“Persecution is part of history, but it is not the last page”
The testimonies of persecuted Christians from China, India and Iran reminded the 5,000 at the Lausanne 4 Congress of the price to be paid for faithfulness to Christ. “But these sufferings are nothing compared to the glory that awaits us”, says Iranian pastor Farshid Fathi in an interview.
Protestante Digital · SEOUL · 26 SEPTEMBER 2024 · 11:35 CET
The Third Lausanne Congress was held in Cape Town in 2010. Among its attendees was an pastor from Iran, Farshid Fathi. After coming to know Christ in the mid-1990s, Fathi had seen the Christian church grow in his homeland, despite furious persecution by the Islamic regime, which killed seven Christian leaders in 1996.
But persecution did not stop the church. “In 2005 we started with house churches, we were only two families. Five years later, there were already 50 house churches”, the pastor recalls.
Shortly after returning from that conference, Fathi was arrested along with a dozen Christians who were gathering for worship in a house. He was sentenced to prison for “threatening national security” of Iran.
Fathi was held in a cell for a year, without seeing the sunlight, waiting for his sentence. “But Christ”, Fathi told an attentive crowd of thousands in Incheon-Seoul fourteen years later, “is the light of my life”.
Participants of L4 in Incheon-Seoul pray for the persecuted Christians in several countries. / Photo: Lausanne Movement. In a conversation with Protestante Digital and Evangelical Focus (see main photo of this article) in Incheon-Seoul, Fathi recounted details of that dark time. “Even though I felt alone, I was calm”, knowing that “there were hundreds of thousands of people praying for me”.
A year after this total confinement, Fathi was transferred to Evin prison, where he spent four more years in difficult, though not as extreme, conditions. After his release, he left the country and today serves the church in Turkey, among the hundreds of thousands of Iranians now living in this neighbouring country, where there is also a vibrant Christian community.
In his home he now has “a shelf where I place objects and phrases for which I am thankful”, including “being able to have a mirror to look at my face, or being able to walk more than three metres, or being able to turn the light on and off in a room”.
His smile and expression of joy are contagious.
Real growth amidst real persecution
“Hundreds of Christians have been imprisoned”, Fathi explained, yet “the church is growing”.
“All Christians share the gospel, and if one Sunday someone doesn’t accept Christ for the first time, we wonder if something is wrong. It is estimated that there are now more than a million new believers in Iran, all from an Islamic background, despite severe restrictions on the practice of the Christian faith”.
“Persecution”, the pastor added, “is not the end of the story, but part of it”, and “the greatest demonstration of love we can make is to be willing to go through suffering”.
His words resonated in the hearts of the audience, formed by over 5,000 from 202 countries, who spent much of the time in at the tables praying for persecuted Christians around the world.
Reaching rural areas
Farshid’s testimony was joined by that of Sara Akhavan, an Iranian-Argentinean, who told with great emotion how through supernatural revelations God led her to take the gospel to seven unreached villages in Iran, seeing a house church founded in each of them.
Sara Akhavan shares about the advance of the Christian faith in Iran, at L4. / Photo: Lausanne Movement. After reaching the sixth municipality, Sara was arrested in a police raid and imprisoned. “When I was in prison, I felt afraid and sad... but then I remembered God’s promise, and I began to sing that there is victory in the name of Jesus”. Akhavan sang in Spanish the words that comforted her heart.
A few weeks later, she was released from prison and was able to complete the task, planting the seventh house church. “No matter what difficulty we face as long as the seed of the gospel continues to be sown”, Akhavan concluded.
The times of sowing and reaping that have been repeated throughout history in so many countries confirm Jesus’ teaching about how the message of the gospel always has power, even if we cannot always see it.
In an introductory video during a plenary at the Congress, it was recalled that in the 19th century several missionaries spent their lives in Iran without seeing any fruit. “But they themselves said that they were preparing the soil for the sowing that was to come later.
Today the harvest is underway and “it is unstoppable, because that is what Jesus has promised: that the gates of Hades will not prevail”, Pastor Farshid said.
China 2030, a missionary movement in expansion
Lausanne 4 also gave space on its fourth day to the eyewitness testimony of a pastor in China, whose name and image cannot be disclosed for security reasons. This pastor recalled how in 2010, for the previous global Lausanne 3 gathering, some 200 Chinese pastors and missionaries were blocked by the government and could not reach Cape Town.
“However, that was the origin of a collaboration between pastors that would generate a missionary movement of unparalleled unity: China 2030”, explained the young pastor, who dreams with others about sending Chinese missionaries around the world. “My dream is that the next time Lausanne is held in Asia, it will be in China”.
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Patrick Fung, addressing the Seoul 2024 audience speaking about the gospel in Asia. / Photo: Lausanne Movement.
Patrick Fung, who from Singapore leads a movement that mobilises missionaries across Asia, had spoken in the morning about the lessons of the book of Acts on persecution of the church. “In severe persecution, the church expands. Persecution will never kill the church but a compromised gospel will”, Fung warned.
The pastor said the marks of discipleship include suffering, and how the spread of the gospel is done by thousands of anonymous followers, “from the margins” who are driven by the Holy Spirit to carry the message.
“God is sovereign and he allows persecution, even through new forms in the West. Legislation is restricting religious expression. But God continues to use the non-famous, the unnamed, for the spread of the gospel”, Fung said.
India: “We are not heros, just brothers and sisters”
Babu Verghese, journalist and historian, shared hard-hitting stories of persecution of Christians in some states of India. Mutilations, burning of churches and properties, defamations... All this with the connivance of anti-conversion laws passed in some states “which despite being unconstitutional are being enforced”, he said.
Babu Verghese spoke on the history and present of India, and the religious freedom issued there. / Photo: Lausanne Movement.
Although international organisations have denounced this situation, the pressure of Hindu nationalism makes it difficult to bring about change. “In India there is a battle against the Bible, against freedom of belief”, and Babu encouraged Christians elsewhere not to give up this battle, in prayer and in solidarity with the Christian people of his country.
“Many times we hear these stories, but when we put a face to them, it’s different”, noted one of the session presenters.
At the tables gathering 5,000 brothers and sisters in faith, the next few minutes were filled with prayer and tears. “Remember that we are not heroes”, said one of the presenters, “we are like any of you, we are your brothers in faith. There is nothing like the family of God, and Jesus is the true hero who has promised us that ‘all this present suffering is nothing compared to the glory that awaits us’”.
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