Less than two months after my release, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that the Turkish authorities targeted and arrested me on the basis of my nationality and faith. They confirmed that I was the victim of religious persecution and declared that the appropriate remedy would be to expunge my criminal record and accord me an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations. They urged the Turkish government to conduct an investigation and take appropriate measures against those who had violated my rights. Finally, they urged the Turkish government to “disseminate the present opinion through all available means and as widely as possible.”
So far, the Turkish government has done none of these. The foreign minister still refers to me in public as a spy and calls me Agent Brunson. When a gunman killed fifty people in a mosque in New Zealand in March 2019, Turkish media suggested that I was the one who had given the killer his orders.
This is the new normal in Turkey. The Turkish media—behind which stands the Turkish government—used me to paint a public image of Christians as traitors, terrorists, and enemies of Turkey when nothing could be further from the truth. This deliberate propaganda campaign has led to a rise in hate speech against Christians. We are very proud of the small but brave Turkish church that continues to stand for Jesus in an openly hostile environment.
IN PRISON I often questioned with distress why I struggled so much, especially in comparison to some of my spiritual heroes—or at least what their biographies say about them. I decided that if I ever had the opportunity, I would be open and honest about my struggles, that my testimony would be one of weakness: my weakness, but God’s strength. Maybe God chose a weak man to serve as an encouragement to others who feel weak.
I understand persecution, yet I was unprepared for what happened to me. In part this is because I counted the cost for some things, but never for prison—I don’t know of any other missionary who has been imprisoned in Turkey. But what really broke me was unmet expectations. I expected that God would intervene to carry me above my circumstances into joy, that even in grief I would feel strength and an infusion of grace, and most importantly, that I would have a sense of his presence. Instead, I felt abandoned by God. The truth is, God’s faithfulness and loyalty and love are never put to the test in our difficulties; it was my faithfulness, my loyalty, my love for him that was being tested.
In my case, not sensing his presence was part of the test.
I had to learn the lesson of Isaiah 50:10: “Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and lean on his God.” God was teaching me to stand in the dark, to persevere apart from my feelings, perceptions, and circumstances.
It is clear to me, especially as I remember my weakness and brokenness, that God’s grace brought me through. Mostly it was an unfelt grace, but it was there. I had a part as well: I had to cooperate with God. At every point, every time I was broken, I had a choice to make, and I chose to turn my face toward God. I had doubts, questions, I complained and fought with God, but eventually I would once again embrace him. I never stopped talking to him:
No matter what you do or don’t do, I will follow you.
I want to keep my face turned toward you, Jesus, like the sunflower that follows the sun throughout the day.
I don’t need an answer to my questions to have a relationship with you, God.
As I look back on my prison time—and I am still processing it—I see a pattern. I would get hit with a test, break and go low, and then work slowly toward a point of surrender to God, only to face a harder blow and go even lower. But each time, I started to climb again and eventually made it back to surrender—a deeper surrender, because now I was more aware of the price. There were many ups and downs, but there was a gradual upward trajectory. This was a choice.
I am glad to have escaped the valley of the wolves. And yet there is something I miss from that terrible ordeal. A dear friend told me of a conversation he had with Richard Wurmbrand. In spite of the miserable conditions and torture he endured, there were times when he wished to be back in his solitary prison cell where he had tasted an unusual intimacy with God. I understand him in some small degree, for the conditions of imprisonment—the isolation, threats, and fears—drove me to cling to God as never before. They also brought a rare clarity about what really matters. My every day in prison became consumed with seeking God, drawing close to him. Now I am free, and so grateful for my freedom. But I miss being so completely dependent on God and want to recapture the desperate seeking I had then.
MOST OF THIS BOOK has been a story about one man in a cell. But in truth there was something much bigger going on: God’s story.
