CHAPTER FOURTEEN: FUTURE HEADLINE

MUSLIMS TURN TO CHRIST IN RECORD NUMBERS

Charles Sennott was the Middle East bureau chief for the Boston Globe from 1997 to 2001. As he left that role to cover events in Europe, he published a book that became a best seller in the Boston area entitled The Body and the Blood: The Middle East’s Vanishing Christians and the Possibility for Peace.

The book purported to document “the dramatically diminishing Christian presence” in the Middle East, a veritable “Christian exodus” that has left the Christian community there “withering” and “imperiled” in the face of war, persecution, and radical Islam. “What will happen if those [Christian] ideas and those institutions are abandoned, if they become barren, empty, echoing halls of the past?” Sennott asked. “Is Christianity truly going to die out in the land where it began?”306

The Christian Science Monitor called the book “a powerful and moving narrative. . . . Valuable and timely, it illuminates the human struggles while providing the in-depth historical context essential to understanding today’s conflicts.” Foreign Affairs called the book a “touching account of a venerable community whose numbers are sharply declining.” The Hartford Courant called it “profound and moving . . . a major achievement of insight, understanding, and interpretation.”307

Sennott’s book on the potentially imminent death of Christianity echoes a prevailing media worldview. “Christians Leaving Middle East,” declared a CNN headline.³⁰⁸ “Christians Quit Christ’s Birthplace,” proclaimed the BBC.³⁰⁹ A National Public Radio story talked of “the dwindling number of Christians in the Middle East.”³¹⁰ A Denver Post article claimed that “once significant Christian communities” in the Middle East “have shrunk to a miniscule portion of their former robust selves” and “in 50 years they may well be extinct.”³¹¹ An article in the Guardian newspaper in London suggested the Christians of the Middle East have become “an endangered species.”³¹² A story in the Toronto Sun suggested that “a time might come, unless the political situation dramatically improves, when Christian communities of the Middle East no longer exist.”³¹³

This Christianity-is-dying theme is complemented by the Islam-is-taking-over-the-world theme, so fashionable in academic and media circles over the past decade. In his 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, for example, Samuel P. Huntington argued that the percentage of Christians in the world will fall sharply in the twenty-first century and will be overtaken by the explosive growth of Muslims. “In the long run,” wrote Huntington, “Mohammed wins out.”³¹⁴ CNN, meanwhile, called Islam the world’s “fastest-growing religion.”³¹⁵ PBS called Islam “the world’s fastest growing faith.”³¹⁶ If you do a Google search of Islam and fastest-growing religion, you will find dozens of Muslim Web sites that abound with similar quotes from sources ranging from ABC News to Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes to USA Today.³¹⁷

There is just one problem with such stories. They are not quite accurate. Not anymore, at least.

THE BIG (UNTOLD) STORY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The War of Gog and Magog, as we have seen, will bring about a shattering of radical Islam that will trigger a spiritual crisis for Muslims all around the world as they see, to their shock, the hand of the God of Israel defending—not demolishing—the Jewish people. The soul-searching that results will be intense. As they monitor saturation coverage on radio, television, and the Internet, Muslims will hear followers of Christ explaining what will happen and why, and they will see the prophecies of the Bible—not the Koran—coming true before their own eyes. What’s more, they will see the power of the God of the Bible displayed before the eyes of the world.

In the process, many will realize for the first time that Jesus Christ did, in fact, die on the cross for them. He also rose again for them—to give them assurance of salvation, a place in heaven for eternity, and an abundant, joyful life here on earth, if they will only receive his free gift of salvation. When that happens, Muslims will turn to Jesus Christ en masse.

But even today, an exciting and dramatic spiritual revolution that is being completely missed by the mainstream media is under way throughout the Islamic world. The big (untold) story in the Middle East is that more Muslims are turning to Christ today than at any other time in human history, and much of it has happened since 9/11.

Over the past several years, I have had the privilege of interviewing more than three dozen Arab and Iranian pastors and Christian leaders throughout North Africa, the Middle East, and central Asia. In sharp contrast to the picture the media is painting, the picture they present is one of Christianity being dramatically resurrected in the lands where the Bible was written.

While I was writing this book, for instance, my wife and kids and I lived for two months in Egypt, where scores of Arabs are coming to Christ in the most amazing ways. During our time there we visited the largest church of born-again believers in the Middle East, which meets in a cave on the outskirts of Cairo beside what is known as the “garbage village.” Some 10,000 new and growing believers worship there every weekend. In May of 2005, more than 20,000 Arab believers gathered for a day of prayer for their unsaved Muslim friends to become followers of Christ. The event was broadcast throughout the Middle East on a Christian satellite-television network, allowing millions more to see God powerfully at work.

