Florida cardiologist Chauncey Crandall has seen documented medical miracles in his office—because he points his patients to the one who heals

Jeff Markin, a middle-aged auto mechanic, walked into the emergency room at the Palm Beach Gardens Hospital in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and collapsed from a massive heart attack. Forty minutes later he was declared dead. After filling out his final report, the supervising cardiologist, Dr. Chauncey Crandall, headed on to the next patient. But before he crossed the threshold, he sensed God was telling him to turn around and pray for Markin.

“Father God,” he said, under his breath, “I cry out for this man’s soul. If he does not know You as his Lord and Savior, raise him from the dead now, in Jesus’ name.” Crandall then told the emergency room doctor to give the dead man another shock with the defibrillator.

But it was the miracle-working power of God that raised Markin from the dead on that October day in 2006. Markin is alive and well today thanks to the prayers of Crandall and many others who were interceding for his life.

“I remember being in the back of a funeral home. I was mad that none of my friends and family came to visit me,” Markin says. “My next memory or recollection is, He told me everything was going to be OK. The next thing I knew I woke up in my daughter’s arms.”

Since that day, Crandall has become known as “the praying doctor.” He has witnessed many miraculous healings—and even raised others from the dead. By the power of God, he has cured a young girl with a severe blood infection, healed a missionary with multiple parasitic infections and malaria, and restored a man who was scheduled to have his leg amputated because of lesions eating through his skin. Despite science’s skeptics, Crandall has a national reputation for treating people with “the best of medicine and the best of Jesus.”

So how did a Yale-educated cardiologist whose Palm Beach, Florida, practice draws some of the most powerful people in American society, including several billionaires, come to believe in supernatural healing? How, as a scientist, can Crandall embrace God’s power to intervene in the natural order?

The Healing Dimension

Crandall began pursuing information about divine healing after he received a late-night phone call in June 2000 from the hospital lab concerning one of his patients. The patient had a white blood cell count of more than 80,000. The doctor’s immediate thought was, Whoever he is, he’s dead—he has leukemia.

It was his 11-year-old son, Chad.

When Crandall learned that his boy was suffering from a life-threatening illness, he dropped to his knees in disbelief. Then he cried out to God for every spiritual gift God would give him. Crandall also began studying healing, especially T.L. Osborn’s book Healing the Sick.

Next, he started studying the Word of God and visiting churches, looking for someone who shared his newfound belief in healing. But pastor after pastor told Crandall healing isn’t for today.

Crandall’s pursuit eventually led him to a Spirit-filled church, where he found the support he needed from a man named David Hogan of Freedom Ministries. Hogan is a missionary to the native Indians in Mexico. He prayed for Crandall and commanded healing to manifest in Chad.

Crandall was so excited to find a man of God who believed in healing that he left his medical practice for a season and traveled with Hogan to the Mexican jungles, where he witnessed miracle after miracle. The experience left no question in his mind that God’s healing power was real.

Of course, Crandall also made sure Chad received the best conventional medical care possible. He visited the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard, Duke Children’s Hospital and finally The Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Oregon, where Dr. Brian Druker told the Crandalls about a miracle drug, Gleevec, that might soon be on the market. Partially as the result of Crandall’s advocacy, which included persuading President Bush to write a letter on Chad’s behalf, Gleevec was fast-tracked by the FDA. After keeping Chad alive with prayer and lesser drugs for a year, Crandall gave him Gleevec—and reduced his counts to normal within four days.

But three years later the leukemia returned in a form that produced tumors. One morning in a Houston hospital, Chad went home to be with the Lord.

Crandall held the boy in his arms and cried, “Lord, not now! Not now, Lord! You can heal him, Father. I have seen Your mightiness. I have seen the sick healed. You can heal this boy.”

But God did not raise him, and Crandall was faced with a decision to either abandon Christianity completely or commit himself unreservedly to God’s service. “Do I run from You today, Lord Father? Because I want to run from You,” he cried.

“But I can’t run from you, Lord. I have seen too much of Your glory. Lord, I don’t understand this, but I will not run from You. But in exchange for my son’s life, I want 1 million souls for Your kingdom.”

That’s when Crandall and his wife, Deb, felt the peace of God. Within weeks he was being invited around the globe to share his hope in Christ with ministers such as Benny Hinn and Reinhard Bonnke.

When he prayed for people at mass evangelistic meetings they were often touched by the Holy Spirit and healed of their diseases. Then, Crandall began to see miraculous healings among the patients in his practice.

A Near-Death Experience

One of those patients is Frank Baldwin. Baldwin wasn’t raised from the dead, but he was a dead man walking when he met Crandall. The 74-year-old retired pastor had cancer and was bleeding internally but didn’t know it.

One morning when he was walking his dog, the pooch ran ahead of him and pulled him off balance. Baldwin hit the street face first. He was lying in a pool of blood and couldn’t find the strength to get up. He laid in the street for an hour before anyone found him. His daughter got him an appointment with Crandall the next day.

“Here I was sitting in his office with my face all battered from the fall, and Dr. Crandall says to me, ‘Do you know what’s wrong with you? You’re just an old, beat-up preacher, but we’re going to get you well,’ ” recalls Baldwin, who lives in Stuart, Florida, with his wife, Ann.

“I told him I was about to have knee surgery, and he told me I would have died on the operating table. Then he went over and got his Bible and anointed me with oil and prayed for me. He didn’t pray a little now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep prayer. He called on God. From that moment, I began to heal. Today I am cancer-free.”

Baldwin is an example of a minister who was run down when he met Crandall. Baldwin preached the gospel for 53 years before walking away from the pulpit with medical issues. Crandall reports that many prominent men and women of God visit his practice looking for a doctor who prays and believes. Though patient confidentiality precludes him from releasing their names, he says these well-known international ministers often come in with multiple health issues after not taking care of themselves for years.

“I see a lot of ministers who have beat themselves up. They are in their 50s or 60s, overweight, some with diabetes, and they aren’t feeling well,” Crandall says. “We slam them with the truth that it’s not about them; it’s about Jesus.

“I tell them they need to get out of rebellion and start taking care of their body so they can finish strong for the Lord and impart wisdom to the next generation. They are grabbing hold of this and changing their lives for the glory of God.”

