Today’s testimony is shared by Rasheed, a brother from Afghanistan.

A story so powerful it will shake your understanding of miracles.

Imagine facing execution knowing your final moments are near.

What if against all odds a miracle intervened?

Today we share the unbelievable story of an Afghan pastor who stared death in the face and walked away defying the impossible.

This isn’t just a story of survival.

It’s a testament to unwavering faith when everything seems lost.

An inspiring journey of faith, endurance, and the miraculous power that delivers from the clutches of certain execution.

Listen and be blessed.

My name is Rashid.

That is not the name my parents gave me, but it is the name I must use now.

The name I was born with is too dangerous to speak even here, even now.

There are people who would still want me dead if they knew where to find me.

I need to tell you something that happened when I was 8 years old.

It is the first memory that taught me what it means to be a follower of Jesus in Afghanistan.

It was early morning before the first call to prayer.

I was sleeping on the mat I shared with my two younger brothers when the door to our compound exploded inward, not with bombs or force, but with the sound of men’s voices and boots on our courtyard stones.

My mother’s hand clamped over my mouth before I could make a sound.

Her other hand pressed my face into her chest.

I could feel her heartbeat fast like a bird’s wings.

They had come for my uncle.

I heard him being dragged across the courtyard.

I heard my grandmother weeping.

And then I heard my uncle’s voice loud and clear, cutting through everything else.

He shouted something.

Even with my mother’s hand over my mouth, even with the terror flooding through my small body, I heard him.

He shouted that Jesus is Lord.

That was the last time I saw my uncle alive.

3 days later, we learned he had been executed.

The charge was apostasy.

He had been born Muslim, they said, and he had rejected Islam for Christianity.

In Afghanistan, this is not just a sin.

It is a crime punishable by death.

My mother wept for days, but always silently, always behind closed doors.

My father stood at the window looking out at nothing, his jaw tight.

And I, at 8 years old, learned the first great lesson of my life.

Following Jesus in my country could cost you everything.

It could cost you your life.

But we did not stop believing.

My family had been Christians for three generations.

My grandfather used to tell us stories late at night when no one else could hear.

He spoke about how Christianity came to Afghanistan long before Islam ever arrived.

He told us about ancient churches, about manuscripts written in languages most people had forgotten, about a time when the message of Jesus spread across these mountains and valleys freely.

He showed me once when I was very young a piece of pottery he had found in the ruins near our village.

It had a cross carved into it.

It was hundreds and hundreds of years old.

He held it in his weathered hands and told me that our faith was not foreign to this land.

Jesus had reached Afghanistan in the earliest centuries.

The church had been here first, but those days were long gone.

Islam came in the seventh century, and slowly over generations and centuries, Christianity was pushed into the shadows.

Some converted willingly.

Many converted under pressure, under threat, under the sword.

A few families like mine kept the faith in secret.

We became like seeds buried deep underground, waiting for a spring that might never come.

My grandfather taught me to read from a Bible that had been in our family for longer than anyone could remember.

The pages were thin as whisper, held together by careful stitches in prayer.

We could not read it during the day.

We could not read it where anyone might see.

So he taught me by candle light in the smallest room of our house.

His finger tracing the words, his voice barely above breathing.

He taught me about the prophets, about King David, about Jesus who healed the sick and raised the dead and died for people who hated him, about resurrection and hope and a kingdom that no government could destroy.

And he taught me the family tree, not just names and dates, but stories.

Stories of faith and stories of blood.

My great uncle arrested for possessing a Bible.

Beaten to death in prison.

My father’s cousin discovered teaching her children about Jesus, stoned by her own neighbors.

My grandmother’s brother accused of trying to convert others.

Hanged in the public square as a warning.

My uncle, the one they took when I was eight, and more.

So many more.

The tree of my family had branches that ended abruptly, cut off by violence, by persecution, by a system that could not tolerate our existence.

My father used to say, “We were not just surviving. We were keeping a light burning in a dark place. Even if that light was no bigger than a candle flame hidden under a clay pot, it was still light. And light matters most when the darkness is deepest.”

When I turned 15, I began attending the secret gatherings.

We never called it church.

That word was too dangerous.

We called them family meetings, though everyone who came was not related by blood.

We were related by something deeper.

We met at 4:00 in the morning before the first call to prayer when the city was still asleep.

Never more than seven or eight people at a time.

If more than that gathered, someone might notice.

Someone might report us.

We rotated locations, never meeting in the same place two weeks in a row.

One week in a basement, another week in a back room of a shop.

Another week in a small house on the edge of the city where the walls were thick and the windows small.

We covered the windows with blankets.

We sang hymns and whispers, our voices barely audible even to each other.

We prayed with our eyes open, always watching the door.

We read from Bibles that had been smuggled in from Pakistan or Iran, printed on thin paper and hidden inside the covers of school books or wrapped in plastic and buried in flower sacks.

The children were taught Bible stories, but we told them to memorize everything and never write anything down.

If they were asked at school what stories they knew, they were taught to call them old family tales.

David and Goliath became a story about a brave shepherd boy.

Daniel in the lion’s den became a story about a wise man who trusted in God’s protection.

But we never said which God.

We hid the truth inside the truth.

I learned early that we lived double lives in public.

We were Muslims.

We attended the mosque on Fridays because not attending would raise suspicion.

We fasted during Ramadan because everyone fasted and if you did not, people would ask questions.

We prayed the five daily prayers where others could see us, bowing toward Mecca, reciting words we did not mean.

It felt like lying.

It felt like betrayal.

It felt like being Peter who denied Jesus three times before the rooster crowed.

I remember the first time I had to deny Christ openly.

I was 16.

A teacher at school asked our class who we believed was the greatest prophet.

Everyone said Muhammad.

When he came to me, I hesitated just for a second, just long enough that he noticed.

He asked me again, his eyes narrowing.

I said, “Muhammad.”

He smiled and moved on.

I felt sick for days afterward.

I prayed and asked God to forgive me for my cowardice.

I read the story of Peter over and over, looking for comfort, looking for understanding.

Jesus had forgiven Peter.

Maybe he would forgive me, too.

My father found me one night unable to sleep, staring at the ceiling.

He sat beside me in the darkness and told me something I have never forgotten.

He said that God does not ask us to die for no reason.

He said that dying for faith is not the same as dying for pride.

He said that if I got myself killed by being careless or stubborn, I would not be serving God.

I would be abandoning the people who needed me.

He told me that we were like Esther who hid her Jewish identity in the court of a king who hated Jews.

She stayed hidden until God needed her to speak.

Then she spoke, even though it could cost her life, but she waited for God’s timing.

I did not fully understand what he meant then, but I would understand later.

When I was 19, my father was killed.

Someone had seen him with a Bible.

We never learned who.

Maybe a neighbor.

Maybe someone from the mosque who had suspected him for years.

Maybe just someone who needed money and knew that reporting a Christian could earn a reward.

The Taliban came at night.

They beat him in front of our family.

They demanded to know where he got the Bible, who else was a Christian, where the church met.

He told them nothing.

They beat him more.

Still, he said nothing.

They dragged him outside.

We heard the sounds.

We could not see, but we heard.

In the morning, his body was dumped at the entrance to our compound as a warning.

I was the oldest son.