This extraordinary church ministry began in 1972 when a young Egyptian businessman named Farahat lost an $11,000 watch and was stunned when a garbageman found it and gave it back to him.

“Why didn’t you take the watch for yourself?” Farahat asked.

“My Christ told me to be honest until death,” replied the man, dressed in filthy rags.

“You are a Christian?” Farahat asked.

The garbageman said he was.

“I didn’t know Christ at the time,” Farahat would later tell a reporter, “but I told him that I saw Christ in him. I told the garbage collector, ‘Because of what you have done and your great example, I will worship the Christ you are worshiping.’”318

Over the next few years, Farahat began to study the Bible and grow in his faith, but when the garbageman asked Farahat to help him reach his fellow garbage collectors for Christ, Farahat always said he was too busy. For the next two years, in fact, the man begged him to come and start a church among his friends, but Farahat resisted.

Finally, in 1974, Farahat visited the garbage village outside of Cairo and couldn’t believe what he found. He had never seen (or smelled) anything like it before—a series of rickety concrete tenement buildings built over massive dumps where men, women, and even the smallest children sift through thousands of tons of trash, sorting bottles, cans, glassware, and other goods for recycling and looking for items of even miniscule value to be sold for cash or bartered for food or clothing. There was no running water, no electricity, and no hope. Many turned to alcohol, drugs, gambling, and prostitution to find some meager escape from the deeply depressing environment. But even more appalling to Farahat were the numbers. Somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 people were living amid the most gut-wrenching squalor he could possibly imagine.

The more Farahat and his wife, Su’aad, saw, the more they found themselves gripped by the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:3: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (NASB), and the words of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 4:13, “We have become as the scum of the world, the dregs of all things” (NASB). Soon a small ministry was born. Farahat and his wife began preaching the gospel in the garbage village and caring for people’s spiritual and material needs, and people started turning to Christ in droves.

In 1978, Farahat was officially ordained by the Coptic (Orthodox) Church, and he became known as Father Sama’an. The congregation met in a cave in the Muqattam Mountains beside the garbage village. By 1993, they had to expand the cave to fit all the new believers and seekers who wanted to attend. What they have now is an amazing testimony to God’s grace in a region where many believe Christianity is dying.

My wife and kids and I visited the garbage village. We also toured the cave that houses the church facilities with a man who told us how he had been an alcoholic and hashish user until he heard Father Sama’an preach. He gave his life to Christ in 1992. You should have heard the passion in his voice and seen the gleam in his eyes. He had been at the bottom of the barrel, and now he was on top of the world. And he was the first to tell us: only the love and power of Jesus Christ had made the difference.

Such stories of lives transformed are spreading throughout Egypt and North Africa. Despite government restrictions and Muslim attacks against churches and believers, Christianity there is growing like wildfire. “I’ve never seen such hunger for God’s Word and the message of Jesus as I do today,” one North African Arab Christian leader told me.

In 1996 the Egyptian Bible Society sold just 3,000 video copies of the JESUS film, based on the Gospel of Luke and produced in the late 1970s by Warner Brothers and Campus Crusade for Christ. In 1997 the Bible Society decided to sell the videos at the famed Cairo International Book Fair. Sales surged to 35,000 in just a few weeks. In 2000 the group sold 600,000 copies of the JESUS film and a children’s version of the video. Today annual sales top 750,000 copies of the Bible on audiocassette, 200,000 to 300,000 full Bibles, and between 300,000 and 500,000 New Testaments.319

“We don’t give these away,” one Bible Society leader told me. “We don’t charge a lot, but we charge something, and many, many people are buying them. Think about what that means. . . . Egyptians certainly don’t have the money or the interest to buy a Bible or a JESUS film or any other piece of Christian literature unless they are really serious about finding God. I believe these sales are leading indicators of growing spiritual interest throughout this country, and particularly among Coptic Christians, of which there are some ten million. . . . There is a revival going on among Orthodox Christians.”

CHRISTIANITY SURGING ACROSS NORTH AFRICA

Egypt is not alone.