A Woman With Nine Lives?

Most of Crandall’s patients aren’t ministers. Most are regular people who desperately need help. Nina Sears is a five-time cancer survivor. The running joke among her friends is, “A cat has nine lives, but Nina has many more!”

Her testimony: I have a good doctor and a great God. That doctor is Chauncey Crandall. Sears met Crandall three years ago at the church they both attend, Christ Fellowship, a megachurch in Palm Beach Gardens with five campuses.

Sears’ battle with cancer began long before she met the miracle-working doctor. In 1999, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She beat it.

Two years later, she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She beat it. Four years ago, they told her she had liver cancer. She beat it.

Next, the cancer went into her lungs. She beat it. She had her right lung removed, but the disease appeared again on her left lung. She beat it again, with plenty of prayer, faith and the grace of God.

“If you saw me, you would not think there’d ever been a thing wrong with me,” says Sears. “I go to yoga class and Pilates. In fact, I just got off the treadmill.”

You might say Sears used one of her more than nine lives during a routine procedure to put a stent in her heart. Sears visited Crandall’s office because she was suffering from shortness of breath. Crandall determined she needed the stent to open a clogged artery in her heart.

While she was on the operating table, her blood pressure dropped to dangerously low levels. “I could hear the confusion all around me and people saying, ‘We are losing her. We are losing her,’ ” Sears recalls. “Then I heard Dr. Crandall tell the nurses, ‘She is going to be fine. She is a child of God.’ And he was right. I am fine.”

She is more than fine. She is healed. Sears was still battling her second bout with lung cancer when she met Crandall. When she told Crandall she had five tumors on her remaining lung, he was drawn into prayer. As Sears recounts it, Crandall anointed her head with oil, put both of his hands on her head and prayed for about 15 minutes.

“When I went back for my next PET scan, three of the lesions on my lung were gone,” she says. “That was a miracle. I am believing the other two are gone now.”

Prayer for Body and Soul

Crandall has stood on the Word of God in prayer for hundreds of patients. Ted Widmayer is a good example. Widmayer injured his leg in a dentist office and walked out with a severe wound that wouldn’t heal.

He went to doctors, surgeons and more doctors as the leg grew worse and worse. A staph infection was literally eating a hole in his leg and, after six months, Widmayer was fearful he was going to lose the leg. In fact, it was scheduled to be amputated. Then he met Crandall.

“Ted was diabetic and had an ulcer as big as a grapefruit all the way down to the bone on his leg,” Crandall says. “I told him that we could pray for him. I took the bandage off his leg, put my hand in the wound and commanded the spirit of infirmity to be bound in the name of Jesus. I pled the blood over him and commanded healing to come into his body, in Jesus’ name.”

Confident that the power of God healed him, Crandall bandaged the wound and told him to come back in two weeks with his praise report. What Crandall didn’t know at the time was what happened inside Widmayer. He felt the power of God overtake him.

“Something happened to me in that room,” Widmayer, a 75-year-old Catholic, says. “I felt a lightness—like a weight being removed from me. There was a release in my body. It was wonderful. I’ll never forget it.”

Widmayer says the bleeding he had experienced oozing from the leg for months stopped immediately in response to Crandall’s prayer. Before the two weeks were up, his wife, Arlene, called Crandall’s office in joyful hysterics. She said that the ulcer was disappearing before their eyes.

Crandall told her to cancel the surgery and come back to his office. He confirmed that the leg was healed. Now, the Widmayers are active in their local church and are known to dance a jig now and again. “I have never felt so good in my life,” Ted says.

Crandall is not afraid to ask his patients if they want prayer—no matter whether they are saved or not. However, before he prays for a person who is lost he leads him into salvation. Crandall says the Lord told him not to pray for healing before praying for salvation because the person “might go back into darkness and be worse off.”

In the case of Markin, Crandall didn’t know whether he was saved. He just knew he heard the Lord telling him to go back into the emergency room and pray.

Later, Markin told Crandall that when his heart stopped he briefly visited hell—or received a vision of it. He saw himself as someone thrown away, isolated for eternity, unloved.

Once he had sufficiently recovered, Crandall led him to Christ. Markin is now committed to sharing God’s love with others. He is one of the 1 million souls Crandall asked for in exchange for the untimely death of his son, Chad.

“I want a million souls and I want to see people healed by the power of God,” Crandall says. “The Lord told me when I speak His name, He will show up.

“Yes, some people we pray for don’t see results. But that’s not going to stop me for praying for the next guy in line. I am going to keep treating people with conventional medicine, and I am going to keep believing that God is a God of healing. When patients visit me, I tell them we are going to make them better—and I believe that.” 3

Jennifer LeClaire (nextlevelprophetic.com) is a minister living in Hallandale Beach, Florida, and the author of two books: The Heart of the Prophetic and Doubtless.

HEALING RESOURCE

You can download a chapter of the book Lord, I Need Your Healing Power by Quinn Sherrer and Ruthanne Garlock here.

In the last 40 years I have seen literally thousands of people healed by the power of God. The healing anointing did not die off with the New Testament church.

Most Charisma readers, from their own understanding of the Bible, can respond with a resounding “Yes” to the question, “Does God really heal today?” But for me, it’s not just a scriptural truth; in the 41 years I’ve been praying for the sick, I have seen Jesus do some amazing things.

The healing that affected me the most personally was the one God gave Judith, my wife, at a time when I hardly knew her. Several of her friends had asked me to pray with her because her gynecologist had told her that she had a precancerous condition of the uterus and needed a hysterectomy. This diagnosis was devastating to Judith, who had just turned 30.

And so we prayed. The following morning Judith went to see the Christian surgeon who was to perform the operation. After a thorough examination he exclaimed: “You’ve been healed! Your tissue is bright pink, like that of a newborn baby.”

Judith was so stunned she just remained on the examining table, trying to take in the news. When her surgeon came back to the room some time later, he was surprised to see her still lying there, so he asked: “Why are you still here? You’ve just been healed. Go home!”

The life-changing outcome of the healing Jesus performed that day was that, several years later, we had two beautiful children—Rachel (now 27) and David (25)—who would not be in this world if that quiet healing hadn’t taken place 30 years ago. You can see why this one particular healing has touched us so deeply!

