A Glimpse into the Persecuted Church: A Challenge to the American Church

Fredd
7/5/2025

Every once in a while, I have heard the question. If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? In the US when we hear that question, we think oh that’s a great question. Like most things church related we quickly forget about it and move on.

My last child graduated college this year. As he was preparing to enter it, I began to seek God about what was next. I was not satisfied to warm a pew, work a job, pay my bills, mow my grass, retire somewhere and die. To survive was not what I was created for. I needed more evidence to convict me of being a Christian. The empty nest is a God-given opportunity that is wasted too often.

If you don’t know Naghmeh Panahi, look her up. I will tell you one thing about her. After 9/11 she got on a plane to share the Gospel in Iran, while I was busy making plans to stay safe and never leave the US again. That alone should shame most the Western church, it does me. My wife and I had not left the US since 1991. After 9/11, I was in no hurry to change that. God had other plans.

As part of seeking what God had for me to do, I contacted Naghmeh Panahi and through that was led to take on sponsorship for a family of four Iranian Christian refugees in early 2023. This was a trusted family of longtime believers and we offered to help them. I spoke about it to my church, through tears, I put their picture up and gave their names. I told them too much of the American church have given up their responsibility by giving anonymously to needs that are never followed up on. And if they are, it’s just in a report.

I said I know these people now and I am responsible to help them. They are not anonymous and neither would I be. At the time a promised program was going to make it possible to get them to the US and restart their lives. When it finally came online a year later that program specifically excluded the refugees in the country they had fled to.

During that first year though, we became close to them. Learning their stories. Sharing their pain. Navigating Persian culture. Learning and laughing about our differences and growing to love each other. I have told them many times that they are a bigger blessing to us than we are to them. It’s something they can’t comprehend. In the middle of this, God restored to me something stolen long ago by abortion, a chance to be an uncle. A brother and sister to call my own and nieces who call us Uncle and Auntie. An undeserved gift from a loving Father.

This part was easy.

The immigration situation in the US is a nightmare right now. There is no way possible to get our family here. This process was supposed to take six months to a year; I figured two years, to be safe. But now there is no process. I had assembled a team to help with it. I guess we could call it quits since the original plan is not happening. We tried, we hoped and waited the year out. Like a short-term mission’s trip, we could walk away thinking our grand gesture had made lasting impact for Jesus. NO. As I said earlier, they are part of my family now and that’s not how I was going to let this go, with God’s help we will continue serve this family until the end. Hope was crushed for them by this and we would not let it die, wherever they are in the world.

This part is more difficult and painful. What verses do you give someone in this situation? You better double-check before you drop a quick verse on someone in crisis.

Persian culture is one that doesn’t typically or easily ask for help. Certainly not from foreigners on the other side of the planet. They never asked, but early in that first year I felt led to send them some money. I didn’t mention it to them. With the time difference I sent it on a Thursday evening, they had it first thing Friday morning. I got a text asking if I had sent them something. I confirmed we had. They told me that Thursday evening they were praying because they were out of food and were trusting God to provide. That broke my heart. Not because God had used us but because of their unmentioned need. I have a pantry full of food and I told them that I can’t let you go hungry. Please tell me when this happens, I can’t be counted on to hear from the Holy Spirit. They will not ask. I have learned this. So now I ask the pointed uncomfortable questions. They have children and we know what children need, so I continue to ask. We have been blessed with a small group of people that are willing to continue help us provide for this family in various ways. Discipleship, friendship, medical, educational, beds, dishes, repairs, dramatic rent and inflation increases, and many other needed things. You know what your needs are, they are the same or likely greater for refugees as well as dealing with being refugees.

We have recently been able to spend a week with our Persian family. Yes, we finally left the safety of the US. I’ve never been less nervous on a plane; this was God’s trip. Meeting them face-to-face for the first time. It was like seeing someone you’ve known your whole life. Nothing awkward about it at all. Just love growing deeper and deeper for each other. I would get up early every day, pray and cry thanking God for this too short of a blessing. This visit changed my life, this wasn’t a text, video, picture, but real people hugging us tightly and often. The worst part of this trip was that I had them in my grasp and had to let them go. I’m tearing up writing it. They were so close, I had them right here in my arms and we had to leave them behind.

This was a week from God for all of us. A needed rest from the seen realities of the situation.

