Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Bethlehem, the city that changed history forever
Why Jeremy Reynalds, our senior ANS correspondent is returning there
By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries
BETHLEHEM, WEST BANK
(ANS) – Bethlehem is located about six miles southwest of Jerusalem, and is the birthplace of our Savior Jesus Christ, who changed history forever.
A Christian Palestinian lights candles at The Church of Nativity in the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem
(Photograph: Musa Al-Shaer/AFP/Getty Images)
Meaning “house of bread,” Bethlehem was also the renowned “City of David”. It was there in young David’s hometown that the prophet Samuel anointed him to be king over Israel (1 Samuel 16:1-13).
And in Micah 5, the prophet foretold that Messiah would come from the small and seemingly insignificant then town of Bethlehem.
But sadly today, Bethlehem is experiencing a modern-day exodus, as many Christians are leaving for a better life in the United States and Europe. It could be that soon, the “living stones” of Bethlehem will be replaced by the “dead stones” of places like The Church of the Nativity and Shepherds’ Field that only tourists will visit, while the local believers have moved on.
Julie Stahl in a story called “Why Are Christians Really Leaving Bethlehem?” that was carried on Tuesday, May 08, 2012 on CBN News (www.cbn.com), wrote, “Arab Christians in Bethlehem have been suffering from human rights abuses and economic hardships for years. But some are trying to bring a message of hope into their lives.
A street scene in modern-day
Bethlehem
(Photo: Jeremy Reynalds)
“It could be described as a modern day exodus: Christians are leaving Palestinian Arab-controlled areas like Bethlehem in great numbers.”
Human rights lawyer Justus Weiner told CBN News, “It’s my prediction that if the remaining Christians in the West Bank and Gaza — Gaza only has maybe a thousand, two thousand Christians. If their needs are not addressed in 10 or 15 or at most 20 years, there won’t be any Christians in the cradle of Christianity. This will be a kind of memorial, a museum.”
Weiner said the threat of persecution, including beatings and forced marriages between Christian women and Muslim men, are some of the reasons Christians have left.
“Although tourism and the economy picked up last year, uncertainty still prevails,” said Stahl.
Pastor Steve Khoury talked more about why Christians are leaving Palestinian areas in droves and what his ministry is doing to help, on “The 700 Club”.
“I know if you just look deep within their hearts, I know many people have fear and doubt in the unknown and unseen,” Pastor Steve Khoury told CBN News.
Pastor Khoury leads churches in Bethlehem and in Jerusalem. Part of the congregations’ outreach includes Christmas banquets each year, sponsored in part by CBN.
Khoury said they do many unorthodox things to bring the message that hope is only built on the solid rock of Jesus.
Khoury grew up on the mission field. His father, Dr. Naim Khoury, started Holy Land Missions more than 30 years ago.
He said his experiences growing up as the son of a missionary taught him not only the life of a missionary, but also the struggles and battles of every believer.
“God has burdened my heart in a great way,” Khoury wrote on his web site. “He has shown me that Arabs can come to salvation; He has shown me that Jews can come to the Messiah, and that the people in Israel are losing hope in life.”
“Seeing people bleed every day, and seeing a person one day and gone the next because of violence has made me appreciate life,” he said.
CBN said that there are only about 15,000 born-again [Messianic] Christians in Israel, adding, ”They face daily persecution by the other two dominating religions”.
Pastor Khoury has seen church members attacked and discriminated against because of their faith. Several believers under his ministry have been martyred, including his own uncle. The church in Bethlehem has been firebombed 14 times, and Dr. Naim Khoury has been shot at several times in the last 10 years.
Nevertheless, Holy Land Missions has reached out to thousands over the years through their many outreach programs, including Calvary Church in Jerusalem and First Baptist in Bethlehem.
But one shining light remains in the midst of the troubles – The Bethlehem Bible College, where many Palestinian [Arab] believers from the West Bank and Gaza, are being trained to share the Good News of Christ with the people in their troubled region, and also have pledged to remain there at witnesses for Him.
In this land where hope and despair are sisters, Bethlehem Bible College has for more than 34 years been training Palestinian Christians to lead the Church and be the light of Christ to their Muslim neighbors.
Bethlehem Bible College, an Evangelical inter-denominational institution, says that it seeks to train and prepare “Christian servant-leaders” for the churches and society within an Arab context who model Christ centeredness, Godly humility, biblical wholeness, creative mercy and justice in their jobs and ministries as life-long learners.