I was 19 years old, responsible now for my mother, my three younger brothers, my younger sister.

I was responsible for our family survival.

And I was also suddenly responsible for the secret church.

The small group of believers had no leader.

Now my father had been the one who organized the meetings, who taught, who prayed over people, who kept everyone connected.

Now he was gone.

They looked to me.

I was not ready.

I did not feel qualified.

I had barely become a man and now I was supposed to be a pastor.

How could I lead anyone when I could barely lead myself?

But there was no one else.

The first time I stood before that small group to teach from the Bible, my hands shook so badly I could not hold the pages still.

My voice cracked.

I forgot what I was going to say halfway through.

I am certain it was the worst sermon anyone had ever heard.

But afterward, an old woman, a grandmother who had been following Jesus longer than I had been alive, came to me.

She took both of my hands in hers.

She looked into my eyes and told me that my father’s blood was watering the soil and my voice would harvest what he had planted.

I did not feel like a harvester.

I felt like a child playing at being a man, but I tried.

Every week I tried.

I studied the Bible until my eyes burned.

I prayed until words stopped coming and all I had left was groaning in my spirit.

I made mistakes.

I said things wrong.

I forgot passages.

I stumbled through prayers.

But the people were patient.

They prayed for me.

They encouraged me.

And slowly, month by month, I learned what it meant to be a shepherd.

For six years, this was my life.

Working during the day as a laborer, carrying bricks and mixing cement to earn money for my family.

Meeting with believers in the dark hours of early morning, teaching, praying, trying to keep hope alive in people who lived under constant threat.

Moving my family from place to place when we feared someone was watching us too closely.

Living always with one eye on the door, waiting for the moment when it would be kicked in.

And then in 2021, everything changed.

I will not pretend I understand all the politics.

I do not know why the Americans left or why the government fell so quickly.

What I know is that one week there were soldiers and checkpoints and a fragile sense that maybe possibly things were slowly getting better.

And the next week the Taliban were back.

They rolled into our city in trucks, black flags flying, weapons visible, and everything we had feared came rushing back like a flood.

The foreign NOS’s evacuated.

The few Christian aid workers who had been operating carefully, quietly trying to help people, they fled on planes or across borders.

The small measure of freedom we had known.

The tiny cracks of light we had found, they closed.

The Taliban went door-to-door conducting surveys.

They wanted to know every family’s background, their tribal affiliations, their religious adherence.

They were looking for people who had worked with the Americans, people who had worked with the old government, people who were Shia instead of Sunni.

And they were looking for Christians, people disappeared.

One day they were there, the next day they were gone.

No trials, no announcements, just gone.

We heard rumors, we heard stories.

We did not know what was true and what was fear, but we knew enough to be afraid.

My mother begged me to leave.

She held my face in her hands and begged me to run to cross the border into Pakistan or Iran to save myself while there was still time.

She had lost her husband.

She could not bear to lose her son.

I remember what I told her.

I told her that if all the shepherds ran away, who would take care of the sheep?

She wept.

She told me I was a fool.

She told me I was being stubborn and prideful and that I would get myself killed for nothing.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe I was a fool.

But I could not leave.

Not yet.

Not while there were still people who needed someone to pray with them, to read the scriptures with them, to remind them that God had not forgotten them.

So I stayed and I tried to be even more careful.

We developed systems.

We used coded language when we spoke to each other in public.

A conversation about tea meant a conversation about Bibles.

Talking about a sick relative meant someone was in danger.

If someone asked about the weather, they were asking if it was safe to meet.

We had a network.

Brother Mahmud, a shopkeeper who sold tea and spices.

He hid Christian materials in his shipments.

No one suspected him because he was old and had a reputation as a devout Muslim.

Sister Fatima, a widow who had lost her husband years before to illness.

She hosted meetings in her small house because no one paid attention to an old woman living alone.

And there was a boy, just 14, quick and smart, who carried messages between believers because children could move through the streets without suspicion.

We all understood the same thing.

If any of us were caught, we would not give up the others.

No matter what they did to us, we would die before we betrayed each other.

I lived like this for 3 years after the Taliban returned.

3 years of hiding, of fear, of watching shadows, of startling awake at night at every sound.

3 years of wondering how long we could possibly survive.

I should have known it could not last forever.

I should have known that when you shine a light in darkness, eventually someone will notice.

The darkness always notices.

His name was Hamid.

At least that is what he told us.

He was young, maybe 25, with a thin beard and nervous eyes.

He came to one of our meetings through Brother Mahmood, the tea shop owner.

He said he had questions about Christianity.

He said he had been reading things on the internet before the Taliban shut down most access.

He said he wanted to know the truth.

We should have been more careful.

Brother Mahmood pulled me aside after that first meeting and warned me to watch this new man.

He said something felt wrong.

The questions Hamid asked were too specific, too detailed, like he was trying to map out our network rather than understand theology.

He asked who else attended meetings.

He asked where we got our Bibles.

He asked if we had connections to churches in other cities.

I remember what I told brother Mahmood.

I told him we could not turn away someone who was seeking Jesus.

That was not who we were.

That was not what we were called to do.

Brother Mahmood just nodded slowly and said he hoped I was right.

I was not right.

For three weeks, Hamid attended our meetings.

He seemed eager.

He asked questions.

He took notes, which should have been a warning because we never wrote anything down.

But he said he wanted to remember everything.

He talked about feeling empty following Islam, about wanting something more, about being drawn to the message of grace and forgiveness.

I wanted to believe him.

We all did.

We were so hungry for new believers, so desperate to see the church grow rather than just survive that we ignored the signs.

It was a Tuesday morning when they came for me.

I remember because Tuesdays I worked at a construction site on the north side of the city.

My youngest sister had made bread that morning, the flatbread I loved, still warm when I ate it.

She smiled at me.

I smiled back.

It was such an ordinary moment.

I walked through the morning market on my way to work.

I greeted people I knew.

The fruit seller, the old man who sold prayer beads, the woman who sat on the corner begging.

These were people I had seen almost every day for years.

Everything seemed normal.

But there was something in the air that morning.

A pressure, a weight, like the feeling before an earthquake when the earth holds its breath.

I should have paid attention to that feeling, but I did not.

At the corner near the mosque, four men stepped out and surrounded me.

They were not in uniform, but I knew what they were.

Taliban enforcers.

They did not need uniforms for people to recognize authority.

One of them asked my name.

I told him.

He nodded as if confirming something he already knew.

He told me to come with them.

No explanation, no accusation, just an order.

I thought about running.

The thought flashed through my mind for just a second.

But where would I run?

They knew my name.

They knew where my family lived.

Running would only make things worse for everyone.

So I went.

They walked me through the market, one man on each side, two behind.

People I had known my whole life looked away as I passed.

No one wanted to see.

No one wanted to be associated with whatever was happening.

I do not blame them.

Fear makes us all smaller than we want to be.

They put me in the back of a truck.

Someone pulled a cloth bag over my head.

The world went dark.

I felt the truck begin to move.

I felt every turn, every bump in the road.

I tried to count the minutes, tried to figure out where they were taking me, but fear has a way of making time meaningless.

I prayed, not eloquent prayers, just the same word over and over.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

When the truck stopped and they pulled me out, I was led inside a building.

