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God is Using Dreams

| June 1, 2019 | no comments

I have talked to many Iranians who have come to Christ because of a dream, though none of them have ever told me that Jesus came to them in their dream, asked them to repeat the “sinner’s prayer,” and then label themselves as a “Christian.”

Iranians are meeting with Jesus or seeing Jesus in their dreams and their lives are changed forever.

To most Iranians, the term Christian is very culturally significant as well as religiously. When an Iranian tells another Iranian that they have become a Christian, they are often understood as having become an Armenian. To the normal Iranian, being Christian and being an Armenian are the same thing. How can an Iranian ever become an Armenian?

Many Iranians who experience Christ in a dream have to mentally process several things. They do not just go to sleep one evening and wake up the next morning as a Christian, ready to attend Sunday morning service with their families. They have years of propaganda to combat. They have been told their entire lives that Christians are evil like the Jews. They have been told that Christians follow three gods and that Jesus was a prophet like Mohammed. They have been told that the apostle Paul was a liar and corrupted the Bible and that only the Koran is pure.

Most of the Iranians who tell me about their dreams tell me that their lives changed because of the process after the dream. Instead of experiencing complete conversion in the dream, the dreams have acted as a catalyst in the process of searching and discovery. Iranians are meeting with Jesus or seeing Jesus in their dreams and their lives are changed forever. They do not wake up knowing more, but instead wake up wanting to know more.

The dreams ignited a sudden desire to find a Bible or to find a Christian to help explain their dreams to them. They start seeking answers to the many questions in their dreams.

The dreams are not an end result but a starting point to follow Jesus. Because of the cultural connotations associated with the term Christian, many Iranians who come to Christ because of a dream think of themselves as followers of Jesus but do not label themselves Christian. This is an important difference.

Iranian believers who might not refer to themselves as Christians but are following Christ are willing, and sometimes required, to give their lives for Christ.

These new Iranian believers who might not refer to themselves as Christians but are following Christ are willing, and sometimes required, to give their lives for Christ. As believers in the Gospel, they are subjected to unemployment, persecution, divorce, loss of contact with family, and imprisonment. Apostasy, or turning away from Islam, is grounds for the death penalty.

Missionary work is banned in Iran, and many churches and mission organizations are afraid of the consequences of working in an environment that is so dangerous. Jesus said very clearly in Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.” No exemption was given for those countries that would not allow the Good News of Jesus Christ. Dreams are working where the church has clearly failed in Iran.

 

PR

Taken from Jesus In Iran by Eugene Bach. Copyright © 2015 by Back to Jerusalem, Inc. Used with permission.

 

Publisher’s page: https://backtojerusalem.com/product/jesus-in-iran/

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Category: Spirit, Spring 2019

About the Author: Eugene Bach is a pseudonym for a member of the Chinese underground church who does not wish to be identified. He was trained in U.S. military special operations and served two tours in the Persian Gulf and Asia–Pacific region, serving primarily as a member of a rapid response team focusing on targeted threat elimination, counterterrorism, and security. He has been working with the underground church in China for about twenty years, helping them to establish forward mission bases in closed countries around the world, including Iraq and Syria. Eugene leads the Chinese mission movement called Back to Jerusalem, which provides essential support for Chinese missionaries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He is the author or co-author of I Stand with Christ: The Courageous Life of a Chinese Christian (2015), The Underground Church (2014), Leaving Buddha: A Tibetan Monk's Encounter With the Living God (2019), Jesus In Iran (2015), and other books about the underground church in places like China, North Korea, and Iran.

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