Author name: Sarah Stegall

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Israel’s 10 Best-Kept Secrets

Even If you don’t trek to the usual Holy Land hotspots, you’ll find God’s footprints in these biblically rich sites


Few places compare with Israel. Though the country is relatively small (about the size of New Jersey), it’s filled from end to end with biblical history. If there is one place on earth that every Christian needs to visit, it’s Israel. Why? Because being there is the only way to physically experience God’s eternal story that runs through the ancient sites and historical wonders. It is the land where the Bible comes alive.

Many Christians who go to Israel are challenged to new levels of discipleship. Some are healed, renewed, empowered and blessed. The experience of one pilgrim sums it up best: “It was like visiting with the Lord in His home,” she said. When you go, visit the well-known sites but also set aside time to take in some of the land’s best-kept secrets. Here are 10 we suggest you see. You won’t be disappointed. 

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1. TEL DAN

Seconds into Israel’s 
Tel Dan Nature Reserve and all else is forgotten. You’ll want to get lost under shady trees as you’re serenaded by the sounds of the rushing Dan River—the Jordan’s largest source—and its flowing streams and gentle springs. But if you keep going, you’ll come across three sites: the ruins of the Canaanite city once captured by the tribe of Dan; one of the “high places” from the time of King Jeroboam; and the ancient Canaanite “Gate of the Three Arches.”

Rosita Martinez

Changed by the Great Transformer

Former lesbian turned evangelist Rosita Martínez is living proof that God’s love redeems and restores lives Rosita Martínez grew up depressed, lonely and confused in a world of crippling contradictions. Ignored by her mother, overprotected by her father and sexually abused by her cousins, she seemed to be right in line with Satan’s plan of destruction …

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Fighting China’s One Child Policy

Chai Ling fought for human rights at Tiananmen Square. Now she’s taking on China’s One Child Policy.

Chai Ling is no stranger to activism. She was a key leader in China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protest and as a result ended up on the communist nation’s list of the 21 most-wanted students. But since she accepted Christ last year, Chai has been on a mission to expose a practice she says is “hundreds [of] times” worse than the government’s massacre of hundreds of student protestors. 

Through her organization, All Girls Allowed, Chai is working to raise awareness about the horrors of China’s One Child Policy. Chai says hundreds of Chinese women commit suicide every day as a result of forced abortion and pressure against women in general. Others have fled the nation. Many families, preferring boys, abort their baby girls, or abandon female infants, advocates say.

A Bridge Over Depression

A Bridge Over Depression

A Bridge Over DepressionWeighing about 100 pounds and facing hospitalization, award-winning vocalist Candy Christmas, former member of southern gospel group The Hemphills, says she hit rock bottom. 

In 2004 her doctor, seeing Christmas’ depression was winning the war inside and out, suggested medication or admittance to a hospital. But deep inside, Christmas knew there was another way to overcome the darkness in her life. 

“I knew that the Word of God says that Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace, and so I told my doctor … either my religion works for me or it doesn’t, and I’m just not going to go that direction,” Christmas says.

The Loose-Change Abolitionist

The Loose-Change Abolitionist

The Loose-Change AbolitionistZach Hunter had always thought he should’ve been born more than 200 years ago. Heartbroken by the idea of slavery, which he says is America’s “biggest blemish,” Hunter felt he could have made a difference alongside leaders of the anti-slavery movement that included Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. 

That perspective changed when Hunter discovered there are millions of people in various forms of slavery in the 21st century. He knew at that moment what God was calling him to. 

“I just thought, Wow, I can do something to change the world,” says Hunter, who launched the student-led Loose Change to Loosen Chains campaign while in middle school. He says there are billions of dollars in change in American households alone. “Why not take something as underestimated as the teenage years and something as underestimated as loose change and see what we can do?”

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