I could smell mildew and concrete.

Somewhere water was dripping.

They took the bag off my head.

I was in a small room, concrete walls, a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, a metal chair, nothing else.

They made me sit.

Then they left me alone for what felt like hours.

I learned later that this is part of the technique.

Leave someone alone long enough, and they start breaking themselves down without any help.

When the door finally opened, a man walked in.

He was older, maybe 50, with a neat beard and clean clothes.

He looked educated.

He sat down across from me and smiled slightly.

He did not yell.

He did not threaten.

He just started asking questions.

How long had I been a Christian?

Where did I learn about Christianity?

Who taught me?

I said nothing.

He nodded as if he expected that.

Then he opened a folder and spread photographs on the table between us.

They were pictures of our meetings, pictures taken from inside the rooms where we gathered, pictures of people praying, pictures of someone holding a Bible, pictures of me teaching.

Every photograph was taken from the same angle.

The angle where Hamid always sat.

The man across from me watched my face as I looked at the photographs.

He saw the moment I understood.

He saw the betrayal register.

He asked me again who else was involved.

He asked me where we got the Bibles.

He asked me if we had contact with Christians in Pakistan or Iran or outside the country.

I said nothing.

He stood up, still calm, and told me that my silence would not protect anyone.

He said they already knew everything they needed to know.

The photographs proved it.

My cooperation would not save my friends, but it might make things easier for me.

I looked up at him and told him I had nothing to say.

He nodded once and left the room.

The men who came in next were not calm.

They were not educated.

They were not interested in asking questions.

I will not describe in detail what happened next.

There are some things that do not need to be spoken out loud.

I will say only that I learned that day how much pain a human body can endure and still remain conscious.

I learned that terror is not just fear of death, but fear of the next moment and the next and the next with no end in sight.

I prayed through all of it, not for rescue, not for relief, just for strength, not to break, not to give them names, not to betray the people I loved.

When they finished, they threw me in a cell.

It was underground.

I could tell by the dampness, by the smell of earth and stone, by the way sound echoed.

There was no window.

The only light came from a bare bulb in the corridor outside the bars.

I was not alone.

There were three other men in the cell.

One was old, maybe 70.

The others were younger.

We did not speak at first.

We just existed in the same small space, each locked in our own suffering.

Eventually, one of them asked why I was there.

His voice was quiet, barely above a whisper.

I told him the truth.

I told him I was arrested for being a Christian.

The old man made a sound like a grunt.

He said religious prisoners were the lowest status in prison, lower than thieves, lower than murderers.

Even criminals did not want to associate with apostates.

I did not respond.

What was there to say?

That night in the darkness, one of the younger men whispered a question.

He asked, “What was so important about this Jesus that I would let them do this to me?”

I thought about not answering.

I was exhausted.

I was in pain.

I wanted only to sleep and forget where I was.

But then I realized that even here, even in this place, God was giving me a chance to speak.

So I told him, I told him about Jesus who healed the sick and loved the outcasts.

About Jesus who died for people who hated him and rose again to prove that death is not the end.

About Jesus who offers forgiveness that we do not deserve and love that we cannot earn.

I spoke quietly, barely above breathing in that dark cell.

And three men who might die in that place listened.

Two days later, they took me out again.

They brought me before a judge.

It was not a real trial.

There was no lawyer.

There were no witnesses for my defense.

It was a formality, a show.

They read the charges, apostasy, spreading Christianity, corrupting Muslims, possessing and distributing forbidden materials.

Each charge carried the death penalty.

The judge asked if I had anything to say.

I stood there in chains and told him I was a follower of Jesus Christ.

I told him I would not deny my faith no matter what sentence he gave me.

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he pronounced the sentence death by execution to be carried out within one week.

Public execution to serve as a warning to others.

They took me back to the cell.

I sat in the corner and tried to process what I had just heard.

7 days, maybe less, and then I would die.

I was 28 years old.

I had never married.

I had never traveled beyond the provinces near my home.

I had never done anything remarkable except try to keep a few people’s faith alive in a hostile place.

And now I would die for it.

I thought about my mother, about my brothers and sister, about the believers who depended on me, about all the things I would never do and never see and never experience.

And I was afraid.

I am not ashamed to say it.

I was terrified.

That night, alone in the darkness, I broke down.

I wept until I had no tears left.

I prayed angry prayers, asking God why he brought me this far.

Only to let me die like this.

I wrestled with him like Jacob wrestled with the angel, demanding to know what purpose this served.

I got no answer, just silence.

But in that silence, slowly something else came, not an answer, not an explanation, just a presence, a sense that I was not alone.

I remembered words from the Psalms.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

God was not promising me escape.

He was not promising me rescue.

He was promising me his presence.

And somehow in that dark cell, that was enough.

I spent the next 3 days in prayer.

I forgave Hamid.

Though I do not know if he wanted my forgiveness or cared about it, I prayed for my family.

I prayed for the believers.

I prayed for the men in my cell.

I made my peace with dying.

I was ready, as ready as anyone can be to face execution.

On the fourth day, they came to take me to the courtyard where the execution would happen.

They bound my hands.

They walked me up the stairs out into blinding sunlight.

I had not seen the sun in days and it hurt my eyes.

There was a crowd gathered.

The Taliban required people to attend executions.

Refusing to watch was itself suspicious.

I scanned the faces looking for my family, praying they had not been forced to come.

I did not see them.

There was a post in the center of the courtyard.

That was where I would die.

They walked me toward it.

My legs felt strange, like they belonged to someone else.

My heart was beating so fast I thought it might explode before the executioner even had his chance.

They reached the post.

They began to tie me to it.

And then a man in a commander’s uniform came striding across the courtyard shouting.

Everything stopped.

The commander was checking papers, making phone calls, arguing with the other officials.

His face was angry.

Something was wrong.

After several minutes of confusion, he made an announcement.

The execution was postponed.

There was an administrative error.

The paperwork had not been filed correctly.

It would be rescheduled in 48 hours.

The crowd dispersed, confused and disappointed.

I was untied and marched back down to my cell.

I sat in the darkness trying to understand what had just happened.

The old man in the cell with me spoke up.

He said he had been in that prison for 3 years.

He had watched dozens of executions.

He had never in all that time seen one postponed.

Never.

I did not know what to think.

Was it really just an error or was it something else?

Two days later, they came for me again.

Same process, same courtyard, same crowd.

This time, the truck that was supposed to transport additional officials to witness the execution broke down on the way.

Brand new vehicle, regularly maintained, but it would not start.

Mechanics could not find the problem.

By the time they fixed it, it was too late in the day.

Islamic law has specific requirements about timing for executions.

They had missed the window, postponed again.

I was returned to my cell.

The men there stared at me like I was something supernatural.

One of them asked if I had put a curse on the Taliban.

I told him I had not, but God might have.

The third time they tried to execute me, everything proceeded smoothly.

The timing was right.

The officials were present.

The crowd was gathered.

I was tied to the post.

The executioner stepped forward.

He was a Taliban fighter, a man who had killed before, whose hands were already stained with blood.

He raised his weapon.

He looked into my eyes and he froze.

His hands began shaking.

The weapon fell from his grip and clattered on the stones.

He backed away, his eyes wide, saying something over and over that I could not hear clearly.