From the beginning—before the beginning—God was setting things up, like the ultimate Grandmaster chess player. Can it be a coincidence that Philip Kosnett, the chargé d’affaires at the embassy in Ankara during most of my imprisonment, happens to be a member of our home church in a small town in North Carolina? Or that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a member of my denomination? And that Vice President Mike Pence was attending one of its churches, where the pastor prayed every Sunday for my release? Or that Jay Sekulow, who as head of the ACLJ had taken on my case, then became one of President Trump’s attorneys? Yes, I had become a pawn, but the Grandmaster was on my side.
It may be a miracle that I was released, but I think it was an even greater miracle that so much was done to release me. I am still amazed at the unprecedented steps that my government took. It was the first time they imposed trade sanctions or used the Magnitsky Act on a NATO ally. The policy on Syria was affected. Congressmen and congresswomen, two thirds of the Senate, European parliamentarians—they all advocated on my behalf. There were other countries involved as well—Mauritania, Sudan, Hungary, Israel, Monaco, Canada, the UK—all asking for the release of a Christian pastor whom nobody had ever heard of.
All of this was necessary, because it took unprecedented steps to pry me out of Turkey. There was no guarantee that I would be freed. We learned that even on the night before the last day of trial, with the Turkish economy battered and the threat of more sanctions if my case were not resolved, the Turkish government demanded that the US pay $1.9 billion for my release. They were turned down flat.
I believe so many intervened on my behalf because all over the world Christians were praying for me as I was held hostage. Some have said I was the most prayed for man in the world. I don’t know if this was the case, and certainly while in prison I did not have the wider view of what was going on; although Norine told me, I was too overwhelmed by my circumstances to take it in. But even as the chants filled my cell at Sakran, so too, the church of Jesus Christ raised a powerful voice to heaven that would change everything, starting with my heart. Night and day, God’s people cried out their distress in prayer, even when I could not. I continue to be astounded that so many prayed for so long and with such intensity.
Why? Most prisoners do not receive this kind of attention; many are unknown except in heaven.
One of the main reasons is that now there are millions of people who have prayed for Turkey, who have that country on their radar. This was God’s plan all along. My assignment had been to help prepare for a spiritual harvest. Prison did not cut short my assignment, it served it in the most effective way. God used my imprisonment to orchestrate an unprecedented worldwide prayer movement. I rode a wave of prayer out of Turkey. But a tsunami of prayer from God’s people has crashed into Turkey, and this is going to bring great blessing to its people.
A Turkish believer said, “The whole world is praying for us with a single voice—imagine what we can do with all that prayer.”
That God had a master plan also provides the best explanation for why things went so completely wrong on the two dates I thought God had set for freeing me. It is only with hindsight, access to my journals, and comparing notes with Norine, that I have begun to understand what happened. After returning to the States I was startled to read in my Harmandali journal that just a few days before I was sent to Sakran Prison the thought kept going through my mind: Are you willing to stay if it will bring greater glory? And I said, Yes. So, on December 12, 2016, instead of being set free a court confirmed I should be kept in prison.
As for May 22, 2017, the two governments did in fact reach an agreement on this date I had received in a dream sixty-eight days earlier. But the next day—when she was supposed to be getting ready to go—Norine woke up with a song playing in her mind: “I Surrender All.” And so she did. The day after this Turkey pulled out of the agreement. Something like this happened several other times. We think it is possible that God would have shortened the imprisonment, but because we were willing to surrender—although without knowing what we were surrendering to—he extended it in order to raise up this movement of prayer. It is as if God were saying, “I can take you out now, but if you stay I will do a greater work.” Now I realize what a privilege God gave me.
Norine told me a number of times, “If we are faithful with this, and go through in the right way, we will say we have no regrets because of what it will accomplish.”
We have no regrets.
I WAS ERDOGAN’S HOSTAGE, but only until God accomplished what he intended to through my imprisonment.
And then, at the right time, God kept his word—the word he gave to me right before all of this started, the word I clung to throughout my imprisonment. It’s time to come home.
He brought me home.