Does John Piper overplay literacy and diminish the glorious power of sermon-centered missions in oral cultures? It's a pushback from a podcast listener named Miles. Pastor John, my wife and I have our lives on the trajectory towards doing Bible translations as a career, so I am in no way suggesting that I think the Bible is unimportant.

But when I think historically of the practice of believers prior to the advent of the printing press and when I think globally about the millions of believers who don't currently have the Bible in a language that they can understand, it seems that our American evangelical ideal of Christian discipleship might be too dependent on assumptions about literacy and access to cheap copies of the Bible.

There was a video of you, Pastor John, on Facebook on April 19th, and you said, "You don't have a chance against the devil unless you know how to read and understand God's Word." This statement was obviously not intending to convey that people without access to Scripture are hopeless, but I think it reflects to some degree what I'm getting at here.

Literacy is obviously a good thing, but have we made it a test of genuine faith and obedience? Pastor John, what would you say to Miles? Well, I am really glad for this question, especially to correct either a misunderstanding of what I said or to correct a misstatement of what I said.

I mean, I made the mistake, not anybody else. The whole issue of orality in missions has been an issue for me for about 20 years or so, and I'm really glad to say some clarifying things about it. So first, let's make some missiological observations and then some biblical observations.

It's a plain and important fact that there are several thousand languages in the world that do not have complete Bible translations in them. The exact number right now is not important for the point I'm making. Just the fact that there are any is the point that I'm making. Those languages have real people who speak them, people that need to believe on Jesus Christ in order to be saved from the wrath of God.

And some of these people speak only that unwritten language rather than a trade language in which the Bible exists, and many of them are not yet able to read at all. That's one fact. Another fact is that translating the Bible into a language often takes many years, sometimes decades.

It seems to me patently clear that the people who are without Christ should not have to wait until they have a Bible in their own language in order to hear the gospel, be saved, be discipled, form churches, grow in grace and the knowledge of the Lord. And that implies that someone who knows the scriptures, either because they can read or because someone else told them, must speak, must speak orally, must speak the gospel to the people groups so that they may believe and be saved and grow in grace.

Therefore, the last thing I want to do is discourage missionaries from penetrating people groups who are preliterate as if evangelism and discipleship were not possible until the people have their own written copies of the Bible or have the ability to read for themselves. We take people where they are and give them what we can, and we do it as soon as we can.

And I don't doubt that God in his mercy through the faithful oral teaching of the scriptures can grow for himself mighty, devil-defeating saints. So what I said, or at least what was heard, is wrong. I mean, what did they say? I said that you don't have a chance against the devil unless you know how to read and understand God's word.

So if I said that and I didn't put any qualifiers around it, then I'm just plain wrong. What I mean by qualifiers is I hope I said or implied that if you can't read the Bible for yourself, you have to depend on somebody else who can read. So reading is essential.

You can read the Bible to tell you what it says because, in fact, without the word of God—I'm going to say this—without the word of God, we cannot defeat the devil. So let's be clear. A new convert who believes the gospel and cannot read can defeat the devil. Got that?

I say it. A non-reader who is preliterate can defeat the devil, but he can only defeat the devil by faith, 1 Peter 5:9, and faith flourishes by the word of God. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So if a person can't read, he'll be dependent for his devil-defeating power to be fed the word by somebody who can read or has been taught by somebody who can read.

Christianity is not magic. It is faith in a historical reality mediated through inspired writing and believed by the power of the Spirit. Now, here are the biblical observations I had in mind when I said missiological observations and biblical ones. Here's three. And I'm so glad to hear that Miles and his wife care about Bible translation because that really clues me into where they're coming from.

They just don't want to minimize the necessity of oral dimensions of discipleship, which is what I'm trying to rectify here. Number one, the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 3, 4, "By reading, you can perceive my insight into the mysteries of Christ." This is absolutely astonishing. Paul is the inspired representative of the risen Christ, and he's been given profound insight into the mysteries of Christ.

And he says, "By reading," it's a participle, just says, "Reading, you can join him in spiritual perception of divine reality." Nothing could elevate reading more highly than that sentence. And all of us should want that for ourselves and want it for everybody we can help. So the priority of reading is huge, and Christianity has always been building schools and building hospitals wherever they go.

Number two, second biblical observation. The words of the Lord are true and righteous, Psalm 1910. More to be desired are they than gold, much fine gold, sweeter also than drippings from the honeycomb or Psalm 119.72, "The law of the Lord is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces." In other words, to possess the words of God is a great treasure.

To be sure, somebody who can't read but has the word of God stored up in his heart orally is better off than a literate person who has a Bible and it just sits on the shelf collecting dust. But when you are holding the written word of God in your hands, you are holding a treasure better than tens of thousands of gold and silver pieces.

And every Christian virtue I can think of inclines me to want others to be able to hold it in their hands as well and read it. And the last biblical observation would be to simply observe that paternalism of missionaries over new churches and the breeding of perpetual dependence in younger churches is something to be avoided like the plague in missions.

And as long as we have the Bible and we are the readers and we are the teachers and they don't have the Bible and they don't have the teachers and they can't read, well, they're in a position of dependence and we're in a position of power and control, and that should not go on indefinitely.

And this is what has lamed so many younger churches over the centuries, a perpetual dependence on outside influence for the understanding and teaching of the word of God. So my conclusion is, by all means, give the gospel. Let's give the gospel to pre-literate people as soon as we can.

And let's not postpone disciple making until a written Bible is available in their language. And even in our own culture, if there are people who for various reasons are not able to read or find it very difficult to read. I remember asking a young man one time, "What are you reading?" And he's about 30 years old.

He said, "I don't read." I said, "You mean not even magazines?" He said, "No." I said, "What a revelation." There are people who either by disposition or dyslexia or other kinds of things that just don't read. They don't ever read. We must not neglect those people. We must not.

We must be about the business of strategies of disciple making. So we do what we can do, for nobody lives by bread alone but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. So we must not neglect the people who are willing to read and to follow the word of God.

And we must not neglect the people who are willing to follow the word of God. And we must not neglect the people who are willing to follow the word of God. And we must not neglect the people who are willing to follow the word of God. And we must not neglect the people who are willing to follow the word of God.

Amen.