The 700 Club Interactive: Brandon Gaskin [0:37-5:37]

There's 400 different sign language in the world and only one have a complete Bible and sign language and not ESL. And by the way, it was just completed in 2020. And it took nearly 50 years to translate the Bible. Praise God, but it still worked to do. Well, joining us now is Brandon Gaskin, Brandon, welcome. Thank you. One of the statistics that you just referred to in that video setup was that less than 2% of the deaf community identify as biblical followers of Jesus. So can you tell us about how you came to follow Jesus? Yeah, so at the age of 15, I was invited to a deaf church for the first time. And understanding, I grew up in a hearing mainstream church with my family. Not having access to an interpreter or nothing. And then getting invited and high school to a deaf church for the first time was my blowing to me because it was like, wait, God, can you deaf people? And so that really just began the journey of my following Jesus and following the love and who he is and my salvation story as well. Yeah, I just wanted to say that when I heard you speak in Nashville, I mean, there was not a dry eye in the house. It was so moving to every single person in that room because I think a lot of us who aren't deaf, who can see, were so impacted. And I think our eyes were truly opened to the deaf community. So I just wanted to say thank you. And again, it's such a pleasure to have you with us today. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of telling this story as well. Like I said, they're not often deaf people get invited to share their story. So to be able to share their story and have the global church come around and say, oh, we're missing a people group. And we need to rally around if we want to see the great commission fulfilled. Yeah, absolutely. I also wanted to ask you, you know, what was one scripture? One scripture really stood out to you in your journey to coming to the Lord. What was that scripture? Yeah, I could remember the interpreter who invited me. She led me to Exodus chapter 4, verse 11, which is the story of Moses before the burning bit. And the Lord basically tell Moses that, who made the deaf? Who made the mute the blind? It did not mean the Lord. And I was really just touching to me because they were just telling me and validating that you were deaf because God created you deaf for a purpose. And so that really just led me to like, yeah, Lord, I want to follow you. I want to obey you. I want to live my life for you. Yes, so powerful. Brandon, oftentimes we hear about when the Bible is translated into different languages, people rejoice because it's in their heart language. And I kind of felt that when you described going to a church where there was a, for the deaf community, you came alive. It was for you. In the video, you also shared that of the 400 different sign languages in the world, only one ASL has been interpreted in the Bible. And it took 50 years. Can you explain why that is? Yeah. Well, when we look at the actual physical Bible and then deaf culture, they're different. Many deaf people don't read language like language. Many are visual. That's why it's sign language is important. So many of the sign language and actually all of the sign language are video based. And it takes a little bit longer to do that. And now modern technology were able to change the wording and twist it. It was able to. But in sign language, that's not possible. You have to refilm the whole video section. And so it took a very long time for that translation process to be developed. But thankfully, we have friends like deaf mentioned who did that work to help build the foundation, but also friends like deaf Harvard that helped build that foundation to where we're seeing now. Bible translation, moving, happening around the world. It took 30 or 40 languages that are currently in a process of developing a cryptidate. Either have some or have a cryptidate now with the goal of 2333 to see all at least all 400 languages have some part of the language. Yeah. That is absolutely incredible. It's so powerful. And we come alongside you guys in that mission. Absolutely. Also, one of the things that you point out a lot is that many churches don't have interpreters. And that when, sometimes even when you ask, and I think you've had many experiences like this, when you asked for ASL interpreters and people don't say, like churches respond and they're just like, I'm so sorry, we can't provide that.