commit themselves for this service, and those who will invest faithfully in the work. D r . C hase : Dr. Cowan has spent a week on the Biola Campus to share with our students this same informa tion and challenge. We feel that this type of personal confrontation for our young people is invaluable. In cidentally Wycliffe Bible Translators through the years has provided Biola College with instructors for our various classes on phonemics, pho netics and other linguistic areas. Many of our students have ultimate ly gone with WBT to various fields of the world. D r . C owan : Yes, that’s certainly very true. In fact, a rough estimate would be that there are well over 150 Biolans now in our Wycliffe member ship. I think of Earl and Betty Adams who attended Biola. Earl is now the Director of our Member-In- Training program. This includes our jungle training program which be gan in Southern Mexico. Earl has also been over in New Guinea and returned just a few months ago from Napal where we had established an other base to train workers. Right at the moment he’s over in West Africa doing similar work. It’s not just a matter of learning skills, get ting accustomed to climate and the like, but really preparing candidates in terms of a spiritual attitude to wards the people of other countries, living under primitive conditions so that even in these circumstances they’ll be rejoicing in the Lord. This is a time when new missionaries re validate their sense of call to service under actual field conditions. We want them to go out assured that is what God wants them to do. We praise God for Earl and Betty Adams, and for the preparation in the Word of God received here at Biola. Others of your more recent gradu ates are Larry and Linda Jordan. Larry was a very successful young
Bible Translators consider as some of the major goals for missions in the next decade? D r . C owan : Our primary objec tive we believe to be that which the Lord has committed to us in going into all the world and preaching the gospel to every creature. For this reason we should give a special pri ority to reaching those areas and isolated spots where nothing has been done to allow the people to hear and to read the Gospel. The com pletion of the body of Christ, the true Church made up of all born- again believers could be in this next decade or sooner. We seek to estab lish national churches so that the congregations can evangelize their own people with the message of Christ. It is our fervent desire to send workers into every tribe which has a language still unreduced to writing. We want to give them the Word of God in their own tongue, training them then to reach others. It’s also our purpose to help other missions who have similar burdens in reaching hitherto untouched peo ple. Some of our staif serve as con sultants on loan to these organiza tions. They check over translations carefully. D r . C hase : Just how big is the task of translation that yet remains? D r . C owan : No one can fully say the exact dimensions of what is be fore us. More exhaustive surveys are being conducted regularly. Certainly it’s not an underestimating to talk in terms of two thousand more groups for which something should be pro vided from the Word of God. Given some 4,000 young men and women to go out and learn these languages, along with a comparable 4,000 to serve as supporting personnel main taining them out in the fields, we see no reason why the outreach can’t be done in the next 30 years. We have techniques that are tried and tested. The crux of the matter is the re sponse of individual Christians to 20
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