“More Persians have come to faith in Jesus in the last twenty years than in the previous thirteen centuries.”
– Lindy Lowry, Open Doors USA
Let me share some good news with you that I hope will encourage your faith and remind you that God is moving mightily around the world.
Here are a few snippets of this good news that I came across recently:
“Across Melbourne, like many places around the world, a steady stream of Persian people have been turning up in churches, many giving their lives to Jesus in what is a modern-day revival. What makes this move of God more remarkable is that the Persians have been an unreached people group for millennia. Yet more Persians have come to faith in Jesus in the last twenty years than in the previous thirteen centuries.”
– From A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World Will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders by Mark Sayers (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2022 – p. 190).
“Describing how the church in Iran has grown, Mark Bradley writes in his inspiring book Too Many to Jail, . . .
‘There are very few public Christian meetings in Iran in Persian. But this success is a Pyrrhic victory. For out of this persecution against the official churches, the house churches have been born.’
The hard ground with God for the Persian church has become holy ground.
‘Many have suffered. But the result is that now there are more purified Christians in Iran who are passionate to spread the Gospel of Jesus’.”
– Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence (p. 191)
“In the last 20 years, more Iranians have become Christians than in the previous 13 centuries—since Islam came to Iran. In 1979, there were an estimated 500 Christians from a Muslim background in Iran. Today, there are hundreds of thousands—some estimate more than 1 million.
“According to the research organization Operation World, Iran has the fastest-growing evangelical movement in the world. The second-fastest-growing church is in Afghanistan—where Afghans are being reached in large part by Iranians.”
– The Gospel Coalition, “The Fastest Growing Church in the World”
Additional References
Bradley, Mark, Too Many to Jail: The Story of Iran’s New Christians (Derby: Monarch Books, 2014).
Lowry, Lindy, “Mass Conversions Are Happening Right Under Our Eyes’—Iran Official Admits,” Open Doors USA / Global Christian Relief, 2019.