When I was in Casablanca and Rabat in 2005, I found the Moroccan media up in arms about the “phenomenon of Moroccans converting to Christianity.” Newspaper and magazine articles estimated that 25,000 to 40,000 Muslims have become followers of Jesus Christ in recent years. These numbers are overstated, church leaders in the country tell me, but the fact that they are being published and widely discussed says a lot about the dynamic that is at work and how rapidly the church is growing there.320

The government of Morocco—which has long worked to prevent missionaries and Bibles, JESUS films, and other Christian materials from entering the country—has begun taking a series of small but important steps to reach out to evangelicals and to project an image of religious openness. In 2004, for example, top officials began an ongoing dialogue with Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals and Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council, among others. In 2005, King Mohammed VI invited American evangelist Josh McDowell and other Christian leaders and musicians for a series of high-level talks, public-speaking events, and even a Christian concert in Marrakech. The concert alone attracted more than 80,000 Moroccan young people, and a similar event was held in May of 2006.

When I visited with Ahmed Kostas, an aide to the king, in his office at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs in Rabat, he insisted that the kingdom was opening up and becoming more friendly to Christians. “You can buy The Passion of the Christ in shops all over Morocco. Moroccans can watch Christian television on their satellite dishes. We don’t care what people watch. They can see whatever they want. They can choose whatever they want. . . . [In the past] the West has tried to force Christianity on us—it’s the feeling of force that is the real tension.”321

“What about efforts by Arab and Western Christians to get more Bibles and Christian literature into Morocco?” I asked.

“Officially, it’s not a concern,” he said. “But the way it is done is. . . . The big concern is any activities that cause unrest.”

“You’re worried that public, visible efforts to promote Christianity in Morocco will infuriate radical fundamentalists, who could cause trouble for the regime?” I pressed.

“We don’t want anything that causes unrest.”

A few months later I met with Mr. Kostas’s boss, Dr. Ahmed Abaddi, who was appointed by the king to serve as Morocco’s director of Islamic affairs, responsible for overseeing the country’s 33,000 mosques. Abaddi, a soft-spoken, gentle-mannered former professor of comparative religion, told me that the king wants to build bridges of friendship with evangelical Christians in the United States because he knows the “real” America is not Hollywood and the pornography industry but people of faith. “Historically, it has been the Christians who have held America together,” Abaddi said. “Anyone who traces the history of America knows that evangelicals are behind it.”³²²

The king also wants all Moroccans—and particularly his country’s Islamic leaders—to develop more friendly relations with Christians, Abaddi explained. “We need our people to know the real West, to understand that the West ain’t no angel, but it ain’t no demon either.”

Why would Morocco reach out to evangelicals, though, when one of the central goals of such Christians is to evangelize, a practice frowned upon in his country? Abaddi said evangelicals are “gentlemen” whom you can trust. “We are trying to reach out to the real America. . . . Evangelicals are serious people, helpful people.”

Abaddi acknowledged that the idea of Muslims converting to Christianity is a very sensitive subject in his country. But he also told me that he had recently published a book in Lebanon about the importance of encouraging religious freedom within Islam and even suggested that “Muslims have the right to change their religion,” if they so desire.

Unfortunately, not all leaders in the region are as open as Dr. Abaddi and his colleagues. The church is growing as never before all across North Africa, and most Muslim leaders are up in arms.

In neighboring Algeria—the birthplace of St. Augustine but for many centuries almost devoid of a Christian presence—more than 80,000 Muslims have become followers of Christ in recent years.323 The situation has become so alarming to Islamic clerics that in March of 2006, Algerian officials passed a law banning Muslims from becoming Christians or even learning about Christianity. Christians trying to share their faith with Muslims face two to five years in jail and fines of 5,000 to 10,000 euros for “trying to call on a Muslim to embrace another religion.” In a move to stamp out the rapidly growing house-church movement, the law also forbids Christians from meeting together in any building without a license from the government.³²⁴

In Sudan, meanwhile, one of the biggest stories in modern Christendom is unfolding—a spiritual awakening of almost unimaginable proportions amid civil war, radical Islam, rampant persecution, and outright genocide. More than one million Sudanese have turned to Christ just since the year 2000—and not in spite of persecution, war, and genocide but because of them. “People see what radical Islam is like,” one Sudanese Christian leader told me, “and they want Jesus instead.”³²⁵

When Sudan received independence in 1956, there were only five or six born-again Anglican priests in the entire country. Today there are some 3,500, caring for more than 5 million followers of Christ affiliated with the Anglican Church alone. Other denominations are also growing rapidly. “The growth of the church is really tremendous,” says Daniel Bul, bishop of the Episcopal Church of Sudan. “We hope . . . in the southern Sudan . . . everybody is going to be a Christian.”³²⁶

Muslim clerics throughout the region have been watching this dramatic movement toward Christianity for some time and have been horrified. Now the trend is rapidly accelerating.

