TV Program

Current Episode

Dog Sled Bibles

2006-07-23

PRODUCTION #: 1055

SPEAKER: Shawn Boonstra

Jesus said that before He comes back, every tribe, every nation, and every group of people on the face of the planet is going to hear the gospel, the good news of what Christ did for them at the Cross of Calvary. That includes some of the remotest tribes on earth.

Tribes like the Inuit, who live at the far reaches of the Arctic near the North Pole.

Today, on It Is Written, you are going to hear how those people are receiving the gospel of Jesus Christ through rather remarkable means.

One of my favorite Bible characters has always been the Apostle Paul. Here is a man who actually fulfilled the gospel commission in every sense of the word. God took Him out of the life he was in, changed him around, introduced him to Christ and then he carried the gospel to some of the remotest places in the world in his day.

In fact, in the book of Colossians, chapter one and verse 23, we read that Paul said the gospel had been preached to every creature under heaven. That was within the confines of the Roman Empire. And what Paul was doing was fulfilling the gospel commission that Christ gave the church to do. Jesus said, go to every nation, go to all peoples, all groups of peoples around the earth and tell them what Christ did for them.

And today, my guest is a modern day Apostle Paul. His name is Sebastian Tirtirau. He grew up in Romania under an atheistic, communistic government. He didn’t believe in God. At 14, he was drafted into the Romanian army. At 18 he was sent to prison to serve time for someone else’s offense. And then a 10-year-old girl led him to Christ.

As he met Christ in the pages of the Bible, and as he became acquainted with the Savior, he felt a burning desire to go somewhere and do something for God. He got on a plane, went to South Africa and ended up living among the Kalahari Bushmen. He was adopted by them. He raised up a Christian church among them.

And today, he is my guest. He’s going to tell us the story of what God has done with him since then and where else God has led him.

INTERVIEW

SHAWN: Sebastian, really good to have you on the program again today.

SEBASTIAN: Happy to be here.

SHAWN: Sebastian, you lived among the Kalahari Bushmen in the deserts of Africa for a long time. You’ve been back many times since. But that is not the only place God has led you. You’ve been to some other pretty remote places on this earth to share the gospel of Christ. Tell me, what happened after the Kalahari Bushmen? Where else have you been?

SEBASTIAN: In 2001, I found out from some friends of mine that there were some remote tribes in British Guyana in South America, right on the edge of the Amazonian forest near the Amazon River. Now, these tribes were extremely remote and I went to a village of 8,000 people to build a school and a clinic. And of course, to preach the gospel as well.

SHAWN: Now, let me ask you a question. How is it that you end up going to British Guyana unto these remote tribes? Do you throw a dart at a map on the wall and just go wherever the dart lands? How do you make a decision like this?

SEBASTIAN: Well, being called to go to isolated tribes, I have a world map on the wall in my house and I highlight all of the remote places. And I ended up with the Kalahari Bushmen, Amazonian tribes, the Inuit of the Arctic, Congo pygmies and so forth. I slowly start working in each area and see how we can create missions and develop work in those places.

SHAWN: So, you end up in British Guyana, you are among these tribes. What happens there? How do you lead these people to Christ? What’s it like to live among them?

SEBASTIAN: It’s an amazing experience, totally different from the Bushmen. They have different lifestyle, different traditions, and different religion. They have everything different from the Kalahari Bushmen, but, at the same time, the gospel is the same. The thirst for the gospel is the same everywhere.

So I ended up adapting to a new way of life with the Amazonian tribes. I lived with the Araucanian and the Arawakan tribes in South America. Later, when I visited Venezuela and Brazil, I went to five other tribes, including the tribe of Caribes who are modern day cannibals. Although, they don’t really practice cannibalism as they did a few hundred years ago.

SHAWN: Is there still some cannibalism going on?

SEBASTIAN: Absolutely. Instead of eating prisoners from other tribes that they catch, they eat their own dead. They don’t bury the dead, believing that sharing the spirit by eating them will make them stronger.

SHAWN: So they believe they are gaining strength by eating the bodies of other human beings. That’s pretty rough. Tell me, what’s it like to move in with these tribes? How do you establish yourself among them? What’s it like to live among them?

SEBASTIAN: I start with a lot of gifts. I come in, for example, in Venezuela with the Caribes tribe. I came in with two jeeps, one filled with myself and the friends that I came with and then the other one with gifts. I brought them axes, all sorts of tools to build better houses. Some tribes that we go to, we teach them how to fish. They don’t know how to fish.

