Tribute to Dr. Ghassan Khalaf
Tribute to Dr. Ghassan Khalaf
By Patrick Anderson
My life has been enriched by friendships with Arabic-speaking Christians. One of these is Dr. Ghassan Khalaf who passed away recently at his home in Beirut. My connection with him was through Maha and Chaouki Boulos, two of my heroes. Ghassan also considered the Bouloses to be his heroes. He told me that Chaouki was the most courageous person he had ever known.
Ghassan described a time when he received a call from Chaouki asking him to meet him near Amman, Jordan, to preach. Upon arriving at the designated place, he discovered that Chaouki had scheduled an open–air evangelistic preaching event in an area most Christians considered to be hostile to Jesus. Ghassan described the stage which was temporarily constructed adjacent to the site of a mass grave where scores of Christian believers had been slaughtered and buried just a few years prior. Chaouki led the service. A group of young Christians sang fervent songs and Ghassan preached with a conviction and courage he said he did not know he possessed.
Ghassan Khalaf was born on April 16, 1945, to Eliya and Laurice Khalaf. He had three siblings: Mona, Wissam and May. He married Hannah Atwe on October 20, 1970.
Ghassan was a passionate man who combined his love of Jesus with an academic’s mind and intellectual approach to the Bible. He attended the Arab Baptist Seminary in Beirut, graduating in 1969. He continued his education at the Evangelical Seminary in Belgium where he earned his PhD. The Lord called him to pastor the Hadath Baptist Church – Baabda — from 1976 until 2008. He was a translator and writer at the Baptist Publications from 1976 to 1981. He was appointed the head of the Baptist Convention many times and was elected to be on many committees with the International Baptist Convention.
He was a lecturing professor in several subject areas such as hermeneutics, ethics, the art of preaching, the Greek language, and New Testament theology. He was widely known and respected in the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary, the Middle East Seminary, the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Cairo, the Jesuit University and numerous other universities and seminaries across Europe and America. He led the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut as president from 1993 to 2008.
The last time I saw him was about two years ago in Beirut when he told me he was still working on a new translation and commentary of the Bible in Arabic–a project he first started in 1981.
In 2012, Rev. Ghassan Khalaf lost his wife, Hannah Atwe, after a struggle with illness. His deep sorrow was assuaged through God’s grace in finding a companion for his last year, Waed Doughman, whom he married in 2017.
He passed away to be with the Lord on August 3, 2018.
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