Also in early 2023, God introduced us to an Iranian missionary in my region; through him later in the year, we met a persecuted family of three in dire circumstances within an hour of our home. I knew immediately that God wanted us to serve them in some way. They had suffered not only at the hands of the Iranian government but also long-term in others ways I won’t share. Through my church and friends, we were able to provide a large Christmas of needed and wanted things. Although materialism has polluted the holiday, for this family in this situation the gifts helped to start the process of healing and having a home again. For us though, this was not a one and done. Whatever God has called us to does not involve providing a quick fix and hitting the road. We have continued to serve this family in any way we can. We have quickly grown to love them. We see and text them regularly, stay in their home, eat with them, pray with them, and to be a part of what God is doing for them.

This part was easy.

This family is currently in the asylum process. If you’re paying attention to the news, you know that deportations are happening here on a regular basis. Persecuted Christians who have done everything legally to seek asylum are also being deported. There are currently eight Iranian believers and at least one Chinese believer that have been sent to Panama and in real danger of being sent to their home countries. Recently, persecuted Iranians in the asylum process were arrested at church in Los Angeles. Other Iranians with no political posts or history have been picked up.

All of these things bring understandable darkness and fear to people who have escaped a police state and its mistreatment. A paralyzing fear of what’s next. Fear that keeps you under the covers or laying on a couch crying. Begging God to intervene. In this aspect, currently our government looks the same as Iran. Vans of masked people roll up and start dragging students away from school or people at court trying to stay legal, putting people in camps, removing due process, free speech, mocking their experiences, demeaning them at every opportunity. Your brothers and sisters are in the middle of this. Will you look the other way?

Of course, we need criminals removed and laws enforced. But the church better recognize what is happening in the name of law and order. I was born in a divided Berlin largely because the majority of the church in that country, thirty years earlier had failed to stand up against tyrannical behavior.

If you think this is what America is about, you and I are miles apart.

This is not the Shining City on a Hill that Reagan talked about in his farewell address.

This part is more difficult and painful. What verses do you give someone in this situation? You better double-check before you drop a quick verse on someone in crisis.

Every Iranian I meet is a blessing and teaches me so much. One family of believers that we have been in introduced to in Iran is the same. A young couple with a young child. A man with an evangelist’s heart. He is the first one I know directly that has seen people come to Jesus from a dream. He is learning how to be a good husband, father, and solid believer. His wife and him are both seeking and growing into useful tools for God’s work.

The economy is horrible on a good day there. Worse since the war. Inflation. Cash deprecation. Shortages. Rolling blackouts and with those, no water. Gas rationing. Little hope for freedom. Constant suffering with poverty.

We have each shared many conversations about all kinds of things. It’s been near daily blessing to be a part of someone’s life there. To become close to people that I can help in someways and can’t in others. I have to trust God for their future.

This part is easy.

The wife broke my heart one day with a simple message around Christmas time, telling me their dream for the future.

Their dream is to one day celebrate Christmas and go to church with us openly. For now, they settle with pictures I send them from church. A weak substitute that people will break the law for, so they can catch a fleeting glimpse of the freedom to worship.

As I write this, the husband is contacting me telling me he will delete our contact info because of the dangerous situation in Iran resulting from severe crackdowns after the war. To the current government, Christians are seen as worshiping the Zionist god and are agents of Mossad. I follow the news there and I know exactly what this means once they are arrested, ten-minute trials and five-minute executions.

This part is more difficult and painful. What verses do you give someone in this situation? You better double-check before you drop a quick verse on someone in crisis.

God forgive us for how we whine about the temperature in the building, the seats, slow internet, how long the sermon is, the coffee, and so on. Using any excuse to skip regular attendance and real involvement as believers.  Or God forbid Sunday lands on a holiday like Christmas, let’s shut to door for this “family” day. I know people who would give anything to be in a church on Sunday and if it was Christmas so much more the better.

Repent now before these things reach the ears of a Holy God. I’ve run out of patience with the American church, it’s best not to wait till God does.