Of course, I have witnessed many other miraculous healings. One of the most extraordinary happened to Barbara Holmes. We first met her at a conference in March 1996 in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Friends brought her just for prayer, since she had been confined to bed, suffering due to constant back and sciatic pain.

Barbara had received the best possible medical care at Johns Hopkins and Sloan-Kettering hospitals. She was taking 12 Percocet every day for pain, and even this high dosage, according to her, did not help her “searing leg pain.”

As a final resort her physicians had inserted a spinal cord stimulator into her side in 1995, with a wire implanted in her back that was attached to eight electrodes lined up and down along her spinal column.

She was the first patient at Johns Hopkins to receive the eight-electrode model of this apparatus. She had undergone six major surgeries already. None of them had helped to take away her constant pain.

At the conference a number of us prayed for Barbara from 10 p.m. until 12:35 a.m. During this prayer all the pain left—and in addition to her healing, she received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. At last she was free from pain after, as she says, a 10-year battle with low back and piercing sciatic leg pain. “Since that day my life, as I had known it, was gone,” she said.

Eleven months later, the healing was confirmed when one last surgery removed the metal rods and wires with the electric stimulator from her spine. But in Barbara’s view the most wonderful gift of all has been her deepening relationship with her Savior. “In Him I truly am a new creation. God is so good! He is my life,” she says.

Judith’s and Barbara’s testimonies are just two among the many healings that we have actually witnessed. They are, I believe, truly miracles in which God healed beyond the normal course of nature. Most of us love such testimonies, which fill us with joy and thanksgiving. But it must be noted that they are extraordinary.

I once asked my dear friend the Rev. Tommy Tyson, the Methodist evangelist who worked with Oral Roberts in the days of his tent crusades, how many miracles of healing he saw. He said that most evenings when thousands came, there were two or three healings that he thought would qualify as miraculous. Perhaps another 5 percent of the crowd experienced some degree of healing.

My own experience is even more positive. For example, in one conference we held, 183 people responded to a questionnaire about receiving healings: 12 claimed to have been totally healed; 92 received a significant healing; 57 had a partial healing; and three experienced no healing at all. These results are typical of those I have observed throughout my years in healing ministry.

It seems to me that when healing prayer is presented to people in an honest way, everyone is blessed. Even when the sick are not physically healed, they will be strengthened and comforted by the fact that those of us who pray demonstrate our belief that Jesus loves them in a very personal way and is on the side of life and love.

Evidence for the Benefits of Healing Prayer

More and more physicians are coming to recognize the value of healing prayer. A generation ago, Kathryn Kuhlman and Oral Roberts (City of Faith) established relationships with the medical community, as did many others, such as Dr. William Standish Reed, who holds an annual healing conference for physicians.

Doctors do not easily accept individual testimonies, but they do pay attention to the results of strictly controlled scientific studies. I had always wanted to do a scientific study documenting healing, and then I met a physician, Dr. Dale Matthews, on the staff of Georgetown Medical School, who also shared this vision.

We came up with a plan by which we would pray for patients who suffered from a sickness that was medically incurable. We decided upon rheumatoid arthritis, a disease of the autoimmune system that affects more than a million patients in the U.S. The only treatment given is for pain, and it does not lead to a cure.

We arranged with Sally Marlowe, a nurse practitioner in charge of a pain and arthritis clinic in Tampa, Florida, to pray for 40 patients in two groups, combined with follow-up. The prayer teams were from our healing center in Jacksonville, Florida. We prayed for these groups of patients for three days, along with teaching them about spiritual issues such as the need to forgive. To qualify, each patient had to have at least six swollen joints and nine tender joints.

The results were truly extraordinary! The average number of tender joints at the beginning of the study was 16.8, but at the end of 12 months it was only 5.7. The average number of swollen joints at the beginning was 9.8, but at the end it was only 3.1.

Matthews wrote this up in a report published in the Southern Medical Journal (December 2000) and stated that the results were equivalent to an effective new drug coming upon the scene. (All the patients were already taking medications such as Prednisone.)

Four patients appeared to be totally healed. Another significant finding was that the patients’ conditions did not deteriorate in the following year, as they would have if the changes had been due merely to the power of suggestion.

A Key to Healing

We have found that time is often the missing ingredient in healing prayer. Many healing ministers in our day have picked up on the idea of “soaking” prayer, and they see extraordinary results. In Barbara’s story at the beginning of this article, we reported that she received 2-1/2 hours of prayer. But how many of us are able to invest this much time in one person? There is a real price to pay in the healing ministry!

Jesus said over and over that we need to persist in prayer and not give up, even when there are no apparent results: “Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). In Luke 18:1-7, “faith” seems to be equivalent to persistence and patience. Jesus praises those who cry out to Him “day and night.” How different from: “I said a short prayer for you yesterday. Why are you here again? Go home and claim your healing.”

One thing in the life of Jesus that astounds me is that He dealt with people individually. He did not try to save time by praying for large groups of the sick. Even though He had only three years of public ministry, He seemed to spend much of His time one-on-one.

We sometimes try to take the easier way by holding healing services for thousands of people. But we should be challenged by the amount of time Jesus invested in praying for sick individuals. He must have had a reason He preferred to pray for people singly instead of holding healing services. Why?

I have learned to accept the fact that there is a great mystery here, and I no longer trust easy answers to the problems of God’s will in relation to sickness. Tommy Tyson was one of my dearest friends, and for 30 years we preached and ministered together. Three times I was present praying for him when he was seriously sick, and he was dramatically healed those three times. In fact, on one of those occasions, in Bolivia, he was dying (and had a near-death experience).

The next morning he was alive and well again. But then, six years ago, Tommy came down with several serious ailments at the same time. We were hoping that he might pull out of it one last time, but somehow we all sensed that this was his time to move on to his eternal life with Jesus—and we were right.

Our experience is that when we pray, most people receive some degree of healing, and when conditions are ideal—which they seldom are—the percentage goes way up. (Incidentally, large healing services are not ideal.)

