A SOVEREIGN MIRACULOUS WORK OF GOD IN KAZAKSTAN

The nation of Kazakstan dominates central Asia and trade routes between east and west. Much of the country is semi-desert. Its population is 18 million people with almost 7 million Kazaks and 6 million Russians. Literacy is a high 98 % of the population. The nation has enormous oil and mineral reserves, and it is moving to a market economy.

The country has almost 300 Protestant congregations all of which are Russian speaking. Until ten years ago there were hardly any Kazak-speaking Christians at all. All Kazaks are nominal followers of Islam, but only 5% are practising Muslims.

Today, for the first time in history Kazaks can read the entire New Testament in their own language. The Bible League (e-News@Bible-League.org) has offices in Kazakstan and there it recently welcomed the arrival of the Kazak Holy Book, which contains the entire New Testament and 16 Old Testament books, including Psalms, Proverbs, and Isaiah. It took ten years for the translation of the New Testament into the Kazak language to be completed.

"Demand for this Kazak Holy Book is huge," notes the Rev. Waldemar Kurz, the Bible League's Director of Ministries for the former Soviet Union. About half of the 44,000 first run new edition Kazak Holy Book were placed with churches and mission agencies within a month of their arrival.

"The Bible League is the only organisation to date that has printed the Kazak Holy Book," explains Rev. Kurz, "including the first edition which was published four years ago but did not contain the entire New Testament. We are humbled and thankful to God for allowing us to take part in this privilege of providing his Word."

A missionary in Kazakstan using the new Kazak Holy Book reports, "You cannot imagine the thrill of seeing Kazak believers - church leaders who have been believers for two, three and four years - with the entire New Testament in their hands for the first time. If I were able to describe the joy on their faces it would bring tears to your eyes."

Kazakstan, a multi-ethnic nation with a long tradition of tolerance, struggles today with which political ideologies it should pursue. Sources inside Kazakstan report that the country is at a critical juncture in its history, and that the availability of the Kazak Holy Book at this time is indeed "a sovereign, miraculous work of God."

Earlier in 2000 Igor Voronenko, the National Director of the Bible League in Astana, noted that now is a good time to preach the gospel in Kazakstan:

"People lost purpose in their lives, abandoned communist ideals, but have nothing to fill the void," he says of his fellow countrymen in the aftermath of the collapse of the former Soviet Union. "This is an important time to spread the gospel because there is an emptiness and lack of certainties in people's lives."

The openness of people to the gospel is reflected in the increase of Kazak Christians during the 1990s. Ten years ago the number of known Kazak Christians numbered six. Today there are more than 6,000. More than 80 new churches have been planted in Kazakstan during the past two years. A number of these are multi-ethnic as well as Kazak congregations. The new Kazak Holy Book promises that the growing Kazak Church will become a mature church.

Elisabeth Heaps, the daughter of Graham Heaps, the pastor of the Dewsbury Evangelical Church, in her year-out from Cambridge University where she is studying Russian, is in Kostenay in Kazakstan, for the third time. Hers is a Russian congregation, evangelistic in its outreach to the surrounding villages, and in a state of flux as new people attend and others move away from the poverty of Kazakstan for Russia, or even America, which is the longing of many. There is friction between the younger more educated young people who want theology, teaching and a more educated ministry, and the older members who have passed through persecuting times, and are suspicious of what they see as the dangers of education.

GEOFF THOMAS