PRAISE GOD! What the enemy meant for evil, God has turned into a mighty testimony that is shaking the world!
In 2009, two brave young Iranian women, Marziyeh Amirizadeh and Maryam Rostampour, born into Muslim families in Iran, looked death in the face and chose Jesus Christ over life itself. Their crime? Converting to Christianity and daring to share the Gospel.
According to international media including Al Arabiya English, Christian Post USA, JOY! Magazine South Africa and Tyndale House Publishers USA, the two had launched a bold underground mission after meeting while studying Christian theology in Turkey in 2005. Under the cover of night, they secretly distributed roughly 20,000 Farsi New Testaments into mailboxes across Tehran and opened two house churches in their own apartment – one for young people and one for prostitutes.
In March 2009, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps raided their apartment, found Bibles, and arrested them.
A radical judge charged them with apostasy, blasphemy, anti-government activity and promoting Christianity – a capital crime under Iranian Islamic law – and handed down a chilling, satanic sentence: death by hanging unless they recanted their faith and returned to Islam.
We condemn that judge and that evil sentence in the strongest terms! That judgment was not justice, it was persecution against the Body of Christ and an attack on religious freedom.
259 DAYS IN HELL THAT BECAME HEAVEN:
They were thrown into Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison, the most notorious torture chamber in Iran, enduring 259 days of relentless interrogation, psychological torture, solitary confinement, starvation, and constant execution threats.
But Hallelujah! Rather than backing down, the two daughters of Zion turned the prison into a church.
“We were not allowed to have a Bible, but we lived out its teachings in the prison,” Marziyeh told Al Arabiya English.
They actively prayed with fellow prisoners – the homeless, addicts, prostitutes – and shared the Gospel inside the prison walls.
Prisoners who first called them ‘dirty Christians’ later apologized and accepted Christ. Even prison guards came to trust them. God had a purpose for being in that dark place.
Their story triggered a massive international campaign. Amnesty International, the United Nations, and even a personal letter from Pope Benedict XVI demanded their release.
After nine months of global pressure and prayers from around the world, the regime was forced to release them on November 18, 2009, and they were cleared of all charges in 2010.
They escaped Iran as refugees and revealed the truth in their powerful memoir, Captive in Iran: A Remarkable True Story of Hope and Triumph Amid the Horror of Tehran’s Brutal Evin Prison.
The dual, who are devout born-again Christians, now live in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States of America, where they fellowship with the Christian community, and they are continuing to preach the Gospel and the second advent of Jesus Christ across American churches and around the world, testifying that Jesus is Lord and no one can take Him away from us.
As Marziyeh boldly told her captors in Evin: “Jesus is our Lord and you cannot take Him away from us.”
Glory be to God! Their unbreakable testimony proves that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
Leave a Reply