“You’re my man, you’re my man in Gaza. Tell everyone about Me.” Yeshua has been appearing to Muslims in Gaza, bringing hope and transforming their hearts and lives. Tom and Joann Doyle report1 on how God is raising up evangelists in war-torn Strip in an interview with our friend, Joel Rosenberg.
This man, who they describe as “an Apostle Paul in Gaza” encountered Yeshua in a vision, has embraced God’s call, and even has a heart for Israel.
Tom admits that while the situation may look bleak politically, spiritually, there is much hope.
“The reason is because of the Muslims that are coming to faith in Christ, people that have generations of generations of Islam, but have said, I’m fed up, I need something different, and they’ve turned to Jesus, and they have been transformed.”
“And not only that,” he added, “they don’t hate Israel anymore once they come to faith in Christ.” Tom told of a man who told them he wanted to be a “full disciple”, saying, “I want to do everything that Jesus tells me to do,” having read Matthew and the instructions to love our enemies. He realized that meant Israel: “The enemy was over the fence. It’s Israel. It’s all the Jews,” he acknowledged.
“I hate them, but Jesus said I have to love them. So I prayed and he said, I hoped for a tolerance, but God replaced the hate with love, not just tolerance.” He told them. “I found out there were Jewish believers over their brothers and sisters. I couldn’t believe it, so anyway… that hatred that can be replaced with love.” He said that he even found himself praying for the Jewish people even in the middle of attacks, and that God had developed a deep love in his heart for Israelis.
“Jesus can transform a heart and then they change, so spiritually, we see a lot of hope,” Tom affirmed.
“There’s always hope in Jesus,” Joann agreed, “and the thing that we have found every time that we have been to Gaza is that these women are living desperate lives. And this was before the war. You know, there’s the abuse rate is so high… I’ve heard women say, I have felt safe in the presence of a man when I’ve been with Jesus. So, if we can reach those Muslim women with the love of Jesus, they really are the spiritual influencers, the spiritual gatekeepers of their family. They can transform their whole family starting with their children, their husbands see the change in them. Often they are drawn to that change, and then they are often influenced for Jesus as well.”
Hope for a new generation
Joel asked the couple about the challenge of reaching children in Gaza: “They’re being so indoctrinated in school, in the media, from their fathers, from the mosques to hate, to hate, to see Jews as apes and pigs, and and and to only believe in jihad. They’re sent away to summer camps to train to be Hamas terrorists. How does one break through there?
“My prayer for the day after, is that we start reaching those children with the love of Jesus,” Joann said.
She told the story of a preschool teacher who had come to faith, and started teaching about the love of Jesus instead of jihad. “She’d only been a believer a few weeks, maybe three, four weeks, and she said, “I’ve already crossed that bridge, and I am ready to lay down my life for Christ.” She sent us pictures… little pieces of construction paper with the sheep with cotton balls. She did that, in Arabic: Jesus is the Good Shepherd. And you know, those kids soaked that up. You know, we’re all drawn to love.”
“God created us to love because He is love. So if we can reach those children at a young age and retrain them, retransform their minds, that’s the hope for the next generation,” Joann explained.
It’s not just the children that are soaking up the love of Yeshua in Gaza either. Many are finding the truth about Yeshua online, and making contact with people like Tom and Joann and our Arabic ministry team through WhatsApp.
“They called us on WhatsApp. He’s ready, he wants to pray, there was crying, there was tears, there was excitement. And I mean from day one, this guy was not only ready to live for Jesus. He was ready to die for Jesus. eating up Scripture, just growing,” Tom said of one Gazan man. But he is not the only one. Carlos Damianos also tells stories of new Gazan believers sharing the Gospel wherever they go.
Building on rock, not sand
Our Arabic outreach has seen some amazing fruit over the 13 years we have been working with people in Gaza. Carlos Damianos, who heads up the Arabic ministry, explains while our Arabic outreach is impacting Muslims across the whole Arab world, we have seen particular openness in Gaza from people in a variety of Gazan cities and towns.
“For years we have been connected with families and individuals in Gaza, investing and discipling new believers through zoom and building them up in their faith,” says Carlos. “We have been working most intensively in Gaza, investing in the people with teaching and training in apologetics, for example showing how the Bible and the Quran present a completely different God.”
