Creating Media. Sharing Jesus.

Donate

THE GLOBAL GOSPEL

The history and impact of our most ambitious project

Mike's
Thoughts

What happens when you mix the words of Jesus with drama, visualization, and the Internet? You get The Global Gospel (TGG), now in almost 40 languages. The global distribution of TGG has allowed over two million YouTube viewers to hear and learn from Jesus! That’s “redeeming the time!”

In this edition, you will learn how TGG was designed, has been developed, and is now being delivered through the growing network of GNPI. The Global Gospel is a story of Jesus and you. Take a minute to enjoy your achievements and dream with us what might be next!

The Global Gospel truly has a global impact!

These quotes are all taken directly from the TGG YouTube pages from each language

ENGLISH -
"I LOVE HOW THIS USES THE EXACT WORDS FROM THE BIBLE!"“THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THESE! IT’S GREAT TO HAVE VISUALS THAT FOLLOW THE SCRIPTURES.THEY’RE DOING AMAZING THINGS FOR OUR FAMILY STUDY, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!”

GERMAN -
“DANKE , SEHR GUT GEMACHT”

ARABIC -
“THANKS FOR PREACHING THE WORD OF GOD. GOD BLESS YOU”

SPANISH -
“QUÉ MARAVILLAS QUE SÓLO JESÚS PUEDE HACER....”

CHINESE -
“THE GOOD NEWS OF THIS KINGDOM WILL SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, SO THAT ALLNATIONS CAN HEAR IT, AND THE END WILL COME “(MATTHEW 24:14) I WANT TO HELP UNDERSTAND BIBLE TRUTH. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT ME.”

SWAHILI -
“PRAISE AND GLORY BE GIVENTO GOD FOREVER”

PUNJABI -
“THANK U THIS IS JUST WHAT I HAVEBEEN SEARCHING FOR. A PERFECT SIMPLE VIDEO TO EXPLAIN THE TRUTH OF GOD”

TAMIL -
“MORE USEFUL UPLOAD MOREBIBEL VIDEOS GOD BLESS YOU LOT”

LUGANDA -
“THANK YOU JESUS YOU LIVE TO DIE FOR ME YOU’RE WEREREJECTED ALL BECAUSE OF ME THANKS FOR THE SACRIFICE IGIVE YOU MY HEART MY SOUL AND BODY USE IT AS YOU WANTLORD.”

"I CAN SEE THAT GOD HAS THINGS PLANNED THAT I CAN NEVER IMAGINE"
- ARTIST PAULA GILTNER

THE HISTORY OF
THE GLOBAL GOSPEL

In the mid-1970s, Don DeWelt of College Press Publishing wanted to create the artwork for a book about the life of Christ. They commissioned a young artist named Paula Giltner for The Pictorial Life of Christ in English. Unfortunately, publishing became too expensive and a lack of funds caused the artwork to sit on a shelf for nearly 30 years.

We now jump ahead to learn about Johnny Johnson, a preacher with a heart for reaching the Chinese people. He paid to have Paula’s images digitized. This allowed the book to be printed and published in Chinese. Johnny caught a vision for using the artwork to reach more people groups, but the timing still wasn’t perfect. Ten more years passed.

In 2010, GNPI saw the potential of illustrating scripture to touch lives. After working on the scripts to match scripture to the artwork, Stan Waite began focusing his full attention on this project and has helped our teams finalize and upload each version. Bob Sartoris played an important role as the producer for the original 88 stories.

ARTIST PAULA GILTNER AT WORK

The Global Gospel was born!

God gave GNPI the opportunity to take these colorful images and turn them into a video storybook with 107 short episodes. Fifty years ago, Paula never imagined the impact her images would have. So far, viewers have completed over 71,478 plans with this content on the world’s leading Bible app, YouVersion, and they have downloaded 572,678 stories with these images in 157 countries from FreeBibleimages. She never dreamed that these stories would be broadcast to millions of Muslim homes on SAT-7 KIDS as Jesus Story for future generations. Yet all these are examples of how God is using The Global Gospel to impact lives.

From every nation, tribe, people and language...