In 1993, a Saudi sheikh by the name of Salman Al-Odeh delivered a sermon entitled “Christian Missionaries Sweeping the Islamic World.” He argued that “in Spain [Christians] have the biggest center of missionaries to Africa. They are trained really well and their efforts lead many Moroccans to convert.” He then cited the World Christian Encyclopedia—which he described as a “dangerous survey”—and warned his fellow Muslims that “the number of Christians in Africa was 9 million only in 1900 A.D., or 9 percent of the whole population. In the year 1980 they became 200 million! They jumped from 9 to 200 million in 80 years [and the survey’s authors] expected them to reach 390 million in the year 2000, or 48 percent of the whole population of Africa.”327

Eight years later, in December 2001, Sheikh Ahmad Al Qataani, another leading Saudi cleric, appeared on a live interview on Aljazeera satellite television to confirm that, sure enough, Muslims were turning to Jesus in alarming numbers. “In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity,” Al Qataani warned. “Every day, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity.”

Stunned, the interviewer interrupted the cleric. “Hold on! Let me clarify. Do we have 6 million converting from Islam to Christianity or converting from Islam and other religions?”

Al Qataani repeated his assertion.

“So 6 million Muslims a year convert?” said the interviewer.

“Every year,” the cleric confirmed, adding, “a tragedy has happened.”³²⁸

GOD AT WORK IN CENTRAL ASIA

God is also on the move in central Asia, and Muslims there are turning to Christ in record numbers.

Before September 11, 2001, there were only seventeen known followers of Christ in all of Afghanistan. Today Afghan Christian leaders tell me there are more than 10,000 believers in the country, and Afghan Muslims are open to hearing the gospel message like never before. Dozens of baptisms occur every week. People are snatching up Bibles and other Christian books as fast as they can be printed or brought into the country. The JESUS film was even shown on television in one city before police shut down the entire TV station.

The enormous controversy over the case of Abdul Rahman, a Muslim convert to Christianity facing execution for apostasy by a court in Kabul, became the talk of the nation in the spring of 2006, with saturation coverage by Afghani TV, radio, and newspapers. The event shined a huge spotlight on the fact that Afghans are turning to Christ in such numbers that Islamic leaders are furious. It also showed the fledgling Afghan church that fellow believers around the world are praying for them and eager to see them grow and flourish.

By God’s grace, and with pressure from American, Canadian, British, Italian, and other leaders, the case against Rahman was dropped. He was set free and left the country.

But persecution of believers in Afghanistan has hardly diminished. Just days after Rahman’s release, two more Afghani believers were arrested, and according to the Compass Direct News service and Open Doors International, a Christian ministry to the “closed” countries of the Middle East, “One young Afghan convert to Christianity was beaten severely outside his home by a group of six men, who finally knocked him unconscious with a hard blow to his temple. He woke up in the hospital two hours later but was discharged before morning.” Compass and Open Doors also reported that “several other Afghan Christians have been subjected to police raids on their homes and places of work in the past month, as well as to telephone threats.”329

Yet none of this has stopped the Afghan church from growing. “God is moving so fast in Afghanistan, we’re just trying to keep up,” one Afghani believer told me. “The greatest need now is leadership development. We need to train pastors to care for all these new believers.”³³⁰

Afghanistan is not alone.

As I mentioned earlier in this book, I went to Alma-Ata (now Almaty), a city in southern Kazakhstan, near the Chinese border, on a missions trip in 1986. At the time there were no known Kazakh believers in Christ in a country of some 15 million people. By 1990, there were only three known believers. But today evangelical leaders in the country report that there are more than 15,000 Kazakh Christians and more than 100,000 Christians of all ethnicities.

On that same trip, I went to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. At the time, there were only a handful of Uzbek believers in a country of 27 million people. Today there are some 30,000 Uzbek followers of Christ, and hunger for the gospel is at an all-time high.

While these may seem like small numbers in comparison to the overall populations of these Muslim countries, the immensity of their importance cannot be overstated. These are historic developments, unprecedented in the fourteen hundred years since the Islamic religion was founded, especially when one considers the tremendous social, religious, legal, and economic persecution faced by Muslim converts from Islam. In many of these countries, a new believer in Christ risks being ostracized from his or her family, fired from a job, attacked verbally and physically by Islamic fundamentalists, imprisoned by authorities, and even executed.

