Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first president baptized in office. Shortly after his inauguration, Edward L. R. Elson of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington baptized the president in a private ceremony.

For several reasons, Elson was an interesting figure during America’s civil-religious awakening of the 1950s. First, he was the president’s pastor. Second, he was a pretty effusive flatterer of leaders in high office. He peppered Secretary of State John Foster Dulles with invitations to attend numerous church events, laying it on thick with encomia like “Let me tell you how superlatively I believe you are handling your high office.” Third, he frequently took the liberty of giving Dulles advice on how to handle affairs of state. And fourth, he was a committed anti-Zionist. Beginning in 1954, Elson was a board member of the American Friends of the Middle East, an anti-Zionist front group sponsored by the CIA. He was determined to get Dulles to assist him in advancing the AFME’s mission.

Elson could be startlingly forward with the secretary of state. In 1955, Elson wrote to Dulles, asking how the AFME might be “of increased usefulness at this trying time of American relations in this area.” In 1957, he invited Dulles to a dinner with Cornelius Engert, one of the AFME’s founders, to discuss Middle East strategy. (Dulles’s staff, noting that the AFME was “a partisan Arab group,” declined the invitation on his behalf.) And in 1958, Elson had the audacity to insist that Dulles make a special stop in Egypt on the way to a Baghdad Pact meeting in Ankara because “some of our real and trusted friends would be greatly encouraged by your personal appearance in Cairo.”

With a few exceptions, such as when Elson asked Dulles for a framed and autographed photograph to hang on the wall of his study next to his likeness of Eisenhower, Dulles consistently gave Elson the cold shoulder. Elson believed that support for Israel was antithetical to American interests in the Middle East. He was not interested in any concrete efforts toward reconciliation between Jews and Christians that went beyond prayer, which he described as the best “way of reconciliation” and “tool for peace.”

In stark contrast to mainline Protestants like Elson, evangelicals such as Billy Graham were deeply interested in pursuing reconciliation between Jews and Christians. In Covenant Brothers, an excellent new study of the relationship between evangelicals and Israel since 1948, historian Daniel Hummel argues that evangelicals broadly and consistently sought reconciliation with the Jewish people through support of the newly established nation of Israel. In fact, postwar evangelicalism fostered a political and social program crafted to bring American Jews, the Israeli state, and evangelicals into what Hummel calls a “covenantal partnership.”

Over time, this program became known as Christian Zionism. A variety of leading figures helped give it shape, especially after the Six-Day War of 1967. Among them were Graham, archaeologist William Foxwell Albright, scholar Uriel Tal, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, National Association of Evangelicals president Arnold Olson, Southern Baptist preacher W. A. Criswell, Americans for a Safe Israel founder Herbert Zweibon, and International Christian Embassy Jerusalem head Jan Willem van der Hoeven.

Hummel’s central argument is that Christian Zionism is not the caricature of popular imagination, which treats evangelical fondness for Israel as a product of end-times fascination and American imperial ambition in the Middle East. Rather, evangelical political support evolved from the founding of modern Israel in 1948 and deepened in complexity after 1967. Theology played a role, but so did history, political philosophy, Cold War diplomacy, pragmatic considerations, and even tourism. The one unifying theme that bound American Jews, evangelicals, and Israelis together was the notion of covenant built on a foundation of reconciliation between Jews and Christians. The creation of the state of Israel, and the defense of its existence after 1967, demonstrated to evangelicals that Jewish and Christian identity were bound inextricably through shared sacred texts, theology, tradition, and common experience. Throughout the book, Hummel explores the benefits of this partnership and the avenues of reconciliation it opened—while also taking seriously its limits and failures.

Source: Christianity Today

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The Evangelical Hospital of Barcelona has set up a special area for Covid-19 patients. They ask churches to pray for them “to continue being a light in the midst of this pandemic.”  This wonderful story of how a Christian hospital is serving COVID-19 patients comes to us from the Evangelical News Service.

Health professionals are the ones who directly witness the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in the population. Long working hours are combined with constant exposure to the virus combined with a deep perception of death/  This requires much more than medical skills.  Managing the situation with emotional sensitivity and spiritual strength is also a challenge for healthcare workers.

An example of this is the Nou Hospital Evangèlic (New Evangelical Hospital), in Barcelona, Spain. It is receiving patients diagnosed with the Covid-19 to “support other hospitals that receive the greatest number of cases, so that they, in their turn, can serve more people”. “We have an area for these cases and that is already completely full, so we have had to designate new space,” said the hospital’s manager, Reyes Gualda.