For example, if we had 10 sick people come to us, and they each suffered from a type of illness that would allow us to be certain after we prayed that healing had taken place, and we had (1) teams of experienced prayer ministers and (2) two hours in which to pray and discern related issues, such as a need for forgiveness, then it would not be surprising to find that:

• two were totally healed;

• six were improved; and

• only one or two seemed to have nothing happen.

With all the incentives to pray—the words of Jesus, the marvelous testimonies of healing in our day—why is it that more Christians don’t pray for healing? When I ask a group of people in church how many can remember their fathers or their mothers ever praying with them when they were sick as a child, the average number of those who respond is about 3 percent and 20 percent, respectively. How can this be?

One answer may be found in the teaching of John Calvin. He believed that healing shrines were a “papist” superstition. Because the faith of so many evangelicals goes back to Calvin’s teachings, chances are that you have been taught that, although Jesus truly healed the sick, healing stopped with the death of the last apostle.

Please don’t be overly influenced by the negative beliefs of those around you. Remember that Jesus promised we would do even greater things than He did when He was on earth (see John 14:12). It’s time for us to accept the challenge of laying hands on the sick and seeing them recover (see Mark 16:18).

Francis MacNutt, Ph.D., is chairman emeritus of Christian Healing Ministries Inc. (christianhealingmin.org), in Jacksonville, Florida. He has written a half dozen books on healing, notably Healing (Ave Maria Press).

WIN A HEALING CD

We are giving away 10 free CDs of healing Scriptures set to worship music. To register, click here. Winners will be selected on May 30.

Going to Israel is not just about visting old buildings. The most important thing you can do is to connect with the people.

Many Christians have a love for Israel and are eager to visit the nation. But often their dreams don’t stretch beyond touring the sites that have biblical significance for both Jews and Christians and perhaps taking photographs of them. However, there are numerous ways visitors can be a blessing to Israel, interact with the people and leave something of themselves behind when they travel there. Here are 10 of them.

1. Pray for Israel in Israel with Succat Hallel.

Facing Mount Zion from across the Valley of Hinnom, Succat Hallel, a 24/7 praise and worship center, faces the very place where King David began round-the-clock worship in the tabernacle. Succat Hallel, which means “tabernacle of praise,” was established in 1999 by Rick and Patti Ridings. The ministry grew from meetings in their apartment a few times a week to full-time worship and intercession at its new location. Worship and prayer leaders intercede on behalf of Israel and the people of the land—both Jewish and Arab.

When traveling in Jerusalem, you can play an active part in calling forth the nation’s destiny.

“Prayer can change a nation. Isaiah 62:6 says that the Lord has posted watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem who cry out day and night,” Patti says. “Since we went 24/7, terror attacks have gone down significantly. We pray protection for Israel as we cry out day and night.”

Indeed, the second intifada (Arab uprising) began to ebb about that time.

Worship watches are open to the public during the day and evening. Volunteering opportunities include three-month, short-term positions; long-term up to five years; and internships. Staffers are required to spend 30 hours in the prayer room—some take the six-hour night watch—and five hours serving with a local compassion ministry.

Although many talented musicians come to volunteer, the main requirement is a heart of prayer. The Ridings say that praying on-site in Jerusalem helps visitors intercede for the nation and the issues there more knowledgeably.

“We desire to pray to see the purposes of heaven come down to earth,” Patti says. “We are preparing the way of the Lord.”

Contact: jerusalempraise.com; info@jerusalempraise.com

2. Feed the poor with Living Bread Ministries.

Living Bread Ministries puts a new twist in adventure vacations. A stint with Living Bread, whether just one day or a couple months, will put you in places where few will ever tread: the Palestinian refugee camps known for extreme poverty, violence and now a deep hunger for the gospel.

The personality of Living Bread matches that of its founder, Karen Dunham, who actually prefers to run toward, not away from, danger. Because of Dunham’s persistence her work has expanded from one refugee camp in Jericho to several more in Bethlehem, Ramallah and Hebron, one of the most contentious hotbeds outside the Gaza Strip.

“The people are illiterate and poor, and the children are sick and hungry,” Dunham says. “We bring gifts. We bring the love of Jesus.”

Living Bread needs English teachers, workers to help “rebuild the ruins” of homes in dire need of repair, and teams to bring boxes of humanitarian aid, visit the sick in the hospitals and nurture those already turning to Jesus. Another specific program is a photography course for youth in Bethlehem. In the office, the ministry has administrative and media needs.

“There’s something for everybody,” Dunham says. “Even one day for teams and tour groups—they can feed the poor, pray for the sick, paint a house, work a Bible table in Jerusalem.”

Dunham has earned favor among both Palestinians and the Israeli army, which controls access in and out of the territories. She also leads trips off the beaten path to the ancient biblical “high places” and the crossing at the Jordan River.

Dunham’s strategy is to counter the “giant” in each camp through the love of God, then win the city.

“Run after the giants, and all of heaven will come with you,” she says. “Come, let us chase the giants together!”

Contact: livingbreadchurch.com; karendunham7@yahoo.com

3. Bring hope to Ethiopian Jews through Project Sheba.

After wandering for many generations disconnected from their own people, Jewish Ethiopians are finally coming home to the land of Israel. But when they arrive, they come in at the bottom rung of a cruel economy and they’re vastly unfamiliar with the society. Jennifer Kaplan founded Project Sheba to reach out to “this quiet, dignified and respectful people, to help them reach their God-given destiny.”

Today Israel is home to approximately 120,000 Ethiopian Jewish immigrants. They often come illiterate and penniless and must transition from Third World conditions to a developed nation with modern plumbing, electricity and a different culture. It costs the Israeli government three times as much to absorb an Ethiopian Jew as it does a Jew from any other nation.

Their transition also involves learning Hebrew, integrating into schools and finding jobs, which are difficult to obtain until you’ve mastered the language.

Project Sheba assists Ethiopians in the assimilation process by providing tutors for schoolchildren; adopt-a-student programs to pay for vocational training; home visits; seminars on specialized, self-help topics including financial planning and classes for women who are suddenly faced with opportunities to work.

“The idea is not just to give somebody money, which is important, being the lowest socioeconomic level, but we want to teach them to be financially independent,” Kaplan says.

Foreign volunteers at Project Sheba work alongside local Ethiopian-Israeli workers, make home visits, collect information on the communities’ needs and have a chance to impart hope into their situation.