SHAWN: Now, that’s interesting. You are on some of the richest fishing grounds anywhere, aren’t they on the Amazon?

SEBASTIAN: That’s right.

SHAWN: So you teach them to fish.

SEBASTIAN: Yes, some of the tribes didn’t have any techniques for fishing, so we taught them how to fish and how to make a fishing rod and so forth. Because with most of them, the greatest problems they have are diseases coming from their diet and from their lifestyle. Many of them eat monkey brains and lizard intestines and so forth, while they have the best fish and the best fruit in the world. I’ve eaten the best fruit there that I’ve ever eaten in my life.

SHAWN: Give me fruit any day over monkey brains and lizard insides!

SEBASTIAN: Yeah, so once you get in there, you establish yourself as a friend, as a visitor that wants to become a friend. I try to help them in any way. We sometimes have nurses with us to help medically and this opens the way very nicely for the gospel, because they immediately ask us, what do we believe in? Most of these people are very spiritual, whether they believe in spirits or not, they are very spiritual. So they always ask, "Who do you believe in and who is your God?"

SHAWN: What’s their religion as a tribe?

SEBASTIAN: Animism. They believe in spirits and worship the spirits. It’s a very superstitious tradition and culture in South America. But once you come in with the gospel, for example, in Venezuela with the Caribes tribe, the chief told me the first day, they know that what they’re doing is not right. They know that there is a better way, but there is nobody to teach them. So it’s surely what Christ is saying, the harvest is great, but the workers are few.

SHAWN: You know, it makes me think. You know, here in North America, life is nothing like it is among those tribal groups in South America, but I still find that here in North America, most people, deep in their heart, have this sense that the way they are living now isn’t right, it’s not fulfilling. They are not living up to what they were made for. Everybody seems to have that sense. In other programs where we’ve been together, I’ve referred to Ecclesiastes 3:11, it’s one of my favorite verses. It says there that, “God has planted eternity in the heart.” Everybody has that sense. I find it interesting that they know there’s something wrong. Now how do you broach the gospel of Christ with these people? How did that happen when you were down there?

SEBASTIAN: I start with the plan of salvation, from the beginning, how God created the world and then the devil changed it into sin. I present it to them and I say that the Lord loves everybody who believes in Him. They were quite shocked about this theology because they have the impression that they are at the bottom of the human population. Nobody cares about them. They live quite remote in the jungle. That is why they isolate themselves because they believe nobody wants to have anything to do with them.

SHAWN: So there is some awareness of the outside world?

SEBASTIAN: Absolutely, the chief was very happy to hear when I told him that Jesus loves everybody who believes in Him, and they accepted this faith quite fast. Although they are very violent people, you know, there are about 1,500 left in the Caribes tribe. They live in groups of 15-20 people. Some of them don’t even build a house. They live in the trees, making nests like monkeys. They fight a lot, even among themselves. One night I witnessed a fight between two women. They were fighting with machetes. And they held each other by the hair and just slashed each other and by the end, they had torn shoulders and injured each other's heads, and I had to help bandage them.

But next morning, they gave us a little hut for preaching. The next morning, they were there sitting next to each other on the bench, listening to my preaching. And I asked them, how do you balance your violent lifestyle? They said, by coming back to church and listening about God. And they said, "We know it’s not right, we know it’s not good, but there’s nobody else to tell us what else there is. Who’s going to tell us about a better way?" They are willing to listen.

As a matter of fact, I was in the Caribes tribe in 2004. We started to build a church. And right now, I get reports from there. We have a missionary there that preaches the gospel, and we have 600 cannibals. They come to church every week. And every week they come and they fill the church and they change their lifestyle. They stop eating their dead and they stop eating monkey brains and they start believing in a Jesus who transforms their lives and they become noble.

SHAWN: So the idea that God became one of us and suffered for them, I mean, they see the character of God. If I’m understanding you right, that’s quite different from their own character. There they are intent on killing each other. Here’s a God who gave His own life for them. It must be terribly transforming for these people.

SEBASTIAN: That’s right. They have no Bible written in their language. It’s so remote, they have no teaching, no education. The holy spirit has to teach them the philosophy of life and the basic beliefs. Now this turns them each into a greater Christian. Because you experience God day by day, test Him every day, ask Him to protect you and so forth.

