Captive in Iran (4 page)

MARYAM

The fact that we had even heard the truth about Christianity in Iran is a miracle. We grew up in a country that indoctrinates children in the state religion from the youngest ages, when they are most impressionable. Like all other children in Iran, we were told that Islam is the only complete religion. Teachers told us that Jesus was one of many prophets and that He was the prophet of love and peace, nothing more. Before school every morning we would line up to listen to one of the older children read the Koran in Arabic. Then we chanted, “Death to America! Death to Israel!”
though we had no idea what “America” and “Israel” were. All we knew was that they were unspeakably evil.

Every year on the anniversary of the Shah’s downfall and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini, students still take part in huge demonstrations across the country. We did this too, because the authorities locked the schools and forced us to go. If we didn’t pray the
namaz
, the Islamic daily prayers, they wouldn’t give us our grades. Girls had to have their hair completely covered. If a teacher saw a strand or two sticking out from under our headscarves, she would pull our hair, hard.

Marziyeh and I were both born in Iran to Muslim families, yet as children both of us were thirsty for the truth and to know God. The Lord worked in amazing ways to call us to Him, and then to bring us together.

When I was growing up, I always had a lot of questions in my mind: What is the truth? Who is God, and how I can have a close relationship with Him? Why do I have to talk to God in a language I don’t know, praying words I don’t understand? I had many other questions about Islam and its rules, which frustrated and confused me.

I was eager to find the truth, so I tried to study and research other religions on my own. I read a Persian translation of the Koran and some other books—but not the Bible, because I couldn’t find one. Sometimes I prayed
namaz
, and I also attended meetings of other religions from time to time. However, none of these efforts could quench my thirst.

At age seventeen, I was completely disappointed and thought it would be better not to follow any religion. I was tired of the meaningless rules and religious laws, and tired of a faraway God whose voice I never heard. I had always longed for two-way communication with Him but had never experienced it.

Eventually, I completely stopped doing research. But even then, sometimes when I was alone, especially at night, I looked up into the sky and asked God to reveal Himself to me and speak to me. At times, I would talk to Him in Farsi, like a conversation, for an hour or two, and enjoyed it very much.

One day my sister gave me a little booklet titled
His Name Is Wonderful
. It was part of the Gospel of Luke, from the Bible. Shirin said she had received it from a man at the church near her university. She knew I was
searching to know God and that I would read any book on the subject. “Just don’t read the last page,” she warned, “because it is a confession prayer for anyone who wants to become a Christian.”

I took the booklet from her and went to my room right away, closed the door, and started reading. From the first page, my heart was deeply moved. I started to cry because I could feel the presence of Christ in the room right in front of me. While I was reading, I felt as if I had already known and heard all of these words in the book and had just found what I had been seeking for many years: the love of Christ.

During those hours alone in my room, I realized why I had always felt a barrier between myself and God. As I read about the love of Christ and the work He did on the cross for my sins, I said to myself,
That is exactly what I have been looking for all these years: love without conditions.
None of those words sounded strange or unbelievable to me, even when I read that Jesus is the Son of God. I always tell people that Jesus Himself witnessed and delivered to me the Good News of salvation as a gift, even before I had spoken to anyone about Him or gone to church. He revealed His truth to me and prepared my heart for accepting it.

After two or three hours in my room, I knew I had discovered what I had been searching for; I felt like I had already known Jesus for many years. When I got to the last page of the booklet, I prayed the written prayer and gave my heart to Jesus without any doubt or second thought.

For two years, I attended a weekly Bible study in a woman’s home in Tehran, taking the hour-long taxi ride each way from my home in Karaj. One day, she led a Bible study on the book of Acts and read about believers in the early church receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. She spoke to me about her own experience. I was intrigued with the idea that God would give a gift to humans, a promise of a special spiritual experience. I wanted it for myself.

Later that day, in my room at home, I received this gift and spoke in tongues. I was surprised and overwhelmed with joy. Nothing like this had happened to me before. When I prayed, I knew what I was saying, and I knew that God understood.

I realize that not every Christian has this experience. The Bible describes many gifts, and this was one that I received. I believe that God,
in His wisdom, uses whatever tools He has available to bring the gospel into people’s hearts.

I wanted to be baptized in the official church in Tehran, where we attended, but the regime monitored the church closely and frowned on church baptisms. Instead, in 2002, I was baptized secretly at midnight in the basement of another small church. Though I was only nineteen, the pastors asked me to start serving in the church, speaking to new believers and working with a group of elderly ladies. The pastors said I had a great passion for evangelism, though when I boldly talked about Christ in the subway or riding in a taxi, the pastors said with a note of caution, “Save it for church!”

After I had served in that church for a year and a half, my pastor introduced me to Elam Ministries. It was while taking theology courses sponsored by Elam in Turkey in 2005 that I met Marziyeh.

Marziyeh

Ever since I was a young child, I loved God and wanted to find out more about His truth. I did everything I knew to get closer to Him. Because my family was Muslim, my only means of getting to know God were through Muslim religious teachings and things I learned at school. But I always had many questions about God that Islamic theology and Sharia law could not answer.

I used to think of God as a kind father who is closer to us than members of our own family, because I believed that the God who created my body was closer to my heart than my own flesh and blood. I had been taught the beliefs of Islam and debated them with friends and teachers in school; I could not accept the Koran’s teachings, as they did not seem true to me. I did not accept the image of God that many Muslims have as one who harshly rules over the human race and punishes us for the slightest sins. That is a terrifying image of God.

