Abdul’s journey from the Middle East to America in 1972 to preach the Christian Gospel to Arab Americans led him to Colorado Springs.

He bought an ad in The Gazette inviting people to a church service conducted in the Arabic language and was grateful when eight people showed up at the first service.

After First Nazarene Church gave him free office space, he decided to settle down here. Half a century later, his ministry Voice of the Truth is still here.

The ministry recently marked its 50th anniversary with a dinner for about 250 workers, partners, friends and donors where its achievements were celebrated, including printing and distributing more than 3 million “How to know Christ” evangelistic tracts, more than 2 million New Testaments and more than 350,000 Bibles in 15 languages.

Voice of the Truth hosts an Arabic-language website, Voice of Preaching the Gospel, that’s been visited nearly 8.5 million times by people downloading information, lessons and audio files.

The ministry also:

• Produces radio broadcasts that are carried on 60 U.S. radio stations

• Helped plant more than 300 Arabic Christian churches in the U.S.

• Taught more than 10,500 students about the lives of Christ and St. Paul

• Hosted more than 60 conferences for Arabic Christian pastors

“The seeds that have been planted throughout the world sown from the Voice of The Truth headquarters in Colorado Springs have grown in amazing ways,” said an anniversary document.

“Three to four million Arabic people have heard the Gospel of Jesus through our programs, literature, and churches.”

Locally, the ministry hosts a weekly Bible study in English and a Saturday church service in Arabic. But Christian work wasn’t always so easy for Abdul, which is not his real name, but was adopted as a cover to protect himself, his family and his ministry.

Preaching, persecution and prison

Abdul was raised in a traditional Catholic family in Syria, but his faith came alive after he heard an evangelistic message from an evangelical preacher and decided to be a young Christian evangelist himself while still in his teens.

The decision led to pressure, persecution and a brief imprisonment in Syria, where 87% of the population is Muslim and laws prohibit evangelism. He left home for Lebanon, where the work was easier, but felt God calling him to minister to the growing number of Arabs in the West. Today, about 3.7 million Americans have roots in Arab countries.

Once in the Springs, Abdul started an Arabic-language radio show that was first carried on a local country and western station He worked as a busboy at a local Denny’s to make ends meet until donors could be secured.

But for some Christians, as well as evangelism and missionary organizations, ministry to Arabs is “a hard sell,” said Mateen Elass, who served as a pastor at First Presbyterian Church from 1994 to 2000 and joined the staff of Voice of the Truth in 2015 to teach and train Christians about reaching Arabs.

“From time of Mohammed’s death in the mid-600s onward, the Muslim world was seen as hard soil, impenetrable soil, where the seed of the Gospel would never take root,” Elass said. “Evangelists typically said, ‘Let’s look elsewhere in the world.’”

The dangers accompanying evangelism in the Middle East are many, and most evangelists work in Arab countries as professionals, working jobs that provide a cover for their evangelism work.

These risks led Abdul to protect the ministry and its workers by seeking to avoid any and all publicity, making Voice of the Truth one of the least known of the dozens of evangelical groups based in the Springs.

But this caution, combined with the growing age of its donor base, has hampered fundraising. The ministry’s 2020 income was just under $800,000, with about 70% of its budget spent on work in the U.S., with the rest devoted to international work.

For information about Voice of the Truth’s work and its local Bible study and church service, call 719-574-5900 or email hope@vopg.com.

Voice of the Truth recently hosted a gathering of Arabic pastors from the U.S. at the Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove in North Carolina.

courtesy photos

The Lord’s Prayer in Arabic.