INSIDE THE FIRES OF IRAQ

In Iraq, the hunger for Christ is also at an all-time high, say Iraqi pastors and other Arab Christian leaders who have been inside the country.

More than one million Arabic New Testaments and Christian books have been shipped into Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. More are being printed inside the country, and pastors say they cannot keep up with the demand. What’s more, Iraqis today are turning to Christ in numbers unimaginable at any point during Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror.

Iraqi general Georges Sada, who in addition to serving as a senior advisor to Iraq’s president has served as president of the National Presbyterian Church in Baghdad and chairman of the Assembly of Iraqi Evangelical Presbyterian Churches, says that at least 5,000 Iraqis have publicly identified themselves as new followers of Christ just since the fall of Saddam Hussein. The number of secret believers may be much higher, he told me, since conditions are not yet safe enough in the country for all believers to gather together for worship and prayer.

The Kurds in the north of Iraq are especially receptive to the gospel message and are converting to Christianity “by the hundreds,” Sada reports. One evangelical church recently started in Kurdistan now has more than 800 people worshipping there every week, most of whom are new converts from Islam. What’s more, Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Irbil, has vowed to protect the ancient Assyrian Christian community there as well as new followers of Christ from persecution and violence. Sada and Dr. Terry Law, president of World Compassion, a Christian relief organization based in Oklahoma, met with Barzani in May of 2006. “I would rather see a Muslim become a Christian than a radical Muslim,” Barzani told them, an absolutely remarkable statement by a Muslim leader in a land racked by sectarian violence.331

Despite the fact that numerous Iraqi churches have been firebombed and converts from Islam have been attacked and killed, at least fourteen new evangelical churches have opened in Baghdad alone since the war. Other evangelical congregations are forming all around the country, some with as many as 500 to 600 people attending every Sunday. In 2004–2005, more than 160 Iraqi believers began training to become new pastors and lay leaders. Iraqis are also flooding back into the ancient Christian churches.

“Catholic and Orthodox Christian priests are seeing their faith in Christ revitalized,” one Iraqi pastor, who asked not to be named, told me. “They want to see their churches restored to the first-century kind of activity—evangelism, discipleship, and miracles.”³³²

Why such spiritual hunger? Every Iraqi Christian I have interviewed has given me the same two answers: war and persecution.

“The security in Iraq is deteriorating,” explained one of the leaders of the Iraqi evangelical movement over breakfast, “but the ministry is increasing compared to any time in church history. It’s not that complicated really, Joel. When human beings are under threat, they look for a strong power to help them—a refuge. Iraqis look around and when they see believers in Jesus enjoying internal peace during a time of such violence and fear, they want Jesus too.”³³³

But, I asked, how can you share your faith and lead people to Christ with all the suicide bombings, car bombings, snipers, and other troubles?

“We’re doing what we can, and especially getting Bibles into the hands of people who want them,” he explained. “And people can now watch Christian preaching and teaching on satellite television and get our Bible studies and other materials off of the Internet. But the truth is, God is doing something else that is amazing.

“People are being healed. Many of them. We don’t have much experience with that but we’re seeing it happen anyway. . . . And that’s not all. Muslims are seeing visions of Jesus Christ. He is coming to them and speaking to them, and they are repenting and giving their lives to him. Shiites! I’m talking about Shiite Muslims seeing visions of Jesus and becoming his followers. In fact, I actually haven’t personally met any Shiites who have come to Christ who were converted because someone shared the gospel with them. They have all come to faith through dreams and visions. They are coming to us already persuaded. Our job, then, is to help them study the Bible, meet other believers, and grow in their faith.”

This pastor was not alone in telling me about the enormous number of Muslims who are coming to Christ through dreams and visions. It is a message I heard from nearly every Middle East Christian leader that I interviewed. What’s more, they believe all this is a fulfillment of God’s message through the Hebrew prophet Joel and the apostle Peter. In Acts 2:17-20 Peter, quoting Joel 2:28-31, says, “‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams . . . before that great and glorious day of the LORD arrives.’”

One night in a Middle Eastern country I cannot name, I had dinner with an Iraqi pastor from Baghdad. I asked him to paint me a picture of what he was seeing God do in his country. He graciously agreed.