The commander screamed at him, demanding to know what he was doing.

The executioner just kept backing away, shaking his head.

Later, a guard told me what the executioner said.

He said he saw something standing behind me, something bright, something that terrified him more than any enemy he had ever faced in battle.

He refused to try again.

He accepted demotion, accepted punishment, but he would not touch me.

I was taken back to the cell once more and I understood then with absolute clarity that something impossible was happening.

God was intervening.

Not in subtle ways, not in coincidences that could be explained away, but in obvious undeniable ways.

The delays continued.

Each time they tried to execute me, something went wrong.

Documents got mixed up.

Officials did not show up.

Weather turned bad at the last moment.

Each time more confusion, each time more frustration from the Taliban.

And each time I went back to that cell, more convinced that God had not brought me this far to let me die.

I did not know why.

I did not know what he was doing or what his plan was.

But I knew with a certainty I cannot explain that my story was not finished yet.

The men in the cell with me began to change.

They asked more questions.

They wanted to know about this God who could confuse the Taliban, who could delay executions, who could make hardened fighters afraid.

I taught them.

I told them about Jesus.

I sang hymns quietly in the darkness.

I prayed over them.

Two of them accepted Christ in that prison cell.

One of them was a former Taliban soldier himself, a man who had been arrested for questioning his superiors.

He wept when he prayed to receive Jesus.

He said he had killed in the name of God, but he had never known God until that moment.

Five times they tried to execute me.

Five times something prevented it.

By the sixth attempt, the guards were afraid to come near me.

They brought my food and left quickly.

They would not meet my eyes.

They thought I was protected by something they could not understand.

They were right.

But I knew the protection would not last forever.

Eventually, someone high enough in command would order my execution to proceed no matter what.

Pride would not allow them to be stopped forever by what they saw as omens or superstitions.

I was living on borrowed time.

The question was what God intended to do with that time.

I prayed constantly.

I asked God to show me what he wanted.

I asked for wisdom.

I asked for courage.

I asked for clarity.

And one night I had a dream.

In the dream, I walked through the prison walls like they were water.

I walked out into the streets.

I walked away.

When I woke up, my heart was pounding.

I did not know if it was just a dream or something more.

But I felt in my spirit that I needed to pay attention.

I needed to watch.

I needed to be ready because God was not just delaying my execution.

He was preparing my escape.

The sixth attempt to execute me came on a Friday morning.

Friday is the holy day and they wanted to make a statement.

I was taken from my cell before dawn before the first call to prayer.

The guards were rougher this time, more impatient.

I could sense their frustration in the way they handled me, the way they avoided looking at my face.

By now, stories had spread through the prison.

Some guards believed I was protected by dark magic.

Others thought I was protected by God, though they would never say which god.

A few thought the whole thing was a series of unlucky coincidences.

But no one could deny what kept happening.

They brought me to the courtyard again.

The post was there waiting.

The crowd was larger this time.

Word had spread through the city.

People came out of curiosity, wanting to see the Christian who could not be executed.

Some came hoping to see a miracle.

Others came hoping to see me finally die and prove there was no magic, no God, nothing supernatural at all.

I stood in that courtyard with my hands bound and my heart beating hard against my ribs.

I prayed silently asking God to give me courage to help me face whatever came next without fear.

The commander this time was different.

He was from Kandahar, brought in specifically because he had a reputation for being harsh and unmerciful.

He did not care about omens.

He did not believe in supernatural intervention.

He believed in duty and discipline and completing orders.

He read the charges again for the crowd.

He reminded everyone that apostasy was a crime against God and against the Islamic Emirate.

He said I was being executed as a warning to anyone else who might consider turning away from Islam.

Then he nodded to the executioner.

This executioner was new, young, eager to prove himself.

He stepped forward without hesitation.

He was not going to freeze like the last one.

He raised his weapon.

He aimed.

And then the mullah arrived.

A religious scholar, an old man with a white beard and a reputation for strict interpretation of Islamic law.

He came striding into the courtyard shouting, demanding that everything stop immediately.

There was confusion.

The commander tried to argue with him.

But you do not argue with the senior mullah in Afghanistan.

The mullah insisted that the trial had not been conducted properly according to Sharia law.

He said that proper religious scholars had not been consulted.

He said that executing me without following the correct procedure would be a sin would bring shame on the Islamic Emirate.

The argument went on for nearly an hour.

The crowd grew restless.

The commander grew angry.

But the mullah would not back down.

Finally, the commander had no choice.

He ordered the execution postponed until a proper religious court could be convened to review the case.

I was untied from the post and taken back to my cell.

The old man who had been in the cell since I arrived looked at me and shook his head slowly.

He said he had seen many things in his 70 years.

He had survived wars and invasions and revolutions, but he had never seen anything like this.

I sat in the corner and tried to understand what was happening.

Why was God delaying this so many times?

What was he waiting for?

What was he preparing?

I did not have answers.

I only had faith that there must be a reason.

The next week passed in a strange kind of suspended time.

I was not taken for execution again.

Instead, I simply waited in that cell, existing in a space between life and death, not knowing which way the scales would finally tip.

The guards brought food irregularly now.

Some avoided my cell entirely, sending younger guards who did not know the stories.

Others would pause outside the bars and stare at me like I was some kind of strange creature they could not understand.

I used the time to teach the other prisoners, the old man who had been there for 3 years, the two younger men, and especially the Taliban soldier who had converted.

His name was Khaled, though I never knew if that was his real name or one he had taken.

Names were fluid things in prison where identity could be dangerous.

Khaled was hungry to learn everything.

He asked questions constantly.

How do you pray?

What does this passage mean?

How do you forgive people who hurt you?

He absorbed every word like a man who had been starving his entire life and had finally found food.

I taught him from memory, reciting scripture I had memorized as a child, explaining theology in the simplest terms I could.

The other men listened too, even if they did not fully believe.

In that dark place, any hope was better than no hope.

One afternoon, the young guard who had asked me to pray for his daughter came to my cell during his rounds.

He looked around nervously to make sure no one else was watching, then leaned close to the bars.

He whispered that his daughter was completely healed.

The doctors could not explain it.

She had been dying and now she was well.

He said his wife believed it was because of my prayer and she wanted to know more about my God.

I told him to be very careful.

That curiosity about Christianity could get them both killed.

But if they truly wanted to know, they should seek quietly, privately, without drawing attention.

He nodded and started to walk away.

Then he turned back and said something that made my heart race.

He said that the new executioner was coming in 5 days, that this man had a reputation for being ruthless and efficient, that when he arrived, there would be no more delays, no more interruptions.

I would die 5 days.

The guard looked at me with something like pity in his eyes.

Then he added quietly that if my god was going to do something, he needed to do it soon.

After he left, I sat in the corner of the cell and tried to process what he had told me.

5 days until a man arrived who would not be stopped by omens or fears or religious debates.

5 days until my story ended, unless God had other plans.

That night, I could not sleep.

I prayed through the darkness, not asking for anything specific, just talking to God, thanking him for the extra time I had been given, asking him to use my death if that was what he wanted, asking him to protect the believers, my family, the men in this cell.

Somewhere around midnight, I fell into a restless sleep and I dreamed.

In the dream, I was standing in my cell, but the walls looked different, translucent, like water or smoke.

