Tamil is a language officially spoken in India, Sri Lanka, and Singapore. It is also commonly spoken in Malaysia, Mauritius, and Réunion. In all, about 74 million people speak Tamil throughout the world.
With the huge population of Tamil-speaking people, we have made great efforts to translate the Message into that language. To date, we have 21 Message books and 135 audio sermons in the Tamil language. Currently, we have a Tamil translator both translating and recording the Message at our recording studio in our Madras, India office.
Because India is an industrial nation with state-of-the-art printing facilities, we print the translated Message books in that country. The translations still go through our rigorous checking and editing process like they would here in Jeffersonville, but most of the books are eventually printed in India.
We have recently started duplicating Tamil messages in MP3 format. We now have 132 Tamil sermons available on MP3-CD. Because cassette tapes are still popular among believers in Asia, we still duplicate tens of thousands of Tamil cassettes in our Jeffersonville office and ship them to Madras for distribution in India and many other Asian countries.
The greatest need for Tamil material is in India, where there are over 850 VGR lending libraries and over 100,000 believers. Many of the newly pressed CDs will be sent to these libraries. Believers who do not have access to one of these libraries can receive tapes via the postal lending library. They request certain messages, and the tapes are mailed to them from the library. When they finish listening to the tape, they return it with a request for another message, and so on.
To All The World
The huge numbers of messages in the vast number of languages that are translated and distributed every day is truly staggering. From over a million French-speaking believers to a relatively few that speak languages such as Burmese or Nepali, every tape duplicated, every CD pressed, and every book printed goes to the believer with the love of the Bride of Christ. There are millions of people who believe Brother Branham’s Message, and God is mindful of each and every one. One of those believers was mentioned in the May 2008 issue of Catch The Vision.
Brother Joel Paramanadam (VGR Office Manager in Madras) often visits a Tamil-speaking believer named Sharma. Brother Joel knows that Brother Sharma loves him and looks forward to their every meeting, but it is not the fellowship that Brother Sharma craves. Every time Brother Joel visits him, he comes armed with the Message of the hour. The man, who was once possessed with demons and knew nothing but idol worship, now longs for Brother Joel to return with more words from God’s prophet. Who is responsible for that smile on his face and tear in his eye when he sees the VGR van approach? It is you.
On behalf of Brother Sharma and thousands of Tamil-speaking believers, “Thank you for giving us the Word of God.”