CHINO HILLS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 4, 2024--
The Real Life Network today announced the launch of RLN News, delivering breaking current events and commentary from a Biblical worldview. RLN News will officially make its debut by partnering with The Family Research Council on Pray Vote Stand: Decision 2024, live coverage of the election from 8:30 pm-Midnight ET on November 5.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241104094846/en/
Leading RLN’s new effort is three-time Emmy-award winning anchor and reporter Daniel Cohen, a Jewish follower of Jesus who will serve as the network’s News Director. Cohen will be based in Tel Aviv and deliver the news while connecting what’s happening in the Middle East and beyond with the Bible.
“God knew in advance our foundation of news would be coming out of the number-one spot on the planet where it matters,” said Pastor Jack Hibbs, Founder and President of the Real Life Network. “Israel is not going to go away, Jerusalem is not going away– and yet we know from the scripture that it’s going to be increasingly the epicenter of global news.”
During the past 20 years, Cohen covered some of the biggest stories in top markets. Most recently, he led Newsmax’s Jerusalem bureau as a correspondent, was a morning co-anchor on Los Angeles' highly rated "Good Day LA" on Fox 11 (KTTV), and also served as a morning anchor at CBS 8 (KFMB) in San Diego.
“This is an historic moment for the church. Israel’s relationship with the United States is critical, and the body of Christ must know and understand what’s going on biblically,” said Cohen. “Everyone watching this network will have a front row seat to what’s happening now and what’s happening in the prophetic.”
Cohen earned Emmy Awards for reporting on the Cedar Fire that devastated San Diego in 2003, the Witch Creek Fire (2007), and an FA-18 fighter jet crash in residential San Diego (2008). Currently, Cohen and his family are living through Israel’s war to destroy Hamas, Hezbollah and other terror threats in the region. He recently traveled to Istanbul to cover the election of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and reported from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia when President Biden visited KSA in 2022.
Cohen traveled to the Moldovan border in the early days of the Russia/Ukraine war as women and children were evacuating from the war zone and has visited Jordan and reported from ancient sites in Italy. How it all relates to Israel will always remain RLN’s focus.
Cohen earned a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Illinois, with an emphasis in political science and sociology. He currently is studying Hebrew and resides in Israel with his wife, Paige, and their three children.
About the Real Life Network
Founded by Calvary Chapel Chino Hills Pastor Jack Hibbs, the Real Life Network (RLN) is a free 24/7 television streaming platform with a mission to educate, encourage, build, and strengthen the lives of its viewers with a biblical worldview. Sharing Jesus as the hope of the world, everything at RLN is rooted in God’s Word, and its programming can be found on any device through platforms, such as, Apple TV, Apple iOS, Amazon FireTV, ROKU, Chromecast and Google Play.
Award-winning anchor/reporter Daniel Cohen announced as News Director for The Real Life Network, a free 24/7 television streaming platform with a mission to educate, encourage, build, and strengthen the lives of its viewers with a biblical worldview. RLN is rooted in God’s Word, and its programming can be found on any device through platforms, such as, Apple TV, Apple iOS, Amazon FireTV, ROKU, Chromecast and Google Play. (Photo: Business Wire)
JDEIDEH, Lebanon (AP) — It was not how the Rev. Maroun Ghafari had envisioned this Holy Week — for years, he had held Easter sermons in his predominantly Christian village of Alma al-Shaab in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel.
This year, he is preaching from a Beirut suburb, beside a cardboard cutout depicting his church in Alma al-Shaab, now caught in the crossfire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters.
Since hostilities erupted last month between Israel and Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group — in the shadow of the wider, U.S.-Israeli war on Iran — over 1,400 people have been killed in Lebanon, and more than 1 million have been forced to flee their homes.
Among those displaced from the war-torn south are thousands of Christians. They now find themselves far from their ancestral churches in Lebanon, where Christians have maintained a strong presence through centuries of Byzantine, Arab and Ottoman conquest and plenty of modern-day crises.
