Inside the Revolution

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  In Epicenter, I reported that one million Sudanese had turned to Christ just since the year 2000—not in spite of persecution, war, and genocide, but because of them. “People see what radical Islam is like,” one Sudanese Christian leader told me, “and they want Jesus instead.”585

  Since the book’s release in the fall of 2006, more than a quarter of a million additional Sudanese have given their lives to Christ, bringing the estimated total number of believers in the country to more than 5.5 million.586 The crying need now is for more trained pastors, Bible teachers, disciple makers, and humanitarian relief workers.

  When Sudan received independence in 1956, there were only five or six born-again Anglican priests in the entire country. Today there are more than 3,500 Anglican priests there, along with scores of pastors and ministry leaders from other denominations.587 But this is simply not enough to keep up with the demand. Students are attending seminary classes in caves. The government is preventing Christians from building adequate ministry training facilities. And, of course, hundreds of churches have been destroyed by years of fighting.

  Revival in Iraq

  In the fall of 2008, several colleagues and I had the privilege of traveling to Iraq and participating in a conference of prayer, worship, and Bible teaching attended by 640 Iraqi pastors, worship leaders, Bible study leaders, and young people. It was, we were told, the fourth such annual conference, and this one constituted by far the largest gathering of Iraqi believers in the modern history of the country.

  It was an incredibly special time, and I wish every one of my readers could have a similar opportunity. The believers and their pastors came from every province in the country. They were filled with joy and excitement to worship God and to be together as brothers and sisters in Christ. They literally sang songs of praise and adoration to their Lord Jesus Christ for two—and sometimes three—hours at a time before settling down for a pastor to teach from the Bible. After each session, they would huddle together to compare notes about what God was doing in their cities, towns, and villages. They would tell stories of miracles they were seeing happen in their midst. They would pray with and for each other. They would exchange e-mail addresses and promise to stay in touch with each other. They also asked the Western pastors and ministry leaders, of which there were a few in attendance, to pray about coming back and helping to lead future conferences and retreats to train Iraqi believers how to study the Bible for themselves.

  Without a doubt, the hunger for Christ inside Iraq is also at an all-time high, say the numerous Iraqi pastors and ministry leaders I interviewed. Several million Arabic New Testaments and Christian books have been shipped into Iraq since the liberation. Millions more are being printed inside the country, and pastors say they cannot keep up with the demand. What’s more, Iraqis today are turning to Christ in numbers unimaginable at any point during Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror.

  Before 2003, senior Iraqi Christian leaders tell me, there were only about four to six hundred known born-again followers of Jesus Christ in the entire country, despite an estimated 750,000 nominal Christians in historic Iraqi churches. By the time Epicenter was published in 2006, the number of known believers inside Iraq had grown to more than five thousand. And God has continued moving powerfully since then. By the end of 2008, Iraqi Christian leaders estimated that there were more than seventy thousand born-again Iraqi believers—some ten thousand actively worshiping in above-ground Bible-teaching churches inside Iraq, at least another ten thousand worshiping in secret house churches inside Iraq, and another fifty thousand living as refugees outside the country, mostly in Jordan, Egypt, Europe, and the U.S.588

  In addition to Muslims converting to Christianity in large numbers, there is also a significant spiritual awakening under way inside the traditional Iraqi churches. “Catholic and Orthodox Christian priests are seeing their faith in Christ revitalized,” one Iraqi pastor, who asked not to be named, told me. “They want to see their churches restored to the first-century kind of activity—evangelism, discipleship, and miracles.”589

  Why such spiritual hunger? Every Iraqi Christian I have interviewed has given me the same two answers: war and persecution. Though the security in Iraq was deteriorating from 2003 to 2007, one of the top leaders of the Revivalist movement there told me he had never seen so many Iraqis praying to receive Christ and wanting Bible teaching.

  I asked him how he accounted for such developments.

  “It’s not that complicated really, Joel,” he replied. “When human beings are under threat, they look for a strong power to help them—a refuge. Iraqis look around and when they see believers in Jesus enjoying internal peace during a time of such violence and fear, they want Jesus too.”590

  But, I asked, how did he and his disciples share their faith and lead people to Christ with all the suicide bombings, car bombings, snipers, and other troubles of the past few years?

  “We did what we could,” he said, “but God is not dependent upon us. This is something He is doing on His own. He is drawing Muslims to Christ. We are just His servants, helping where we can. The truth is, God is healing Muslims of sicknesses and diseases. He’s also giving Muslims visions of Jesus Christ. He is coming to them and speaking to them, and they are repenting and giving their lives to Him. I’m saying that Shiites are seeing visions of Christ and repenting. When we meet them, they already believe in Jesus. We don’t have to share the gospel with them. We want to, but it’s not necessary. They’re already convinced that Jesus is the Savior. They’re already convinced that the Bible is the Word of God. So we help them study the Bible. We help them grow in their faith and get into a good church so they can meet other believers and learn to worship the Lord as part of the Church. But you see, Joel, it is God who is at work. He is making this happen—not us.”