And a year or two down the road when I come and visit them again, they look totally different. They have a light on their faces that is amazing. It really impresses people to see how God changes the worst of the pagans.

SHAWN: So there is not an area on earth where God’s spirit cannot invade and conquer the devil’s territory and transform these people’s lives.

SEBASTIAN: Absolutely.

SHAWN: These are people who we are going to be neighbors with in the kingdom of heaven. It’s a remarkable story. Now, tell me a little bit, what’s going on now? You’ve been there, you’ve helped them, you’ve preached Christ to them. Tell me a little bit about what’s going on today.

SEBASTIAN: Their work is advancing very fast in South America. According to National Geographic, there are about 50 Amazonian tribes that have not been seen by human civilization.

SHAWN: Amazing.

SEBASTIAN: So this leaves a few untouched tribes in there. But many of the other tribes like the ones I’ve been to and the ones I preach to right now, the work is developing very fast. We are establishing schools in nine countries in South America. We have medical aviation services that have eight planes that fly all over the continent. It’s estimated that around a million people a year come to the faith in South America. So it is an amazing advancement and yet we still have some other borders that we haven’t crossed yet and some very remote, isolated places that we haven’t been to yet. And this is part of the vision of the last times, the end times.

SHAWN: Now listen, I have gone to your website, www.pilgrimsociety.com, is that it?

SEBASTIAN: That’s it.

SHAWN: And I’ve seen some pictures and I know that you’ve been among the Kalahari Bushmen. I know that you’ve been to South America. But that’s still not the end of the story. Now South America’s a hot place. One of the places you’ve been lately is the complete opposite, isn’t it? Where else have you been? Where else has God led you?

SEBASTIAN: I just came back this year from the Arctic. I went above the Arctic Circle. I went as far up north as 84 degrees north.

SHAWN: Eighty-four degrees. Now in case somebody’s reading this and doesn’t really know their geography, how far is the North Pole?

SEBASTIAN: Ninety degrees.

SHAWN: Ninety degrees, right? And the Arctic Circle starts at 60 and you are at 84 and that’s a long ways north. Why in the world are you that far north?

SEBASTIAN: That’s where the Inuit people live, formerly called Eskimos. They are not called that name today, they are called Inuit and they spread their small villages all over the Arctic.

SHAWN: So, are you telling me there are actually people living up at 84 degrees north?

SEBASTIAN: There are actually people living at 86 degrees north. There’s a little village of nine people called Alert, way up in Ellesmere Island, Northern Canada. I’ve seen in Northern Greenland, there are villages with population one. Actual registered villages with population one.

SHAWN: One person in the village.

SEBASTIAN: I always wondered what that person is doing during the six months of darkness. What is the activity? Is he depressed or alone? And I really want to visit that man in that village and give him a Bible, because that’s what I did in the Arctic. I visited seven very remote, isolated villages, and delivered Bibles to 400 people in the Arctic.

SHAWN: Now, I know that you had a burden to share Bibles with the Inuit. You took a trip there on a luxury cruise liner, wasn’t it?

SEBASTIAN: No way. It was a 26-foot sailboat, belonging to my brother, Christian, who was a sailor for the past 15 years. I talked to him about my passion to go to the Inuit people. He said, “Listen, I’ll take you by boat, because you have a lot of Bibles. You have no place to put them in a plane. So I’ll take you by boat. We are going to sail to Northern Atlantic and go to Greenland.”

And last year in July, we tried to do that. We attempted to reach Greenland. We left with a beautiful forecast of seven days of perfect weather, perfect winds. But my brother didn’t know that once you work for the Lord, there is another force that fights against you.

So, by the time we were 12 days into the sail, we hit a fog bank of 250 miles that lasted five days. Our solar panels did not charge our batteries or our radio. Violent storms came right after that with waves up to 20 feet tall. And one night at two o’clock in the morning I was on watch on deck, and keep in mind there was just the two of us on the 26-foot boat. And I started to get violently ill. I started to spit blood. My brother looked at me and said, “You are dying, so we are going to turn around and come back home.”

SHAWN: Now listen, you are in the North Atlantic, you are in the middle of nowhere, practically, you’ve got no power, and you’ve got no way to move at that point. What’s it like? What’s your faith saying? Are you questioning God’s plan at this moment? Are you asking yourself, "Did God really send me?"

