There are tens of thousands of Palestinians fleeing the city. Rev. Dr. Jack Sara, President of Bethlehem Bible College says this includes Christians.

“The Christian community in Gaza has been in refuge now for over a month hiding in churches. Many of them really are in shortage for a lot of things. You’re talking about kids, women, men, elderly people, sick people.”

(Photo courtesy of Bethlehem Bible College)

An Israeli airstrike on October 20 damaged part of the compound of the Church of St. Porphyrius in Gaza City. At least 400 Palestinians, mostly Christians, were taking shelter in the church and 18 were killed.

The Palestinian Christian community is in mourning and cut off even from offering tangible support between the West Bank and Gaza.

Dr. Sara says, “We are incapable of sending in anything because of the total blockade. So right now, we’re hoping that something will happen so that we can send them as much as we can, whether it is funding, food, or medicine — not just in particular for the Christians, but as we want to help the other communities who are suffering and struggling in the community of Gaza.”

Ultimately, Dr. Sara says Palestinian Christians in Gaza and the West Bank feel like the forgotten Church.

“Part of the problem that they’re seeing is even the Christians are siding against them, in a way, whether they intend it or not. But this what the news is carrying…. So we feel hurt and frustrated.

“It seems that there are many of them — I don’t want to generalize — but it feels like a lot of Christians, including theologians, pastors, and leaders are on the side of war rather than the side of peace.” Dr. Sara shakes his head, choking up. “This is shocking to us. This is hurtful here.”

All Palestinians need the Gospel as much as any other people in the world, and nobody is beyond the saving love of God! The Palestinian Church is the hands and feet of Jesus Christ in unimaginable tragedy, but they need the support of the global Body of Christ.

(Photo courtesy of Bethlehem Bible College)

“I cannot fathom how Christians could lose sight of grace which could touch any person, even those who could be deemed terrorists by us,” says Dr. Sara. “[The Apostle] Paul was a terrorist in our own kind of definition!

“I think God’s grace is able to reach out to anyone. Jesus is able to reveal Himself to anyone in such a drastic and harsh moment. There is no one beyond grace.”

Please remember and pray for the Palestinian Church. You can send Bethlehem Bible College a message here and let them know Palestinian Christians are not forgotten!

“We need the prayers of the saints from all over the globe to pray for the Church here to keep our sanity, to keep our prophetic voice in such a context like this,” says Dr. Sara.

Pray also for Palestinian Muslims and Hamas terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza to know the total transforming power of Jesus’s love, mercy, and grace.

Header photo courtesy of Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona/Unsplash.

Dr. Sara says, “Nobody expected the escalation to happen this way. Of course, as people who are for peace [and] justice for both peoples at the same time, really we lament the loss of innocent lives on all sides. It’s very hard. Everybody is in prayer, to be honest.

(Photo courtesy of Bethlehem Bible College)

“We have several students who are in Gaza who are in communication with us, and they’re afraid. They have families. They have little kids. It’s a terrible situation.”

United Nations representatives warn of a dire humanitarian crisis for innocent Palestinians affected by the Israeli government’s siege.

“It’s not only Gaza,” says Dr. Sara. “Israel has already taken measures to close on the West Bank and cut off a lot of resources from the West Bank which means, besides the millions of people that live in Gaza, another 3 million people in the West Bank as well will suffer.

“This is added to the act of retaliation that some individuals or people will do against Palestinians here and there…. Around Palestinian towns, there are already reported attacks against Palestinians.”

Please pray for wisdom as Bethlehem Bible College represents Christ among suffering Palestinians in an overwhelming crisis.

Dr. Sara says, “Emotions are very high and young people are very angry. They need people to calm them. They need voices to calm them down and give them a Christian perspective.”

(Photo courtesy of Bethlehem Bible College)

Learn more about Bethlehem Bible College and how to support their Gospel-centered education work at their website here.

Send a prayer or message of encouragement to our Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters at Bethlehem Bible College.

Pray for a true, Gospel-driven peace over the region.

Header photo courtesy of Bethlehem Bible College.

Despite these challenges, would you believe Palestine is a top missionary-sending country?

The Palestinian Church sends out roughly 3,400 missionaries per one million Christians.

Jack Sara, President of Bethlehem Bible College says, “One of the cool things about Palestinian Christians is they are very proud of their faith and they are willing to share it wherever they are. The situation with occupation and difficulty suffering certainly has made out of them a resilient people, particularly the Christians.”

(Photo courtesy of Brett Zeck/Unsplash)

This commitment to missions reveals the Gospel heart cultivated in the Palestinian Church, and serves as a challenge and encouragement to other believers.

“The global Church would do a good thing to provide a platform for Palestinian Christians to speak, to come and share experiences there [and] some of the lessons learned from living the Gospel in such hard circumstances,” says Sara.

These hard circumstances often qualify Palestinian missionaries to connect with people in other countries where life is difficult — and offer them the Living Hope of Jesus Christ.

Sara says, “We’re living in an atmosphere where you’re, in all circumstances, between a rock and a hard place. So you learn to grow your faith, you learn to depend on the Lord, [and] your faith grows as you get deeper in the Word of God.”