One man, who was suffering with cancer, was able to come to Israel for treatment and while he was here he was baptized at our Bible college, and shared his testimony. Sadly, he has since passed away but he loved the Jewish people and considered them brothers and sisters, after coming to faith and we’ll be together again in eternity. Another man who came to faith in Gaza has been studying the Bible with us for several years, and has been able to share his faith with about 80-90 people there, doctors, people in tents, all kinds of people, several of whom have come to faith.
“Thanks to God that the intensive teaching we gave them in the peaceful times has made them ready to share their faith so boldly in the hard times,” exclaims Carlos. “They are making the most of the opportunities to share now with no fear, and they have learned the huge differences between Islam and Christianity. Their opinion of Jewish people has also changed completely. They see Israelis as brothers and sisters and pray for them.”
There are several reasons why people in Gaza are finding Yeshua at this time:
- Many are sick of their religion and tired of war, and are searching for hope, for something new.
- Yeshua is also appearing to many in dreams and visions, softening hearts in preparation to heal the Gospel.
- The truth is now freely available in Arabic on the internet. Millions of Muslims are watching testimony videos every month.
Although most Christians have been able to escape Gaza and the visible church has been diminished, something is happening underneath the surface. Joann pointed out that it’s not really an “underground” church, since the Hamas tunnels dominate the subterranean level of Gaza, but prefers to use the term “secret church.”
“I actually hate using that term now with the tunnel, so really it’s the secret church… and it is flourishing and it is growing… there are so many people that want to know there’s got to be more than Islam. There’s got to be more than all this hate. There’s got to be more than Hamas.” That feeling was there even before the war. Now it’s even stronger. New believers are radiating the hope and love of Yeshua, impacting all around them.
“They see Christ shining out from them, they see that they have hope, that they have joy in the midst of all the devastation around them. And so they are actually seeking them out, and they’re taking them straight to God’s word.”
Joann explained how new believers would show their friends passages of Scripture, such as Psalm 71:
In you, O Lord, do I take refuge;
let me never be put to shame!
In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me;
incline your ear to me, and save me!
Be to me a rock of refuge,
to which I may continually come;
you have given the command to save me,
for you are my rock and my fortress.
Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked,
from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man.
For you, O Lord, are my hope,
my trust, O Lord, from my youth.
(Psalm 71:1-5)
Gazans are living in danger both because of the war, but also because of the cruelty of their own Hamas leadership. “So they are sharing verses like this, and these people are giving their lives to Jesus Christ,” Joann explains. “They’re turning their back on Islam, turning their life to Christ, and then they have the opportunity to slowly disciple… it’s something that is happening in secret,” she shared.
Tom encouraged Christians in the nations not to be swayed by simplifications and stereotypes about Israel and Gaza from the media, but to look to the Bible. “We need to not take our worldview from the news to where we think everybody’s that way. We need we need to get it from God’s word,” he said.
“We know right now that Muslims are more reachable than any time in their 14,00 year history. They are responding to the gospel. They are interested in the gospel.”
Sharing the extraordinary success of internet evangelism in the Muslim world he told Joel Rosenberg that while 4,000 people had been watching testimony videos each month, now it’s well over a million, and almost reaching two million from all around the Arab world every single month.
Many have reported having dreams and visions of Yeshua, and at first they may not know where to go or what to do about it. It’s not easy to find a Bible and in many Muslim nations they can’t find a church either. “They can’t just walk into First Baptist or wherever. So where are they going to go?” Asks Tom. That’s when they go online. And that’s where ministries like ours come in.
“Is it similar to what’s happening with these testimonies online, video testimonies in Israel, in Hebrew and in English and other languages,” Joel Rosenberg agreed. “Basically digital is one of the key ways. People need personal contact, but at first they just need to hear somebody explain to them how they make this transition. It’s exactly right.”
“We have hope for the future of Gaza, but it is not going to be easy. It’s going to take a global movement of prayer to break the stranglehold of Islam that is crushing the people of Gaza and the rest of the Middle East. So please keep praying, as you pray for Israel, pray for them.”
Main picture by Aamil Suhail on Unsplash
