Nastaran is a mother of two who regularly receives a Christian magazine that contains stories from VOM’s Courageous series. Recently, her brother-in-law visited her home with his family, and her son read the story of Patrick to her nephew while excitedly showing him the magazine.
Read MoreFariba is married to a drug addict, and they have a teenage son. They live in a small room in a machine shop, and Fariba works long hours as a housecleaner to try to make ends meet. Desperate and hopeless, Fariba decided to commit suicide because she felt her life was worthless.
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Dr. Mike Ansari is the President of Heart 4 Iran, which partners with multiple Christian ministries to reach Iranian people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. He’ll explain what the inauguration of Ebrahim Raisi as the new president of Iran means for persecuted Christians and religious freedom. One of the greatest needs of the church in Iran is Bibles. Mike will tell how VOM is helping meet that need—and thank our listeners for giving to deliver Bibles into Iran. He’ll also talk about the benefits of delivering Bibles in digital form—which are much easier to hide and also to share with friends. You’ll learn about the need to train leaders for Iran’s growing church—and how Heart 4 Iran is encouraging new believers to share Christ and even plant their own house churches. Finally, Dr. Mike will equip us to pray for the nation of Iran and our Christian family members there. Learn more about delivering Bibles into Iran in this VOM Radio conversation with Joe and Dawn. Never miss an episode of VOM Radio! Subscribe to the podcast.
Read MoreWhen a team of evangelists went to a marketplace in Qom to share the gospel, they met a young boy who was selling socks in the bazaar. As they were talking with the boy, they discovered that he had a cellphone, so they gave him a micro-SD card loaded with Christian materials.
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Many Christians are afraid. They are afraid as they watch American culture and society continually turn away from the biblical teachings and Christian values they hold dear. They are afraid that the persecution our brothers and sisters face in nations like China, Nigeria, North Korea and Libya may soon be much more than something we read about. It may be the path that we — Christians in the “land of the free” — are called to walk. The problem with this attitude is that the Bible tells us not to be afraid. When communist authorities in Romania forced VOM’s founder, Richard Wurmbrand, into a van as he walked to church on Feb. 29, 1948, he had good reason to be afraid. Here’s how he recalls his thoughts that morning in his book In God’s Underground: I knew that I faced questioning, ill-treatment, possibly years of imprisonment and death, and I wondered if my faith was strong enough. I remembered then that in the Bible it is written 366 times — once for every day of the year — “Don’t be afraid!” 366 times, not merely 365, to account for leap year. And this was February 29 — a coincidence that
Read MoreThree Christian men who converted from Islam were recently sentenced to five years in prison after they refused to renounce Christ. In November of last year, Iranian authorities raided the homes of the three men and seized Bibles, cell phones and computers, ordering the men to stop all Christian activities.
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Every morning, Pastor Navid and his wife, Shadi, wake up knowing they could be behind bars by nightfall. In Iran, where authorities infiltrate house churches and tap believers’ phones, Christians must always be prepared for the possibility of arrest and imprisonment. For Navid and Shadi, however, the threat of imprisonment means little compared with their burden for those around them who don’t know Christ. Fortunately, the more they secretly share Christ in Iran, the more people they find who are ready to hear. Before the couple married, Navid witnessed firsthand the persecution of Christians by Iran’s authoritarian Islamic regime. While serving in seven different cities, including the capital, Tehran, he saw more than 40 Christians arrested. In one city, several Christians were arrested after the intelligence agency tapped a woman’s phone to identify local believers. In another city, Christians were arrested after a neighbor called police to report hearing Christian worship music. Elsewhere, someone pretended to be a Christian in order to infiltrate a house church. And at another location, a book of Christians’ names and church locations was stolen and given to police. Navid said the Christians he knows haven’t denied their faith when confronted by authorities. Most of
Read MoreNadia is a Christian who was concerned about her roommate’s health. Her roommate had been involved in occult and voodoo practices, and she was experiencing anxiety and feelings of hopelessness. Nadia shared her concerns with a few other believers, and they began to pray for the roommate.
Read MoreA VOM-distributed micro-SD card loaded with a digital Bible was recently received by a Kurdish fighter in the mountains of Kurdistan.
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Prison Fixed HIS theology When 36-year-old Reza placed his faith in Christ 12 years ago, after comparing the Jesus of the Bible with the Jesus he had read about in the Quran, he began to live out his new faith with abandon. He worked with other Christians to get God’s Word into the hands of Muslims throughout Iran, which decades earlier had adopted Shiite Islam as its official state religion. And he and a friend even duplicated and distributed thousands of CDs and DVDs containing the gospel message. Reza wanted to lead people to Jesus and help build God’s kingdom, but his motives became increasingly confused. He grew more concerned with the number of people he was reaching than the people themselves. Then, one day, he was arrested and imprisoned for his evangelism. “When I look at that now, I am grateful to the Lord for going through that because it really built my Christian character,” Reza said. “I knew there were so many things in my Christian theology that needed to be fixed. I think God used that point to fix that.” Misplaced Hope One summer day in 2011, Reza and a Christian friend rode a motorcycle through a
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