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For 30 years, Lina had lived in Ashkelon, a target for Hamas rockets near Gaza. She had grown used to missile attacks, sirens, and running for shelter. But October 7 was different.

“This time it was like a horror movie,” she recalls. “So many children, so many people were killed for nothing. Ashkelon is like a war zone now. There is a smell of burning everywhere—the smell of war.” Where could she and her children go to feel safe again?

Fortunately, caring friends like you made a way for Lina and her children to stay in Eilat, a peaceful area away from the attacks. Through CBN Israel, donors are providing temporary shelter for families and offering therapy to help them process the terrible trauma they’ve experienced. They are also supplying them with hot meals and basic necessities. As Lina shares, “We fled from our houses with practically nothing, and we are left without work or income.”

She added, “You gave me a complete hygiene kit—toothbrush, deodorant, and everything we needed.” Donors also enabled her to purchase clothes and toys for her kids. She said, “I couldn’t bring toys at all—I didn’t think of that. What you’re doing really helps a lot. Thank you!”

In addition to rushing relief aid to these terror victims, your gifts to CBN Israel can also deliver ongoing assistance across the country to elderly Holocaust survivors, single mothers, immigrants, and those struggling to survive.

The war has devastated thousands of lives across the Holy Land. Your support to CBN Israel can rush emergency relief to those escaping battle zones, while offering groceries, housing, financial aid, and more to others in need.

Please join us in providing a lifeline to those who need our help!

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By Marc Turnage

Nazareth—the boyhood home of Jesus—sits on a limestone ridge (the Nazareth Ridge) in the Lower Galilee that separates the Jezreel Valley to the south from the Beit Netofa Valley to the north. Nazareth first appears in ancient literary sources in the New Testament (Matthew 2:23; Luke 1:26; Luke 2:4, 39, and 51). According to Luke, Jesus’ mother, Mary, came from Nazareth (1:26). Matthew relates how the Holy Family, after returning from Egypt, relocated to Nazareth (2:19–23). Jesus taught in Nazareth’s synagogue (Luke 4:16-30), and as His popularity grew, He became known as “Jesus from Nazareth” (Matthew 21:11).

Although Nazareth is not mentioned in ancient sources prior to the New Testament, archaeologists have uncovered remains from the Middle Bronze Age (time of the Patriarchs), Iron Age II (time of kingdoms of Israel and Judah), and the late Hellenistic eras. The discovery of tombs from the early Roman period (first century B.C. to second century A.D.) indicates the limit of the village, as Jews do not bury their dead inside of cities or villages. The site in the first century covered an area of about sixty 60 acres, with a population of maybe perhaps 500 people. 

Ancient Nazareth sits 3.8 miles (about an hour-and-fifteen-minute walk) to the south of Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee when Jesus was a boy. Its proximity indicates its dependency upon Sepphoris; moreover, its location between the Jezreel and Beit Netofa Valleys, both of which contained international travel routes, suggests that Jesus was anything but “a hick from the sticks.”

Archaeologists uncovered what they tentatively identify as a Jewish ritual immersion bath from the early Roman period. If they are correct, it may point to the location of the synagogue of Nazareth (see Luke 4:16-30). This, as well as early Christian structures, are now enclosed inside the modern compound of the Catholic Church of the Annunciation, built in the 1960s. 

Later Jewish tradition identifies Nazareth as the location where the priestly course of Hapizez settled after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in A.D. 70; an inscription discovered in the coastal city of Caesarea, from the Byzantine period, repeats this. The church fathers Eusebius and Epiphanius indicate that the population of Nazareth was Jewish into the sixth century A.D. 

By the fourth century A.D., Christian pilgrims began to journey to Nazareth and were shown a cave identified as the home of Mary. It remains a place for pilgrims to this day. It has housed churches since the Byzantine period. Today, Nazareth contains two main pilgrim churches: the Catholic Church of the Annunciation and the Orthodox church built over the spring of Nazareth. 

Marc Turnage is President/CEO of Biblical Expeditions. He is an authority on ancient Judaism and Christian origins. He has published widely for both academic and popular audiences. His most recent book, Windows into the Bible, was named by Outreach Magazine as one of its top 100 Christian living resources. Marc is a widely sought-after speaker and a gifted teacher. He has been guiding groups to the lands of the Bible—Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Italy—for over twenty years.

Website: WITBUniversity.com
Facebook: @witbuniversity
Podcast: Windows into the Bible Podcast

“He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty. He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever” (Luke 1:51-55 NKJV).

The Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) and the Benedictus (Luke 1:68-79) voice the Jewish redemptive hopes and aspirations of the first century. They yearned for God’s removal of Rome, freeing His people so they could worship Him. And they anticipated the reversal of the social order. These were subversive ideas; they upset those who resided in palaces and felt comfortable with the status quo. They hoped God would exalt the lowly and bring down the mighty, that the hungry would be filled and the rich would be made poor. 

God’s redemption was not merely inward and personal. God’s redemption impacted all His people and manifested itself in visible, tangible ways within the social and political order. Mary’s words are anything but safe; they are radical. Israel’s long-held hope for redemption has now come, and it will disrupt the established world.

We tend to view Christmas through our own lens—what God has done for me. In doing so, we can all too easily fail to feel the collective sense of hope and upheaval that the message of Christmas originally articulated. It’s there in Mary’s song; in the song of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist; in the angelic proclamation; and even in Simeon’s utterance about the newborn Jesus in the Temple. 

God is fulfilling His promises to Israel’s fathers—to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—with the birth of Jesus. The hopes of His people, and the world, are being realized in the baby in Bethlehem. But this redemption will upset the social and political order of the day. 

It’s hard for us sometimes—wrapped in the lights, sounds, and smells of Christmas—to hear the disruptive and subversive tone of the first Christmas. But we need to. What God did in sending Jesus was more than for our personal benefit. It manifests itself in visible and tangible ways to all humanity—the mighty and the lowly. 

Jesus articulated the message of Christmas when He read from the book of Isaiah in the synagogue of His hometown Nazareth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19). 

PRAYER

Father, manifest Your redemption this Christmas in the world among the hurting, suffering, poor, and oppressed. And help us to be present where You are. Amen.

By Julie Stahl

During such dark times, it’s heartening to remember that Hanukkah began after a time of utter devastation and desolation in Jewish history.

Hanukkah—which is also known as the Festival of Lights or the Feast of Dedication—marks a great victory over 2,000 years ago.

“It’s a holiday that celebrates religious freedom and our victory against oppression and our ability to rededicate the Temple,” says Rebecca Spiro, a resident of Jerusalem’s Old City.

In the second century B.C., the Jewish people in Judea revolted against the Syrian-Greek (Seleucid) conquerors.  

The Syrian-Greek King Antiochus IV ruled over Israel in 174 B.C. He tried to unify his kingdom by imposing pagan religion and culture on the Jews—forcing them to eat pork and forbidding them from observing the Sabbath, studying the Bible (Torah), and performing traditional rituals. As a supreme insult, the Seleucids defiled the Temple in Jerusalem and dedicated it to the Greek god Zeus.

Mattathias, a Jewish sage from the village of Modiin, took a stand with his five sons against the prohibitions and idolatry and fled to the hills of Judea. There, they raised a small army and engaged in guerilla warfare against the Seleucids. 

Before his death, Mattathias appointed his son Judah the Strong as their leader. Judah was called “Maccabee,” a word composed of the initial letters of the four Hebrew words, Mi Kamocha Ba’eilim Adonai, which means, “Who is like You, O God.”

Mattathias, a sage from the village of Modiin, and his five sons took a stand against the prohibitions and idolatry and fled to the hills of Judea. There they raised a small army and engaged in guerilla warfare against the Seleucid Empire. 

Before his death, Mattathias appointed his son Judah the Strong as their leader. Judah was called “Maccabee,” a word composed of the initial letters of the four Hebrew words, Mi Kamocha Ba’eilim Adonai, which means, “Who is like You, O God.”

King Antiochus sent his general, Apollonius, to wipe out Judah and his followers, but he was defeated. So he sent tens of thousands more soldiers to fight. The Maccabees responded by declaring, “Let us fight unto death in defense of our souls and our Temple!” They assembled in Mitzpah, where the prophet Samuel had prayed to God. 

Despite being greatly outnumbered, the Maccabees won and returned to Jerusalem to liberate and cleanse the Holy Temple from the idols that Antiochus had placed inside.

On the 25th day of the month of Kislev, in the year 139 B.C., the Maccabees rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem. The legend says that there was only enough sacred oil to burn for one day in the menorah, a candelabrum with seven branches used in the Temple in Jerusalem. But once lit, the menorah burned for eight days—enough time to purify more oil. That’s why Hanukkah lasts for eight days.  

Although Hanukkah is not mentioned in the Old Testament, it is recorded in the New Testament: “It was now winter, and Jesus was in Jerusalem at the time of Hanukkah, the Festival of Dedication. He was in the Temple, walking through the section known as Solomon’s Colonnade” (John 10:22-23 NLT).