Dan Wooding interviews Bishara Awad at The Bethlehem
Bible College
Some time ago, I was back in Jerusalem on a reporting assignment and I decided to return to Bethlehem on a special assignment — to meet with Dr. Bishara Awad, the founder of The Bethlehem Bible College. (On a previous trip, my wife Norma and myself, were held up by five teenage gunmen believed to be from Islamic Jihad, who were planning to kill us thinking we were Jewish settlers coming into the city for a gun battle. Fortunately, our quick-thinking Arab taxi-driver managed to persuade them that we were visitors from the USA, and with that, and the providence of God, they finally let us go, only to arrive at the Bible College to be greeted by a hail of rocks from nearby children.
When I arrived, I asked Bishara to outline the history of The Bethlehem Bible College and he replied, “We started in 1979 in a school where I was the headmaster and the Lord blessed that little seed and vision and now we have this beautiful Bible college with many students studying a variety of programs.
“We have graduated many leaders they are already in the field pastoring, planting churches, teaching in Christian education, counselors and so on. So we are making a great impact in the whole community especially in the Palestinian Christian community.”
Why did he feel the need to have a Bible college in this difficult part of the world?
“All of our students are Palestinians and they come from Bethlehem and also from the cities around here as well as from Jerusalem and from the cities north of Jerusalem. We also have students from Nazareth and Gaza that are studying here.
“At present, we have about 144 students and we also have an extension in Nazareth and also the Galilee Bible College in Galilee. That is a sister Bible that we started.”
Jeremy Reynalds during his last
trip to Bethlehem
ANS senior correspondent, Jeremy Reynalds, visited Bethlehem last year and was able to report on the difficult conditions that many are living in a refugee camp there. (You can read one of his reports at http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2013/s13110035.htm )
Now he is planning to return for a unique conference to be held in Bethlehem from March 10-14, 2014 called “Christ at the Checkpoint,” which is sponsored by The Bethlehem Bible College.
Its aim is to:
To Challenge Evangelicals To Take Responsibility To Help Resolve the Conflicts in Israel-Palestine By Engaging With the Teaching of Jesus on the Kingdom of God.
Its objectives include:
1) To explore the challenges that stand against fulfilling the vision of the kingdom of God today in Palestine/Israel, and to consider the positive and negative attitudes and contributions of Christians in the last few years towards the conflicts in the region.
2) To discuss the theological and practical implications of the inauguration of the kingdom of God in the land – and what this means in times of conflict.
3) To study and unpack the teachings of Jesus and explore how they contribute towards achieving peace and justice in Palestine/Israel.
4) To consider the rise of religious radicalism in the region and how it affects the conflict, and to seek together a biblical response towards this rise.
5) To motivate and encourage Evangelicals worldwide to actively seek to contribute to achieving peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
I realize that to some, this conference is controversial, but I believe that Jeremy Reynalds is a fair-minded and truth-seeking journalist, and he will bring us some of the highlights of this conference so that we can be informed about how Arab Christians are dealing with all the difficulties of living for Jesus Christ in this troubled part of the world.
We, at ANS, would like to help Jeremy — who like all of us at the news service, does not receive a salary for his work — with his expenses to attend the conference, and already some of you have kindly sent donations to help with his reporting trip to Bethlehem. If you would also like to help with a donation (tax-deductible in the US), just go to http://www.assistnews.net/assist/donations.htm and click “Where Needed Most,” but then let me know the amount at assistnews@aol.com so I can pass the news onto Jeremy.
If you prefer to send a check, just make it out to ASSIST and mail it to: PO Box 609, Lake forest, CA 92609, USA, and put “For Jeremy Reynalds Bethlehem trip” in the memo section.
And please remember to pray for the believers of Bethlehem that they will have the courage to stay and be “shining lights” for Jesus Christ in the place where He was born.
Tweet
See all ASSIST News articles at www.assistnews.net
Dan Wooding, 73, is an award-winning journalist who who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 50 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS) and he hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on the KWVE Radio Network in Southern California and which is also carried throughout the United States and around the world. He is the author of some 45 books, the latest of which is a novel about the life of Jesus through the eyes of his mother called “Mary: My Story from Bethlehem to Calvary”. (Click to order)
** You may republish this story with proper attribution.
Send this story to a friend.
<!–BYLINE:By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries–>