“You know, Joel, the best way to think about Iraq right now is to think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,” he said, referring to the famous story found in Daniel 3. “Remember, they were captives in Babylon, and they refused to bow down and worship the idol that King Nebuchadnezzar had built. So the king ordered that the fiery furnace be heated seven times hotter than usual, and then he threw the men in there. But when the king looked into the furnace, he was stunned. He asked his officials, ‘Didn’t I throw three men in there?’ And they said, ‘Certainly, O king.’ And then he said, ‘But look! I see four men walking around in there, without chains on their hands, and without being harmed—and the fourth is like a son of the gods!’

“This is what we are facing today. When you look at the news, you see Iraq on fire—seven times hotter than before—and that’s true. Things are very difficult. There is much violence and bloodshed. But that is only part of the story. That was the view from the outside. On the inside, it looked much different for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Yes, they were inside the flames. But they were also free, and they were walking with Jesus. That’s our situation today. For the first time in our lives, we are free, and Jesus is walking with us, guiding us, helping us be a blessing to our fellow Iraqis who need his love and his salvation so desperately. We couldn’t be more excited about the miracles God is doing here. We just ask the church outside to keep praying that we are brave enough and worthy enough to bear the name of Jesus.”334

THE PASSION IN PERSIA

Perhaps the most dramatic story unfolding in the Middle East is the explosion of Christianity inside Iran, arguably the most fiercely Islamic and diabolically anti-Christian country on the face of the planet, certainly on par with Saudi Arabia.

“In the last 20 years, more Iranians have come to Christ [than in] the last 14 centuries,” said Lazarus Yeghnazar, an Iranian-born evangelist now based in Great Britain. “We’ve never seen such phenomenal thirst. . . . I believe this phenomenon [will] snowball into a major avalanche. This is still a rain. This is not the avalanche coming . . . but it will be happening very, very soon.”³³⁵

At the time of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, there were only about 500 known Muslim converts to Jesus inside the country. By 2000, a survey of Christian demographic trends reported that there were 220,000 Christians inside Iran, of which between 4,000 and 20,000 were Muslim converts.³³⁶ But according to Iranian Christian leaders I interviewed for this book, the number of Christ followers inside their country has shot dramatically higher since 2000.

In fact, the head of one leading Iranian ministry, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, told me, “Based on all the things we are seeing inside Iran today, I personally believe that if every Iranian who secretly believes in Jesus could come forward right now and declare his or her faith publicly, the number would top a million.”337

Such numbers are impossible to verify given the current political conditions, but the trend lines are clear, and the increasingly panicked reaction of Iranian authorities in recent years does point to unprecedented growth of the Iranian church.

In April 2004, Iranian Shiite cleric Hasan Mohammadi delivered a stunning speech at a high school in Tehran. He urged the students to “safeguard your beloved Shiite faith” against the influence of the evangelicals and other so-called apostate religions, and warned, “Unfortunately, on average every day, fifty Iranian girls and boys convert secretly to Christian denominations in our country.”³³⁸

Mohammadi had been hired by the Ministry of Education to teach fundamental Shiite Islam to the country’s youth, who are increasingly dissatisfied with the Islamic Revolution and are looking elsewhere for fulfillment. But as one father whose son was in the audience told a reporter, Mohammadi “unknowingly admitted the defeat of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a theocratic regime in promoting its Islam.”

By September of that year, the Iranian regime had arrested eighty-six evangelical pastors and subjected them to extended interrogations and even torture.

In October 2004, Compass Direct reported that “a top [Iranian] official within the Ministry of Security Intelligence spoke on state television’s Channel 1, warning the populace against the many ‘foreign religions’ active in the country and pledging to protect the nation’s ‘beloved Shiite Islam’ from all outside forces.” The news service went on to report that this security official had helped interrogate ten of the arrested evangelical pastors, had complained that Christian activities in Iran had gone “out of control,” and was “insisting that their church do something to stop the flood of Christian literature, television, and radio programs targeting Iran.”³³⁹

The rise of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led to a dramatic acceleration of government-directed persecution of Iranian Christians—particularly pastors, many of whom have been arrested, interrogated, beaten, and even worse.