The situation requires an extraordinary effort from the entire hospital, both the medical and cleaning personnel. Basic materials are scarce, they admit. In this complicated scenario, all planning is continually modified to fit changing needs. That is why the Nou Hospital Evangèlic states that they do not know “what will happen in the coming days” and ask for “prayer so that the team knows how to remain calm, have a clear vision and be successful in decision-making.”

The Nou Hospital Evangèlic explained that they have had to hire more people. “We are looking for people to work in the hospital. We need more nurses,” their spokesman said.  Despite the fact that they have a special isolated area for COVID-19,  up to 40% of the health workers at the center are affected by the virus and 25% are in quarantine.  Most are waiting on the results of their test.

SOURCE: Assist News, Jeff Thompson

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Easter is usually a time of vibrancy and life. For many of us, Easter includes dressing up in bright pastels, gathering with family and friends, and maybe even hunting for colored eggs. Those traditions seem wholly inappropriate given our current situation.

Instead, we’re left wondering what happened to Easter in the midst of a global pandemic. COVID-19 has turned our world upside-down, causing many to question where God is in the mess. How can we celebrate the life and joy represented by Easter at a time like this?

But for those who are open enough or desperate enough to look again, I believe this Easter has the potential to be more important than any in our lifetime.

Our world is searching for answers. A recent study found that internet searches around prayer doubled for every 80,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. But why do people turn to God at a time when God feels absent? Could it be that we deeply want to believe in the God of Easter — a God who suffers with us, for us, and overcomes sin and death? Has there ever been a moment the collective human race was more longing for such a God?

If you are not feeling very hopeful ahead of Easter 2020, I have good news for you: you are in good company. The first Easter didn’t seem like good news for Jesus’ followers in the week leading up to it either. No one would have looked at a beaten Jesus, unjustly accused, abandoned and hung on a cross and said, “That is good news.”

But that’s exactly the paradoxical way God works. Through Jesus, God was doing something no one would have expected to show us how much he cares. Instead of being some impersonal deity, sitting on a royal golden throne surrounded by angels, Jesus became flesh and blood. He walked our soil and felt our pain. This is what makes the Christian faith so unique: our God suffers with and for us. The story of Easter teaches us that when our world feels upside-down, God is often at work setting it right-side-up.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Nick Hall

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The leadership of Assist News has named Peter Wooding as the new ANS Senior Editor.  Assist News Founder and Peter’s father Dan Wooding, passed away on March 18, 2020.  Because ANS is staffed by volunteer writers, we need your generous support to further the mission as we advocate for the Persecuted Church.  

Dan’s younger son Peter follows in his father’s footsteps by reporting on ministries around the world.  Peter’s reports have included hot spots in Sudan, the war front in Eastern Ukraine, and massive rallies in Africa with Reinhard Bonnke.  His passion to share what God is doing inspired him to take over ANS. 

“One of the last things my father said to me was, ‘Peter it’s the end of an era, but please carry on the work of ANS.’”

SOURCE: Assist News Service, Jeff Thompson

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Americans across the country are celebrating Easter at home with their families on Sunday, including survivors of COVID-19 who say God’s supernatural intervention saved their lives.

Geneva Wood

Before COVID-19 spread across the U.S., the virus wreaked havoc at the Life Care Center nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, back in February. As many as 35 coronavirus deaths have been linked to the facility, but 90-year-old Geneva Wood said God intervened and saved her life.

Wood was at Life Care Center recovering from a stroke and days before she was to be discharged the facility went on lockdown because of a coronavirus outbreak. Within a few days of the lockdown Wood “experienced a spiking fever.”

“I didn’t know that I had the virus until I had the virus. I had no symptoms of it before,” Wood told CBN News of her experience.

Local news station KIRO reported that Wood was on the brink of death and doctors advised her family to say their goodbyes.

Wood was mostly kept in isolation while fighting the virus but maintained that God was there with her.

“I could feel God’s presence. His hands were on my body and I could feel His presence, and I’d wake up and I could feel these hands and I’d go back to sleep. Through the night, ’cause I’d wake up, I couldn’t see His face, but I could feel His hands and I knew He was with me and I made it through the night,” Wood recalled.

“Until you’ve felt God’s presence and His hands on you, it’s something else. If it hadn’t been for Him, I couldn’t have done it. And I wasn’t alone because He was with me all the time,” she testified.

Wood also credited “one special” doctor who shared Bible scriptures with her daily.

“At first all I said was Psalm 23, but he would read to me every morning,” she said.

After 19 days in the hospital, Woods was sent home coronavirus free. Her family said  her recovery was nothing short of “miraculous.”

Barbara Killiebrew

Barbara Killiebrew, 60, of south Georgia is celebrating Easter with her family members who she was unable to see for weeks after she was put on a ventilator and near death due to the virus.