I could see through them to the corridor beyond and beyond that to the stairs leading up to ground level.

A voice spoke, though I saw no one.

The voice reminded me of words from Matthew’s gospel, words Jesus had spoken to Peter.

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

In the dream, I walked forward.

I expected to hit the wall, but instead I passed through it like it was not there.

I walked through the corridor, up the stairs, across the courtyard, through the gate.

I walked out into the streets of the city as if nothing could hold me.

I woke up suddenly, my heart pounding.

The cell was still dark.

The walls were still solid.

But something had shifted inside me.

A certainty had settled in my spirit that I cannot fully explain.

I was going to escape.

I did not know how or when, but I knew it was going to happen.

From that moment, everything changed in how I approached my situation.

I was no longer passively waiting for death or rescue.

I was actively watching, observing, preparing.

I began paying careful attention to patterns.

The guard shifts changed every 8 hours at 6:00 in the morning, 2:00 in the afternoon, and 10 at night.

The transition period lasted about 15 minutes when there was confusion and the new guards were getting their assignments.

I noticed which doors made noise when they opened and which did not.

I noticed that the cell door had to be locked with a key from outside, but sometimes guards forgot to fully turn the key, leaving it technically closed, but not locked.

I memorized the route from my cell to the courtyard.

23 steps down the corridor, turned left, 18 more steps to the stairs, 42 stairs up to ground level, then across the courtyard to the main gate.

I was not planning an escape.

I had no tools, no weapons, no outside help.

But I was preparing myself to move if God opened a door.

I was making sure that when he said go, I would be ready.

Khaled, the converted Taliban soldier, noticed the change in me.

He asked one morning what had happened.

Why did I suddenly seem different, more alert, more focused?

I told him about the dream, about the certainty I felt that I was going to escape.

He looked at me for a long moment, then nodded slowly.

He said that when it happened, when the moment came, I should not hesitate.

I should not look back.

I should run and not stop running until I was safe.

I asked him what would happen to him and the others when I escaped.

Would they be punished?

Would the Taliban think they had helped me?

He smiled, a sad smile.

He said that he was already serving a long sentence, that they were already torturing him regularly for converting, that whatever happened to him after I left could not be worse than what was already happening.

Then he said something that has stayed with me.

He said that God had opened the door for me, not for him.

That his purpose was to stay here in this place with these men who needed to hear about Jesus.

But my purpose was somewhere else.

And if I did not go when God said to go, I would be rejecting the miracle he was giving me.

The days passed slowly, 3 days until the executioner arrived, then 2 days, then one.

On the final day, the day before the man from Kandahar was scheduled to arrive, I spent hours in prayer, not begging God to save me anymore, not asking him to change the circumstances, just surrendering, telling him that I trusted him, that whether I lived or died, I was his.

There was a strange peace in that surrender, an acceptance that whatever happened next was in his hands, not mine.

Evening came.

The guards brought our final meal of the day, such as it was, thin soup and old bread.

I ate slowly, mechanically, my mind focused inward.

Around 9 at night, there was unusual activity in the prison.

I could hear voices raised, footsteps moving quickly back and forth above us.

Something was happening, but I did not know what.

The old man in my cell muttered that it was probably some official visiting, some inspection.

It happened sometimes.

The whole prison would get disrupted for hours.

At 10:00, the guard shift changed as usual.

I heard the familiar sounds of the day guards leaving, the night guards arriving, assignments being given out.

But something was different this time.

The transition seemed more chaotic than normal.

I could hear arguing, confusion, someone saying something about being short staffed because another guard had called in sick.

Khaled caught my eye in the darkness.

He was thinking the same thing I was.

This confusion might be the moment.

We waited.

Around 11:00, the lights went out.

Not just in our cell, but throughout the entire prison.

The single bulb in our corridor went dark.

The distant lights from the upper levels disappeared.

Everything went black.

Power outages happened occasionally in our city.

The electrical grid was old and poorly maintained.

But they were rare at night when there was less demand on the system.

I heard shouting from above, guards calling to each other, asking what had happened, trying to figure out if this was a power failure or something more serious.

The backup generator was supposed to kick on automatically within seconds.

It was checked and maintained every single week.

But seconds passed, then minutes, and the generator did not start.

More shouting, louder now.

I could hear footsteps running, voices arguing about who was responsible for the generator maintenance, demands to get it working immediately.

In the darkness of my cell, I stood up.

My heart was beating so hard I could hear it in my ears.

Was this it?

Was this the moment?

I felt my way along the wall until I reached the bars of the cell door.

I had tested this door every single day for weeks.

It was always locked, always solid.

But something, instinct, faith, the voice of God made me push on it now.

The door swung open.

It did not resist.

It did not creek.

It simply opened as smoothly as if it had never been locked at all.

I stood frozen in shock, unable to move, unable to believe what had just happened.

Behind me, Khaled grabbed my arm.

His voice was urgent, fierce.

“Go,” he whispered.

“Go now.

This is your miracle.

Don’t waste it.”

I turned to him in the darkness.

“What about you?

What about them?”

“This door opened for you, not for us,” he said.

“Our purpose is here.

Yours is out there.

Now go before the lights come back on.”

I hesitated one more second.

Then I embraced him quickly, feeling his thin frame, knowing I might never see him again.

“You’re a pastor now,” I whispered to him.

“Lead them.

Teach them.

Keep the light burning.”

“I will,” he promised.

“Now run.”

I stepped out of the cell into the corridor, into the complete darkness, into the unknown.

Behind me, I heard the old man’s voice, quiet but clear.

“May your God go with you.”

I put my hand on the wall and began walking, 23 steps to the turn.

I counted each one, moving as quickly as I dared in the pitch blackness.

Somewhere above me, the guards were still shouting about the generator, about the power failure, about needing to check on the prisoners, but no one had come down to our level yet.

Everyone was focused on fixing the problem, not on securing the cells.

I reached the turn and went left.

18 more steps to the stairs.

The darkness was so complete I could not see my own hand in front of my face.

I felt along the wall, trusting my memory of the route.

My foot hit the first stair.

I began climbing.

42 stairs.

I counted each one, my hand trailing on the wall for guidance.

At the top, I could hear voices much closer now.

Two guards, maybe three, arguing loudly about whose responsibility it was to maintain the generator, whose fault it was that it had failed.

They were right around the corner, maybe 10 m away.

If they turned, if they walked this direction, they would run directly into me.

But I felt in my spirit that I needed to keep moving, that I could not wait for them to leave, that God was covering me somehow, protecting me.

I stepped off the stairs and began walking down the corridor in the direction of the voices.

It was insane.

It was impossible.

But I did it anyway.

I could hear them clearly now.

So close I could almost reach out and touch them.

They were still arguing, their voices raised, each blaming the other.

I walked past them in the darkness.

They never turned.

They never looked.

They never saw me at all.

My legs were shaking so badly I could barely walk.

My breath was coming in short gasps, but I kept moving forward, one step at a time, praying with every step.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

I saw moonlight ahead.

Actual moonlight streaming through an opening, the doorway to the courtyard.

I stepped through and out into the open air.

After weeks underground in that cell, the moonlight seemed impossibly bright.

I could see clearly now the courtyard, the walls, the wooden post where they had tried to execute me six times.

