Bible Podcast Leaves Mark on Israel, Launches Arabic Format
Revolutionary Scripture podcast Daily Audio Bible is one of the most-listened-to podcasts in the world, with more than 1.5 million listens monthly and nearly 52 million downloads. Created in 2005, Daily Audio Bible is one of the Internet’s biggest success stories, and is now available in more than five languages, including the newly launched Arabic format.
In February, Daily Audio Bible’s creator and daily voice, Brian Hardin, made his first trip to Israel with a group of Daily Audio Bible listeners. While in the Holy Land, the group visited Bethlehem, which is located in the Palestinian controlled region of the country.
“The massive security wall that connects the checkpoints is covered in anti-Semitic graffiti, and I noticed that in the midst of the hatred, someone had painted ‘Love Wins’ in English,” recalls Hardin. “We stopped the bus and started to ask the locals if there was someone who would be able to paint for us. No one would agree to do so, out of fear of arrest, so we bought some cans of spray paint and attempted to paint the Daily Audio Bible logo on the wall. We unexpectedly drew a crowd, with the Palestinians wondering what ‘the Americans’ were protesting.”
Before long, Hardin was in a lengthy conversation with a young Muslim student from Abu Dhabi. He had Christian friends, and engaged in a respectful discussion, eventually agreeing to write “DailyAudioBible.com” in Arabic on the wall.
“When I asked him if he feared arrest, he told me I had no idea what it meant to him to be able to do this for us and to write on the wall,” says Hardin. “It hit me how many people would see this and what it meant for a Christian and a Muslim to leave this mark here together. It was like the Daily Audio Bible community was leaving a sign of hope in a hopeless situation.”
In December, Christian publishing giant Zondervan released Hardin’s debut book, Passages: How Reading the Bible in a Year Will Change Everything for You, which is designed to help readers learn that the Bible was meant to be read in bigger portions, in the way people read every other book, rather than the one-verse-at-a-time method that nullifies the big picture of Scripture.
This new, exciting method motivates readers to start a daily Bible reading program that can change their lives as they rediscover the joy—rather than the routine people often make it—of reading God’s Word.
