David Dolan awoke with a start. The fierce rumbling outside rattled the windows of his room in the medical clinic, threatening to send glass shattering into the darkness that enveloped the area.

Silence. Then the thunderous booming again. Weakened from a severe case of hepatitis, David couldn’t move.

A single man in his early 20s, it had been about a year since David had left his comfortable home in Idaho to live and study on a kibbutz—or agricultural settlement—in Israeli occupied territory in the Golan Heights. Now he lay helpless in bed as the sounds of war spoke their terror nearby.

"This time," he thought, "I’m not in Idaho listening to radio reports about a Syrian surprise attack against Israel...I’m in the valley right below the battle!"

David felt his bed tremble as artillery and tank shells crashed in the Golan Heights. "They’ll have to carry me down to the bomb shelter," he worriedly thought. He settled in, waiting for his friends and co-workers to rescue him.

An hour passed. Then two. Then several. Helpless and starting to panic, David reports his imagination began to run wild.

"Pictures of Syrian soldiers carting me off from the clinic flashed through my mind," he says. "As my sense of panic grew, I prayer fervently that God would send someone...to retrieve me."

But no one came. Night finally gave way to morning, and the battle tapered off to silence. At breakfast time, one of David’s co-workers came by with a tray of food, casual, as if nothing had happened. After a sleepless, fearful night, David was ready for some explanations.

Turns out the shelling had merely been an all-night military exercise by the Israeli army. In the excitement and confusion, others had forgotten to stop by and tell David he was in no real danger—at least not this time.

Welcome to Israel, Dave.

Two decades later, David Dolan is still living in Israel, working as a news correspondent for CBS radio in Jerusalem. He first flew to Israel in 1980, planning to spend a year working on a kibbutz and studying Hebrew. Needless to say, his temporary plans became permanent.

So how does a guy from Idaho end up reporting news from the heart of Israel? It started back in 1973.

As a teenager who’d been raised in a strongly Catholic home, David rejected his family’s faith and announced he was an agnostic. He comments now that decision "Didn’t go over real well with my folks or extended family!"

During this time, David started experimenting with substance abuse and also began working at a nearby restaurant. The cook at the restaurant was quite heavily into the occult and had even spent time with Charles Manson. She struck up a friendship with David and other young people in the area.

"My girlfriend and I and others would go over to her home and spend a lot of time there, have marijuana parties," David remembers. It was there he was introduced to the world of dark spirituality.

Then, unexpectedly, one of David’s older brothers became a Christian. "He shared the gospel with me, and I rejected it," says David. But even though he rejected Christ, his brother’s example sparked an interest in the Bible.

Even more unexpectedly, in the fall of 1973, the Yom Kipper War broke out in the Middle East, with Arab nations banding together for a surprise attack on Israel. For some reason, news of the attack had a profound effect on this rebel teen.

"Even then," he says, "I feel that God was tying me in to Israel and the Jewish people in my spirit, because when I heard the news of that [attack], I began to weep and was really disturbed—even though I hardly even knew where Israel was."

God was turning David’s heart from darkness to light, and using Israel to do it. That Christmas, David’s brother gave him a Bible and a book on Israel’s place in Bible prophecy. David refused to read them.

Then, just after the new year, David came face-to-face—literally—with the danger associated with his dabbling in the occult. Here’s how he describes it:

"I actually had a demon appear to me and offer to give me power if I would worship it...I was quite shaken by the experience because I was just starting to really accept that there might indeed be a spirit world...I actually turned on and off lights and tried to make the thing go away and pretend it was just an illusion, but I knew that it was real...

"It was frightening, and I was freaked! The first thing I did was put on my shoes and went for a walk and got out of there. I was hoping that when I came back it would be gone, but it was still there."

David told the cook at his work about the demon visitor. She came over, saw it too, and confirmed that it was indeed a dark spirit. She was unfazed by it, but for David, that was enough.

"Thank God I did reject it," he says now. "And that night I picked up the Bible—started reading it." Through that, he finally became a Christian himself and turned his back on the occult and agnosticism completely. He also began reading the prophecy book his brother had given him, a book by Hal Lindsay. He reports, "Immediately my heart was turned toward Israel...Immediately I determined that I would go there someday."

David’s next few years were filled with Bible college, training to get an FCC license, broadcasting school, and a shot stint working at a radio station in Idaho. All the while, he had a desire to be involved in overseas missionary radio. So, November of 1980, he took advantage of the opportunity to work on the kibbutz in Israel. He extended his stay there, and in 1982 began broadcasting news for Voice of Hope, one of the only Christian radio stations in all of Israel. In 1988 he joined CBS as a radio news correspondent, and continues to work with them today.

During his time in Israel, David has witnessed numerous wars in the Middle East, given firsthand reports on terrorist activities, broadcast news from Jerusalem while Saddam Hussein’s scud missiles rained down on the city during the Gulf War, seen a rocket explode 50 feet from him while standing on a friend’s doorstep, and been a spectator for air battles between Israeli and Syrian jet fighters. In fact, one such dogfight ended with the tail of a Syrian plane crashing down from the sky just a few hundred yards behind his office!

Still, in spite of the constant danger, David is unwilling to leave. "My favorite place is Jerusalem" he explains fondly. "It’s so unique, and there’s so many aspects to it...The ancient history, the archaeological digs, and evidences of ancient life [in Israel] are just so predominant that you can’t miss that. That combined with the thriving modern city and its cultural mix of Arabs and Jews and many foreigners...All of that makes Jerusalem so unique."

Although he has a great love for Israel, David has chosen not to share that love with a spouse, at least not yet. Living and working in a place where war and terrorism are constant possibilities can be hard on a relationship. For that reason, David finds truth in Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians 7:1b: "It is good for a man not to marry."

David thoughtfully explains his perspective this way, "I’m a non-citizen of Israel, living in a predominantly Jewish state, working as a journalist covering what is usually conflict, and too frequently war. I have to go off to the terrorist attacks etc. It’s a high-stress job, high pressure. And I’m traveling and writing. The traveling is expensive and I have to be gone for extended periods when I go—several months at a time. That would be more difficult, obviously, if I had a family.

"I have basically chosen to remain single. I’ve had three relationships that could have turned into marriage, but all of them were American gals that either didn’t want to live in Israel, or tried it and didn’t like it, or were unable to try. That’s just the way it’s been. I’m not opposed to being married, but I’m not actively seeking it."

In spite of that, David knows firsthand that choosing to remain single has its own hardships, not the least of those being general attitudes of other Christians toward singles in the church. "I think the church is sometimes guilty of promoting marriage to the point where a single does feel inadequate or incomplete or unfulfilled or embarrassed to be single."

That results in singles feeling pressure to marry from their Christian brothers and sisters—and sometimes making unwise decisions because of that. David reveals that on more than one occasion, his girlfriends have told him they felt God leading them to be life partners. Since God hasn’t sanctioned polygamy in our day and age, David feels those ideas came from the girls feeling pressured to marry, a pressure he believes is applied more strongly to women than to men.

"This is a cultural thing in the church, and not really a biblical view of it," he says emphatically. "Singleness is fine, is good, is full, is great."

He adds, "We have a real and a significant and a fulfilling and marvelous and joyful and awesome relationship already in our lives if indeed we are believers and have turned our lives over to the Lord...[We need to] focus on that relationship, develop that relationship...be satisfied in that relationship. Then, if He wants to add to that a marriage partner, fine. If HE wants to."