2011 - ENGLISH
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 510 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 340 MILLION

2013 - HINDI
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 490 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 370 MILLION

2013 - UKRAINIAN
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 39 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 35 MILLION

2013 - RUSSIAN
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 255 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 145 MILLION

2013 - URDU
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 104 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 61 MILLION

2014 - MANDARIN
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 1.051 BILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 837 MILLION

2014 - MARIATHI
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 71 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 68 MILLION

2014 - BENGALI
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 215 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 196 MILLION

2014 - GUJURATI
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 55.5 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 46 MILLION

2014 - MALAYALAM
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 37 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 37 MILLION

2014 - AFRICAN FRENCH
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 130 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 67 MILLION

2014 - CRIMEAN TATAR
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 7 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 480,000

2015
ARABIC (EGYPTIAN) VAN DYKE
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 230 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 206 MILLION

2015 - ARABIC (TUNISIAN)
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 11.2 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 11.2 MILLION

2015 - CANTONESE
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 62 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 68 MILLION

2015 - PUNJABI
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 88 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 100 MILLION

2015 - SPANISH
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 420 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 350 MILLION

2015 - BOSNIAN
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 2 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 3 MILLION

2015 - MN NAN
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 50.46 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 50.46 MILLION

2015 - TELUGU
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 75 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 70 MILLION

2015 - THAI
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 60 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 20 MILLION

2016 - TAMIL
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 77 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 77 MILLION

2016 - SINDHI
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 75 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 75 MILLION

2016 - KOREAN
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 71 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 71 MILLION

2016 - BURMESE
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 42 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 43 MILLION

2016 - FARSI
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 110 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 62 MILLION

2016 - SWAHILI
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 98 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 16 MILLION

2017 - TURKISH
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 75 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 60 MILLION

2017 - NEPALI
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 15 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 14 MILLION

2018 - BAHASA
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 23 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 23 MILLION

2018 - GERMAN
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 229 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 101 MILLION

2019 - NORWEGIAN
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 4.7 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 5.2 MILLION

2019 - LUGANDA
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 16 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 7 MILLION

2019 - BHOJPURI
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 150 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 51 MILLION

2019 - ORIYA
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 37.5 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 32 MILLION

2019
MEXICAN SIGN LANGUAGE
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 130,000 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 87,000 MILLION

TAGALOG
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 74 MILLION
COMPLETED BY 2020
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 50 MILLION

PORTUGESE
COMPLETED BY 2020
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 260 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 220 MILLION

SOMALI
COMPLETED BY 2020
TOTAL SPEAKERS: 11 MILLION
NATIVE SPEAKERS: 11 MILLION

Revelation 7:9

THE GLOBAL GOSPEL TODAY

To date, The Global Gospel videos have been shared thousands of times across every major social media platform. From solar projectors in remote villages to mobile devices in urban coffee shops, TGG is being used all over the world to spread the gospel and make disciples.

But the story of TGG is still being written; new languages are produced yearly! For example, in 2019, when Suzanna Moreland, a student at Ozark Christian College, heard about The Global Gospel, she caught a vision for how it could impact her home country of Brazil.

For three generations, Suzanna’s family has helped establish and serve local churches in Brazil. This put her in the perfect position to not only understand the lack of discipleship and evangelism resources in Portuguese but to address this great need. With a heart for Portuguese speakers and a clear vision for how this resource could be used, Suzanna took the reins and became our youngest project coordinator. She assembled a team with a variety of talents and a shared love for the Brazilian church to help GNPI make TGG available in Portuguese.

On the other side of the world, Nenette and her team in the Philippines are celebrating the completion of TGG in Tagalog, a language spoken by 24 million worldwide!

Our coworkers in Africa are putting the finishing touches on TGG Somali. For their safety, they asked us not to reveal where they are working until the project is complete. The Somalis are a people group in desperate need of hope, peace, and salvation that can only come from Jesus Christ.

Suzanna, Nenette, and those with a heart for the Somali people are just a few of the many TGG stories that demonstrate God’s provision and perfect timing on this project. By the grace of God, and with your support, we hope to have even more TGG stories as The Global Gospel continues to gain momentum.

Looking Ahead

It is sobering to see people dying and to realize that nearly 70 percent of the world doesn’t know Jesus. As individuals, we have limited time and resources to accomplish the Great Commission. Yet, when we work together, we accomplish so much more than we could on our own. We can encourage each other and share resources. The right tools are also extremely helpful in offering the good news to others.

God is using The Global Gospel as an effective tool of collaboration. Last spring, we celebrated one million views for TGG on YouTube, and this spring we are celebrating two million views!

More exciting opportunities have developed with the serialized versions of TGG for children (called Jesus Story) on satellite television in the Middle East. It was so successful that it is being rebroadcast with an intentional social media follow-up strategy.

Jesus Story has already been produced with different hosts and settings in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, and Norwegian. Jesus Story in Swahili is coming soon from our team in Kenya.

TGG has opened the door for us to partner with other ministries. FreeBibleimages has posted TGG photos and videos on their website. Our teams around the world have also created several discipleship plans, including content from TGG, for YouVersion. GNPI teams are committed to expanding the resources available in other languages.

Thanks to you, TGG is growing stronger and more robust each month. With the addition of new languages and formats, more people are using this tool to offer hope around the world. We don’t know all the ways God intends to use TGG for His glory, but we know that His word won’t return empty (Isaiah 55:11). This promise allows us to look to the future of TGG with great excitement!