  Revival in the Holy Land

  In the heart of the epicenter itself—Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza—signs of revival are finally noticeable after centuries of spiritual drought.

  In 1967 there were only a few hundred NCBBs and only a handful of MBBs in the Holy Land. Today, when you include Israeli Arab believers and Palestinian believers living in the West Bank and Gaza, there are about five to six thousand born-again followers of Jesus Christ walking where He once walked. What’s really exciting is that just since 2007, nearly one thousand Muslims have come to Christ in the West Bank alone, most of them converted through dreams and visions of Jesus. What’s more, the quality of the converts is exceptional. Indeed, Jesus appears to be handpicking spiritual game-changers out of His backyard and raising them up to be enormously influential in reaching the rest of the epicenter with the gospel.

  One of the most influential Revivalists I have ever met is a Palestinian Arab. Born to a nominal Christian family in Jerusalem in 1947, Taheer (whom I cited in the last chapter)591 was barely six months old when the first Arab-Israeli war broke out. His mother died soon thereafter. Nevertheless, God was incredibly gracious to him, bringing him to saving faith in Jesus Christ at the age of eighteen as he wept on his knees with repentance after finally reading the New Testament for himself.

  “I will not leave you as orphans,” Jesus said in John 14:18-19. “I will come to you. After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also.” These verses were suddenly coming true in this man’s life, and he soon developed a passion for reaching Muslims and nominal Christians with God’s amazing grace. When I met him, he was running the Arab-language division of one of the world’s most effective radio ministries, broadcasting the gospel and hour after hour of solid Bible teaching to millions of Muslims scanning their radio dials for hope and truth.

  Several years ago, Lynn and I met three young Palestinian men from Bethlehem who had become believers from nominal Christian backgrounds. Not long before we had met them, they were teenage boys throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and participating with PLO activists and Hamas Radicals in violent demonstrations against what the
y denounced as “Israeli occupation of Palestine.” But after coming to faith in Jesus Christ, they had changed completely. Now they were sharing their new faith with anyone and everyone who would listen, enrolling in intensive Bible and evangelism training classes, and doing everything they could to train younger Palestinian believers to become effective in ministry as well.

  “The Church is really growing here—finally,” one of them told me. “I remember just a few years ago there was a church in Bethlehem where there was just the pastor and one believer. But the pastor conducted services as if the little worship hall was full, like a regular church. He would stand up at the pulpit and read announcements. He would preach his sermon. Then he would tell the congregation to stand for a closing song. The congregation was just this one guy. But the guy would stand up and sing, and then sit back down. Before I became a believer, I thought it was funny. But now that little church has more than one hundred new believers in it. I don’t think it’s funny anymore. It’s very exciting!”592

  Revival in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan

  In 1967, there were no known born-again followers of Jesus Christ from a Muslim background in the entire country of Syria. But after the humiliating loss to the Israelis and all the casualties and carnage wrought by the war, spiritual interest in the gospel began to grow. By 1997, there were about one thousand known believers in Syria. Today, there are between four and five thousand born-again believers in the country, both MBBs and NCBBs combined.

  Does more need to be done? Absolutely. But as one Arab ministry leader there told me: “I am so excited because God is doing a miracle in Syria.” Women, he said, are particularly receptive to the gospel. About two hundred fifty women attended one conference his wife organized—and ninety-six prayed to receive Christ. “Some of the first churches in the world were in Syria in the first century,” he reminded me. “Then it became a spiritual desert. But now the Church is coming back here.” What’s more, he says that “because Paul received Christ on the road to Damascus, we have a vision for this to become a sending country”—that is, a country that sends trained disciples from Syria to other Muslim countries in the region to share the gospel.593

  Arab Christian leaders in Jordan tell me that in 1967, there were fewer than one thousand born-again believers in this entire biblically historic country—only about ten known Muslim Background Believers and only five to eight hundred Nominal Christian Background Believers. But God has been reviving the Church in the last four decades, and particularly in the past few years. Conservative estimates say the number of believers in the country is now between five and ten thousand. The head of one major Jordanian ministry, however, believes there may be as many as fifty thousand believers in the country—about fifteen thousand NCBBs and more than thirty-five thousand MBBs.594 Again, the precise numbers are not as important as the trend, and the trend is that the Church is definitely bearing fruit again after centuries of spiritual barrenness.

  In Lebanon, sources tell me, there are about ten thousand truly born-again followers of Jesus Christ today, though nearly four in ten of the country’s 4 million residents describe themselves as “Christian.” Most of the believers are NCBBs, but Muslims are starting to show an openness to the gospel that has been lacking for centuries.

  As the Second Lebanon War erupted in July of 2006, Lebanese Revivalists huddled together to fast and pray for their country, even as rockets and bombs were falling all around them and the mood of the people was quickly darkening. “The Lebanese find themselves in a very dark tunnel, and they feel there is no light,” a local Arab ministry leader told me later. “We asked God for wisdom to know how to love our neighbors and our enemies.”

