakodesh) to satisfy its lusts and desires.  Instead I decided to set the L-rd always before me (Ps 16:8).  Therefore I am seated with Moshiach in heavenly places.  I have passed from death into life.  The castle I am speaking of is that of a renewed mind in Moshiach Tzidkeinu, for we are told not to be conformed any longer to the Olam Hazeh but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.  And in this castle I am describing here, the habitat of a renewed mind in Moshiach, I discovered it was the will of Hashem for me to be a Bible translator of Hashem's words.

But how do you have the strength to do these things?  You submerge your mind into the mikveh of Scripture, looking for the Author, the lover of your nefesh, who bought you with His korban kapparah.  You quote Scripture to the Devil until he can't stand to be around you.  You go out on the street and give someone a tract.  You go to the homeless shelter and witness to them and feed them.  You visit a shut-in.  You avoid the appearance of evil.  You treat people in all purity.  You ignore what they say and listen to their heart's cry.  You avoid tale-bearing and tale-bearers.  You see people as they will be or might be in Moshiach, and not as they are or were.  Remembering that Satan wants to take people captive to do his will, you always release people to the will of Hashem.  With pre-tevilah candidates you tell them that they are engaged to Moshiach and they are preparing to be co-buried with him, so, forsaking all others, in sickness and in health, as the wedding vow goes, they are His.  But it will not be "until death do us part,"      1C 7:39, as ideally in marriage, for to be absent from the body is to be present with Moshiach Adoneinu.

The Bible says, "Don't make place for the Devil."

Satan's target is the heart.  The Bible says, "Above all, guard your heart?"(Prov 4:23)

Remember. Trust in the L-rd with ALL of your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

At the Azuza Street revival it was not Heaven Above, it was Heaven Below and everyone was caught up in heavenly revelries.  Hearts were heavenward. Keep your heart heavenward and turn your heart away from the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life. 

Why do you have to "guard" your heart?

For one thing it is deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9).  It is sneaky.  You have to watch it.

It is susceptible to Satan's wiles and crafty designs.  That's why 1Ti 4:16 says to

"watch your life and doctrine closely. and if you do you will save both yourselves and your hearers."  But sometimes when we are almost totally innocent, even then Satan attacks our heart with a painful old memory or some other spiritual attack on our mind.

Above all, guard your heart.(Prov 4:23)

Teenage girls guard their hearts all the time.  The teenager wants to go to a school but has a "crush" on a boy.  What is to be done?  Very simple.  The crush is suppressed or repressed for four years or whenever school is over.  Then, if the boy is still available, the "crush" can be brought up from hibernation.  This is called guarding the heart.  There may be some sadness for a time, but with the tears of that sadness G-d can do great things.  Translation work is done with great sadness and spiritual warfare often, because in order to translate over a million words, a scroll so large it requires desperation of appetite to ingest, sometimes Hashem allows tzuros to drive along the whole scriptorium enterprise.

As it says in Judges "Out of the eater came something to eat."   When I translated the OJB I was so miserable and upset that I had to eat the Bible like a starving man.  Now thousands are eating as a result of my eating, as it says, "out of the eater came something to eat."  Satan does not want anyone to eat the Bible so naturally Satan attacks the cooks, the translators. 

G-d has given us love, power, and self-control.

Moshiach says to take everything one day at a time  (Mt 6:34).   Don't get ahead of the L-rd.  We walk by faith and not by sight.  Don't try to analyze and understand everything.  Remember this one thing. Trust in the L-rd with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

Don't take your eyes off of the L-rd.   Set your hope FULLY on the L-rd (1K 1:13). This is why you must guard your heart.  Jer 17:10 says, "I the L-rd search the heart and examine the mind."

The Bible says that the L-rd is to have first place in our hearts, and we are to keep ourselves from idols.  Then, when we seek first the kingdom of G-d, all these other things come back around to us.  "Delight yourself in the L-rd and He will give you the desires of your heart" (Ps 37:4).

However, we must go ahead and do G-d's work and wait on the L-rd.  "Those who wait upon the L-rd will renew their strength."  (Isaiah 40:31)  "Those who wait on Me will not be disappointed." (Isaiah 49:23)  If we wait on the L-rd and learn how to please Him, no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.  (Isaiah 54:17)

"I know the plans I have for you," declares the L-rd, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope." (Jer 29:11)

The reason you have to guard your heart is that Satan will come to you and tell you that you cannot find your joy in the L-rd, that you have to have something else and that "something else" requires you to go your own way and do as you please.  Or you say to the L-rd, "I will give you my ministry gift, translation work or whatever it is, but only if you give me what I demand."  No, it does not work like that.  Your ministry gift is not your gift but His, and freely we received, so freely we give. 

The Bible says, "I know, O L-rd, that a man's life is not his own;

It is not for man to direct his steps." (Jer 10:23)

When Satan comes to you and says that G-d is not enough, and that G-d is against you, you have to say, "No, Devil, my G-d shall supply all my needs!" 

We who are in leadership don't preach ourselves. (2C 4:5)  The Greeks said to Moshiach's Shlichim, "Sir, we would see Yeshua."  If Moshiach is lifted up, Moshiach will draw all men unto himself.  We have to help people find their hope in Moshiach, not in man.  Jer 17:5 says, "Cursed is the one who trusts in man."

Secondly, we have to suffer with Moshiach in order to reign with him.  We can't gather the harvest unless we go forth weeping with the precious seed of the Word.  It would be better to have a sadness in your life and devour the word of G-d and translate it for others to read, than to have a superficially happy little empty life and nobody comes to Moshiach.  You have to keep your etz hakravah atzmeet (tree of self-sacrifice) to stay in the ministry picture.

Without a vision the people perish.  We know that Satan is angry and will try to hinder.  We must pray that the liar will be unmasked and that the enemy will be pushed back and that thousands of people will discover Hashem's