Charisma News Brief: First Holy Land Trip Blows Sheila Walsh Away

As a former co-host of the 700 Club, Sheila Walsh has been all around the world. But surprisingly, at least for herself, she says she had never taken a trip to Israel until recently.

Once there, however, Walsh says the Word of God made an impression on her like it never had before. There with her husband, Walsh was filming an eight-week series on the Holy Land for TBN.

“For me, there was this sense of the Bible opening up in front of my very eyes,” who co-hosted the 700 Club with Pat Robertson from 1988 to 1992. “…. When you sit on the edge of the Sea of Galilee, there is no doubt in the world that the Lord was there. That’s one of the places where I just found this overwhelming sense of peace.

“Sitting there by myself with the word of God opened before me, I was silenced by the holiness of that place.”

But Walsh didn’t want to make it just an ordinary sightseeing trip to Israel like many others before her had. She wanted to take in the whole Israeli experience from a biblical point of view.

“I’ve watched lots of my friends who had gone to Israel and they’ll stand in front of the camera and share thoughts and experiences or a passage of Scripture,” Walsh told Charisma Media’s John Matarazzo during a recent interview. “I wanted it to be more like a travel log. I asked if I could hire a car and on the first day I drove from Jerusalem a couple of hours north and I went to Magdala where we believe that Mary Magdalene was born.

“But what they are excavating at the moment is this synagogue from the first century. Because it’s such a beautiful and holy site. Those who were responsible for it were very gracious to me and they allowed me and my guest, Renee, an Arab believer, to actually go in and sit where we believe that Christ would have taught in this synagogue. … It was like you were there sitting at Christ feet and being taught by him.”

Click here to watch more of this compelling interview with Christian artist and author Sheila Walsh. {eoa}

Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.