The following is a transcribed testimony from a female Iranian Christian named Nastaran Farahani. It's taken from a TGC panel discussion on the persecuted church titled "On the Persecuted Church: Panel with Nancy Guthrie, Mindy Belz, Don Carson, K. A. Ellis, Nastaran Farahani". Her testimony starts at about the 7 min 20 sec mark.
One day, while I was taking a shower, I heard someone was talking to me, telling me "repent!"
The voice told me "I'm going to wash you of your sin".
At that time I didn't know what that voice was, and what was the meaning of those words.
But after a while, my sister, she came to Iran from Holland, for visiting. I realized that she has a Bible for me.
One lady she came to her [Nastaran's sister] and she told her that God gave her a vision that she saw three women sitting on a bed and all trust in Christ. So she told her, "you have to go to Iran and visit them".
Another woman came to her and gave her a ticket.
So she came to Iran for a visit. And when she got home to our family, she opened her bag and brought out a Bible, and said "I believe in Jesus".
And all my family started to cry.
And I told her "I believe in Jesus! I know Jesus! I do not know how, but I know him. I do not have any question".
[Nancy Guthrie:] "...How did they [the rest of Nastaran's family] respond to this word of Jesus?"
They just cried.
Within one month, my mom converted.
And within two months, my father had a dream or vision, and he converted to Christ.
We started to go to the church. At that time the building church was open in Iran. But after persecution coming to the church, we decided to gather at home and start the house churches.
There's more to her testimony. Indeed, the entire panel discussion is worth listening to.
"Middle Earth" "workers" from the West meet together occasionally to share information and strategize. On a recent (within the past couple of years) gathering a study was presented that had been done in preparation for the meeting. "Workers" were asked what they thought was the primary factor bringing Muslim Background Believers (MBBs) to faith. The same question was asked of MBBs themselves. Among the "workers" the overwhelming observation was the miraculous visions. Surely these were the primary factor. However, the MBBs gave a different answer. While they acknowledged having visions, they overwhelmingly cited the Christian Scriptures as being the primary factor without which any visions are meaningless.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jim. Good to know. :-)
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