RT Kendall Ministries

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT MY RELATIONSHIP WITH YASSER ARAFAT:

Q: Do you think Yasser Arafat was converted to Jesus Christ before he died?

A: I only know he heard the Gospel, that I was faithful to the Gospel every time I met with him (five times) and that he seemed to love me even for the fact that I was uncompromising in presenting the Gospel to him. He always welcomed me to pray for him and held me in high esteem. As to whether he truly accepted Jesus Christ into his heart, we will not know until we get to Heaven.

Q: How did you feel when he died?

A: I wept. I had difficulty accepting it. I would have liked ‘closure’ – to see him again and pray for him again. He had invited Louise and me to celebrate her special birthday in Ramallah in October. But when we went he was too ill to see us. I was even planning to go to Paris, but he died before I could make arrangements. God gave me a strong love for him. But I have committed him and the whole matter to the Lord who initiated the relationship in the first place.

Q: Do you think Arafat was using you?

A: Probably, but I understood this. And I did not mind this as long as I was not kept from witnessing to him as much as I wanted to.

Q: How were you able to meet him in the first place?

A: Canon Andrew White, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Envoy to the Middle East, took me in to meet President Arafat on July 3, 2002. What would normally have been a twenty minute meeting stretched to nearly an hour and forty-five minutes. A surprising relationship was born. And yet it was truly born twenty years before, as a result of certain things Arthur Blessitt told me about Arafat, that I began praying for him daily. If John Wesley was right – that God does nothing but in answer to prayer, someone had been praying for Saul of Tarsus before his conversion. So why not with Arafat? But I never expected to meet him.

Q: What did you talk about when you met with him?

A: Jesus Christ. My relationship with President Arafat was non-political and wholly spiritual and theological. I repeatedly said to him, ‘Rais [Arabic for president], I do not come to you as a politician but as a follower of Jesus Christ.’ He always assured me this was fine with him.

Q: Did you press him to receive Christ?

A: Yes. Especially the first two times I went into see him, but not every single time after that. But I always read from the Bible with him and always prayed for him. Twice I anointed him with oil.

Q: How did you present the Gospel to him?

A: I focused entirely on the fact of Jesus’ death on the cross. The fundamental point that divides Islam from Christianity is that Jesus actually DIED on the cross. Muslims say that Allah delivered Jesus from the cross. I stressed that if he were to confess that Jesus DIED on the cross for our sins
(1) he would be given supernatural peace – unlike anything he has ever experienced;
(2) he would be given supernatural wisdom;
(3) he would be given an assurance of a home in Heaven;
(4) he would encourage Palestinian Christians – the forgotten people of the day;
(5) he would send a signal to Muslims all over the Arab world who have had dreams about Jesus and don’t know what to do about them.

On the second occasion I was there a translator – not needed so much for Arafat as for members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) – interrupted and admonished me, ‘This is a call for conversion. You cannot do this. You have put your finger on the very point that divides Christianity from Islam, whether Jesus was crucified.’ I replied: ‘I am trying to get him to confess what I think he already believes.’ I continued and the translator interrupted again and said, ‘You are trying to convert him. You cannot do this.’ Arafat lifted his hand toward the translator to let me carry on.

I then put it like this to President Arafat: ‘Rais, you are one of the most courageous men in the history of the world, but what I am asking you to do requires more courage than anything you have ever done – to confess that Jesus actually died. If you will do this I will stand with you and die with you.’ He was quiet. The room was tense. For a moment I feared an international incident would break out. Andrew White changed the subject. While others were speaking Arafat sent me a non-verbal signal that said to me not to worry. I then asked President Arafat if he would promise to consider what I said. He promised to do so. (More details of this occasion and other visits with Arafat will be left elsewhere on this website for a while longer.}

Q: What did he think of Mel Gibson’s film?

A: He wept all the way through it. ‘It is paining me’, he said to me. After the film I prayed with him, that the Holy Spirit will apply the truth of this film to President Arafat’s heart and make us thankful that ‘Jesus died on the cross for our sins’. When I finished he kissed me.

Q: What was he like as a person?

A: There was something vulnerable about him. I found him both hard and easy to talk with. I won’t try to explain it, but I loved him – and told him so. I wonder how many Christians have told him that. It is what Jesus would convey to him. It was always easy to make Arafat smile; all I had to do was to smile at him and he smiled back. A friend of mine, less sympathetic said to me, ‘R T, I see Arafat as an evil terrorist’. I replied: ‘I see him as an old man who wants to be loved.’

Q: How well did you know him?

A: Not very well, but in five visits – twice over lunch – I got a sense of his personality and feelings. Each of my visits with him lasted at least an hour (nearly three hours and a half the day I showed The Passion of the Christ to him). Canon Andrew White of course knew him best of all - better than any outside Palestine. I still felt I got to know some of his ways – and I knew when to keep quiet. He had a formidable presence, very imposing. I sometimes felt like pinching myself that I was sitting in the presence of (possibly) the most recognizable face in the world and yet could say anything I wanted to say to him.

Q: What was it like to eat with him?

A: Both times he had me placed directly across the table from him. We were never completely alone together. He was given a separate plate of food – of only vegetables: corn on the cob, squash, broccoli. He would break off a piece of broccoli or corn and hand it to me to eat. But I was served Arabic food – humus, rice, middle eastern salads, kebabs. He told me he occasionally ate chicken. He never touched alcohol, tea or coffee. I asked: ‘If you don’t drink tea or coffee, how do you get awake?’ ‘Sharon’, he thundered back in a split second.

Q: Is there one moment more than any other that stands out?

A: I think it was when I anointed him with oil the first time and prayed for him – then to have several members of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) in the room ask, ‘Will that prayer work for us too?’ It let me know I was appreciated by them and not resented. One of them invited me to come to his home in Jericho and pray for his family. My favorite photo with Yasser Arafat is the one of my anointing him with oil which turned out to be the last time I saw him.

Q: Do people, especially Christians that are biased for Israel, resent it that you spent time with him?

A: Yes. But when I get a chance to explain that I was only wanting to witness for Jesus Christ to him, as Jesus did to Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-9) and that Paul the Apostle said that the conversion of Gentiles could provoke Israel to be saved by making them jealous (Rom.11:11,14). it satisfied most people. I often said that it just may be that the quickest way to see Israelis and Jews converted is to witness to Palestinians; that if you really do love Israel, pray for Palestinians. I am not talking politics, only theology.

Q: What good do you think you actually did in your times with Arafat?

A: I cannot be sure. I know absolutely that, as a consequence of my visits to Ramallah – and talking about them on TV and in churches all over the United States and Britain, I helped raise the consciousness of a good number of American and British Evangelicals to be aware of Palestinians as well Jews, and to get them to pray for Palestinians as well as Jews. I think also that I made some lasting friendships among some Palestinians, like the respected Palestinian statesman Dr Saeb Erekat and also Dr Emil Jarjoui, a member of the PLO Executive. What is more, thanks to Canon Andrew White, I developed a special relationship with Rabbi David Rosen, one of the most respected orthodox Jewish rabbis in Israel. We are now writing a book together!

Q: Do you expect to have continued contacts with Palestinians?

A: I don’t know. If the new leadership want a follower of Jesus to be among them, and I am invited, yes.

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