The Maccabees were also important in early Christianity. Recently, archaeologists uncovered Hasmonean tombs about a mile from the modern Israeli city of Modiin in the area where the Maccabees would have lived, about 20 miles from Jerusalem.

At the site is a mosaic floor with a cross on it. Archaeologists suggest that Byzantine Christians found the original tomb and decorated it with the mosaic.

“The Maccabees were Jewish leaders, Jewish rebels. They removed the Greek empire and Greek presence from what is now modern Israel and they established an independent Jewish state, which makes it significant to both Judaism and Christianity,” says archaeologist Dan Shachar.   

Today, Jewish people light a special Hanukkah menorah, called a Hanukkiah, with nine branches—one for each of the eight days plus the shamash or “servant candle” used to light the others. Each day an additional candle is lit, so that by the eighth day they are all ablaze. Hanukkah falls around and sometimes coincides with Christmastime. Children are often given presents each day of the holiday.

Rebecca Spiro observes, “This is a holiday about spirituality; this is a holiday about values; this is a holiday about connecting to God.”

She also adds that there’s a message in the holiday for today. “The world is coming up against Israel. The wolves are circling the sheep. This is nothing new, and the message for Hanukkah is no matter what happens, our candles burn bright,” she says. “Civilizations have come and gone, but the Jewish people are still here.”

Julie Stahl is a correspondent for CBN News in the Middle East. A Hebrew speaker, she has been covering news in Israel full-time for more than 20 years. Julie’s life as a journalist has been intertwined with CBN—first as a graduate student in Journalism at Regent University; then as a journalist with Middle East Television (METV) when it was owned by CBN from 1989-91; and now with the Middle East Bureau of CBN News in Jerusalem since 2009. She is also an integral part of CBN News’ award-winning show, Jerusalem Dateline, a weekly news program providing a biblical and prophetic perspective to what is happening in Israel and the Middle East. 

The terror and fear of war can be felt across Israel—especially among vulnerable seniors.

For instance, one Tel Aviv apartment complex is filled with elderly refugees, Holocaust survivors, and those who can’t survive on their own. With constant volleys of missiles targeting their city daily from Gaza, they risk death if they venture out, even to shop for groceries.

Danielle Moore, from the Christian Friends of the Jewish Agency, asked, “If you are a person in your 80s or 90s—very frail—how are you going to manage when there is a siren, and you’re outside? How are you going to reach a place of safety?”

That’s why, thanks to friends like you, CBN Israel has partnered with the Jewish Agency and others to provide huge food boxes and water—ensuring that residents can remain in the building, right near bomb shelters. “We want to keep them safe,” Moore stated.

And CBN Israel’s National Director Dan Carlson wants them to feel cared for, to know they aren’t alone. He says Israelis rarely feel safe with enemies surrounding them—and October 7^th only made it worse, noting, “It’s like the nation is in trauma right now—the whole nation.”

Moore adds, “When you think about the elderly, many of them Holocaust survivors, and all the traumas and hardships they went through… Now they face siren after siren, understanding that their life is at risk, and it’s unbearable.” But generous donors are there with food, water, and basic necessities—along with smiles and hugs—and giving them the encouragement they need. One grateful resident, Helen, said, “It’s very helpful. I’m about to cry from excitement!”

Your gifts to CBN Israel can also evacuate war victims to hotels far away from the attacks, and offer them meals, essentials, clothing, toys, and trauma counseling. And you can reach out to others in need in many other ways.

Please join us in blessing Israel at this historic moment!

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Gilead was the center of Israelite population in Transjordan (east of the Jordan River). The tribes of Reuben and Gad, and half of the tribe of Manasseh remained east of the Jordan River and did not settle in the lands west of the Jordan.

Within the Bible, the isolation of these tribes from the tribes west of the Jordan is felt within the stories. They found themselves often threatened from desert marauders and rival kingdoms east of the Jordan. The story of the judge, Jephthah, who delivered Israel from the Ammonites, took place in Gilead (Judges 11:29-33). Saul’s first victory, the deliverance of Jabesh-Gilead, also occurred in Gilead (1 Samuel 11:1-11).

Gilead also served as a land of refuge and asylum for Israelites from west of the Jordan River; for example, when David had to leave Jerusalem because of the rebellion led by his son Absalom, he fled to Mahanaim, which is in Gilead (2 Samuel 17:21-22). So too, the remaining family of Saul and his supporters fled to Gilead after Saul’s death on Mount Gilboa (2 Samuel 2:8).