As part of our trip out of the country, my wife and I were in a church of persecuted Iranians. It is in a country that is hostile to their presence and mine if I’m not spending tourist dollars. Always at risk of harassment, jailing, and deportation. I was asked to share a few things with them. What would I have to say to the persecuted? These are heroes of the faith in my eyes. People who have lost homes, their homeland, their family, maybe even years in prison, years in the prison of a life in a country that doesn’t want them, health, or even the ability to provide for themselves. People who have given all for Jesus. What would I share? I told them what came to me in the moment. I told them they were not forgotten by God, not abandoned. That God knew each one and had his eyes on them. Abandonment is the feeling that I hear and see the most among the persecuted. If you read unvarnished stories of imprisonment for the faith you will see it there also.

Jesus left us as parts of his body, hands, feet and so on. When suffering for the faith the persecuted many times feel abandoned by the God they serve; but, if Jesus has left us here to do his work, then aren’t they really abandoned by us rather than God?

There were about thirty to forty people there, all were crying including me as I spoke the words. Except one man, his was the thousand-yard stare. Unsettling and locked in on me the whole time.

Three months before our trip I had read a story about three believers in Iran that were sentenced to over forty years in prison between them. Their crime-being part of a home church.

After church, I met the man who didn’t cry, and he turned out to be one of the three. He had been imprisoned, recently tortured, and still very much carrying the pain of it all. Later in the day we were able to have a long conversation, me just listening and learning mostly. He had been able to escape Iran. Thank God, I thought. Thank you, Jesus, that he was here. We even shared a joke and the best belly laugh either of us have had in a long time. Laughing till tears is the best. We began to communicate regularly; his desire was to get somewhere safer. We shared Bible verses and prayers. I had a new friend that I had hugged, laughed with, shared with, and was growing to know better each day.

This part is easy.

As I’m writing these things down, I had not heard from him in a few days. Another contact there told me he had tried to leave the country and was arrested and now awaiting deportation. Funds for a lawyer were needed. This was being worked on by others, but I could not stand by and do nothing. Within a day or so I had figured out some funds to send. I sent the message. A day or two later I saw my friend had been on the messaging app we were using. I thought maybe he was out awaiting a hearing or something. All our messages had been deleted, not unexpected for his protection. I sent a simple hello, not for sure who might be on the other end.  The next message sent chills down my spine, he had been deported, was at the airport in Iran, arrested, and awaiting transfer to prison. His arrest is national news there. I have asked believers there what can be done, knowing the answer already. Prayer and nothing else. It will be many years of brutality that he will have to daily endure. Will he survive? Will I ever see my friend again? Just a few months took a heavy toll on him, many years seem to be too much to endure.

This part is more difficult and painful. What verses do you give someone in this situation? You better double-check before you drop a quick verse on someone in crisis.

As I write all this down, I’m ugly crying, snotting-up, over and over again, and trying to figure out how to do more.

I have never questioned God about things going one way or another. But this time I did ask God, why did you have me meet this man in a place neither of us have been before? What was the purpose? I know there was a purpose in it, God’s Will was moving. Please God, I don’t want to miss something that has cost someone else so dearly to share his life and story with me. I can’t have the sacrifice wasted on my ignorance. I still don’t know why, but God will reveal it at the right moment. Maybe you reading this is the reason.

And so now, I know people actually convicted of being a Christian. It’s not just a cute question asked to forgetful believers, holding eight-dollar coffees, and telling each other they are fine. I know what it looks like. I know people who have served time in Iranian prisons for their faith. I have hugged them, heard their stories and thanked God for the opportunity just to meet them. Now I know someone who is in prison for their faith, I am sick about it. I have hugged him, heard his story, and even more know that I am not worthy of bringing even a cup of water to people like this. But I will do everything I can, with everything I have, to keep trying to help them.

My children rarely saw me cry, an occasional family or my best friend’s death was about it. Now, almost every day since I’ve gotten involved with the persecuted, I’ve had tears. I cry in front of my church, my family, my friends. I cry thinking and praying for people in situations I can’t fix. So many times, now, I have that headache around the eyes that comes from crying and trying not to. It’s a terribly small price to pay for what I get in return.

Jesus didn’t wash feet on the second floor; he was down on the ground in the dirt he was washing off. There’s so much work to do, we need to get on our knees and into the dirt like our Savior did and do something.

To read something like these stories is easy. To do is the hard part. What will you do? Probably nothing statistically. But for a remnant of you, maybe this is your sign to act. A friend was recently preaching and said, “The goal of the Church is not to survive, but to act.”  Those words have stuck with me.

Will you act or are you just acting?