“The families just need to know that somebody cares,” Kaplan says.

Kaplan is concerned with the struggles not only of the Ethiopian Jews already in Israel, but also of those still trying to get there. Part of her mission is to raise awareness for the approximate 20,000 Jews still in Ethiopia waiting for permission from Israel to immigrate.

Contact: sheba.org.il; info@sheba.org.il

4. Take Grafted’s Hands On Tour for young adults.

Grafted’s Hands On Tour to Israel was specifically designed by young people for young people. In other words, it’s jam-packed with hard-core, challenging activities.

From the time young recruits deplane, they are whisked into physically demanding projects such as painting and repairing homes, cleaning up city streets and orchestrating a one-day camp for children in the Old City’s Arab Quarter. They also spend emotionally challenging times with Holocaust survivors and assist at a soup kitchen. For one day, the young people don an Israeli army uniform and help out at a military base.

“Young people have the time, and they have a lot of zeal and energy,” says Liesl Maas, Grafted director. “This tour facilitates something for young adult Christians to pour their zeal and passion into. And it’s an opportunity to meet with other young Christians from around the world.”

Grafted, based on Romans 11—Christians grafted into the Jewish olive tree—is a department of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) specifically targeted at college-age Christians interested in Israel. Grafted’s calling, like that of ICEJ, is to comfort the Lord’s people, as described in Isaiah 40:1.

The 10-day, hands-on tour includes some sightseeing, as well as lectures on God’s purposes for Israel and the political climate.

“For our generation it is important for us to understand what God is doing in the world and what God is doing in Israel,” Maas says.

Maas has noted an emerging interest in Israel among younger generations in recent years and says that the hands-on tour provides an outlet for this phenomenon.

“It gives young adults the opportunity to be Jesus’ hands and feet here in the land,” Maas says.

Contact: grafted.org; liesl.maas@icej.org

5. Visit Israelis at their settlements in the heartland.

Never has there been a more poignant time to stand with Israelis who live in the heartland of the Jewish state. With talk of Israel ceding 91 percent of the land in the West Bank to the Palestinians, the Jewish pioneers who have settled this land feel abandoned by their own politicians as well as the international community.

Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFOIC) was established in response to calls for Israel to give land to the Palestinian Authority in what is commonly known as the West Bank—the region that was referred to in the Bible as Judea and Samaria. The organization links Christians with these Israeli communities both through financial support and visits.

Sondra Oster Baras, director of CFOIC in Israel and a Jewish Israeli resident of the heartland, points out that a tour of biblical places would naturally include Hebron and Shiloh in addition to Jerusalem and Galilee. But due to sticky politics, a border crossing and the fact that few tour companies venture there, these places are omitted from the typical circuit.

“It is off the beaten track because it’s a controversial area. ‘West Bank’ is a scary word; ‘Judea and Samaria’ is good,” Baras says. “There is no better way to understand the complexity of these issues than to come and visit and see for yourself.”

CFOIC arranges visits to these places for Christian tourists in Israel, whether for a couple hours or a few days, to show the Jewish settlers they’re not alone.

“In an international atmosphere where people do not understand the biblical connection between Jews and the land of Israel, you can well imagine how it is for Jews sitting in these communities, feeling condemned, to have people come visit them,” Baras says. “It’s an incredible statement of encouragement.”

Contact: cfoic.com (in Israel); kim@cfoic.com (in the U.S.)

6. Volunteer to be a bridge for Jewish and Arab believers.

Creating a safe environment for two sometimes antagonistic sides to meet is the intention of Musalaha, an organization that seeks to reconcile Messianic Israelis and Christian Palestinians who are equally affected by hostility between their societies. Salim Munayer, a Palestinian Christian, founded the organization in 1990 to allay growing tensions between Arab and Jewish believers in Israel at a time when reconciliation was not a major focus.

Politicians have yet to stamp out a peace agreement, yet thousands of young Israeli and Palestinian believers have made peace with one another through Musalaha’s programs. Munayer has long reckoned that sometimes it takes a trip into the stark Israeli desert to lower one’s defenses, initiate dialogue and ultimately conclude that both sides need each other and the Lord.

Some of the activities sponsored by Musalaha are desert trips, summer camps, sports camps and women’s meetings. During these activities, believing Jews and Christian Arabs dialogue and share experiences that force them to rely on one another, breaking down barriers and instilling trust.

“The distinctive aspect for people who volunteer here is they will be exposed to both sides,” Munayer says. “Most organizations work on this side or that side, but at Musalaha you see the difficulties and complexities of both sides, and how Jesus is the answer for both sides.”

Musalaha, Arabic for “reconciliation,” attracts some 1,000 participants during the summer activities. The high season for volunteers is from April to September, when several summer camps for children are taking place. Camp counselors and long-term volunteers are needed. Office help is needed year-round.

The goal of the organization is not only to bring reconciliation among individual believers but also to bring healing and forgiveness on a wider scale to the communities they represent.

Contact: musalaha.org; musalaha@netvision.net.il

7. Reach out to the needy with Christian Friends of Israel.

When Israel’s northern border was being pummeled by enemy rockets in 2006, Christian Friends of Israel (CFI) raced up to the war zone to provide relief to Israelis. When the rockets stopped there, CFI volunteers headed to the city of Sderot in the south to carry on a weekly outreach to communities under attack.

Established in 1985, CFI’s priority has always been for it volunteers to be personally involved in the lives of the local people.

“The big picture of this ministry is how it gets involved in people’s lives directly, reaching the people of Israel one person at a time,” said Kevin Howard, director of media at CFI.

CFI has a long-term volunteer staff of 40 and facilitates short-term volunteers who want to spend from one day to three months in Israel. All volunteers, even if they have an office job, will have a chance to make periodic personal visits to Israelis who are recipients of CFI aid.

Volunteers on short-term trips get to help out in one of the ministry’s nine departments. They might do repairs in someone’s home, visit lone soldiers at an army base, take medicine and food to Holocaust survivors or help out members of the Ethiopian Jewish community.

The ministry works in conjunction with the local municipalities in identifying people the government cannot afford to help.