Compass Direct reported in November 2005:

An Iranian convert to Christianity was kidnapped last week from his home in northeastern Iran and stabbed to death, his bleeding body thrown in front of his home a few hours later. Ghorban Tori, 50, was pastoring an independent house church of covert Christians in Gonbad-e-Kavus, a town just east of the Caspian Sea along the Turkmenistan border. Within hours of the November 22 murder, local secret police arrived at the martyred pastor’s home, searching for Bibles and other banned Christian books in the Farsi language. By the end of the following day, the secret police had also raided the houses of all other known Christian believers in the city. According to one informed Iranian source, during the past eight days representatives of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) have arrested and severely tortured ten other Christians in several cities, including Tehran.340

Only a few days before the pastor’s murder, Ahmadinejad met with thirty provincial governors and vowed to shut down the country’s growing house-church movement, reportedly saying, “I will stop Christianity in this country.”³⁴¹

Nevertheless, evangelical leaders inside Iran say they are seeing Jesus’ words in Matthew 16:18 come true before their very eyes: “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (KJV).

“Before the [Islamic] Revolution, there was a very small response to the gospel,” one Iranian pastor told me. “In the summer of 1975, our ministry shared Christ with nearly 5,000 people. Only two people showed any interest. But [in 2005], 98 out of every 100 people we shared with showed interest, and we saw many decisions for Christ.”³⁴²

He added that a Farsi-language broadcasting ministry he works with received 50,000 calls in 2005 from Iranians wanting to receive Christ despite the fact that they had to make long-distance calls at their own expense, knowing the lines could be tapped and facing the threat of persecution, jail, and torture.

Radio and satellite-television evangelism ministries are big factors in getting the gospel to millions of Iranians who would otherwise have no access to the truth. And God is using other creative methods to reach Iranians as well. Back in 2003, for example, when Iranians heard that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was anti-Semitic, they couldn’t wait to see it. Neither, apparently, could the mullahs and the government authorities, thinking that anything negative about the Jews had to be good for Muslims. So despite the fact that Islam forbids the visual depiction of Jesus—and teaches that Judas was crucified in Jesus’ place, and thus was never resurrected—The Passion actually played in Persia. True, only one theater ran it. But there was a ten-day waiting list for tickets. What’s more, tens of thousands of bootlegged copies of The Passion are now circulating throughout Iran, and the official version is actually available in Iranian stores, as it is in most Muslim countries throughout the region.343

Ultimately, though, I’m told that many Iranians are not coming to Christ primarily through The Passion or the Jesus film or radio and satellite-TV ministries or even the work of the mushrooming house-church movement. These resources are vitally important. They are giving many unbelievers initial exposure to the gospel, and they are certainly strengthening the faith of new believers and those who have been following Christ for some time. But they are not enough to bring some Iranians to a point of decision. What is bringing these Iranians to Christ is dreams and visions of Jesus, just as in Iraq, though in much larger numbers.

As one Iranian pastor explained, “A factory manager recently showed up at a church. We didn’t need to share the gospel with him. We didn’t need to persuade him of anything, which was good, in a way, because many in our congregation are terrified to share their faith. But this man already believed because Jesus had spoken to him in a dream. In fact, he said that Jesus had been personally teaching him the way to follow him for two hours a day for an entire year. Now he finally had the courage to identify himself with other believers, and he wanted to worship Christ with us. It was amazing. But things like this are happening all the time in Iran.”344

In my third novel, The Ezekiel Option, I tell the story of two Christians driving through the mountains of Iran with a carful of Bibles. Suddenly their steering wheel jams and they have to slam on the brakes to keep from driving off the side of the road. When they look up, they see an old man knocking on their window asking if they have the books. “What books?” they ask. “The books Jesus sent me down here to get,” the old man replies.

He goes on to explain that Jesus recently came to him in a dream and told him to follow. When he awoke, he found out that everyone in his mountain village had had the same dream. They were all brand-new followers of Jesus, but they did not know what to do next. Then the old man had another dream in which Jesus told him to go down the mountain and wait by the road for someone to bring books that would explain how to be a Christian. He obeyed, and suddenly two men with a carful of Bibles have come to a stop right in front of him.

This was one of my favorite passages in The Ezekiel Option, but it’s not fiction. I didn’t make it up. It’s true. I got it directly from a dear friend of mine who is the head of a ministry in the Middle East. He personally knows the men involved. I simply asked if I could change their names for use in the novel, and my friend agreed.

Yet for all the good news that is happening in Iran today, it is just the beginning. The avalanche of God’s grace is coming, and it may be coming very soon. A few years ago, while I was writing The Ezekiel Option, my wife and I invited some friends to dinner, a dear couple; the wife is Iranian and a passionate Muslim convert to Christ. She had actually never heard of the War of Gog and Magog or the prophecies of Ezekiel 38–39. However, as she listened to me explain them, she said they struck her as very similar to a prophecy all the Iranian believers on the Internet were talking about from Jeremiah 49:34-39.

