Lebanon (MNN) — “There’s a sense that war is at the gates,” says Pierre Houssney of Horizons International, summing up the events of the last 24 hours in Lebanon.
In Hezbollah’s “biggest security breach” in its nearly year-long conflict with Israel, thousands of handheld pagers used by Hezbollah were sabotaged. The resulting explosions that began Tuesday afternoon injured over 2,700 people, critically wounded 200 and killed at least nine.
“They (Hezbollah) use these pagers to communicate with one another to meet together without being spied on, but they had been compromised,” Houssney says.
Hezbollah has accused Israel of being behind the attack, but Israel did not immediately respond.
Houssney confirms that Israeli leaders will open the Lebanese front of the war, potentially escalating the conflict.
“They’re going to be trying to return the people that have fled from northern Israel and have been living in hotels ever since October 2023,” Houssney says.
Ministry center in southern Lebanon (Photo courtesy of Horizons International)
Israel’s security cabinet stated the resettlement goal Tuesday morning, just hours before the pager explosions began.
Houssney says the impact of Tuesday’s events on the Horizons ministry team has been a chaotic environment and a future that’s even more uncertain.
“We have a church in Tyre, Lebanon. Even though there have been all kinds of shelling and missile attacks since October, we have continued to hold worship services. That is all in doubt right now,” Houssney says.
“Our staff have reported to me [on Tuesday] afternoon that it’s chaos in the streets down there. If there is a war, we’re not sure whether it would reach up to Tyre, whether our staff and church members would have to evacuate.”
Prayer is the most effective critical response right now.
“I would ask for boldness for the believers, and then also for open hearts among the people. We all know that when humans lose hope in worldly things, that’s when they turn to God,” Houssney says.
“We can pray that people would put more of their hope into Christ and that we would hear, decades from now, that the Lord used these events to bring many people into His kingdom.”
Header image of war-weary flag of Lebanon generated by R.B. Klama using NightCafe.
