This Bible land Tour is a comprehensive 12D9N tour, suitable for first timers. You will walk in the footsteps of Jesus and journey from his birthplace to his crucifixion site of Jerusalem. This is a journey that brings Biblical stories to life as you visit many of the historical, cultural and religious sites.
Visit Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, Qumran where the Dead Sea scrolls were found and explore the City of David. Take a boat ride to experience the Sea of Galilee which is the same lake that Jesus walked on and enjoy the panoramic view from the Mount of Olives where numerous events of the Bible History occurred.
Spend some time exploring Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus and visit the Shepherd’s Field and Church of Nativity, one of the oldest surviving churches in the world. You will experience the old city of Jerusalem and experience momentous moments visiting many holy sites. Visit the Western Wall, one of the holiest place of Judaism today and see the Dome of the Rock located on Temple Mount. Take a spiritual walk along the Via Dolorosa, where Jesus carried His Cross, continue to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and visit the Garden Tomb that is considered by some Christians to be the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus.
Join us for an unforgettable time in Israel where you will see firsthand the places where Jesus lived and ministered. Many visitors have returned transformed with many precious memories of the Holy Land, with a deep appreciation of the bible and renewed faith in the Lord.
Spiritual Director: Rev Lim Jen Huat
Tour Information Date: 3 – 14 May 2020
Registration closes: 1 Feb 2020
To request for itinerary or register, please contact us at:
On 9 May 2020, a special distribution exercise was conducted in partnership with the Ministry of Manpower, which provided 3,000 prayer mats to guest workers in 66 dormitories. Mr. Zaqy Mohamad, Senior Minister of State in the Ministry of Manpower and Ministry of Defence, also visited the dorms during this distribution exercise.
Apart from guest workers and underprivileged communities, the COVID-19 has also affected vulnerable homeless individuals. With many public areas being cordoned off, some of them no longer have temporary places of refuge; many have struggled to find places to sleep, rest and consume meals.
In order to care for the rough sleepers amidst the COVID-19 situation, Hope Initiative Alliance (HIA) worked closely with the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) to set up Safe Sound Sleeping Places (S3P), throughout the circuit breaker period. The S3P initiative is spearheaded by MSF, in response to the urgent needs faced by the homeless community, that have been accentuated in the midst of the COVID-19 situation.
As such, HIA partnered SowCare – the charity arm of the Bible Society of Singapore – to set up a temporary shelter for the homeless at S3P@Bible house. We are currently also working towards setting up another transient shelter at MacPherson. Through this initiative to serve rough sleepers, SowCare also raised funds and collected in-kind donations to administer holistic care through basic essentials, while working towards providing them with a permanent roof over their heads.
Reiterating the need to care for these especially marginalised community, Rev. Ezekiel Tan, President of HIA stressed that “while many of us have the opportunity and luxury of staying home and keeping safe, the homeless have the added anxieties of keeping themselves healthy, while making ends meet. We are honoured to have had the ability to work with the MSF and other partners, to care for and remind the homeless that they are not forgotten amidst this trying period. It is only as a united community that we will be able to emerge as a stronger Singapore.”
Should members of the public wish to support the initiatives, individuals may make cash and/or in-kind donations. To make in-kind donations and arrange for delivery, please contact us at our hotline 6304 3486.
Join us for a journey to the lands of ancient treasures and Christian history. Enjoy breathtaking views at some of the most beautiful and unique biblical sites in both Turkey and Greece. Walk through the lands of the Churches of Revelation with visits to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. You will also walk in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul and experience Greek history, culture and learn more about early Christianity. From the iconic religious sites retracing the footsteps of the Apostle Paul to the UNESCO World Heritage Site like the Acropolis in Athens. A truly inspirational experience!
On 22 April 2020, the Alliance of Guest Workers Outreach (AGWO) – a movement of Hope Initiative Alliance – launched the Adopt-a-Dorm system, where companies, NGOs and even individuals are encouraged not only to help with the food and hygiene needs of individual dorms, but also to care for the workers’ mental and emotional well-being. Of the 279 factory-converted dormitories that AGWO is assisting, 60 have been adopted.
On 22 April 2020, the Alliance of Guest Workers Outreach (AGWO) – a movement of Hope Initiative Alliance – launched the Adopt-a-Dorm system, where companies, NGOs and even individuals are encouraged not only to help with the food and hygiene needs of individual dormitories, but also to care for the workers’ mental and emotional well-being. Of the 279 factory-converted dormitories that AGWO is assisting, 60 have been adopted.
Since the late 1880s, interaction between cinema and the church has been both colorful and engaging. In the last ninety years, the church’s reception of film has shifted from hostility and rejection to acceptance. Today, the use of films as resources for theological discussions is increasing.