Christians are estimated to make up around a third of Lebanon's population of roughly 5.5 million people. With 12 Christian sects, the country is home to the largest proportion of Christians of any nation in the Arab world.
Christian villagers who stayed behind in southern Lebanon, ignoring Israel’s blanket evacuation warnings for the area, have increasingly hardened into enclaves surrounded by fierce clashes.
And though villagers in Alma al-Shaab had been uprooted before, in the 2024 Israel-Hezbollah war, this time around, they were adamant they wouldn't leave, even as airstrikes came closer and closer.
The villagers huddled in their church for protection as Israeli warplanes pounded large swaths of southern and eastern Lebanon while Israeli troops stepped up a ground invasion and Hezbollah kept firing rockets at Israel.
In his annual Easter homily, Patriarch Beshara al-Rai of Lebanon’s Maronite Church blamed both Hezbollah and Israel for the suffering wrought by the war.
“The country is going through a critical situation due to Iranian interference through Hezbollah and Israeli aggression,” he said. “Our hearts bleed for the victims of the conflict imposed on Lebanon.”
Ghafari’s brother, 70-year-old Sami Ghafari, was among the villagers who sought refuge at the church in Alma al-Shaab.
But he dashed out briefly on March 8 to tend to his garden, and was killed by an Israeli drone strike. His killing prompted the remaining villagers — including his brother — to pack up their belongings.
The U.N. peacekeepers in the area — a force known as UNIFIL that has monitored the region for nearly five decades — evacuated them to the northern suburbs of Beirut.
“We wanted to stay, but it was always possible that one of us could be targeted or killed at any moment,” the Rev. Maroun Ghafari told The Associated Press from St. Anthony Church in the northern Beirut suburb of Jdeideh, where the displaced from Alma al-Shaab came to worship on Saturday.
“Everyone is tired, and we see that war brings nothing but destruction, death and displacement.”
For many Lebanese Christians, it's a tradition on Holy Saturday — the day between Good Friday, which commemorates the crucifixion and death of Jesus, and Easter Sunday, which marks his resurrection according to the Gospels — to visit the graves of their loved ones.
This year, displaced Christians could only reflect from afar.
Nabila Farah, dressed in black for the Saturday service at St. Anthony Church, was among the last to leave Alma al-Shaab. She still feels heartbroken, a month later.
“You miss the smell of home, the lovely traditions and customs, the sounds of the bells of three churches ringing,” she said, reminiscing about her village. “As much as we experience the Easter atmosphere here, it will never be as it is over there.”
Those who remain face other challenges.
Marius Khairallah, a priest in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, where much of the Christian community has hunkered down, says that he and his congregants are staying put "not out of stubbornness, but out of a sense of mission, to remain alongside their fellow faithful, as witnesses.”
“A significant number of parishioners have been displaced or are absent,” he said. "Yet churches still open their doors. Prayers are still raised — even with fewer voices."
Worries are mounting among Christians in the area as the Lebanese army — which seeks to stay neutral in the Israel-Hezbollah war — pulls out from parts of southern Lebanon, leaving them exposed to Israeli forces pushing deeper into the territory.
St. Antony's main priest, the Rev. Dori Fayyad, used his Good Friday sermon to take solemn note of the war’s widening toll on the southern Lebanese Christians, as the faithful recited prayers in Arabic and Syriac, a dialect of the Aramaic language spoken by Jesus.
“Today, you understand what the cross means, not as an idea, not as a concept, but because you are going through it,” he told the fully packed pews, the crowd so thick that dozens had to stand or crouch on the back stairs.
Some wiped away tears as Fayyad named one by one the southern churches, illustrated in the cardboard cutouts next to the pulpit.
“These churches in these villages are not only places of worship,” he said. “They are silent witnesses to suffering and to faith.”
Associated Press video journalist Ali Sharafeddine in Jdeideh, Lebanon, contributed to this report.
A girl kisses a cross held by a priest during Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Parishioners walk in a procession after a Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Worshipers pray during Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Worshipers pray during Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Worshipers pray during Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
