A former Palestinian sniper turned Christian believes revival will break out in Gaza and thousands will come to Christ after the end of the Israel-Hamas war.
Taysir “Tass” Abu Saada, a former aide to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, recently told CBN News’ Global Lane that God’s Holy Spirit is already changing Palestinian hearts through dreams and visions.
“Many Muslims are looking for an alternative to Islam,” he said. “My team is, naturally, sharing Christ. So we are looking at a good revival going on already in the Gaza Strip.”
It has been 104 days since Hamas terrorists carried out the savage massacre of hundreds of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, marking the start of the Israel-Hamas War.
And many Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have been caught in the cross-hairs. Evidence has shown how Hamas has prevented evacuations of Palestinian civilians, keeping them in harm’s way and even using them as civilian shields against Israeli attacks that are only intended to target terrorists.
As a result, the Hamas-run government of Gaza claims more than 24,000 people have been killed there since the war began, and thousands more are injured or presumed dead.
But Saada believes good can come out of the destruction and pain.
“Despite the destruction that is taking place, I believe God has a purpose to get the Palestinians in Gaza (to) wake up and look at a different alternative to what they believe,” he explained.
Ex-terrorist Tass Saada (left) and a refugee family in Gaza (right). (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
Saada said he believes hearts are turning to Jesus and confirmed a report late last year that hundreds of Gazans encountered Jesus in their sleep.
“I have a report from one of my team members that 200 Gazans gave their heart to Jesus in one lump sum,” Saada expressed. “The Lord appeared to them in visions and dreams and they were hugging each other and rejoicing. [They] realized all of them had the same vision that each one of them had.”
“Obviously, the Lord is doing His work and the believers in the land are doing their work,” he added.
As CBN Digital reported, born in Gaza, Saada was overcome with rage toward Jewish Israelis in the aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967.
His family moved to Saudi Arabia and Qatar and, ultimately, he ran away to join Fatah and fight to support Arafat.
“After the Six-Day War, I felt as if I was having a nervous breakdown, and my hatred just grew and grew,” Saada said in his testimony, published on JewishRoots.net. “I did not understand how we could lose so many wars against Israel. We were bigger than Israel in numbers and size, we had more equipment — everything we had was more than they had, but still, we lost the wars against them.”
“I was thinking that, once again, our leaders sold us to the Jews,” he added. “That was when I decided to go and fight for our land, which I believed was ours.”
The founder of the Hope of Peace Foundation eventually emigrated to the U.S. where he met his wife, Karen.
Soon afterward, he met a Christian man and learned about Jesus.
That is when his life and entire perspective on Israel changed.
He recently moved to the Holy Land in hopes of seeing more Gazans come to Christ.
“God is going to do a lot of work [in Gaza], and I want to be a part of that,” Saada said.
Saada previously told Joel Rosenberg on The Rosenberg Report that he believes we are in the “End Times.” “What we are seeing today happening is really one of the signs of the end of times, because it is not normal — the destruction that is taking place,” he said. “The evil hand of Hamas is attacking Israelis in a radical, very evil way. Naturally, Israel had to respond and defend itself.”
Although four Arab nations and Turkey have offered to assist in planning the reconstruction and governance of Gaza once Israel ends its war with Hamas, Saada boldly proclaimed that God has another future for the Gazans.
“The harvest is going to be huge,” he said.