“First and foremost, I thank God for Jesus, for Him saving my life and giving me another chance, because two or three times where I have given up,” Killiebrew told WALB.

“God said no,” she continued.

Killiebrew was first hospitalized on March 18 and found out a few days later that she tested positive for COVID-19.

“I realize there are so many people around the nation fighting for their life but God and His good almighty helped me. He kept this young lady here to come home and tell about corona, COVID-19,” she said.

Killiebrew maintained that God brought her back to be with her family.

“I felt in my mind and my heart that I was coming back to them. I was fighting, I was fighting for my life,” Killiebrew said.

Clay Bentley

Another man in Georgia, Clay Bentley, also shared how God miraculously intervened in his recovery from the virus. Bentley said he could feel God moving in his life at the most critical point during his fight.

He was hospitalized for 12 days and told CBS News correspondent David Begnaud that his condition was so bad that doctors had told him there was nothing else they could do.

Bentley told Fox News in another interview that as the hospital was considering putting him on a respirator he experienced a miracle.

“I felt like I had a man lying on my chest and I couldn’t breathe,” he said. “And the weight of this man was crushing me and I couldn’t breathe at all. And then all of a sudden, I felt the breath entering me. It was the Lord on my chest. When He breathed inside me, I felt the power of God hit.”

“I couldn’t breathe at all, and suddenly, I felt the Lord. I mean, His presence was there, and I felt air blowing into my lungs,” He told CBS News.

Bentley now back home under quarantine and can’t wait to see his relatives again.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Jeannie Law

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If you ask most people what comes to mind when they think of Easter, they might say chocolate bunnies, children hunting Easter eggs in their pastel-colored Sunday best or perhaps a nice lunch with family after possibly going to church. If you ask most people what Easter symbolizes, they would say the start of spring — the beginning of new life. 

And what “life” means to such people falls so short of what it truly is. Shakespeare’s Macbeth described life as “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” And to most people life is a void. Such people don’t understand who they are, why they’re here or where they’re going.

Some people seek a life of pleasure — party on! Have a blast while you last! Eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we die! is their creed.

Other people spend their life in the pursuit of money or possessions so they can have status or security for themselves or their family.

Others might, less selfishly, make caring and serving their family, “the next generation” or even needy strangers their primary purpose.

But in the end, all of these pursuits, some noble and some not, fail to fulfill our true purpose.

James 4:14 describes life as a breath vapor on a cold morning; it’s there for a moment, then gone. Ecclesiastes 3:2 says “There’s a time to be born and there’s a time to die.” And so life is a vapor… here today and then gone. Death is a terrible enemy. It stalks the earth relentlessly, taking young lives as well as older ones. Death is an interloper, an intruder and no respecter of persons!

SOURCE: Christian Post, Jack Graham

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As many Christians in the West mark the first time they’ve been unable to celebrate Easter publicly at church due to the COVID-19 outbreak, theologians are weighing in on how God might be moving in the world.

Because of the ongoing pandemic, federal, state and local governments have issued “social distancing” and stay-at-home orders along with the temporary shutdown of businesses deemed as “non-essential.” And churches have been largely prohibited from holding services, even on the holiest of Christian holidays.

“I’m reminded that for the persecuted church, this is every week for them,” said Glenn Packiam, pastor of New Life Church-Downtown in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in an interview with The Christian Post.

“The inability to gather, the restrictions on church and worship, we are in many ways standing in solidarity with the persecuted church because we are experiencing what has been their norm on a weekly basis,” he said.

The pandemic presents another opportunity to reconsider the first Easter and the period soon thereafter where Jesus appeared to the disciples while they were in locked rooms, afraid and unsure of what had just happened.

“The last they knew, He was crucified and buried in a tomb. So there is, in a very real sense, not just a connection with the global church —a portion of which is the persecuted church — but there is also a connection with the earliest of churches, the first followers of Jesus who found themselves in locked rooms. And Jesus appeared to them,” Packiam said.

“The resurrection of Christ is able to appear to us, to come to us wherever we are. And as we think about Easter we can remember that the risen Christ walks through locked rooms, He appears through locked rooms, He comes through closed doors and finds us afraid and alone.”

American Christians sometimes tend to interpret events based on what is happening to them, that if they are experiencing difficulty then it must be the end times, he added.

“I think we have to be careful of that because we get spoiled by comfort, we get spoiled by life sort of being relatively good. And because of that we lose our sense of the power of what Christian hope actually is. Christian hope has always been the future,” he said, referencing the Apostle Paul’s words in Romans 8 where he speaks of a hope which remains yet unseen.

“For many of us living in a comfortable sort of existence, our definition of hope gets skewed to be a sense of peace and everything is OK.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Brandon Showalter

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