Hollywood Actor Dean Jones Plays His Greatest Role - Helping Persecuted Christians And Jews Around The World

Along With His Wife Lory, He Has Launched The Christian Rescue Committee And Has Just Returned From Freeing Slaves In Southern Sudan

Hollywood actor Dean Jones has starred in many Disney family comedies, including "That Darn Cat!" (1965), "The Love Bug" (1968), "Million Dollar Duck" (1971), "The Shaggy D.A." (1976), and "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo" (1977). But now he is playing his greatest role... as a rescuer of persecuted Christians and Jews around the world.

Jones, who also played in "Jailhouse Rock" in 1957 with Elvis Presley, has started the Christian Rescue Committee (CRC), along with his actress-turned-screenwriter wife, Lory, and their pastor, Jack Hayford, of the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California.

In an interview at the Open Doors USA Prayer Conference recently in Costa Mesa, California, Dean Jones explained, "The Christian Rescue Committee tries to move people out of danger. We want to provide a way of escape for people who are being persecuted for their faith: Jews, Christians and others."

Harrowing Trip To Southern Sudan
Jones has just returned from a harrowing trip to Southern Sudan with Christian Solidarity International (CSI) to help purchase and release slaves there.

"I was there with a small group of people," he said. "The situation is desperate. There is every human rights violation that you can name, or you've ever heard of, going on in Sudan - genocide, ethnic cleansing and slavery. Over 2 million people have been killed, mostly civilians, mostly Christians. And the young Christian commanders in the rebel forces - the freedom fighters - told us, 'We will never surrender. We will never give up Christ. They will not make us Islamic converts.' They really inspire you. However, I believe that the radical regime in Khartoum will try, if they get the oil money that soon will be coming to them, to wipe out the black Christians and animists of the South."

When asked about how he felt about people who say that by freeing slaves, they are encouraging more kidnappings, he responded, "I feel that it's a same kind of criticism that the Underground Railroad got in this country in 1850 when you had slavery and the Underground Railroad was the only way that slaves could find any way to freedom. I realize that the purchase of slaves and their release behind rebel lines so they cannot be abducted again, is not an answer. But it does bring visibility to this problem.

"What groups like UNICEF should be doing is not criticizing the people who are doing what they feel should be done right now in purchasing and releasing slaves, but instead they should be criticizing the institution of slavery in Sudan and they should be doing everything they can to end it. It must be abolished. To criticize a few people who are buying and releasing slaves, I think, is the wrong emphasis."

Helping To Free Jews From Western Ukraine
Dean Jones then said that his new ministry is also providing mini vans in Western Ukraine to take Jews out of that area, across the border into Hungary and down to Budapest where they are housed at the Raoul Wallenberg Center until the Jewish agency flies them to Israel. (Wallenberg was a Christian Swede who led a rescue operation DURING world War II that saved thousands of Hungarian Jews. Wallenberg was taken prisoner by the Soviet army on January 17th 1945 and was never heard from again.)

Jones continued: "We have also advocated religious freedom before the United Nations Committee on Religious Persecution in Geneva, and we were instrumental in the release of 15 Christians - 14 Filipinos and one Dutchman -- from prison in Saudi Arabia.

"Hit The Ground Running"
"We really hit the ground running. I was playing Captain Andy in 'Showboat' at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, when I heard about these 15 Christians that had been picked up, so I asked a brilliant young lawyer, a Yale graduate, if he would go to Saudi Arabia and try to negotiate the release of these Christians. He said yes and so that was the beginning of the Christian Rescue Committee and it's our hope that this rescue committee will be a standing committee that will be a very practical and very immediate response to the threats of death against Christians around the world."

He said that most of the support for CRC has come from his wife Lory, himself, Jack Hayford and people from the Church on the Way who have heard about the various missions of mercy. "We must now broaden our net," he said. "It's a public corporation and the public must respond and I believe they will."

Two Worlds
When asked if he saw any irony in being a part of the make believe world of show business and then suddenly working in real world, he said, "No, I don't actually because we have been Christians now for some years and we have been assisting so many ministries, such as Open Doors and Compassion International and others over the years.

"The real world is no shock to me anymore. In fact, the problems around the earth energize me. When I think that 160,000 Christians will lose their lives this year, simply because they are followers of Jesus Christ, I want to do something that will alleviate a part of that problem and possibly next year, a few less will die. The fact there is anti-Semitic activities breaking out in areas of the world that viewed the Holocaust first-hand, this seems absolutely unbelievable to me and yet it's happening.

"I believe it would have honored Christ if we had gotten to that judge in Pakistan who let three Christians out of jail on bail and then was murdered a week later. He was a Muslim, but he was murdered by a more radical Islamic fundamentalist group. If we could have gotten him out to safety to another Muslim community some place in the world, I would have thought that that was an honor to the Lord Jesus, because he was helping believers."

His Challenge To The Church
I concluded by asking Dean Jones what his challenge was to the Church around the world?

"It is that we cannot sit back and say, 'Well this is all a part of biblical prophecy. These are the end times and therefore we should do nothing.' The Lord Jesus said, 'Occupy 'til I come.' It's for us to do the business of the Kingdom until the Lord Jesus returns. We should 'remember those who are in prison as if we are imprisoned with them.' And so we are challenged to overrule in our own spirit - the spirit of self-interest - in order to extend ourselves to people that are wounded."

Dan Wooding (assistcomm@cs.com; www.assistnews.net) is an award-winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife, Norma. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times). Wooding is also the author of some 38 books, (the latest of which is a second printing of "Blind Faith" with Anne Wooding, his 91-year-old mother who was a pioneer missionary to the blind of Nigeria -- ASSIST Books and WinePress Publishing). He is also a syndicated columnist and for ten years was a commentator on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC.