"I want to go to Iran, meet some of the Christians and write about it," I proclaimed cheerfully in the office. I was still relatively new to working for the persecuted Christians, so the boss smiled and explained to me that it was too dangerous to go to Iran for mission work. If I was just a tourist, it would be relatively safe, but on a work trip it was not. I took his words at face value and instead started contacting some of the Iranians who had fled to the West to hear their stories about being a Christian in Iran.
Along the way, I began to realize why it made sense not to go to Iran and interview local Christians.
"I wish I could sit on the street and talk to people about faith, read my Bible in public and just be free," says Babak*, whose encounter with Christianity started when he happened to find his older brother's hidden Bible. He was a secret Christian and took Babak to church. The older brother was trained by people from the Danish European Mission's partner ELAM, and traveled around Iran to support churches and train new Christians.
"But he was arrested and then our father found out he was a Christian. He was furious and my older brother fled the country to get away from his anger. When I became a Christian, my father took it more gently so as not to lose his other son too. Instead, he tried a new tactic. He wanted me to practice the faith for myself. It was okay that I had become a Christian, read the Bible at home, prayed and lived as a Christian at home - just not in public."
Things were going well until Babak took the same course as his older brother.
"When I came home, I was so fired up and burning to tell people about Jesus. I was walking the streets, talking to people, praying for them and doing missions. I kept waiting for something bad to happen and for us to be arrested, but it didn't happen. I also started talking about faith and reading the Bible with my mom. She came to faith and slowly it spread in the family. Little by little, my sister-in-law, my brother, my cousin, his wife, one of my brother's friends and more came to listen, sing and pray together. We started meeting at home and eventually we were 10 people in our house church. When it was just my mom and I who believed, my dad used to take a walk every time we started singing or reading the Bible. But when our family started coming in such large numbers and the church grew, he got scared. He didn't dare go out and while we were reading, worshipping or praying, he was constantly checking the windows. He made sure they were tightly closed for fear that we would be discovered. But sometimes he would also interject or repeat some of the Islamic philosophers' points."
In time, his father also accepted Jesus, so now Babak's entire immediate family are Christians. They came together in the house church, but there was always a risk that the government would find them and arrest them.
"We tried to be as careful as possible while sharing the gospel. When I came back from the course, I knew there was a chance I would be arrested and lose my freedom - and maybe my life. But when you have such a small group that fears and is pressured by those outside, you become closer inward. When we worshiped or read the Bible, God touched us. God did something to us in our little church. He moved us. The body of God is something special. When you are persecuted, you focus on God - because He is the only thing and the center. In the West, there is not the same persecution and that makes some Christians focus less on the center. In Iran, when you are persecuted, you only hold on to the one central thing, because you can only depend on God," says Babak, who after a few years had to flee Iran. Now he teaches Christian Iranian leaders from abroad and tries to give them tools to reach people with the Gospel.
He does this together with his colleague Rahim*, who focuses on discipleship and training of new Christians.
"Many of the new Christians come out of the country for a short course where I, Babak and some others teach them about the Gospel, the Holy Spirit, evangelism and especially discipleship. There is a great need for equipping and training the new Christians. Inside Iran, there are no Bible schools and few opportunities for physical fellowship between Christians, so we find other ways to teach and connect with them. But it's difficult, and Christian leaders in Iran often have to refrain from having contact with each other to protect their church networks. This is to prevent the intelligence services from finding them all if they find one church," explains Rahim, who himself is on the intelligence blacklist and will be arrested if he sets foot on Iranian soil.
Rahim became a Christian in an officially registered Protestant church, but almost all of them have been closed by the government in recent years. This has instead accelerated the spread of underground churches, of which the vast majority of Christians in Iran are a part.
"Without the official churches and frameworks, it has become more difficult and risky to train the new Christians. But it's so important that this happens, because when Muslims come to faith, they have a lot of problems and challenges from their previous lives. There's a lot in their lives that needs to be healed and worked on - pastoral care, spiritual struggles, inner healing, relationships, sin - which is why discipleship and training is so important. But when the older Christians help and lead the younger ones, we see great results."
As new Christians learn more and more about Jesus, they often become more active in evangelism and church planting. With increased activity often comes increased pressure from the government. Rahim experienced this too.
"I had lived a quiet life in the early years of my Christian life, but when I came back after a course with ELAM, I became active in evangelism and started leading a house church and planting new ones. That changed my situation and the intelligence services came after me. That's how it is in Iran - the government goes after the active Christians, those who maybe lead a house church, evangelize or distribute Bibles. And then they go after them."
Rahim's family was also harassed by the government because of their son's faith, so when Rahim was getting married, they were banned from leaving the country and Rahim had to get married without his parents.
"It's terrible not to be able to go back to your home country and I would have loved to have my parents at the wedding. It's hard, but that's the way it is. I love doing mission in Iran and I loved it when I was there. When you do God's will, you are persecuted. Some even strive for persecution, but that's not the point. But if you know you're doing God's will and you're being persecuted because of it, then it's okay. When hard times come, you really feel God's grace and love - and that's enough for me. When you're close to God, it's worth all the persecution and suffering," he tells me with a look that I've seen in many of the persecuted Christians I've spoken to. Knowing Jesus is worth it all - imprisonment, suffering, firings and ultimately death.
Reza is now an old man, and he became a Christian in Iran more than 40 years ago. All these years he has worked to grow the Kingdom of God in Iran. At the same time, the government has tried to stop the growth by persecuting Christians. But to no avail.
"Persecution is meant to stop people from coming to faith. And it also creates fear. It does. But it also creates a unity in suffering for Iranian Christians. And despite the persecution, there is revival in Iran. But it has been a long time coming. In the first years after the Islamic revolution in 1979, 8 Christians gave their lives for Jesus. They paid the price and became martyrs. Persecution doesn't lead to revival, but it gives both perseverance and opportunities to share the gospel," says Reza, before his British colleague Charlotte* adds.
