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Hey everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. I'm here with Abby from Eritrea and we're talking about the spiritual state of the nation in Eritrea. So I looked up the statistics and there were some conflicting statistics but it looks like it's about 50-50 between Christianity and Islam. Some of them said you know 60-40 Christianity to Islam but when they say Christian 90% of that is the Orthodox Church and then Catholic is like I think maybe 9% of that and then 1 or 2% of that are Lutheran. So I was looking it up and it looks like in Eritrea there are only four religions that are recognized by the government and that's Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran or Islam and in order for any other church or religion to operate they have to get a license from the government. They have to register with the government and they're almost always denied. They're almost always told no and the few that are given a license or registration they have to give personal information on all their members to the government so the government can monitor them and so forth and like I said most of the time they don't even allow other religions to operate. So the size of Eritrea it's about the size of Pennsylvania and it has 5 million people living there. They have no official language. 55% of the people speak a language called Tigrinya. There are lots of other smaller tribal languages. Arabic is a pretty big language. A lot of people speak English and then there's also a lot of Italian because it's a former Italian colony. So you've been there and obviously you're a bible-leading Christian and so you've tried to talk to people about the gospel. So are those statistics that I gave is that kind of what you experienced? They love the Lord. They really are into religion and they you know they go to the church then it's just sad they don't go with the Bible because the good news is they have the Bible but then they go so much with traditions and then they just leave the Bible but they love they love to go to the church and then I try to talk to them about it and I tell them about the way how we believe in Jesus Christ and they think you belong to a cult. They think you know something is wrong with you and when I tell them you have the same Bible they say what I tell you. So the Bible that they have is is from the Textus Receptus so it matches up with the King James right? Yes, it's a problem and this is the sad about the whole story because it is. But they don't read it, right? They don't read it, no. They just kind of, do they even carry it around? No, it's just they have the other book. It's called the Mary book. I don't know where it comes from. They take it out and then they go with that kind of. So when they go to church they don't bring a Bible they bring the Mary book. There's a password, he just preaches out of them. So he doesn't even preach out of the Bible, he preaches out of the Mary book. Yeah, it's just kind of the Mary kind of. And that's in the Orthodox Church. Which is what 90% of the so-called Christians there are Orthodox. So I mean they're pretty much like Catholics then. It is more Catholic, it is 100% more Catholic. If you tell them that they get very offended. But the problem is it is close. I mean they're praying to the saints, they're praying to the and then praying to Mary. And this is exactly what the pattern is too. And if you have done anything wrong, you go to the pastor and talk to him and confess. And this is what I try to explain around. You have to pray to Jesus to be forgiven and not go to the pastor. He doesn't have the authority to forgive you. But this is what they do, they go to the pastor. Just like the pastor. Wow, so the Eritrea is kind of similar to Ethiopia, right? Because they're close together so the culture is pretty similar. So you speak Tigrinya? Yeah. Okay. And then when you were over there talking to them, didn't you try to show them that after Mary gave birth to Jesus that she had other children? Yeah. Oh wow, that was very bad. They're like wow, you shouldn't say that because Mary is holy. She should have other babies than Jesus. And after that she just served for the church and then she died. So Mary is holy more than Jesus, right? It's all about Mary. She's holier than Jesus. Yeah. They even have a picture where you see Jesus. No, you see God married next to each other and then you see Jesus. And you're like what? Is Mary married to God? It is shocking. It is sad because you know the funny thing is they go to the church. They always go to the church. They love him. They love their Lord. It's just. Well it sounds like they love Mary. Oh yes, they do. They pray her of much. This is what they say. Wow. And then the word says she brought forth her firstborn son. Yeah. Which obviously firstborn implies that there's other kids that were born after. And then in their Bible, like in their language, in Tigrinya, that word firstborn like that for sure means. Yeah, bokriwada. Yeah, it means she had other kids after that. Definitely, it says bokriwada. So they just kind of looked at that but they just said no. They're trying to find another conclusion about that answer because firstborn means in Eritrea bokriwada. Bokriwada means, I mean it means firstborn. Yeah. So if they want to twist that, then it's you know it's like lying to yourself. Yeah. I mean it is part black and white. It says you know firstborn. Yeah and of course the Bible says he knew her not until she brought forth her firstborn son. So obviously he did know her after that. And then obviously it talks about his brothers James, Joseph, Judas, Simon and all that. Yeah. That's too bad. This is what I showed you in the Bible. The brothers of Jesus are there too. So they believe in salvation by works. Yeah, oh yes. Oh yeah, you have to do, you know, you have to do good things to get there. So I know that you know they don't allow churches to just start up because like I was saying you know you got to be Lutheran or Catholic or Orthodox or whatever. Well what do you think would be the reaction if we went there on a missions trip say and just started sobering? Like because we could probably use the Italian language to do some sobering in certain areas. If people knew Italian and then other areas we could use English or Arabic, right? Because obviously if we had a missions trip like people aren't really known to me yet. But we could use some of these other languages maybe. Do you think that, do you think that would be allowed to happen or do you think that the authorities would come down on us? No, I don't think the authorities because the fact is we have the same Bible like them. If we show them we have the same Bible then nothing will happen. It's just they wouldn't like the idea of you know you are not pretty married. Right. But they say so. I mean if they would open the Bible and I hope so much one day they would open their eyes. Maybe we need some people coming to our... You know what we should do? We can wear a t-shirt that says like Sola Fide and then they will think we are Lutherans or something and they will just carry their Bible on. Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide. Well anyway that's really interesting. We actually, our church doesn't have any materials in Tigrinya. I've tried to get them translated but it's just kind of an obscure language. The entire movie Marching Design is in Arabic. Totally dubbed into Arabic. Fully dubbed into Arabic. And also obviously we have a lot of stuff in Italian. We have a lot of subtitles in Italian. After the Tribulation, Lord of the Bible versions, Marching Design. So that's the kind of stuff that we could use in that area. But unfortunately we don't have anything in Tigrinya because it's pretty hard to find professional translators to take things from English into Tigrinya. It's not that big of a language. So are you planning on going back any time? You said you were there a couple of years ago, right? Yeah, yeah. It's a wonderful country. They're just completely lost. And I hope people like you get people down there who can preach the Bible. And maybe they will get it. Because I had cousins that were really into it, to listen to it, to know what's going on. Because we have the movie, the Jesus movie was translated into Tigrinya. Yeah, because they did that into over a thousand languages. Yeah, and it's really good. It's very close. Better close than nothing. So it's good for them to listen to that. And they're very into it. They love it. And I think they just need help. Yeah, so it's a pretty nice place to visit. People are nice, friendly. But they're just lost. Yeah, five million people. So anyway, well, thanks for talking with me. It was a pleasure.