And I could see that the courtyard was empty.

No guards, no patrols, nothing.

I learned later what had happened.

Someone had called in a fake bomb threat to the prison.

Most of the guards had been pulled to the outer perimeter to search for explosives.

The few who remained were dealing with a power failure and the generator, but I did not know any of that then.

All I knew was that the courtyard stood empty before me.

I had to cross 50 m of open ground to reach the outer gate.

50 m where I would be completely exposed, completely visible in the moonlight.

I expected gunfire with every step.

Expected shouts, expected search lights to suddenly illuminate me, bullets to tear through me.

Nothing happened.

I walked across that courtyard like I was walking through a dream or like I was already dead and this was the afterlife.

Everything felt surreal, impossible.

I reached the outer gate.

The gate that was supposed to be locked at all times, guarded at all times, impassible.

It was standing open.

Not wide open, but open enough.

A gap just wide enough for a person to slip through.

The guard who was supposed to be stationed there was gone, pulled to the perimeter with the others, and the wind had blown the gate open during the confusion.

At least that was the explanation I heard later.

The wind had blown it open.

A strong gust.

Just coincidence.

But I knew better.

The wind did not open that gate.

God did.

I slipped through the gap and found myself standing in the street outside the prison walls, free outside, alive.

For a moment, I just stood there, unable to move, unable to process what had just happened.

I had been in that cell for weeks, waiting to die.

And now I was standing in the street, breathing free air, looking up at the stars.

Then reality crashed back in.

I was not safe, not even close.

I was an escaped prisoner in Taliban controlled territory.

I was wearing prison clothes that marked me clearly when they discovered I was gone and they would discover it soon.

They would search everywhere.

I started walking quickly, trying to look purposeful, but not panicked.

The streets were mostly empty.

It was late, past curfew.

Anyone out at this hour was either Taliban or looking for trouble.

I kept to the shadows, moving from one dark space to another.

Every sound made me freeze.

Every car that passed made me duck into doorways.

I was prey trying to survive in hostile territory, and I knew it.

I had one destination in mind.

Brother Mahmood’s tea shop on the far side of the city.

It was about 6 km away.

In daylight, with safe streets, it would be a pleasant walk.

At night, as an escaped prisoner, it felt like crossing a war zone.

I prayed continuously as I walked.

Not in words anymore, just in groans and feelings, in desperate silent cries.

To God to keep me hidden, to get me to safety, to not let this impossible escape end in recapture just blocks from the prison.

I walked for what felt like hours.

Maybe it was only 40 minutes.

Time loses meaning when every second might be your last.

I saw things that terrified me.

Taliban trucks patrolling the streets, groups of armed men standing on corners, checkpoints in the distance that I had to carefully avoid by taking longer routes through darker alleys.

At one point, a truck slowed down near me.

I pressed myself into a shadowed doorway, not breathing, certain they had spotted me, but they were just looking for someone else, scanning the street.

And after a moment they drove on.

My clothes were soaked with sweat despite the cool night air.

My hands were trembling.

My legs felt like they might give out at any moment.

But I kept walking.

Finally, finally, I saw the familiar shape of Brother Mahmood’s shop.

It was dark, closed up for the night.

I went around to the back door to the alley entrance that few people knew about.

I knocked using our old signal.

Three quick knocks.

Pause.

Two knocks.

Pause.

One knock.

A code we had established years ago for emergencies.

Nothing happened.

Had I gotten it wrong?

Had he moved?

Was he even here?

I knocked again, my desperation growing.

If he did not answer, I did not know what I would do.

I had nowhere else to go.

The door opened to crack.

Brother Mahmood’s eye appeared in the gap, suspicious and cautious.

Then the door flew open.

He grabbed me and pulled me inside so quickly I almost fell.

He looked both ways down the alley to make sure no one had seen me, then shut and locked the door.

He stared at me in the dim light of his back room like I was a ghost.

“It’s not possible,” he whispered.

“You’re supposed to be in prison.

They said you were going to be executed tomorrow morning.

How are you here?”

“God opened the doors,” I said my voice came out shaking.

“All of them.

The cell, the corridors, the gate, everything.

He opened everything.”

Brother Mahmood just kept staring at me, trying to understand, trying to believe what he was seeing with his own eyes.

Then his practical nature took over.

He made me sit down.

He brought water, bread, dates, cheese.

I realized I had not eaten properly in days.

My hands shook so badly I could barely hold the cup.

While I ate, he made phone calls, speaking carefully in coded language, never saying anything specific in case the lines were monitored.

But within half an hour, he had gathered information from our network.

Sister Fatima could hide me temporarily at her house on the edge of the city, but everyone agreed I could not stay in the city.

The Taliban would search every location connected to me, every place I had ever been, every person I had ever known.

I needed to leave, not just the city, the country.

Brother Mahmood had contacts with smugglers who moved refugees across borders.

It was dangerous.

It was expensive, but it was possible.

He could arrange it, but we had to move immediately.

The guards would discover my escape within hours, probably at the next cell check around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.

Once they knew I was gone, the entire city would go on alert.

Every checkpoint would have my description.

If we were going to get me out, it had to be before dawn.

Brother Mahmood looked at me with an expression I could not read.

Then he told me something that made my heart skip.

He had already made some calls when he first heard about my scheduled execution.

He had anticipated that if I somehow escaped, I would need to flee immediately.

So, he had taken the liberty of sending word to my family, of gathering them, of preparing for exactly this moment.

They were at Sister Fatima’s house, waiting.

My mother, my brothers, my sister, they were there.

“I thought you might want to say goodbye,” Brother Mahmood said quietly.

I could not speak.

I just nodded, tears running down my face.

We left his shop under cover of darkness.

Brother Mahmood walked ahead of me, scouting, watching for patrols.

I followed at a distance, staying in shadows, moving from one dark space to another.

It took almost an hour to cross the city to Sister Fatima’s house, moving carefully, avoiding main roads, ducking into alleys whenever we heard vehicles.

When we finally arrived, Sister Fatima opened the door before we knocked.

She had been watching, waiting.

She pulled us inside quickly, and there they were, my family.

My mother saw me, and her legs gave out.

My brothers caught her.

Then they all rushed forward and we were all holding each other crying, trying to be quiet because even here we were not truly safe.

I had perhaps 15 minutes before I needed to leave.

15 minutes to say everything that needed to be said.

My mother held my face in her hands, touching my cheeks, my hair, my shoulders, as if she needed to confirm I was real.

She kept whispering, “You’re alive.

You’re alive.

You’re alive.”

I told her I was sorry.

Sorry for all the pain I had caused her.

Sorry for not listening years ago when she begged me to flee.

Sorry for choosing this dangerous path.

She shook her head fiercely.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.

You followed Jesus.

How can a mother be angry about that?”

But then her expression changed.

She said she had prayed for God to deliver me, to save me, to let me survive.

But now that it had happened, she realized what it meant.

That I would have to run, that I would have to leave Afghanistan, that she might never see me again in this life.

The weight of that truth settled over all of us.

I turned to my brothers and sister.

They were older now than when this all started, marked by the suffering our family had endured.

I told them they had to survive, that they had to be wise and careful, that they should not follow my path because it was too dangerous.

