Pastor X and His Wife are Back with an Update from Afghanistan
We have the tremendous honor of getting to share an update from our good friend Pastor X and his wife. We talk about community and the important role of being in each other's lives.
This is a different picture of what the church can do and what the church can be.
“We would love an update. What’s happening in the underground church?”
“There is so much going on in the underground church. God is moving powerfully inside of the Middle East. The things that we’re seeing are amazing. People are seeing Jesus and getting free from death penalty cases. We have crazy stories that are happening inside the Middle East. It's such a powerful time.”
“Well, I'm excited today Pastor X, because we have yet to meet your wife. So, I would love to hear your story of how you met Jesus.”
“As a child, I was after God. At a very young age, I went to an Islamic school for women. Because I loved God so much, I was taken out of school and went to a fundamentalist school instead. I would do all the things and religious activities that they asked me to do. I tried to follow the rules of Islam.
One time we saw the film of Luke during Christmas time. We watched the movie over and over all night long. For me, it was shocking that they would say God is love and that God is full of love. This surprised me because the God I knew was the God that wanted to get revenge. I saw that there was such a difference between the God of Islam and the God of the Bible.
I started watching the Christian programs on satellite, but we still only did the things that Islam wanted, such as praying 5 times a day. But every time I would watch the program, I would only watch to the point where they would say Jesus is God. At that point I would turn off the television. I would tell my Mom, “look, they're making a human a god, and they're trying to brainwash you and take you on an incorrect path.”
At this time, my mom was diagnosed with MS. The MS worked very quickly in her body. And because I worked in a hospital, they said to me that she only had a few months to live. Her hands didn't work, her eyes drooped, and she was drooling. She couldn't walk anymore. She only had two months to live. Then, I found out my mom was watching Christian programs behind my back when I was at the hospital working. I also found out that she would, with tears in her eyes, say, “Jesus help me.” I didn't know she was doing this.
She asked for a New Testament Bible. She got one, and started reading it. She was actually saying the sinners prayer every day, but she didn't know what it was. She thought it was just a prayer. I didn't know any of this, but I saw that my mom was dying. I told my mom that I want to kill myself. I had tried to kill myself many times, but my family saved me. I wanted to do it one more time. My mom begged me not to do it. So I said to my mom, “you're going to die. What's the difference between two months? If you don't let me kill myself now, I'll do this outside of the house.”
I convinced my mom that we should both commit suicide. So one day, my father went outside of the city to the country house and we sent my sister out as well. My mom and I decided to take sleeping pills and turn on the natural gas. My mom was really upset and very nonchalantly turned on the television. She turned on a satellite broadcast program. I went to the kitchen to turn on the natural gas when the program started. On the program they said, “my brothers and sisters, we’re with you tonight. For the ones that want to kill themselves right now, those who are sad and depressed or hopeless, this program is for you. We want you to call us right now.” I froze right there, and very casually sat next to my mom.
My mom said, “my last wish before I die is that you would let me talk to these pastors.” I said, “Okay, go ahead and call.” We would call this program all the time when they would say, “Jesus is God.” I would ask a lot of questions. We called so much that they actually knew our voices. When we called this time they prayed with my mom. Then, when I got the phone they said, “you’ve served Allah all your life and you’ve followed all the rules of Islam. The fruit of it is that you have not gotten any closer to God, and you want to kill yourself. My wish is that you give your life to Jesus and trust Jesus, the God that I'm telling you about. If this God doesn't change your life, go ahead and kill yourself after a week and I'm okay with it.”
Immediately this thought came into my head, “I've served Allah all my life, and he actually owes me a lot. I was perfect in his law. So the last thing I can do for Allah is this. I know that the God of the Bible and Jesus is a lie. I will do what they say, and after a week, I will call in to the program live, and I will tell everyone what happened last week and that nothing had changed in my life. And I will tell everyone not to follow Jesus because he's a liar. This could be my last ministry to the God of Islam. So I agreed, and I prayed the sinners prayer. After I prayed the prayer, a peace came upon me that I never felt before. I thought, “wow, these Christians are so powerful. They can brainwash you from such a distance.”
All this time my mom was sick and bedridden. She would write with tears in her eyes, “Jesus Christ, please help me.” She also came to Jesus that night. And at 5 in the morning, I heard a loud noise. I thought my mom had fallen and I was super scared. I jumped up and said, “Mom, what happened?” Because my mom was bedridden, she couldn't walk at all. But I saw my mom walking perfectly. I said to my mom, “what are you doing?” My mom said, “Hey, I'm going to the bathroom.” She didn't even know she was walking.
I called the hospital and told them about my mom walking. The head nurse thought I was crazy. They knew my mom was dying, so they thought I was hallucinating. They knew she couldn't walk. The nurse said, “don't be upset. I'm going to come right now.” And I said, “why do you need to come? I'm telling you, my mom can walk perfectly.” So she said if she was walking perfectly, bring her into the hospital. And for the first time my mom walked into the hospital without a wheelchair.