SEBASIAN: Well, I’ve had many experiences in my life when you doubt, because you are a human being. That’s what comes with the package. But, on the sea, there is such an awesome force around you and a little 26-foot boat, you have 20-foot waves. And you are at the bottom of four stories. And here we are in the middle of the ocean, it’s fog, it’s night. I’m spitting blood, I’m vomiting violently. I’m very ill, and I keep thinking, where’s the closest land to me so I can reach land? I was sick and tired of bobbing up and down, like in a washing machine for 24 hours. And the closest land to us was the bottom of the ocean at 5,000 meters under ourselves. But it didn’t feel too appealing to go down there.

All of our equipment was badly damaged. Because of the salty water, most of our equipment was rusty, but when we got back to the shore, the entire load of the Bibles was completely dry. So, I knew I had to use those Bibles somewhere. There were Bibles in the Inuit language translated by the Canadian Bible Society. I still have the passion for the Inuit and I said, "I need to go back again."

SHAWN: So you didn’t give up. You faced a challenge, you faced odds that a lot of people would have quit over. You are telling me that you just didn’t go home with your Bibles at that point and give up.

SEBASTIAN: No, I kept on praying about it and I knew that God had a plan. And this year, in March, I found out that there’s a cargo plane that flies to deliver equipment to northern isolated communities of Inuit in Northern Canada. So I flew with this plane. They had four seats and I could take all the Bibles that I could, because they had space. And I went in there and I flew to a very isolated village and from there I went by dog sled with a hunter that I met in the Arctic called Natalino, an amazing man who, although he doesn’t know God and he doesn’t know anything about Christianity, he had the light of God in him.

SHAWN: Now, how did you find this man?

SEBASTIAN: I went from door to door and I asked who would have a dog team that would take me to some of the villages. Everybody recommended Natalino Pugatok, a 51-year old man who had 14 dogs. And he said, “I’ll take you.”

And we left one morning. It was minus 57 degrees outside.

SHAWN: Minus 57 degrees? How cold is that? What’s life like at minus 57?

SEBASTIAN: It’s hard to explain because people haven’t experienced what minus 57 really feels like. But at minus 60, if you keep you mouth open more than five minutes, your teeth start cracking. My eyelashes, because of the wind chill factor, my eyelashes would get stuck to each other as I was blinking because of the cold.

But at the same time I had a polar bear and caribou fur suit on me that was made by the wife of this hunter and I was well-dressed. We loaded the Bibles in the sled and we left one morning at 7 o’clock and we started to ride toward the village. It was supposed to be a nine-hour ride to this village and it took us three days to get there, because halfway through the journey a huge snowstorm blew in with winds of 100 miles an hour.

SHAWN: So now, you’re minus 57, or minus 60 degrees, plus 100 mile an hour winds. Nobody can even calculate what that kind of wind chill is like.

SEBASTIAN: Nobody even calculates the wind chill on that, but we got lost because the dogs lead us by smell to the villages. And they lost the smell trail. And we got lost on the sea ice about 20 miles away from our position. And he said, "We have to stop. We’ll build an igloo until the storm passes." Then we lived in an igloo for three days.

SHAWN: Now, tell me the truth. Do you get worried at a moment like this? One-hundred-mile an hour winds, it’s 60 below zero. You know, life hangs on a very tenuous thread in those kinds of conditions. Did you get worried at all?

SSEBASTIAN: Yes, I was alone in the middle of the Arctic. I was with a stranger. If he would have let me die, nobody would have ever blamed him for anything, because many people die in the Arctic. My wife and my daughter didn’t know where I was. As a matter of fact, my daughter was watching a news station and they showed the weather channel. They showed a huge storm in the Arctic and my daughter asked her mom, “Mom, isn’t this where Dad is? Isn’t this the place where Daddy is?” And they got very worried. But I was in the middle of the storm and we built an igloo. It took us about six or seven hours to build the igloo. We got inside, and it was minus 35 degrees inside the igloo, no wind. And then I prayed that during those three days that the Lord would show me that this is what He’s calling me to do. Because, I wanted to make sure that I’m not on vacation, but that I’m on His work.

SHAWN: So, it’s Easter weekend, and you are actually in this igloo for three days. I find that interesting.

SEBASTIAN: Yes, we got lost on Friday. It was Good Friday. And we spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the igloo. And Sunday morning, as I woke up around four o’clock in the morning, it was still dark outside and I was wondering if it was still storming. But because of my breath, a little hole melted right above me, because the igloo was very tiny, so every time you turned, your face hit the roof of the igloo. So a little hole melted from my breath and I could see through the hole into the sky and saw a bright, bright star. And I said, "The storm is over."