I told them to marry, to have children, to build lives, to hold Jesus in their hearts quietly without drawing attention, to be like seeds underground, waiting for a better season.

My youngest sister was crying silently, tears streaming down her face.

She asked when I would come back.

I could not answer her.

I did not know if I would ever come back.

My mother blessed me, putting her hands on my head and praying over me in a whisper.

She prayed for protection, for guidance, for God’s presence to go with me wherever I went.

A vehicle arrived outside just before 3:00 in the morning.

An old truck battered and worn, the kind that transported goods across the country that no one looked at twice.

The driver was a smuggler.

He was not doing this out of conviction or faith.

Brother Mahmood had paid him a significant amount of money, but he was professional.

He knew the routes, knew how to handle checkpoints, knew how to avoid patrols.

He showed me the false compartment built into the truck bed, a space underneath, barely big enough for two or three people to squeeze into.

He told me to get in.

I said goodbye to my family one last time.

My mother blessed me again.

My brothers embraced me.

My sister held on to me until someone gently pulled her away.

Then I climbed into that cramped, dark space.

There were two other people already there, a young couple with a small child.

They were fleeing for their own reasons, refugees like me.

The panel closed over us.

The world became darkness and the smell of diesel and sweat and fear.

The truck began moving before dawn while the city was still dark.

Inside that compartment, we could not see anything.

The darkness was total suffocating.

We could barely move.

The space was so small that we had to position ourselves carefully just to fit.

The young couple’s child was wedged between her parents, and I was curled against the side wall.

The air was thick and hot despite the cool night outside.

There was a small ventilation hole drilled in the side, barely the width of my finger.

But it was not enough.

Each breath felt insufficient, like trying to breathe through a cloth.

The truck rumbled beneath us, every bump and pothole jarring our bodies.

I could hear everything happening outside, but could see nothing.

The sound of other vehicles, voices, music from radios.

The normal sounds of early morning in an Afghan city waking up.

But for me, every sound was potential danger.

The child began to whimper.

The mother whispered frantically to her, trying to keep her quiet.

In this space, noise was danger.

If guards heard crying coming from underneath a truck, they would investigate.

I reached out in the darkness and found the child’s small hand.

I held it gently and began humming.

Not a hymn.

That would be too dangerous if we were overheard.

Just a simple tune, wordless, soothing.

The child quieted slightly.

The mother whispered, “Thanks.”

The father asked in the darkness who I was, why I was fleeing.

His voice was tense, afraid, but also curious.

I told him the truth that I was a Christian, that I had been arrested, sentenced to death, miraculously preserved through multiple execution attempts, and had escaped just hours ago.

There was silence for a moment.

Then he asked if I really believed God had done all that, if I truly thought divine intervention had saved me.

I told him yes.

I believed it with everything in me that too many impossible things had happened for it to be coincidence that God had opened doors no human hand could open.

He was quiet again.

Then he said something that surprised me.

He said, “If my God was powerful enough to open prison doors, maybe he was powerful enough to get us across the border safely.”

I told him I believed that too.

“Then pray,” He said.

“Pray for my daughter.

Pray for my wife.

Pray for me.

If your God listens to you, ask him to save us.”

So I prayed quietly in that dark, cramped space.

I prayed for this Muslim family I had just met.

I prayed to Jesus for their safety, for protection, for mercy.

I prayed that the same God who had saved me would save them too.

The wife began crying softly.

The husband held her and we lay there in the darkness, strangers bound together by fear and desperate hope.

The truck stopped suddenly.

We heard voices outside.

Checkpoint.

My heart began hammering so hard I thought the guards would hear it through the metal.

This was it.

This was where they would find us.

I heard the driver’s voice, calm and bored, papers rustling, questions being asked about his cargo, his destination, his route.

The guards sounded young, not particularly interested, routine checkpoint, routine questions.

But then one of them said something about checking the truck bed, about reports of smugglers using false compartments.

The wife grabbed my hand in the darkness, squeezing so hard it hurt.

The husband was breathing in short, panicked gasps.

I prayed silently, desperately, “God, you did not bring me this far to let me fail now.

Please, please.”

We heard footsteps walking around the truck.

Heard something tapping on the metal sides.

Heard the guards discussing whether to do a full inspection or just wave it through.

One guard said they had received word about an escaped prisoner, a Christian high-valued target.

They needed to be thorough.

The other guard complained that it was too early for thorough, that they had been on duty all night, that they just wanted their shift to end.

They argued back and forth for what felt like hours, but was probably just minutes.

Then we heard money changing hands.

The driver’s voice, casual, offering “something for your trouble.”

The guard’s voices suddenly friendlier, more accommodating.

The truck moved forward.

We had passed.

We all exhaled at the same time in that dark space.

The child started crying again, louder now from the stress and fear and heat.

The mother tried to comfort her but was crying herself.

I kept praying, thanking God for this checkpoint past, asking him for the next one and the one after that.

The truck stopped six more times over the next several hours, six more checkpoints.

Each time my heart stopped.

Each time I prayed, each time somehow we passed through bribes, friendly conversation, forged papers, the driver’s skill at navigating the system.

God’s intervention, all of it worked together to keep us moving, but the heat in the compartment was becoming unbearable.

It was maybe 8 or 9 in the morning now.

The sun was up, beating down on the truck.

The metal absorbed the heat and turned our hiding place into an oven.

The child had stopped crying.

That was almost worse because it meant she was too exhausted, too overheated to cry anymore.

The mother kept trying to wake her to make her drink the little water we had, but the child was barely responsive.

I took off my shirt and tried to fan air through the ventilation hole.

It helped minimally.

We were all drenched in sweat, gasping for breath in air that felt solid with heat.

The husband asked weakly if I thought we would die in here, if we would suffocate before reaching the border, I told him no.

That God had not brought us this far to let us die in a box.

I tried to sound confident, but honestly, I was not sure.

The heat was brutal.

The air was scarce.

We were all struggling.

I began praying out loud, not in Dari or Pashto, but in tongues, in a prayer language that bypassed my conscious mind.

The husband and wife did not understand the words, but they seemed comforted by the sound of prayer, by someone calling out to God on their behalf.

Around midday, the truck stopped.

Not at a checkpoint this time, but on the side of a rural road.

We heard the driver get out, open the hood, curse loudly.

Something was wrong with the engine.

We waited in that hot, dark compartment, barely conscious, barely breathing, while the driver tried to fix whatever had broken.

We could hear him working, hear his frustration, hear him making phone calls, trying to find a mechanic in this rural area.

An hour passed, then two.

The heat was killing us.

The child was completely limp.

The mother was begging in whispers for someone to help, to let us out, to give us air.

But we could not get out.

There were other vehicles on this road.

If anyone saw people climbing out of a false compartment, they would report it.

We were trapped.

I held the child against me, trying to keep her as cool as possible with my body, which was absurd because I was burning up, too.

But I did what I could.

I prayed over her.

I begged God not to let this little girl die because of my escape.

The father was barely conscious.

The mother was delirious, whispering to people who were not there.

And I kept praying, kept calling out to God, kept believing that we had not come this far to die on a roadside.

After nearly 4 hours, the engine started again.

The truck began moving.

Fresh air started flowing through the ventilation hole.

As we picked up speed, the child stirred slightly.

