Many Syrians are going to church to encounter God while bombs are exploding and people are dying in one of the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century.
The civil war has been raging for nearly six years, yet many Syrians are going to church for the first time. And they’re asking for Bibles and how they can know God.
“People are thirsty to know more of God,” one Syrian pastor told Open Doors . He sees this thirst as symptomatic of a people broken by unspeakable tragedy.
“There is pain in every mouth, even our neighbors; there is pain and a lot of grieving, ” he said.
Bibles are in such a high demand in this Muslim-majority country, he said, that Open Doors donated and distributed more than 12,300 Bibles there from January to September this year.
Many Syrians come to church in search of Bibles, having never had one, while others are Christians who were forced to flee the fighting with only the shirts on their backs.
Since the war began in 2011, an estimated 11 million Syrians, half the country’s population, have fled to refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, and many others have been displaced within the country.
Open Doors has given the Syrian people more than Bibles. The ministry has also given its war-torn residents life-saving trauma care and other kinds of humanitarian aid.