The land of Gilead is a mountainous area in the central Transjordan. The limestone hills reach altitudes of over 3000 feet in some areas. The Jabbok River (Genesis 32) divides Gilead into two sections. The tribal division of land among the tribes east of the Jordan River followed the contours of the land created by the Jabbok.

Its elevation allows it to receive excellent rainfall during the winter months and dew in the summer. The area also has a number of springs that provide water. This also meant that forests grew on the mountains of Gilead (Jeremiah 22:6; Zechariah 10:10). Grapes also grew well in Gilead.

The most important highway, which ran north-south, known as the King’s Highway ran through Gilead. This roadway went from the Gulf of Eilat to Damascus where it met the international coastal highway that connected Egypt with Mesopotamia. Gilead’s strategic location on this road brought wealth to the people that lived in Gilead.

Marc Turnage is President/CEO of Biblical Expeditions. He is an authority on ancient Judaism and Christian origins. He has published widely for both academic and popular audiences. His most recent book, Windows into the Bible, was named by Outreach Magazine as one of its top 100 Christian living resources. Marc is a widely sought-after speaker and a gifted teacher. He has been guiding groups to the lands of the Bible—Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Italy—for over twenty years.

Website: WITBUniversity.com
Facebook: @witbuniversity
Podcast: Windows into the Bible Podcast

“Zechariah asked the angel, ‘How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.’ The angel said to him, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news”’ (Luke 1:18-19 NIV).

Luke repeatedly speaks about the “proclamation of good news” within his Gospel and Acts. He uses the phrase “to proclaim good news” as opposed to the noun “gospel.”

His language reflects a more Hebraic form of expression and goes back to biblical passages from Isaiah (40:9; 41:27; 52:7; and 61:1), which ancient Judaism understood as part of God’s promised redemption for His people. 

When the angel Gabriel tells Zechariah, John’s father, that he came to announce good news to Zechariah (Luke 1:19), he doesn’t merely mean the birth of a son (although that was certainly tremendous news for the aged couple).

Rather, Gabriel’s language hints at the role Zechariah’s son will play in God’s redemptive actions for His people (1:15-17). And Zechariah would have understood that. 

The angels proclaimed to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people” (2:10 NIV).

Their jubilant message to the shepherds—“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” (2:14 NKJV)—articulated the essence of the good news they proclaimed:

God is fulfilling His promises to His people; the hope of redemption has come! And He does so and draws near through the birth of these babies. 

The worldview of the Bible focuses primarily on the community and collective, as opposed to the individual as we do within Western society.

The angelic proclamation to Zechariah and the shepherds announced God’s redemption for His people. It was not for a few. And the individual was not the center of God’s proclamation of good news; it was meant for all people. 

We often personalize our faith: What does the Bible say to me? What has God done for me? And, at Christmas, what is God’s gift of salvation to me?

If that is our primary focus, we miss the angelic proclamation—which was about God, His fulfillment of His promises to His people, and the hope of redemption for all the people. 

PRAYER

Father, thank You for the fulfillment of Your good news by sending Jesus. May Your good news of hope and redemption be shown through our lives to the world, and may they know that it is Your good news for all people. Amen.

The sudden attack by Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,200 Israelis—and the trauma experienced by thousands of families and children is almost unimaginable. Hardest hit were those living along the Israel-Gaza border, where homes and entire neighborhoods are in ruins. Children have seen gruesome deaths and horrific sights they can’t even grasp yet.

Carey Lee, who runs a non-profit group, is now a victim herself. She shared, “With the amount of destruction and inhumane deeds done, no one in this community has been unscathed.”

But through CBN Israel, friends like you have provided a much-needed refuge for her and other terror victims—by transporting and paying for them to stay in safe shelter, far from the border.

In addition to lodging, caring donors are giving them hot meals and basic necessities, including toys and games for the little ones. They are also providing therapy for adults and children, plus counseling parents about ways to help their kids process the trauma they’ve endured.

Your support to CBN Israel can let these hurting people know they are not alone. As a long-time CBN Israel local partner, Carey Lee affirms, “CBN is an incredible organization that is not just with us the day before the war, or the day after. They’ve been with us on a long journey.”

And your gifts can make you a vital part of that journey. While you are sending immediate relief to the frontlines, you can also extend aid to Holocaust survivors, single mothers, refugees, and others in need.

As war rages in the Holy Land, your support can bring food, shelter, financial assistance, and more to those who are surviving week to week.

Please join us in standing with Israel at this crucial time!

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