Do you know any Palestinian Christians, especially on the mission field? As the Lord brings the people of Palestine to your mind and heart, please take the time to join them in prayer.

Sara offers these requests: “Pray for the unity of the Palestinian Church. Pray that the Lord will transform more churches in places that are with no Church.

“Pray that really the Church would continue sending people outside…. Even when they are becoming immigrants sometimes, they are missionaries wherever they go. In every circumstance, [pray] that the Lord would keep us mission-minded first.”

Click here to learn more about Bethlehem Bible College.

Header photo courtesy of Bethlehem Bible College.

Apartheid has become recognized as a crime under international law. Most instances involve racial apartheid, though human rights groups have recognized cultural and gender apartheid as well. An example of the latter would be Afghanistan’s separation of men and women.

Apartheid is a relatively new crime under international law.

Apartheid explained

Jonathan Kuttab of Bethlehem Bible College is an international human rights attorney. He says, “Another part of the system of apartheid is the use of law and legal mechanisms. This isn’t just discrimination and racism. This is written in the laws, and you can read the laws and realize that by law, the system is being applied. The system must also be used to create domination and preserve domination by one group over another.”

Kuttab says the situation for every country will look different, but it will always involve the elements listed above. “A lot of the conversation goes on says, “Is this like South Africa? Or isn’t it? How different is it? How do we compare it? This is not a very useful approach because every country is different. Desmond Tutu, for example, says comparisons to apartheid are unfair to South Africa.”

How to pray

Pray the love of Jesus will break down injustice and the barriers between people groups worldwide. Kuttab says, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. That whoever believes in Him, whether they are Jew, or Gentile, male or female, black, white, whatever, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

The header photo shows an apartheid sign in South Africa in 1989. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

The course will cover Herod the Great and also his sons and grandsons. The Herods ruled in the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, including the time of Jesus’ ministry.

Haytham Dieck, the course instructor, says, “They had a wide impact, especially in the Bible. Each one of them did something in some way or another. Truly, there is a Herod’s heritage. Of course, the biggest heritage is of Herod the Great, his building, and his legacy.”

Herod the Great built a temple in Jerusalem that was even larger and more magnificent than Solomon’s. He also constructed the Herodium, a lavish palace built into a small hill.

Herods vs. kingdom of God

But he treated his people brutally, slaughtering Jewish scholars and even members of his own family. The magi visited Herod the Great on their quest to find Jesus. His fear of losing power led to a massacre of children in the region.

His son Herod Antipas followed in his footsteps. Dieck says, “He ordered the beheading of John the Baptist. Jesus called him a fox (Luke 12:32), and even in the trial of Jesus, the Herod he met was Herod Antipas. He mocked Jesus.”

The course contrasts the Herods with the kingdom of Jesus. The Herods constructed buildings, but Jesus builds a people. The Herods ruled through force, But Jesus through love.

The course goes on to cover Herod Agrippa. Dieck says, “He died in Caesarea when people start to glorify Him as a god. And he accepted that. He did not say anything. In a way, he was happy to know that. And then suddenly, he was struck down. And according to the Bible, worms actually ate him.”

“For this kind of Kingdom, eventually the ruler wants to stay here forever. They want to be glorified as a god.”

Paul encountered Herod Agrippa II, who expressed interest in the news of Jesus.

Header photo courtesy of Bethlehem Bible College. 

To make things more difficult, Israel controls the airspace overhead and the waters offshore. Yousef AlKhouri of Bethlehem Bible College, who grew up in the Gaza Strip, explains. “There are many goods that are not allowed to enter Gaza, or, like vegetables and flowers, to be exported out of Gaza. These are the main exports from Gaza. Gaza is also on the Mediterranean Sea, so its economy relies heavily on fishing. However, Israel controls the water and doesn’t allow fishermen to go past six miles, sometimes only three miles.”

“According to many international organizations, for good fishing to happen, it has to be over 12 miles into the sea or ocean.”

AlKhouri’s family only gets four hours of electricity daily, and drinkable water is in short supply. He says, “I have two nephews and one niece. The oldest is nine years old. And the youngest is four years old. Neither has experienced in their lifetime 24 hours of electricity or clean tap water. In fact, the statistics say that 50 percent of Gaza children wish not to live.”

Pray for the healing and hope of Jesus in Gaza.

(Header photo courtesy of Marius Arnesen, CC BY-SA 3.0 NO <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Jack Sara, President of Bethlehem Bible College, says, “He was probably the first Christian to reach out to them with blankets with food parcels and tents. He just treated them as humans. He helped with bringing letters to their families, reaching out to their families in Gaza and elsewhere.”

Until his death, Brother Andrew was welcome in Gaza. He once presented a Bible to President Yasser Arafat. He once wrote, “There are no terrorists . . . As long as we see any person—Muslim, Communist, terrorist—as an enemy, then the love of God cannot flow through us to reach him.”

Work with Palestinians

1992 was also the year Sara first met Brother Andrew. “He was very much, I would say, involved in seeing that Bethlehem Bible College will continue to advance in its both training of students, but also outreach to the community around us.”