I believed that the daily
namaz
prayers, bending several times a day in front of a God who was already in my heart, were a waste of time and unnecessary, and I could not accept them. I also had many questions about
why I had to speak to God in Arabic instead of in Farsi, my native language.
Doesn’t this God who taught me my own mother tongue know it Himself? Why should I pray to Him as if He’s a great leader or ruler over me? Why can’t I speak with Him in my own language?
These were the questions that had long occupied my mind. The answers I received at school were not convincing.

Despite my reservations, I did my best to fulfill my religious duties. I told myself that I might be wrong, and that the truth would show itself to me one day in the future. I prayed
namaz
for two years without fail. I used to read the Koran, and I would even wake up in the middle of the night and pray again. But these types of prayers and worship were not making me feel any closer to God. On the contrary, they created a greater distance from Him as they became a routine action that I was forced to do, not something that I wanted to do.

Even before I found Christ, I was certain that God spoke to me in dreams. In one dream, I was praying toward the sky when it opened up and a white horse came down and spoke to me: “Sit on my back,” it said. When I obeyed, the horse took me to a city where worshipers coming out of a mosque were performing the Islamic Ashura and Tasua ceremonies, mournful chanting and self-beating. At first, they couldn’t see me or the horse. But suddenly they appeared to change into wild animals with savage features, not like people at all. As soon as I saw them, they could also see me and tried to kill me. The horse ran like the wind to save me. As I held fast to its neck, I felt its love pouring into me with a power and purity I had never known. After we eluded our pursuers, the horse came to a fork in the road where one path turned up into the sky. As the tired horse started on the upward path, I awoke.

For a week after that, all I could think about was the deep love I had experienced in the dream. I have never since experienced love like that in this world.
God, why did You let me wake up? I wanted to be in this dream forever!
(That same horse has reappeared to me in a dream, with a message, every few years since then.)

After some thought and consideration, I came to the conclusion that the most important part of being a believer is my heart, and I decided to put aside my religion. I began to speak to God with my heart, in the manner of a relationship between a child and her father. One day, I heard from
a friend of mine who had converted to Christianity that, in their religion, Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of humankind, who has come to the earth to free people from their sins. I became curious; I had not heard anything like that before about Jesus. I used to think He was just another prophet, as He had been introduced to us in our textbooks at school. I said to myself,
How do I know He is the truth?

I decided to study different religions in search of the truth and began to read the Bible. After a while, I realized I could not possibly spend the many years necessary to study all the religions of the world, and that there might be some faith in the world that I would never be able to know in full. Therefore, I knelt and prayed, asking God to show me the right path to reach the truth. I said, “If Jesus is the truth, then You must guide me in the path that would take me to the truth and save me from being misguided.”

The next thing that happened was a real miracle. During this time, I was invited to a church by a friend. On that same day, I had a medical appointment scheduled with a specialist. My visit to the church was an incredible experience. People were worshiping with joy and praying freely to God. Suddenly, in my heart, I heard a voice:
Marziyeh, you are healed
. I wanted to ignore this voice, but when I told my friend, she said it was Jesus and that He could heal me.

Later, at my medical appointment, the doctor picked up his pen to write me a prescription. Then he stopped. I waited, wondering why he was hesitating. Finally, he said, “I don’t know why, but I cannot write a prescription for you. Come back another time.” At that time, I sensed that God reminded me of His message in the church and told me to trust Him.

The symptoms were immediately cleared up. But even after Jesus healed me, I did not fully believe in Him. To me, the healing wasn’t enough proof to convert to Christianity, so I asked God to show me more reasons. At the bottom of my heart, I had begun to believe in Jesus, but I still had my doubts. I had read about the Holy Spirit but could not fully understand.

I read in the Bible about the supernatural experience that the apostles had when they spoke in other languages, and also heard about it from my friend who had led me to Christ. At the time, I could not understand it. There were times when I prayed with friends and some of them prayed in tongues. At first, I thought they were a bit crazy, or that they were trying
to mimic Armenian Christians whom they knew but who spoke their own language. Then I became curious, but thought it was impossible for me.

I had never prayed out loud in public. One day, some friends asked me to join them to pray together. The leader asked me if I wanted to pray, but I was shy. I was praying silently in my heart and said to God that I loved Him and wanted to talk to Him out loud. At that moment, the Holy Spirit came on me and I started to pray in tongues so all could hear. Even though I didn’t know the meaning of my words, I could fully understand what I was saying to God. It was the first time I had ever been so close to God that I felt I could touch Him.

While I was praying, I could see Jesus in front of me for a few seconds. He was standing next to a large throne that was covered with shining gold. At that moment, I was not on the earth. The middle of my forehead was burning with heat, as if someone had branded it. Suddenly all my doubts disappeared, and I felt that God had removed a curtain from my eyes: I could now see the truth clearly. I could not control my tongue, but just kept worshiping Him.

When I got home, I wanted to thank God for His gift to me. I was surprised that the Holy Spirit came to me again and I prayed and sang songs of praise in tongues nonstop through the night until the early hours of the morning. My jaw was aching, but I did not want the experience to end. The sense of God’s love was so powerful, and what had happened to me by then was just incredible, and I could not describe it.