I took a flight over the mighty Himalayas recently on my way to Nepal. From my aisle seat, I caught brief glimpses of Tibet through the tiny window, recalling with fondness my visit to Lhasa and Xigatse, now (goodness!) nearly 20 years ago.

Arid and snow-covered, this landscape crawls beneath for hours—no matter that watching from a speeding airliner 30,000 feet up! It’s unfathomable that any humans could ever have crossed such frozen tundra, and even more so that any would choose to settle there. But settle they did in the valleys that turn lush with snowmelt, raising their yaks and barley and celebrating their version of Buddhism upon the rooftop of the world.

I took along three books that matched the geography of my visit, all ministry-related and all meant to provide a sense of the history and needs of the Himalayan region. Apart from God Spoke Tibetan, I also took:

• The Cross in the Land of the Khukuri by Norma Kehrberg (2000) — about the history of Nepal and her first-generation believers
• No Ordinary View by Naomi Reed (2006) — and an Australian missionary family’s sudden departure from Nepal during the civil unrest of 2006.

My purpose in going on this trip was to see what opportunities might exist for helping Nepali churches send evangelists and church planters into some of the more difficult areas around Nepal. God Spoke Tibetan was an excellent find (recommended by my sister-in-law), as Tibet is one of the neediest in the world when it comes to Gospel witness.

The Miraculous Story

This book provided history I’d never heard before in an incredibly entertaining way. It reads like an adventure novel, yet it only relates history as it happened—the truly miraculous 90-year story of how God’s servants translated, transcribed, and preserved the Tibetan manuscripts of the Bible until a date they could finally be printed and published.

Do you recall the anecdote of Adoniram Judson translating the Bible into Burmese? After he was arrested, his home was destroyed along with the manuscripts. But then one day, a friend found his pillow in the rubble and, thinking it would bring a tiny bit of comfort to his friend, gave it to Judson in prison. Judson was shocked to find that the “lumpiness” in the pillow was actually his manuscript, miraculously preserved unscathed by a God who wanted a nation to know Him.

This book reminded me so much of Judson’s story. How many times during those 90 years was this Tibetan Bible translation derailed? And how many times did Satan try to thwart the process and destroy the only living manuscripts? And yet the God of miracles intervened and opened every door that needed opening and closed every eye that needed closing. It’s truly an amazing story that deserves to be more widely heard.

A Few Key Passages

The Foreword to the book is long, but it really places the premise of this book in its proper context—the Tibetans needed a Bible! I love how Rev. H. Syvelle Phillips relates the long, laborious process of finding the tiny handful or printed Tibetan Bibles so that a few travelers could sneak them into monasteries and pray them into the right, searching hands.

He also mentions hearing from Australians who told him about their long-dead forebears who’d served 40 years as missionaries to Tibet who had left a trunk of important documents there. After finally stumbling across the house where they’d lived, he finds the trunk and writes:

This trunk, which had been there for well over forty years, contained a hymnbook and five handwritten Tibetan New Testaments that were leather-bound and carefully preserved. Amazingly, there were no stains, no mildew, and no worm damage. These documents were all in excellent condition… This was a dialect separate and distinct from the main Tibetan language. Apparently, these missionaries had written a few verses each day as part of their daily devotions. We believe they labored about thirty years writing these New Testaments. Each member of the family had handwritten his own copy. These Bibles were stored in a trunk, and God had supernaturally preserved them all of these years. (xxvi)

Maberly fills this book with key players in the translation: fugitives and missionaries, translators and scribes, friends and enemies. Through it all, we see the grittiness of the process and understand that God orchestrates His servants to do His work in His timing. A process that seemed (to most people involved) a waste of time and effort simply wasn’t. God remained in control, and He saw the work through to the end.

It’s an encouragement to those of us who labor for the Lord without seeing many immediate, tangible results. God’s not a man like us, bound by time or feeding off “results.” He’s our eternal Creator, all-wise and sovereign, with a plan formed before the foundation of the world. He knows what He’s doing, and He’s invited us to be part of it. Apparent results or not, we need to keep on in the strength that He provides, because only He knows the true impact of our service.

Maberly concludes with these two passages that show a glimmer of hope at the end of this long, seemingly tragic story. We can’t know what other victories have been won through the efforts of these translation heroes, but here’s just a glimpse of the beginning:

A Communist general in Lhasa, tired of trying to communicate across the language barrier, decided to learn Tibetan, and ordered his officers to learn it also—fast! But they lacked textbooks. How would they learn? The only book in both Chinese and clear Tibetan was the Bible, and somehow the Chinese commander knew this. He secured Bibles confiscated from Chinese Christians, and copies of the Tibetan Scriptures, and set his officers to studying them. And so across Tibet the conqueror opened the Book of God to learn the language of the people. (149)

Now it seemed less obscure why God had permitted the years to roll by before the Bible could be translated and printed. When priests and lamas ruled a closed country, few Bibles could have entered the forbidden land. Copies would have been seized and destroyed, while those who carried them would have faced probable death. But now deep tragedy had overwhelmed Tibet. Monasteries were destroyed, the people subjugated, monks conscripted for slave labor. When hope in men and gods had been wellnigh destroyed, at this precise time God’s Book appeared and spoke to the people of peace and life and hope. In the valleys and mountains of Tibet, in darkened temple cloisters; in hermits’ caves, far beyond the din and bustle of life, now the voice of God, through the devoted pen of His servant, Yoseb Gergan, speaks words of life to His suffering children. God has given “legs” to the Bible that it may run into the land of Tibet, telling all of the God who “so loved the world.” (150)

Conclusion

This true-life adventure was an incredibly fast, entertaining read. Coming in at just 150 pages, I finished it in an afternoon. It’s that good.

I can’t wait for my next trip to discover what geographic gems of literature await me. Books like this are diamonds in the rough. I highly recommend this one!

©2025 E.T.