“When I wanted to go to seminary (I didn’t know this till after a while), Andrew was the guy who paid for my ticket to study in the Philippines for my Masters of Divinity.”

Brother Andrew angered many Christians in the U.S. through his gentleness. He mourned the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and called the killing of Osama Bin Laden a murder.

Sara says Brother Andrew practiced “Aggressive bridge-building. He was a supporter of reconciliation work with Palestinian Christians and Messianic Jews. He tried to help even those who would be looked at as fundamentalists or fanatics.”

Pray Christians around the world would learn from Brother Andrew’s gentleness and love.

The header photo shows Sara with Brother Andrew. (Photo courtesy of Bethlehem Bible College)

al-Haq

Jonathan Kuttab serves on the board of Bethlehem Bible College. He is a human rights attorney, and he founded one of these organizations: al-Haq. He says, “Al-Haq is a world-class, world-famous human rights organization that has received more than 46 international awards for human rights advocacy. And it doesn’t hesitate to criticize the Palestinian Authority and Hamas as well as the Israeli government.”

Some European governments froze their support to al-Haq and the other organizations to investigate the claims. But they found no evidence of terrorism. Kuttab says, “So the Israelis went one step further. They sealed these organizations up with metal sheets. Then people just came and tore off the metal sheets, and they continued working.”

Human rights can be dangerous work, Kuttab says, especially since it often involves criticizing governments. “But it’s a struggle that is wholesome. And it’s a struggle that doesn’t hurt. It does expose the violations of human rights. It does call for greater respect for international law. It does call for freedom and democracy. But it works for it in very positive ways.”

“People who work for human rights don’t have weapons. We don’t have armies.”

Palestinian Christians work for nonviolence and peacemaking. Kuttab says, “I really think that Jesus doesn’t want us to kill. He doesn’t want us to use violence. He wants us to use different methods of working for the Kingdom of God.”

Pray the love of Palestinian Christians will bring peace and healing to the region.

The header photo shows part of the border wall between Israeli and Palestinian territory, near Ramallah, where the al-Haq office is located. (Photo courtesy of W. Hagens: senadmessage.nl took the picture, for W. Hagens: copyrights have been transferred to him., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) 

Andrew Bush talks about the new Master of Arts in Peace and Justice. “This is a program, an innovative, accredited, and primarily online degree is offered in partnership with St. Stephen’s University in New Brunswick, Canada. We’ve been working on this project for about three years.”

The MAPJ is a 2-year, 39-credit program. It offers courses about peacemaking and justice in the Palestinian context. Bush says, “Then, provided by St. Stephen’s University, there are courses such as The Inner Transformation of a Peacemaker (speaking of the inner spiritual development of a peacemaker).”

Other courses cover the biblical theology of peace and justice, peace and violence in the Old and New Testaments, practical non-violence, and how peacebuilding interacts with religion.

Take the course

People anywhere in the world can take this course. Interested? Visit bipj.org to learn more or to sign up.

Most of the course is fully online. Students can access lectures at their convenience. In the second year of the program, students will visit the BBC campus for a two-week field study. They will visit Bethlehem, Jericho, Hebron, Jerusalem, Nablus, and Nazareth.

Who will benefit from these courses? Bush says, “This will help people in any context. They can develop their understanding of peacemaking, reconciliation, and the complex art, so to speak, of pursuing peace and justice.”

Many students who have taken the BIPJ certificate program have gone on to work with refugees and human rights in the Middle East.

Header photo courtesy of Bethlehem Bible College.

Several media sources and rights groups say an Israeli gunman killed her. The Israeli government says it has not reached a conclusion about what happened.

But the incident took place in Palestinian territory, says Jack Sara, President of the Bethlehem Bible College (BBC). “Just imagine a crime happening somewhere near the border between Canada and the U.S., on the U.S. side. [An investigation] would be done by the country or by the ruling government that is on the ground there.”

People gathered to hear the Christ at the Checkpoint Conference at BBC. (Photo courtesy of the Bethlehem Bible College on Facebook)

Christ as the Checkpoint

Sara encourages listeners to visit Palestinian territory and see the conditions for themselves. “The Israeli army is an occupation in the West Bank, and they have the upper hand. Their existence in the West Bank is illegal. Nobody’s talking about it, sadly, because people don’t see things from the ground here.”

Many Christian tourists spend as little as five hours on the Palestinian side of the wall.

That’s the focus of the Christ at the Checkpoint Conference, recently held at BBC. Sara says, “We’re asking people to really see the Palestinians and Israelis in the same lens, using the same criticism they use against the Palestinians, towards the Israelis.”

“The Church, sadly, because of certain theologies, politics, or propaganda, sometimes also takes positions.”

The conference featured several different speakers talking about the things Palestinians experience in occupied territory. See a video about the event here.

One speaker, Dr. Muncher Isaac, said the solution to these troubles will not come through big events, but through the Kingdom of God. He said, “Hope is like the small mustard seed. It is our hope that this conference is just one of many small mustard seeds.”

Pray for peace in Palestinian territory.

The header photo shows the podium used in the Christ at the Checkpoint Conference at BBC. (Photo courtesy of Bethlehem Bible College on Facebook)