Christians often ask, “How do we read a non-religiously explicit film theologically? Is that even possible?” Relating to this question, Felecia Taylor Douglass considers films as produced for entertainment purposes, not to explain human relationships with the Creator. Such a “sacred vs. secular” perspective serves to perpetuate common perceptions of theology as sacred, and cultural artifacts such as film as secular.
This certainly is not accurate.
First, apart from the functions of entertainment and relaxation, film narratives record memories; they chart and perhaps parallel our life journeys. Movies regularly focus on themes of human struggles; and as future generations revisit them, the remembered images bring back memories and create new ones.
It is no exaggeration to say that films serve as a repository to enable robust accounts of our own life stories. Film theorist Dudley Andrew even claims that the “first responsibility” of the cinema is to “illuminate the spiritual darkness of our culture.” The medium and mode of film can be wisely appropriated to tell God’s Story as well.
If we hold onto the “cinema is evil” perspective, then we are regressing, whether in academia or the arts industry. Christian theology’s enduring relevance lies not only in proclaiming the narratives from centuries past, but in recognizing that theology is dynamic, always interacting with our current culture to challenge and inform our actions and attitudes.
Second, the nature of theology has always been ambiguous. It can be described broadly as “conversation about God,” in which those outside the church also actively participate—but it is also defined as a discipline that Christians discuss within their faith communities. A fundamental difference between Christian theology and film is that film can provide us with visual reminders of the divine, whereas Christian theology inevitably points us to a personal Savior.
Yet films, created aurally and visually, offer something that academic theology does not. Take, for instance, the stunning visual dynamics in films such as Constantine (2005) or The Devil’s Advocate (1997), where the visual style fuses film noir elements with traditional horror motifs in the thematic debate of good and evil, God and Satan.
The Devil’s Advocate is also an instructive resource for reflections on humanistic orientation: pride, lust and vanity, with a subtle hint of redemption. Can theology recapture the moment of visual transmission as represented—which amounts to a spoken word—in what is a commonly shared (and yet, at the same time, private) space of the cinema?
The term “sacred” often refers to some cosmic power that transcends human understanding and ability but that closely relates to humankind. Peter Berger explains in The Sacred Canopy that “sacred” power can be experienced at unanticipated moments of life. Philosopher Janet Soskice recounts her truly unanticipated “dramatic religious experience” of “a presence of love” in the shower!
Visual media has not usurped the church’s position as a societal institution. But film’s power and influence and its impact on public opinion are undeniable: it shapes social constructs and societal and individual values, and it supplies us with narratives that shape our outlook on life.
Theologically stimulating films are not always categorically religious. Yet they still raise issues that Christians need to tackle. One example is the life-affirming Still Alice (2014), which explores the real issue of human struggle with Alzheimer’s disease and the loss of human identity. Likewise, the Hong Kong film Mad World (2016) draws our attention to the social stigma that confronts the protagonist, who suffers from bipolar disorder.
A movie is more than a text; it is a happening. When viewed on a particular occasion or watched by a particular community, a movie’s contents and message speak to its audience, whose task is to bear it into the wider world of theology, mediated through their own insights and experience.
In this way, the spectator becomes actively involved in the task of personal interpretation and also contributes to the theological task of finding truth, goodness and beauty. This is a worked example of doing theology in a particular way with the media: a two-way engagement. While watching movies and unearthing meanings, familiar themes in a film’s narrative provoke a self-discovery process in the viewer.
This familiarity of particular circumstances unfolding on the screen enables the individual to name, or give meaning to, what was previously unnamed. This also acts as a contemplative stimulus to the viewer’s faith.
In other words, we ask the fundamental questions of who we are and what life is all about; we struggle to grasp the ultimate answer to meaning and purpose of human existence. Viewers ask questions as we seek to understand the film director’s social concerns and interests—and these are essentially the same questions asked in Christian theology.
At this point, one might ask: What, then, is the contribution of a movie replete with violence? French scholar Joseph Marty states that there is a sacramental element in films that can provoke viewers’ sensitivity to the mysterious and transcendent. So, even when the apparent message is blasphemous, film has the ability to evoke our awareness of forgotten forces in the spiritual dimensions.
Such awareness is part of common human experiences: birth, love, death, thrill, shock, awe, etc.—and all of these lead us to mystery, to the sacred realm. According to Marty, all religions, particularly Christianity, help us distinguish the sacred in the profane because the incarnation of Jesus Christ has transfigured the polarization of sacred and profane. So now, we can perceive our mundane everyday life as a receptacle of Otherness. This is a re-seeing of the everyday routine that also shapes the viewing of films.
To this end, the practice of seeing the sacred in secular films is a vibrant complexity that points towards a God who is excessive to any human theological project.
On 18 April 2020, at the request of MOM, we mobilised more than 110 volunteer drivers to send reusable masks to 192 factory-converted dormitories. The Bible House at 7 Armenian Street was designation as the collection point, where safe distancing and contact tracing measures were put in place to ensure the safety of all volunteers.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).