"When Christians are willing to suffer for their faith, friends and family become aware of them and what their faith means to them. It makes them question what is so important about Jesus that the Christian will go to prison with him. It opens up conversations, faith walk and evangelization. And then the persecution gives the Christian an intimacy with Jesus and a dependence on him," she says, before Reza speaks again.
"There are no problems evangelizing in Iran - if you don't evangelize, it's because you're lazy," says Reza with a smile.
"About 80-90% of the New Testaments handed out on the street in Iran are received. And if you have the time and resources to stay with all the recipients, half of them would come to faith. But the question is, do you have the time and resources to train them all? And do you even have the opportunity to stay there long enough? Often you don't, because then you will be persecuted and the government will arrest you. There is an opening for the gospel in Iran and God is working here. But Muslims need to hear the Word of Jesus. This is also true in Denmark, the UK and the rest of the world. People need to hear about Jesus, get to know him and see that he is their savior," emphasizes Reza, who has been wanted by Iranian intelligence for many years.
"In Iran, one of the ways to be in mission is to actually be in opposition to the government. The Iranian government is a clergy and the state is an Islamic police state, so if I publicly stand up for my faith, I'm going directly against them. Everyone knows that it's dangerous to be a Christian in Iran, and when a non-believing Iranian meets a Christian who says Come and follow Jesusit does something to them and challenges them. Because either they think he's crazy or he's experienced something so amazing that it's worth investigating and following."
Believing in Jesus in Iran is an open declaration of war against the government and it attracts attention. But it also brings persecution and hundreds of Christians are arrested every year. Some are simply brought in for questioning and released shortly after, while others are scarred for life by their encounter with the heavy-handed Iranian intelligence service.
"They laid me down and whipped me. They hit me on the head and regularly threatened me with execution during the interrogation. The interrogation took a total of 29 days," says Mostafa about his time in prison.
"Once a week I got 10 minutes of fresh air and once a week I got a five-minute shower. My cell was 2×1.5 meters and the toilet was also in there. There was one light bulb in the ceiling that lit up around the clock, so I couldn't have privacy or sleep. While I was in prison, I could hear them beating one of the other Christians in a neighboring cell," says Nader.
When Christians are arrested, the court sets unrealistically high bail requirements, so families have to go into debt to get their family members out. And when they get out of jail, the harassment continues.
"The secret service kept calling me, my family and my friends and harassing us. They harassed everyone I was in contact with, and they also called my work and pressured my boss and colleagues. I realized that it wasn't safe for me to have contact with anyone," says Ladan about the time after her release. Some time later, she fled Iran.
The intelligence services are always on the lookout for Christian house churches, evangelists and leaders, while official Iran puts pressure on all aspects of life. A Christian convert was given the choice by the judge in a divorce case to renounce his faith and gain custody of his daughter. The Christian mother refused and the father got the daughter. Mother and daughter have not seen each other for 7 years.
But not all Christians who are picked up by the intelligence services ever make it into the official system. Hamid* was on his way home from work, but he never made it to the house. On the road was a black car with tinted windows.
"A handful of men came out of the car, blindfolded me, tied me up and threw me into the car. All the way in the car they beat me. They were shouting in my face and I was so shocked I couldn't even think. I didn't know where they were taking me, but maybe it was a prison, a police station or a secret place for the secret service. I could hear a lot of people shouting, screaming and making noise, but I was blindfolded and couldn't see anything. I was still being beaten, and although they took few breaks, they kept coming back to beat me. For the first few hours, I wasn't asked anything, but the agents said I was a Christian and continued to beat me. I was accused of being a spy for Israel and a missionary in Iran who wanted to trick people into becoming Christians. I denied being a spy, a liar or a Christian, but it made no difference. They claimed they had movies and pictures of me and continued to beat me up. Finally, they forced me to sign three pieces of white paper. I signed, and then they could fill out the accusation themselves afterwards," says Hamid as he shows me the scars on his body.
When the agents finished with him, they dropped him off on an unfinished road outside the city. He didn't dare go to the hospital because he was afraid they would report him when they saw the wounds on his body. So they had to heal on their own. When Hamid was reunited with his wife, they immediately fled Iran.
This is the reality in a country where Christians are growing in numbers but still make up less than 1 % of the population. The government pressures and persecutes Christians, but the mission does not seem to be succeeding as evangelization continues and the church grows. Persecution is part of life as a Christian in Iran, but it's all worth it when it's for the sake of Jesus. This is the message from the Iranian Christians, and it must challenge us here in Denmark. After all, persecution is also part of being a Christian everywhere on earth, isn't it?
I'm still chewing on that question, but I have realized one thing. That with such an aggressive intelligence service, it's probably very sensible that my boss didn't let me go to Iran to interview the ever-increasing number of Christians. Fortunately, I can still pray for the Iranian church and try to support it from the outside, as Babak, Rahim, Reza, Charlotte and many others do. The church needs support because Iranians need the gospel.
This is the clear message of the exiled Iranians, and no one said it as sharply as Rahim:
"Jesus knew he had to die on the cross for all of us. I knew I had to give my life to mission for God - so that Iranians can meet Him! I have so many friends that I want to help - help them to Jesus. There are so many amazing people in Iran who have a difficult life - both because of the government, but also because of Islam. When you come to the light from the darkness, you want to go back into the darkness and conquer it with the light. I want all the Iranian people to experience freedom in Jesus - but for that, they need to hear about him."
Pray for Iran and for the Iranian Christians. Pray that the revival will continue and that Christians will have the endurance to persevere.
*Names have been changed for security reasons.