In “the last days,” Jeremiah says, God will scatter the people of Elam—ancient Iran—to “the four winds” and “there will be no nation to which the outcasts of Elam will not go” (NASB). Our friend explained that this is exactly what happened after the Islamic Revolution in 1979: Iranians found themselves scattered all over the world, unable to return home, and today the Persian diaspora tops 5 million. Next, the prophecy says God will bring his “fierce anger” against Elam “and destroy out of it king and princes” (Jeremiah 49:37, 38, NASB). But then, declares the Lord, “it will come about in the last days that I will restore the fortunes of Elam” (Jeremiah 49:39, NASB).

The buzz among Iranian Christians today is that this prophecy is about to be fulfilled, that the leaders and deputies of Iran will be destroyed by the God of the Bible, who will then pour out his Holy Spirit and bring the people of Persia into the Kingdom of Jesus Christ in a manner that will stun the world. What’s more, many believe this prophecy may be directly connected to the events of Ezekiel 38–39.

REACHING HAMAS FOR JESUS

There are many, many more wonderful stories of what Jesus is doing in the Middle East that I wish I could share with you, but space does not permit. As the apostle John once wrote, “Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25). Still, I would be remiss if I did not end this chapter with the amazing story of how one man set out to reach the leadership of Hamas for Jesus.

In October of 2004, my wife and I had the privilege of having lunch in Southern California with a man named Brother Andrew, one of the most remarkable missionaries of this century and the last.345 He is the founder of Open Doors International and the author of the mega–best seller God’s Smuggler, describing his efforts to penetrate the Evil Empire with the gospel. Brother Andrew is now the author (with Al Janssen) of a powerful and unforgettable book called Light Force: A Stirring Account of the Church Caught in the Middle East Crossfire, which describes his efforts to penetrate the Muslim world with the gospel.

What struck us first about meeting him in person—aside from what a kind and gentle and grandfatherly figure he has become—is the man’s boldness and incurable confidence. He doesn’t just say he believes in a God who can “open doors” to the most closed countries and the most closed hearts on earth. He really means it.

Over salads and iced tea, Andrew humbly told us how he personally shared the gospel with Yasser Arafat, with Islamic ayatollahs, and with Palestinian terrorists exiled to Lebanon. But the story that affected me most was about his unforgettable experience of preaching the gospel to four hundred Hamas leaders in Gaza City. I did not take notes at that lunch, so let me just quote here from Brother Andrew’s book.

“I can’t change the situation you face here in Gaza,” Brother Andrew told the Hamas leaders. “I can’t solve the problems you have with your enemies. But I can offer you the One who is called the Prince of Peace. You cannot have real peace without Jesus. And you cannot experience Him without forgiveness. He offers to forgive us of all our sins. But we cannot receive that forgiveness if we don’t ask for it. The Bible calls this repentance and confession of sin. If you want it, then Jesus forgives. He forgave me and made me a new person. Now I’m not afraid to die because my sins are forgiven and I have everlasting life.”346

Hearing the story, I felt both amazed at this man’s faith and ashamed at my own lack of faith. I had to confess to Brother Andrew that it had never dawned on me to pray for—much less preach the gospel to—Hamas leaders. But isn’t that what Jesus tells his followers to do—to love our enemies and bless those who persecute us? What made the story all the more remarkable was that rather than lynching Andrew for trying to convert them to Christ, the Hamas leaders actually invited him to speak to other Muslims.

“Andrew, I believe you know that I teach at the Islamic University,” said one. “To my knowledge, we have never had any lectures about Christianity. While you were talking, I was thinking that it would be helpful for our students to know about real Christianity. Would you consider coming to the university and giving a lecture about the differences between Christianity and Islam?”

Even the Palestinian Christian leaders who accompanied Brother Andrew to the event were taken aback.

“I think my God is too small,” said the head of the Palestinian Bible Society. “I never thought that a Christian could speak to radical, fanatical fundamentalists. But even if someone did have a chance, it never occurred to me that they would actually want to sit and listen to the gospel. Today God showed me how big He is.”

Such are not the stories being told by the mainstream media today, and they are only the beginning of what God will do in fulfillment of Ezekiel 38–39. But they raise an important question with which I would like to close this chapter.

How big is your God?