  The believers soon found themselves drawn to Matthew 5:14-16, in which Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

  They decided they needed to spring into action, not wait for the war to be over. They mobilized dozens of teams of twenty believers each to begin doing relief work among the Shia families from southern Lebanon who had fled to the Beirut area for safety. In just a few short weeks, with financial help from the Joshua Fund, they delivered forty thousand packages of food, cooking supplies, New Testaments, and the JESUS film on DVD to these displaced and terrified families. They also drove trucks filled with relief supplies and gospel literature to Shia families hunkered down in the south as well as those in the Bekaa Valley, near the border with Syria.

  “Food they need, but Jesus they need more,” said an Arab Christian ministry worker. Through that outreach alone, more than 1,100 Lebanese Muslims prayed to receive Christ as their Savior.

  Revival in Saudi Arabia

  In Saudi Arabia—the epicenter of Islam due to its status as the home of Mecca and Medina—a dramatic spiritual awakening is taking place. In 1967, Arab Christian leaders tell me, there were only a handful of Muslim Background Believers in the entire country. By 2005, they estimated there were more than one hundred thousand Saudi MBBs. They believe the numbers are even higher today, and they say that thousands more Saudis have come to Christ in Europe and elsewhere around the world. Most are coming to Christ through dreams and visions, though often they first hear about the claims of Christ through gospel radio broadcasting, satellite television, the Internet, or through Christians befriending them and giving them a Bible or a book or film about the life of Christ.

  Consider one example. A Saudi woman—let’s call her Marzuqah (which means “blessed by God”)—secretly converted to Christianity. But she had a brother who was dying of a terrible disease, and Marzuqah was deeply grieved. She loved her brother very much, and she wanted to spend eternity with him in heaven. So she prayed fervently for God to heal and to save her brother.

  One day, Jesus appeared to Marzuqah in a dream. “Your prayers have been answered,” He told her. “Go tell your brother about Me.” She did.

  To her astonishment, her brother prayed with her to receive Christ. Then his health improved briefly. The family—seeing his physical improvement but not knowing about his conversion—asked, “Why is this happening?”

  The brother said, “It is because I accepted Jesus as my Savior. And He is my healer, not physically but spiritually. You must take Him too.”

  After explaining why he had given his life to Christ, he died the next day. But first, he made the family promise not to harm Marzuqah for her faith. They agreed.

  Though her family has not yet followed her lead, Marzuqah has become a devoted disciple. She studies her Bible two hours a day. She has found other secret believers to meet with for prayer and Bible study. And she is sharing the gospel with her Muslim friends. “There are so many people I must tell about Jesus!” she says.595

  Revival in Afghanistan

  Before September 11, 2001, I am told, there were fewer than one hundred MBBs in all of Afghanistan. By 2006 I reported in Epicenter that there were 10,000 MBBs, based on the reporting of several trusted sources. However, after traveling to the country in the fall of 2008 and meeting with senior pastors and ministry leaders there, I am inclined to revise that figure downward to a range of between 3,000 and 5,000.

  Is God moving powerfully in Afghanistan? He most certainly is. Has the Church grown significantly since 9/11? Absolutely. The question is simply by how much. Some sources told me the number of Afghan believers is now between 20,000 and 30,000. That could be true, but I honestly did not see enough evidence to convince me with any certainty that there are even 10,000 at present. There is not a single Afghan MBB church that can operate safely above ground. There are no prayer or worship conferences that Afghan MBBs can attend in any significant numbers. Persecution of the believers is intense. Indeed, a thirty-four-year old foreign Christian aid worker was martyred in Kabul just after we left, shot in
the head by two members of the Taliban.596

  “The greatest need now is leadership development,” one Afghan ministry leader told me. “We need to train pastors to care for all these new believers.”597

  An illiterate Afghan Muslim man came to Christ a few years ago and began to be discipled by an older and wiser man in the faith. He then enrolled in a series of training classes for secret believers to grow in their faith. After graduating from the fifth level of Bible and ministry training, he shared the gospel with his town, and almost everyone prayed to receive Christ. Together, they built the first Afghan Christian church without any outside help.

  Ministry leaders in Afghanistan say the spiritual liberation of the country began as soon as the political liberation did. The Revivalists began distributing humanitarian relief supplies—food, clothing, medical supplies, and the like—to their neighbors and even to their enemies to show the love of Jesus Christ in a real and practical way. They set up medical clinics and English-language schools and job-training programs. Their goal was not to convert people but simply to love people.

  At the same time, they began using radio and satellite television to beam the gospel to Afghans hungry to hear the truth after decades of oppression. They began distributing copies of the New Testament and other pieces of gospel literature by the hundreds of thousands. Perhaps more important, they began showing and distributing copies of the JESUS film translated into local languages and dialects to reach the illiterate.

  And Afghans began responding.

  The enormous controversy over the case of Abdul Rahman, a Muslim convert to Christianity facing execution by a court in Kabul for apostasy, became the talk of the nation in the spring of 2006, with saturation coverage by Afghan TV, radio, and newspapers. The event shone a huge spotlight on the fact that Afghans are turning to Christ in such numbers that Islamic leaders are furious. It also showed the fledgling Afghan church that fellow believers around the world are praying for them and eager to see them grow and flourish.