So I woke up the hunter, we packed and we got outside. It was perfectly still. It was a beautiful morning, about minus 58, but a beautiful morning nonetheless. The dogs were covered in snow completely. They woke up as well. We packed and we set out to drive to the village. I felt, truly, like I was coming out of a tomb. And I praised God in the middle of the Arctic. He saved me from the waves. He saved me from the jungle. He saved me from the desert. He saved me now from the middle of the icebergs and ice in the Arctic.

And I knew that God truly is a physical, literal God, who can take care of you every step of the way. So we reached these villages, and I delivered Bibles to 400 people. They would gather in front of my little place in every village I’ve went to, from morning to evening, begging me not to give them one Bible, but to give them two or three to give to other people that were not in the village.

So the thirst I’ve seen and I’ve met in these villages impressed me very much. And I know that God is coming soon. Because the ends of the world listen and make decisions for Christianity and for God. If they can do that we should be that ready for His return!

SHAWN: You know, I find it ironic that we live in an area here in North America that was a Christian nation, and we have ready access to the Word of God, but in these places around the world, they line up to receive a copy. You know, Sebastian, at home, I think I have 64 Bibles?something like that. And I know that in a lot of homes today, people are reading this transcript who haven’t opened their Bibles in a while. Describe for them how hungry and thirsty these people are, that they are lining up to receive a Bible. What’s it like for them to receive a Bible?

SEBASTIAN: Everybody in the Inuit tribe speaks and reads and writes the language. Nobody is illiterate in that place. They teach each other, they teach their children. The Canadian Bible Society has done a great job in translating the Bible.

Many people didn’t know what a Bible was, so the moment they opened up a Bible, their faces would light up and with joy see the words of God. So, the thirst I’ve seen gave me a lot of happiness. I've been a Christian for so many years. I have to have the same passion for God that these people have.

SHAWN: You know, maybe somebody reading this today is sensing a hunger in their life. Sebastian’s been around the world to discover people who know what their hunger is. They recognize that they need Jesus and they need God’s presence in their life and they need what this book says.

Maybe you haven’t opened your Bible in a little while, but you still have that hunger and thirst in your life. Today, I’d like to challenge you as we pray for you to open this book again and find out what all these remote tribes are discovering in Jesus Christ. Sebastian, why don’t we pray together?

PRAYER:
Father in heaven, we want to thank you and praise you for calling Sebastian to reach these people around the globe with the Word of God. Today, somebody reading this has a hunger and a thirst in their heart and I pray that you would, Lord, lead them again to your Word and discover what it is these people around the world are discovering. Lord, prepare us for Jesus to come. I ask that you would awaken in our hearts a desire to know Him better. For I ask it in Jesus’ precious name, amen.

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Today, you’ve heard a story that kind of makes your heart beat a little faster with excitement. Just imagine, God is right now raising up special people, like Sebastian, to carry the gospel to the remotest tribes on the face of the planet. And that’s just one more sign that we are getting closer to the return of Jesus Christ. Now, it’s not easy to reach some of these people.

Today, you’ve heard about some of the Inuit living in the far reaches of the Arctic in a world that is light for half of the year and dark for the other half.

At It Is Written, we are committed to send 5,000 copies of the Bible in the language of the Intuits to some of the remotest villages on the planet, right up at the North Pole. Because we know for a fact that they have never yet had the chance to learn of Jesus. And that’s where I need your help today.

We almost never ask for money on this program. But this is very special. These people need a copy of the Bible in their own language and they have no other chance to get them except through us. I’d like to encourage you to think about buying 10 Bibles for about $100 and I’ll send them to the North Pole with Sebastian. Or maybe you’ve been unusually gifted and you could sponsor 500 or even a 1,000 copies of the Bible.

I know they need every bit of help up there that we can give them. Maybe you can think about just one or two Bibles, but please just do something. These people need Jesus. And I want to invite you today to partner with me as we take the Word of God to the North Pole.

To donate online, click here.
To make a tax-deductible donation over the phone, call 1-800-253-3000. Or send your gift via mail to: It Is Written, Box O, Thousand Oaks, CA 91359

For more information about Sebastian Tirtirau, please visit www.pilgrimsociety.com

Scriptures Used in “Dog Sled Bibles”

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."
—Ecclesiastes 3:11