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How did God answer your prayer?

An hour later, Bob Hawkins, who owned a Christian bookstore in Portland, Oregon, telephoned me. We had met at CBA, and I knew he had ordered a few copies of the magazine.

"How's it going, Bob?" I asked

"You know that little digest magazine you publish?" he said enthusiastically. "Well, it ought to have twice the circulation—and I know how to do it. Send me a thousand extra copies!"

Two weeks later, he ordered another thousand copies. It was time for us to talk. That's when I learned of his marketing strategy—provide the magazine directly through churches. Within a year the circulation had climbed from 20,000 to 100,000 copies each issue.

The pastors who were receiving the magazine began to recognize a need for their people to read good Christian material. What the congregation didn't purchase, didn't have to be returned, so the magazine found additional readers through pastoral visitation. That continues to this day.

You are best known for The Living Bible. What was the most difficult part of the Bible to translate for you? What was the easiest?

Galatians was the hardest book to translate because the line of reasoning in it is complex. Paul is not a modern journalist; as a rabbi, h is perspective makes the text hard for us to understand.

On the other hand, Old Testament books like Ruth and Esther, and the Gospels were the easiest because they are stories.

When The Living Bible first came out, some people criticized it. How did you feel about their comments?

The comments haven't affected me personally. But I felt angry that people who could be helped by an easy-to-read translation were being hindered from using it. Everyone should be reading it for their devotions.

Do you real it in your daily devotions?

Oh, yes. It's fresh and new to me every time I read it. It's almost like someone else's translation. It never was "my" project; God gave me the particular ability to do it, and I'm glad I had the privilege to be used by him.

I also use it for witnessing. Personal witness is not easy for me. But sometimes when I'm traveling on a plane, and my seatmate asks what I'm reading, I use the opportunity to share the gospel message from the pages of The Living Bible.

The Living Bible has now been translated into many languages. How did that begin?

In the mid-1960s, I began to pray about Living Letters being translated into other languages. I looked at an almanac that listed the major languages of the world and found that although five thousand languages are spoken throughout the earth, almost 90 percent of the world's population spoke in only 100 of those languages. To reach those 100 languages is still our goal.

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