Page 6 - Voice of the Persecuted Christians - Jul-Sep 2023 - 123

HELPING CHRISTIANS IN FLIGHT
Behind bars for the OAn e w h o s e t t h e m f r e e
Rejected by their families and even imprisoned by the authorities, Iranian converts to Christianity who share the gospel often end up having to flee their homeland. Tom Hardie meets two believers who have suffered for the faith yet whose lives have impacted many people
of family members. Because she was afraid of them, especially her mother, she felt unable to report what was going on and perhaps unsurprisingly by the age of 12 had fallen behind in her education.
s the door to the two colleagues and I typical Middle to sex’ but although she prayed to apartment opened, we Eastern hospitality. God to be released from it nothing were greeted by two What I had not expected was the happened, perhaps because of her smartly dressed women honesty with which Priscilla then own impression of what God was like. – one our translator for shared her inspiring yet deeply ‘I saw God as a god of rage who would
the day, the other an Iranian Christian moving story. beat me up,’ she said.
who uses the pseudonym ‘Priscilla’*. Years later, however, as an adult she Both smiled and welcomed us to As a child she was brought up in a was surprised to hear that one of her the latter’s comfortable but simply wealthy family in Iran but suffered old friends had become a Christian. furnished home, before offering my repeated sexual abuse at the hands ‘I met her and asked her why she, as
At the age of 14 she began seeing different men as a way of finding the acceptance that her family had failed to provide. As a result she became what she described as ‘addicted
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