In addition to its outreaches, CFI has a distribution center where the poor can collect clothing, household items and furniture. A bridal salon lends wedding gowns to brides who cannot afford a pricey dress for her special day.

Contact: cfijerusalem.org; cfi@cfijerusalem.org

8. Evangelize in Tel Aviv with Trumpet of Salvation.

Not content with just teaching his “To the Jew First” evangelistic campaign, Yaakov Damkani also runs a working seminar for volunteers with Trumpet of Salvation ministries.

Damkani models his ministry after the first 10 chapters of Matthew. In Matthew’s account, Jesus’ disciples at first heard His teachings and saw His miracles; but then Jesus sent them out on their own to put into practice what they had learned from Him.

“We refuse to bring people here and only let them accumulate knowledge,” Damkani says. “We teach the volunteers, and then we take them to the streets.”

Damkani, a consummate evangelist, leads the charge himself—whether he takes volunteers to an army base, a market or the beach.

EXPERIENCE ISRAEL

Charisma Associate Editor Valerie Lowe just returned from a weeklong trip to Israel. Go here to see her photo gallery and videos and to listen to podcasts from her trip.

A Jewish Israeli, Damkani was saved while reading the New Testament and coming to the realization it is a Jewish, not just Christian, book. He now teaches from that experience how to present the gospel to Jews, which he believes should be done differently from a presentation to gentiles.

An animated and passionate character, Damkani is based in Tel Aviv, a primarily secular city on the Mediterranean.

As an extension of the ministry, Damkani now owns and runs Gilgal, a hotel about one minute from the beach, which houses volunteers, tourists and conferences for up to 250 people. The conference center is open to locals and foreigners for seminars, and a modern cafe in the hotel lobby attracts passersby and beachgoers.

“We have really, as a body, neglected the ‘normal’ people—average middle-class Israelis,” he says. “This building gives us a facility for having people come and get the gospel in a nice environment.”

Contact: trumpetofsalvation.com; www.hagilgal.com

9. Build lasting connections through Bridges of Peace.

With massive food distribution, home repair and office work on its agenda, the Israeli organization Bridges for Peace offers many long- and short-term volunteer opportunities, all of which are concentrated on the final goal of building relationships between Christians and Jews.

“We are not trying to meet all the food needs in Israel,” says Rebecca Brimmer, president of Bridges for Peace. “We are trying to change attitudes toward Christianity. We are showing God’s love to people who have never seen it before.”

Full-time, long-term volunteers at Bridges for Peace, based in Jerusalem, are integrated into the staff and, in addition to working office jobs, they help two food banks distribute 55 tons of provisions to individual families, welfare organizations and municipalities.

Bridges also hosts tour groups made up of people who undergo a few sessions of sensitivity training and then spend a week doing hands-on work in a Jewish community. This activity builds upon another one of Bridges’ goals: education of Christians about Israel, the Jewish feasts and Israeli society.

Staffers all pitch in during emergencies. After the Lebanon War in 2006, volunteers headed to the rocket-battered North to help in whatever ways they could. They harvested fruit and collected 30,000 eggs a day for a farmer whose workers had fled during the fighting.

Bridges also set up a warehouse in northern Israel after the war, in addition to its Jerusalem center, in which to store food for times of crisis. Brimmer says the goal is to store at least three months’ worth of food to be used in the event of a war or other emergency.

“If there really is a crisis in this country, money in the bank may not be good,” Brimmer says. “Food is real.”

Contact: bridgesforpeace.com

10. Serve at Christ Church, the crossroads of the Middle East.

During the rule of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1800s, a delegation of British Christians sojourned in Jerusalem to care for the needs of the Jewish community. They built a clinic, the first school for Jewish children and, in 1849, the first and oldest Protestant church in the Middle East, Christ Church.

Standing at a cultural and geographic crossroads, the guesthouse and church complex remain today as a convergence point for Christians from around the world and for Israeli schoolchildren, soldiers and police on official tours of the Old City.

“Any volunteer that comes here is going to end up interacting with all of these people,” says Paul Hames, guesthouse manager.

Operated by The Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ), the center includes the 19th-century church, a guesthouse, a coffee shop, a heritage center and a cistern dating back to King Herod’s time.

CMJ played an integral part in modern Israeli history, beginning with two major public institutions—education and hospitals—and sparking Jewish philanthropy to compete with Christian largesse. Because of that, Christ Church is on Israel’s public education national curriculum tours in the Old City.

And just as when it was founded, the Christ Church center is still considered a place for Christians to share their beliefs.

“You may be making beds or chopping vegetables, but our primary focus is creating opportunities for sharing the gospel,” Hames says of the volunteer work.

Located near Jaffa Gate, the Christ Church garden is famous for being the quietest place in the Old City, providing a place of respite, shade and recharging for weary wanderers.

CMJ operates two other guesthouses in Israel also in need of volunteers: Beit Immanuel in Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Beit Bracha in Migdal near Tiberias.

Contact: cmj-israel.org; ccmanage@netvision.net.il

Nicole Schiavi is a journalist and freelance writer based in Jerusalem and a regular contributor to Charisma.

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Diabolical forces in Iran, Venezuela and in our own country are aligned against Israel today. Here’s how you can pray for the apple of God’s eye.

I have a growing conviction in my life, more pronounced with each day, that the nation and people of Israel must be a central theme in our intercession before the Lord. Never has this been more vital to our lives as Christian believers! I urge you to keep the following prayer directives continually before you:

1. Pray and work against the dramatic rise in global anti-Semitism. In our world today, there is no indication that anti-Semitism is on the decline—only signs that it is rising. As Christians, we must stand against injustice toward any people group. And if we believe that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’s descendants were chosen by God to fulfill a special, unique calling in the earth, we must especially unite our voices in prayer and action to counter the constant, belligerent attacks against the Jewish people.

Just a few months ago, as Israel responded in self-defense to the barrage of rocket fire perpetrated by Hamas from the Gaza Strip, Jewish people worldwide were targeted by an outbreak of anti-Semitic acts in a host of global cities and nations. From Florida to France, an international surge of anti-Israel demonstrations condemned Israel as a bloodthirsty country attempting to kill civilians in Gaza, despite the fact that the Israeli forces sent thousands of text messages warning the people of Gaza beforehand of the counterattacks to come against Hamas in the region.

