The 700 Club Interview: Brandon Gaskin [0:00-5:01]

Well, the Bible says he who has ears let him hear. But for the 70 million people who can't hear, Brandon Gaskin is working to bring them the gospel. Brandon Gaskin grew up in a loving household as the only person who could not hear. When he attended a deaf church for the first time, his life changed forever. After learning that 98% of deaf people have never been reached with the gospel, Brandon knew what he was called to do. As the founder and executive director of the Deaf Belenial Project, Brandon Gaskin's mission is to reach, train, and equip his community with the gospel. All right. Well, I'm so happy to say that Brandon Gaskin is here with me live in the studio. Brandon, it is so great to have you with us today. Thank you for being here. It's still good to be here as well. Yes. Well, first, I just want to, you know, let our audience know that you and I are communicating using SIMCOM. For those who are not aware what that is, can you explain that? Yeah, just a quick summary. SIMCOM, it's basically speaking and signing at the same time. But it's a little bit different because ASL has a full grammar and language of its own. SIMCOM, it's like mixing it to together. So it's not the preppin priority, but it works in some context for not all. Okay, I gotcha. Well, thank you for educating us on that, because I think a lot of people aren't aware of that. So I think it's good for us to know. But first, I just want to talk about, you know, 98% of the deaf community have not been reached with the gospel. Why do you think that is? You know, I think the many things that we can contribute at you, but one of the most primary is the lack of access and occlusion in the church. Bibles are not in full sign language yet. And so the church has a lot of work to do and get involved in reaching deaf and working with deaf to reach other deaf people as well. Yeah, we also teased, you know, our interviews by saying, you know, it took 50 years for the deaf community to receive the Bible. Can you explain what that Bible looks like for them? Because some people would say, oh, well, if they can see, they can read, but it's different. Can you explain that? Yeah, because ASL is its own grammar and its stuff. So when we're talking about America's sign language, there's 400 different sign language in the world to eat people's group after their own sign language. In America, it took 50 years because of video content based. You have to film inside. And then when you catch something that's wrong, you have to go back and film it. Again, after that took nearly 50 years to complete just for ASL itself. But now, great technology was able to advance to work a little bit faster to take 50 years to do that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I would love to know, like, your personal journey of faith, like, how did you come to know Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Yeah. So I grew up in a household pool of hearing people. I didn't sign, spoke mostly. And it wasn't a tool elementary when my mom started to like, maybe a good idea to put him in a mainstream program where they have both deaf and hearing students. And in that deaf program, I was exposed to sign language. And then later on in high school, I was invited to a deaf church for the first time. And it was through that deaf church where, you know, before I knew about Jesus, I knew about God through my mom, through my family, but really through that deaf church and sign language. And I could see God through His language and sign my heart language. That's when I really received, you know, She did and understood His heart for me. Wow. Well, that's amazing. Well, you also talk about how a lot of churches have the ability to reach the deaf community, but they face a lot of challenges in doing so. You know, have you, do you have like a personal story where you have definitely seen that in different churches? Yeah. One of my heart for me is in college. I could remember working with a hearing church and trying to set up an interpreting ministry, a deaf ministry. And in the beginning, it started wonderful. It was like, yeah, let's do it. And then as we progressed, we started to see it with barrier. And they didn't really want to fund. They didn't want to deport that. And that's really a big barrier in many churches around the U.S. and the world. If they don't have deaf leaders, then they're returning to interpret it, but they may not be enough interpreters in that city to deport that local church. There's several things that could barrier for churches. And typically, that is the access problem,