When the hospital staff saw her walking, everyone was like a dear in a headlight. They performed an MRI and ran blood work. Soon after, the doctor came in and showed us the before and after MRIs. He was shocked. He told us that there was no MS in her body anymore. And because my mom had MS for so long, she had a very big case file. So they called all the doctors to look at the file. They said, “we didn't make a mistake by diagnosing her with MS, but now, there's no more MS in her body. There's no MS in her brain. Her nerves are fine.”
They said it was a miracle.
They asked, “who do you pray to?” We told them, “we pray to Jesus Christ.”
One week later, her eyes came back to normal position and she stopped drooling. She worked with her hands and she started walking. Immediately, we brought 5 people to Christ. So many people from the hospital came to Jesus because of this story. My mom was alive until just 6 months ago. She was the mother of nations. She worked with us and in all the nations that we worked in.”
“I'm so sorry for your loss. The church began because of her story. And all the sudden, you both were making disciples as brand new Christians. You were loving Jesus and learning to follow Him. And yet, other people were following both of you.”
“We started watching satellite programs. We didn't even know what teaching or worship was. However, we watched the satellite programs and started learning to worship and teach. We didn’t even know what it meant to witness. So we started taking notes. We watched the satellite broadcast and started making workbooks. Afterward, we would call the programs and they would spend time with us and teach us. We would take notes, make them into workbooks, and pass them out to people.
Since we didn't know how to witness, we would invite our friends and family to dinner when we knew they had a satellite broadcast that night. We would nonchalantly be eating dinner with the satellite program on, and then we all would talk to the pastors after the program. our friends and family would get to know who Jesus is this way. This is how the church started growing.
The pastor started to teach us that we needed to gather these people, and they helped us by emailing us workbooks. We learned them and started teaching them. The same way they were discipling us, we were discipling the new believers. The people around us were growing as we were growing. These are the first steps that we took.”
“What was it like to depend on each other? To be together, while knowing that being together was dangerous?”
“When we first came to Jesus, it wasn't difficult in the sense of persecution. But right now, if we were to call the television pastor, the police would be at our house within the hour. At the time, we didn't understand what security was. We when we would gather everything was so exciting and new for us. In Islam, when we would gather we first had to cry. We would literally have to hit ourselves over our head. Islam tells you to worship like this because this is the way that God would be satisfied with your worship.
But when we saw Christ and learned how to worship, it was so amazing to all of us. We would clap our hands, sing songs, and pray. And the presence of the Lord would come. We’d never experienced this in a communal sense before. Instead of hitting ourselves and crying and wailing, we would just sit in the peace of his spirit and talk to him.
The worship and prayer times that we had in our group made our relationships deeper and made us more dependent on each other.
When the Holy Spirit comes in a corporate setting, there’s nothing like it in the world. There's nothing in the world that's even close.
When the Holy Spirit touches all of us, we see that people are getting touched by the Holy Spirit. Healing was happening, women were becoming pregnant. Healings of cancer would happen right there. Every week God would do something miraculous during our time together. Because the presence was so powerful, people would bring 2-3 friends or family members to our gathering. The presence of the Holy Spirit was so heavy.
Then, we had a problem with security. Our gathering was getting too big. We were threatened, but it was too late. We were so connected to Jesus and so in love with Jesus. We didn't care that we were threatened by the government. The secret police came after us and started sending us threatening letters. They would say, “we're going to kill you.” So then we realized we needed our own security protocols.
One time, one of the leaders of the church mistakenly invited someone from the secret police into our house. When he came to the house, we were teaching what Christianity is. We prayed and worshipped, and for the first time, the Holy Spirit rained and all of us started speaking in tongues. The secret police came because he wanted to arrest all of us, but when he saw us speaking in tongues he ran out of the house.
In the report he filed he wrote about how he thought we were crazy. He said, “they started making noises and sounds I didn't understand. They're all crazy. They can't do anything. They're harmless.” Then we found out that because of this, one of his friends who was also in the secret police came to Jesus. He showed us the file the guy wrote. He told us that the secret police were after us, but when they came to our house and saw us speaking in tongues, they dropped the case.”
“Can we talk about community? This is how Jesus spread in underground church and continues to spread. You both have loved people at the risk of your own lives. Talk about how the underground church takes care of each other daily and is in each other's lives today.”
“First, the leaders come to our house. They come and go in our house very freely. We go on vacation together. We go on mission trips together. We help each other move. If one of us is sick, we take them to the hospital to get them their medicine. We say that the first rule of discipleship is that you have to live with your disciples. We’ve told this to all of the leaders because over time, the thorns of our personalities come into each other and that's when we get corrupted and grow.