We as Christians must pray that in place of anti-Semitism, God will raise up those who will love and stand with Israel, whom God has appointed as “a people for Himself” (Deut. 7:6, NKJV).

2. Pray the Scriptures. It should be evident in our churches and Christian communities that we must pray according to the Scriptures related to Israel, but my experience tells me we still have much work to do in making this truth known.

Isaiah 62:6-7 (NIV) exhorts us, “You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.” Do you call on the Lord today as a believer in Him? Then this Scripture and many others are speaking to you about the importance of living as a watchman for Israel.

We are commanded not to lose heart in this hour of trial but to pray fervently in unity until the Lord establishes Jerusalem and makes it the praise of the earth.

3. Pray for world governments. There is no guarantee that America and other nations will continually stand with Israel, even if they have in the past. We need to be praying that the new U.S. president, the new Israeli prime minister and the government leaders around the world will defend the position of Israel relative to other nations.

Israel has been called by God to be a light to the nations (see Is. 49:6). If Israel arises in righteousness, the nations will experience the Word of the Lord coming forth from Zion (see Is. 2:1-3).

4. Pray for salvation of Muslims. Every day I hear about new cases of aggressive encroachment by radical Muslims into regions that have traditionally been non-Muslim. In the same spirit in which Israel’s enemies have tried to obliterate the Jewish people repeatedly throughout history, the Muslims today are coming not only for Jews but also for Christians and the West. If you are a person who calls on the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and lives by the Bible, you are an infidel and automatically the enemy—one who would be classified among the dhimmi (second-class people) under Muslim Shariah law.

Because Israel represents the testimony of God in the earth, this nation and all who stand with it are under constant threat from God’s enemies. One example of antagonism against Israel is the Al-Aqsa TV programming in the Gaza region, which, since the recent war, introduced a new teddy bear puppet character that declares that Palestinian children should join the jihad fighters of Hamas to attack Israel.

We must pray that all threats of radical Islam against Israel and the church are exposed and thwarted by the power of God. We must pray that the power of the gospel will begin to penetrate the Muslim world as never before and that God will raise up laborers for the harvest.

5. Pray for an awakening in Israel. Ultimately, our “help comes from the name of the Lord.” Israel’s help in this hour will not ultimately come from the nations or even from America. It must look up to the Lord. God is able to cut through secularism, materialism and even a religious spirit to bring His truth to His people.

Pray for the opening of eyes and softening of hearts to the voice of the Spirit. Pray that the unease and fear that Israelis and Jewish people around the world are feeling would cause them to turn toward the Lord, not away from Him.

Will the watchmen of our Lord, for Israel and His kingdom, hear the call in this hour? I thank God that these watchmen are arising around the world with greater strength than ever before; yet we are still far from where we need to be.

As I consider the city of London—once a bastion of Christianity and now a growing base for radical Islam—I am gripped with the urgency of faithfully and fervently praying for Israel in this day in which we live.

If we, the body of Christ, do not arise as a corporate Esther now—“for such a time as this”—there will not be a freedom-loving society in the future, in which our sons and daughters have the ability to worship openly. Beloved, we must pray.

Robert Stearns is the founder and executive director of Eagles’ Wings ministry and the publisher of KAIROS magazine. He is also co-chairman of a worldwide prayer initiative, The Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem, observed every year on the first Sunday in October. He invites you to join more than 175 nations and 200,000 churches to pray for the peace of Jerusalem on October 4. For more information, visit or call 1-800-51-WINGS.

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Why have the people of Israel survived and thrived for so many centuries? The answer lies in the Bible itself.

Those who studied biblical prophecy in the late 1930s believed an evil power of darkness had been unleashed in Europe. German dictator and tyrant Adolf Hitler, like a demon on assignment, was initiating his “solution” to the world’s problems by planning what historians would later identify as the Jewish Holocaust.

When 1948 arrived, the world was missing 6 million Jews, including 1.5 million children who had perished during the Nazi “Final Solution.” Most Holocaust survivors were without a permanent home, had few if any possessions, and had watched their paintings, antiques, gold and silver jewelry, and money being seized by Hitler’s godless goons.

Yet the Jews have not only survived but also thrived since May 14, 1948, when the British Mandate over Palestine ended and a new Jewish nation with the name “Israel” was resurrected from the grave of history. They make up less than 1 percent of the world’s population, yet 176 Nobel Prize winners have been Jews.

Twenty-five percent of the organizations that have received the Nobel Peace Prize were founded or co-founded by Jews. While 67 percent of American high school graduates attend college, 80 percent of Jewish high school graduates go to college, and 23 percent of them attend Ivy League schools.

Studies have shown that Ashkenazi Jews (those from Northern Europe) are highly intelligent, with a verbal IQ of 117-125, and that they score 12-15 points higher than gentile groups in this area. The No. 1-rated economically productive small group is Israeli-Americans, who, according to author Steven Silbiger, are “seven times more likely to have the highest concentration of higher incomes and lowest rate of dependency upon public assistance.”

In the spiritual arena, the ancient Hebrew shepherd Moses gave us the Torah—the first five books in the Bible—and inspired Hebrew prophets penned the remainder of the Old Testament Scriptures. The majority of writers in the New Testament, along with the founder of Christianity, were raised and educated in Jewish families.

Historically, the Jewish people have been both the most successful and the most persecuted of any ethnic group. Their business expertise has exalted them to the highest positions in the global business community, producing top lawyers, skilled doctors and surgeons, and successful civic leaders.

They are the only people who were 1,939 years without a nation, a united language or a capital. Yet today they have returned to their original land (Israel), speak their original language (Hebrew), and pray at their original capital (Jerusalem). So what is the secret of their success?

I call this unique ability to not only persevere but also flourish the Jewish DNA of success and survival—and it all began with one man, Abraham. Abraham the “Hebrew” (Gen. 14:13) left the city of Ur (in Mesopotamia) with his wife, Sarah, and numerous servants, settling in a large, desolate, desert land called Canaan.

He dug wells, built a massive livestock portfolio, amassed commodities in gold and silver, and eventually turned the barren landscape into a blossoming desert. He made peace with surrounding tribes, who honored him as a man of God (see Gen. 20).

