Palestine
The land of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is saturated with the story of redemption. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, baptized in the Jordan, taught in Jericho, and wept over Jerusalem. The first Christian community was born in Jerusalem at Pentecost — Palestinian Jews filled with the Holy Spirit, who scattered the gospel across the known world. Palestinian Christians can trace their community in an unbroken line to those first disciples. But the 20th century brought catastrophe: the 1948 war that established Israel also displaced and uprooted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, including large Christian communities in cities like Ramle, Lydda, and Haifa. The Christian share of the Palestinian population, once significant, has declined dramatically through emigration over decades of conflict. Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, and the Palestinian Authority governs areas of the West Bank under Israeli occupation. The October 2023 war in Gaza has been devastating, killing tens of thousands and displacing nearly the entire population of Gaza, including the ancient, tiny Christian community there. The Palestinian church — one of the world's oldest — now faces perhaps its gravest test of survival.
5,590,000
People live in Palestine today in the land where the gospel was born — and where 75% of people groups have never received it. The Muslim Palestinian majority, bearing generations of trauma, dispossession, and conflict, is largely unreached. The Palestinian Christian community — ancient, diminished, and scattered — carries enormous symbolic significance and a real but fragile witness. In Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, Christians are now a small minority in their own holy city. In Gaza, the war has devastated the two small congregations that remained. Yet the same God who chose this land as the stage for His redemption has not abandoned it. He knows every name in Ramallah and Nablus and Khan Younis, and His purposes for this people are not finished.
Prayer points
The Birthplace of the Church
The first Christians were Palestinian. The upper room where the Spirit fell, the streets of Jerusalem where Peter preached, the road where Philip met the Ethiopian — these are Palestinian places. Pray for the Palestinian church, diminished and scattered, to be renewed in vision and courage. Ask God to raise up Palestinian believers who understand themselves as heirs of the world's oldest Christian community and who carry the gospel with the authority of those who live where it was born. Pray for Bethlehem's Christians, Ramallah's believers, the tiny congregations in Gaza — that they would be sustained, multiplied, and emboldened as witnesses in the land that belongs, in the deepest sense, to their Lord. "Repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." (Luke 24:47)
Gaza and the Valley of Dry Bones
Gaza appears in the Bible as a place of captivity and divine rescue — where Samson was imprisoned and where, through his death, God brought deliverance. Today Gaza has become a symbol of human suffering on a massive scale — a million and a half people in a narrow coastal strip, caught between warring powers, with a Christian presence of barely a few hundred souls. Pray for the Palestinian people of Gaza — for an end to the killing, for humanitarian aid, for justice, and for rebuilding. Pray for the small Christian community — their courage, their witness in the midst of catastrophe, and their survival. Ask God for the valley of dry bones to live again, for resurrection to come to the most devastated place in the land of redemption. "Can these bones live?... Lord GOD, you alone know." (Ezekiel 37:3)
They Will Look on the One They Pierced
In Jerusalem — within sight of where Jesus was crucified — stands the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam's most sacred sites. Every Friday, thousands of Muslim Palestinians come to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque, on the mount where Abraham offered Isaac, where Solomon built his temple, where Jesus overturned the tables. God has not finished with this land or this people. Pray for Palestinian Muslims — burdened by decades of suffering, searching for justice and meaning — to encounter the Jesus who was crucified not far from where they pray. Ask for dreams, visions, and encounters with the risen Christ to multiply among Palestinians of every generation. What the ancient prophecy foresaw, God can bring to pass: a day when the people of this land look on the One who was pierced, and mourn, and are healed. "I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him." (Zechariah 12:10)