If you ever come to see us, one of the first things that you're going to notice about the group of the underground church is our unity. They say, “how can you live with each other and be with each other all the time? Are there not any problems?” But if you're not living with your disciples, that glue doesn't happen. The glue of the Holy Spirit doesn't happen. Our first rule of discipleship and community is that we live with each other. This is how we build unity. This is how we build oneness.”
“Is there a fear when you gather now?”
“Yes, 100%.”
“I’m really interested in how the church is growing amid such persecution. Is this through loving people?”
“The religious Church essentially says, “behave, then you'll believe, and then you'll belong.”
However, Jesus says, “first you belong, then you believe, then you behave.”
For example, if I'm a homosexual and I come to church, do I feel like I belong? Or would you say that I need to talk differently, dress differently, or act differently? You might believe, and if you do believe finally, then you'll belong. But what does Jesus say? For God so loved the world. He doesn't say, for God so loved the believer. God tells us that first we belong. Then we believe. Then we behave.
Look at the adulterous woman. What did He say to her? That he without sin throw the first stone. What is he saying? You belong to me. You’re mine. I think that's the key to us growing in the Middle East; we love. We tell everyone you belong. It doesn't matter who you are, what you are, or where you are; you belong. It’s all about family. It's all about our spiritual family. It's all about connecting. It's all about being accepted. So we are so quick, especially in the West to correct behavior before the person even feels they belong. In the East, especially because it's communal and relational, it's first you belong, then you believe, then you behave.”
“What do you see happening right now, specifically in the aspect of community and unity that you wish would happen in the Western church?”
“In the West we value comfort, convenience, and control. But to have community means we will have to be uncomfortable, inconvenienced, and not in control.
I wish people in the West would do this. Western culture wants to make everything squeaky clean and compartmentalized. But here, my leaders come to my house without calling me. How many times have you had someone randomly come to your house? Do you ever allow them? This is what builds a real community.”
“Do you fear that our lack of living communally has impacted the mission of the church in the West?”
“I was just reading about a survey that reported about 60% of Christians are not coming back to church. Why?
Community is so important. I think this is why we're seeing millennials participate in all this social justice. They want to have a purpose, and they want to do it in a community. They want to do it together. Community is not about attending a 2-hour program on Sunday. It’s not about, ‘come and see our pastor, come and see our worship, and now let's go to lunch.” But what they’re seeking is real community. They want to be energized. They want purpose. The best purpose in life is to live for God.”
“Is there a sense of fear in the people in the Middle East, causing them to withdraw from each other or hide?”
“The Middle East is a little bit different. Persecution is so bad. Unemployment is so bad. And this fire melts us together. Especially with COVID and all that was going on the last two years, there's so much suffering. But through this suffering, you actually realize what's important in life. Which is relationship, which is family.
In America, what's important for many is the American dream. Everyone wants to buy a house with a white picket fence and have two kids and a dog. That's the American dream. But that's not really important.
The fear we face has actually driven us together.
When my mother-in-law died, it brought us so close. It was so bad. It was like a wicked tornado because we all had COVID at the same time. Even all of us having COVID together at the same time helped us be able to take care of each other and be there for each other.”
“I hope people hear a call to gather and to come together in ways where we pray and we believe in God together and we fight for each other. We should take care of each other. That is my heart. That is what I pray happens.”
“I was talking to a pastor, and hopefully, people won't take offense to this. But during COVID this pastor said to me, “do you guys need to meet physically?” And I said, “yes, the Bible says, when two or more gathered in my name, I am there. It doesn't say when two or more are gathered on Zoom, I'm there. And Paul writes, do not forsake the gatherings.”
He responded to me and said, “if I tell my church members to gather, they'll think I'm very insensitive.” I responded to him by saying, “then I must be the most insensitive man in the world.” He said, “why?” And I said, “because when we gather, we are in danger of being raped and killed, yet, I told my leaders to come to my house every week.”
“Pastor X, there's a sense of fatigue and despair that’s plaguing the church right now. There's a sense of, how we even help?
What would you say to those people? They want to help and their hearts are moved, but they don't know what to do for Ukraine or for the underground church in Afghanistan.
How do we love and care for you all amid this very chaotic time?”
“Jesus says wars and rumors of wars are a sign that he’s coming back. The first thing is to pray. Everything happens through prayer. Despite the things we've been through in the Middle East, I know the church continues to grow because you guys are praying for us.
Secondly, remember that America is a blessed nation. The income of Americans compared to people in the East is very different. We make so much money in America. We have so much money in America. One of the reasons why God has blessed America is because Americans are the most generous people in the world.
Come and align yourself with us by going to catalyticministries.com, getting on our prayer app, and giving. Every dollar that you give goes to the underground church. We are the underground church and God is doing something very special. This is the biggest revival happening in the Middle East since the Islamic conquest. Why not be a part of it?”
If you're interested in giving to Global Catalytic Ministries so they can provide necessary funds to believers on the ground, go to catalyticministries.com/giving.
For a 7-day prayer guide and more information on giving, visit ifgathering.com/afghanistan.