More than 400 years later, the descendants of Abraham had produced 600,000 men of war (see Exod. 12:37) who marched out of Egypt to reclaim the land called Israel, which God promised Abraham’s children they would possess (see Gen. 15:18).

This piece of Middle East real estate was named “Israel” in recognition of the new name God gave to Abraham’s grandson Jacob (see Gen. 32:28). After the Israelites left Egypt, they arrived at the Promised Land, dividing it among 9-1/2 tribes who settled in the land, leaving 2-1/2 tribes (Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh [see Josh. 22:9]) on the east side of the Jordan River.

The Israelites were marked as God’s covenant people, and their daily guide for living was the Torah, written during Moses’ 40 years in the wilderness. This divine revelation became the “God code” for social, moral, ceremonial, sacrificial, and civil laws and requirements that would forge the Hebrews’ living standards and mold their moral ethics. By following this rule book of heaven, the Hebrew nation would enjoy abundance and success, and they would rise in influence above the surrounding tribes and nations.

Devout religious Jews, often called “Torah-observant Jews,” have followed God’s Torah code for 35 centuries, enriching their personal lives, families, health, and, in many instances, their finances. For centuries, gentile Christians have ignored or simply not studied the many important practical applications of the Torah code.

Many of its truths are important for our time, such as the significance of physical rest one day a week, the importance of eating the proper types of food, the blessing of moral standards and the life cycles for raising children. We need to examine these codes to understand why devout Jews often build strong families, live long lives and celebrate life.

Books have been written about Jewish wealth and why Jews have been successful, but many secular books leave out the significance of the Torah and the covenant as the spring from which all Jewish blessings flow.

There are hidden secrets encoded in the Torah, the Abrahamic covenant, and the divine revelations in the Old Testament that have molded Jewish thinking and lifestyles, making the Jews a people who cannot be defeated, a blessed ethnic group and a nation that survives against all odds.

The Torah

Fifty days after departing from Egypt, Moses ascended to the top of Mount Sinai in the Arabian Desert and returned 40 days later with the most detailed message from God in mankind’s history (see Ex. 24:16-18). The words, carved on stone tablets, were spoken by God and recorded word for word. Later, the instructions were penned by scribes using large animal-skin scrolls.

Called the Torah, meaning “teaching,” these instructions were the rule book of heaven, revealed to the Jews. “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Come up to Me on the mountain and be there; and I will give you ... the law and commandments which I have written, that you may teach them’ ” (Ex. 24:12, NKJV).

Although the Torah also contains history, much of it reveals specific guidelines and instruction for spiritual, social and moral living; sacrificial procedures; and ceremonial applications. The divine instructions in the Torah are often divided into four categories: the law, the commandments, the statutes and the judgments.

Students of Scripture often merge these four divisions into one package and call it “the Law of Moses” or “the Law of God.” It is God’s law given to Moses, but, more important, it is the revealed mind of the Creator concerning how His people should live, treat one another, eat and think, and how to be successful in the journey of life. This was literally the God code.

Levi, one tribe from among the sons of Jacob, was chosen to teach this code and pass it from generation to generation. Jacob’s son Levi, whose name means “joined,” was the third son of Jacob’s wife Leah (see Gen. 29:34). Levi became a “connecter,” helping join the Israelites to God. When the tabernacle of Moses was constructed, the Levites were the full-time ministers, directed by Aaron the high priest and his sons, all of whom were Levites.

The amazing success of Jewish people has been a mystery pondered and studied for many generations. Of the many books and articles written, many ignore or omit the central heart of all Judaism—studying, reading and following the Torah code.

The Torah reveals detailed information that, when followed, can help extend your life, increase physical health, bring emotional stability, build strong families and provide wisdom for wealth opportunities.

This God code laid out in the Torah has been handed down from Jewish father to son for more than 40 generations. The unbroken link of reading, teaching and instructing each generation has brought success in secular, social, civil and spiritual life.

Yet there must be particular keys that unlock the doors or foundation stones upon which religious Jewish society was built. When examining the Torah, one essential key becomes visible—understanding the message, meaning and manifestation of having a covenant with God.

The Abrahamic covenant is the spring that feeds the river, the beam that supports the building, or, simply, the secret to understanding why the Jewish people have amazingly endured centuries of persecution and grow where they are planted.

The Covenant

While Abraham (then called “Abram”) was living in Ur of the Chaldeans, God appeared to him in a vision instructing him to leave Ur and move to the land of Canaan. At age 75, Abraham followed this vision. During his journey, God appeared to him several times, revealing His divine purpose for Abraham and his future children. God told Abraham that:

• he would become a “great nation” (Gen. 12:2)

• he would be a “father of many nations” (17:4)

• nations and kings would come out of him (see 17:6)

• in his seed all nations of the earth would be blessed (see 22:18).

With each step of obedience that Abram took, God increased the magnitude of His promises. The master key to release the fulfillment of these promises was obedience to the instructions demanded by God in His covenant.

Abraham’s conditions of the covenant were, “Circumcise your sons on the eighth day” and “teach your children to follow Me.” God revealed confidence in Abraham and knew he would follow through in keeping the covenant (see Gen. 18:19).

If Abraham’s descendants followed the agreement made by Abraham and God to mark their sons with circumcision, then God would bless them with land, prosper the works of their hands and make them great in the earth. If they failed to follow the commandment, they would experience great difficulties and lose their natural and spiritual blessings (see Gen. 17:14).

Many books explaining why many Jewish people are gifted with high IQs, creative genius, financial skills and the ability to survive against the odds omit the one feature that has separated the devout Jews from all other nations—their belief that they have a special covenant with God.

Believers, of course, are partakers of a new covenant with God, marked by the forgiveness of sin and sealed by the blood of Christ (see Heb. 8:8-13). Yet gentile believers can receive amazing insight and practical knowledge by examining the roots of the Christian faith, which begin in the Torah code and extend to the covenant God made with Abraham so many centuries ago.

Perry Stone is the founder of Voice of Evangelism, a ministry that spreads the gospel through revivals, TV and other media. He is the author of numerous books, including Breaking the Jewish Code (Charisma House), from which this article is adapted.

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Author Perry Stone talks more about his newest book, Breaking the Jewish Code, here.