Day: 15

A Plan for Iran

It seems like only bad news flows out of the Middle East doesn’t it? For the last forty years, the headlines have been dominated by wars, revolutions, and ISIS. But this raging river of bad news often obscures the amazing movements of God – the explosion of the Gospel over that same period of forty years.

If you don’t follow the persecuted church in Iran, your understanding of the country probably revolves around the Islamist Revolution of 1979 and the Ayatollah Khomeini

The spiritual story of Iran is amazing and the church there has been growing for 4 decades at an amazing rate! Iranian evangelists are extremely bold, especially considering the high cost of spreading the gospel in their country. Iran targets Muslim converts and evangelists. If caught, these Christians typically end up in “The Terror Factory,” the name for Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, where imprisoned Christians are interrogated and brutally tortured.

The Islamic government can never arrest and torture enough new converts or evangelists to shut down the Church. Even if they arrested all of the evangelizing Christians, there would still be a river of new converts every year.

Why? Because for the last thirty years, millions of Muslims have come to Christ after receiving dreams and visions of Jesus. They have also come to Christ after watching Christian content beamed in from Satellite TV.

When Muslims come to Christ, they are thrilled to have found the truth. No amount of threat of imprisonment or torture can stop them from spreading the good news! God is truly doing something special in Iran and the Middle East!

Hungry for Christ

Early on in my work with ICC I met an Iranian believer who told me a story that summarized the great move of God in Iran.

He attended an evangelism seminar for Iranians, taught by westerners. It focused on various methods to attract a disinterested audience to the Gospel. During one of these seminars, this believer stood up and explained that it was different in Iran:

“These methods all seem good to me but we do things differently in Iran. I go to a party and announce that I’m a Christian and anybody that wants to talk about Jesus should visit with me during the party.”

He laughed as he told me that he would be trapped in a corner for the next four hours with people asking him questions about Jesus and about how to become a Christian.

The testimonies of these converts, as well as those of other Iranian evangelists, are always a source of great encouragement to me, so let me share some with you! Zahra’s testimony touches on both the vision aspect and party-sharing dynamic I mentioned:

“Two months ago, I saw that a few people were going inside an apartment which is located across the hall in the same floor I live. Then I heard them singing. I went and put my ear on the door and heard them talking about Jesus Christ.

I knocked on the door and, as it was opened, I saw the group and I saw an angel sitting on the couch. He smiled at me and said, ‘Come in.’  I went inside and the group welcomed me warmly.  I cried and listened to the songs and the passages they read from the Bible.  I was given some papers which were copies from book of John.  I heard the angel tell me, ‘This is your only chance.  Do you want to go after the living Jesus or the dead prophets?’  I said loudly, ‘After the living Jesus!’  Without knowing the group from before and (without having read) the Bible, I gave my heart to Christ that night. . .”

Another Testimony, from Vida:

“In 2007, I meet a lady who had converted to Christianity at a party and I asked her about Jesus. I was surprised that a Muslim could convert to another religion. We talked for two or three hours about how Jesus changed her life. I asked her how to get the Bible and learn more about Jesus. (Month’s later) I came to Christ (and) from that day on, I experienced many miracles in my life.

The first time I told my husband (about my) conversion, he was against it. Then, after a couple of days, he said that I was totally changed and kept telling me, “Your eyes are really shining.” He said he felt a very big and very powerful love inside of me and that he could not ignore it.

About two weeks after I became Christian, my husband came to me and asked me to tell him about Christianity. He asked me to tell him about the Bible and he read it; it was so amazing. Then, after two weeks, he came to Christ. Furthermore, a year after that, many of our family members accepted Jesus.

The (secret) police found out about our meetings and arrested many of our members, including myself. One of the interrogators told me that they were going to keep me in jail for two years and maybe even kill me.

Fortunately, they released me and told me to go home, they told me that I don’t have permission to do any other fellowship. They told me that they are going to watch over me and my other family members, and if they found out that we were coming together, we would go to jail.”

Unstoppable

Reading Vida’s testimony gives you may sense the futility of the efforts of the secret police in Iran. Their main weapon, fear, will only work on some.

The Church is similar to a bottle of syrup. Authorities try to grasp the bottle and take it off the “table” of the culture. In the end though, they merely knock it over in their attempt to remove it. When knocked over, the sweetness of the bottle’s contents spread everywhere. The masses then taste it and spread the word far and wide that there is “food,” and their spiritual starvation can end.

In the West, we take so much for granted (I’m not pointing fingers, as I face the same predicament). We have religious freedom and live in relative ease. Yet, we take these things for granted. As a church, we are asleep in the light.

Zahra went on in her letter to touch on just this point:

“To many of those people who are born in the free countries, freedom has lost its deep meaning.  When they open their eyes in the morning, they do whatever they want, and they take their freedom for granted.  I am an underground Christian now; I suffer different pains for my faith but rejoice in Christ. I cannot mention His name without tears in my eyes.  Are other Christians like me?  I hope one day I can shout to the whole world and tell them about the angel I saw on that couch when he invited me to join the family of God.”

I never stop feeling convicted by my brothers and sisters in the persecuted Church. They speak truth to me and make me face my own weakness and apathy.

We desperately need the persecuted!