The mother came back to awareness.

The father groaned but was responsive.

We had survived.

The driver must have known how close we were to dying because he drove faster now, taking risks he had not taken before.

We could feel the truck moving at speeds that were dangerous on these poor roads, but he did not slow down.

As the sun began to set, we entered the border region.

The terrain changed.

The road became rougher.

We were in the mountains now approaching Pakistan.

The driver stopped and opened the compartment.

We practically fell out gasping for air.

Our legs not working properly after so many hours cramped in that space.

He gave us water.

Real water.

Clean and cold.

We drank it desperately.

The child drinking first, then the parents, then me.

He told us we could not cross at the official border.

My description had been sent to every checkpoint.

The Taliban were actively searching for me.

We would have to go over the mountain pass, the route used by smugglers and refugees.

A guide was waiting for us, a young man, maybe 20, who knew these mountains like his own hands.

He told us to follow him and stay quiet.

We started walking, the couple carrying their child between them, taking turns, me trying to help when I could, but my own strength was nearly gone after the day in that suffocating box.

The trail was rough, steep, rocky.

We climbed in the growing darkness, stumbling over stones, helping each other when someone fell.

My lungs burned in the thin mountain air.

My legs ached.

Every part of my body was pushed beyond what I thought I could endure.

But we kept moving because stopping meant capture.

Stopping meant death.

After about 2 hours of climbing, the guide suddenly motioned for us to get down.

We dropped flat on the rocky ground.

Below us, on a parallel trail, I saw flashlights.

Taliban patrol.

Four or five men searching the border area.

We lay absolutely still, barely breathing, while those lights swept back and forth.

They were close, maybe a 100 m away, close enough that I could hear their voices, though I could not make out the words.

The child started to whimper.

The mother clamped her hand over the girl’s mouth, her eyes wide with terror.

If the child cried out, if the Taliban heard us, it was over.

I put my hand on the child’s back and prayed silently, desperately.

“God, please keep her quiet.

Blind their eyes.

Turn them away.”

The lights swept in our direction.

I was certain they would see us.

We were lying on an open mountain side with nowhere to hide, but the lights passed over us without stopping.

The patrol kept moving, their flashlights searching other areas, their voices fading into the distance.

After they were gone, the guides stood and motioned for us to continue.

We climbed higher, pushing ourselves beyond exhaustion, beyond pain, running on pure desperation.

Now the guide finally stopped and pointed ahead into the darkness.

He told us Pakistan was beyond that ridge.

Two more kilometers.

We were almost there.

Those last two kilometers were the hardest of my life.

The father was carrying his daughter again, his legs shaking with every step.

The mother was weeping from exhaustion and relief and fear all mixed together.

I was praying with every breath because prayer was all I had left.

We climbed that final ridge as the moon rose, casting silver light across the mountains.

At the top, I turned and looked back at Afghanistan.

My country, the place where I was born, where my family still lived, where believers still gathered in shadows, where I had almost died.

The land looked peaceful in the moonlight, beautiful even.

But I knew the truth.

I knew the violence and fear and oppression that lived in those valleys and cities.

I knew the price of faith in that place and I did not know if I would ever see it again.

We crossed the ridge and began descending the other side into Pakistan.

Unofficial, illegal, but safe or safer at least.

The guide led us to a small village on the Pakistani side to a house run by a Christian aid organization.

They helped refugees, people like us who had fled across the border with nothing.

When I walked through that door, when I realized I was truly out of Afghanistan, truly beyond the Taliban’s immediate reach, my legs simply gave out.

I collapsed onto the floor.

I did not lose consciousness.

I just could not stand anymore.

Could not take another step.

Everything that had held me together through the arrest, the imprisonment, the escape, the journey, it all released at once.

I wept, not quietly, not with dignity.

I wept like a child.

Great gasping sobs that shook my whole body.

The aid workers helped me to a room.

They brought food, water, clean clothes.

They told me I was safe now, that I could rest.

That night, I lay in a real bed for the first time in weeks.

Clean sheets, a pillow, a window I could actually see out of.

The small luxuries of normal life that I had forgotten existed.

But I could not sleep.

My mind kept replaying everything.

Every impossible delay in my execution.

Every door that opened when it should have been locked.

Every checkpoint we passed.

Every moment when we should have been caught but were not.

Coincidence?

No.

Impossible.

Luck.

Not a chance.

It was God.

Clear.

Undeniable.

Impossible to explain away.

God had intervened in ways that left no room for doubt.

I thought about Khaled.

The Taliban soldier convert still in that prison cell, still teaching, still witnessing, still paying the price for his faith.

I prayed for him, hoping desperately that he was still alive, that they had not executed him in my place or tortured him for helping me escape.

I thought about Brother Mahmood and Sister Fatima, who had risked everything to help me.

Were they being questioned now?

Were they safe?

I thought about my family waking up this morning without me, not knowing if I had made it across the border safely or if I had been caught and killed.

The gratitude and the guilt twisted together in my chest until I could barely breathe.

An aid worker knocked softly on my door around midnight.

She was a Pakistani woman, middle-aged with kind eyes.

She asked if I was all right, if I needed anything.

I told her I did not know how to feel.

I was grateful to be alive, but I felt guilty for being safe while others were still suffering.

She sat on the edge of the bed and told me something I needed to hear.

She said that survivors guilt was normal, that everyone who escaped felt it.

But she also said that my survival had purpose.

That God had saved me for a reason and I would dishonor that salvation if I wasted it on guilt instead of using it for good.

Her words planted something in my mind that would grow in the days to come.

The next morning, I met the director of the aid organization.

He was a Pakistani Christian, a man who had spent 20 years helping refugees from Afghanistan and other countries.

He asked me what I wanted to do now.

He explained that I could stay at the safe house while applying for refugee status with the United Nations.

The process would take months, maybe a year.

If approved, I could be resettled in Europe or America or another country that accepted refugees.

He asked if I had family elsewhere, if I had any plans, if I knew what I wanted.

I sat there in his office wearing borrowed clothes with nothing to my name except the story of what had happened to me and I realized something.

I had been thinking of this escape as the end of something, the end of danger, the end of my ministry, the end of my calling.

But what if it was not an ending?

What if it was a beginning?

I had been a pastor to 20 people hiding in basement.

Now I could be a voice for thousands who could not speak.

I could tell the world what was happening to Christians in Afghanistan.

I could make sure their suffering was not invisible, not forgotten.

I looked at the director and told him I did not know exactly what my future looked like, but I knew I could not just disappear into a comfortable life somewhere and forget about those I left behind.

He smiled.

He said that was good because they could use someone like me, someone with the story, someone willing to tell it.

Over the next few days, I began to adjust to freedom.

I ate real meals.

I slept without jumping awake at every sound.

I walked outside without fear of being arrested.

But the nightmares came every night.

I would dream I was back in the cell, that the escape had been a dream, that the executioner was coming for me.

I would wake up gasping, disoriented, taking minutes to remember where I was.

The aid organization connected me with other refugees, other survivors.

I met a young woman who had fled an honor killing attempt.

A man who had worked as a translator for American forces and was now marked for death.

A family whose son had been killed by the Taliban for going to school.

Each of them had stories of narrow escapes, of impossible journeys, of losses that could never be recovered.

We formed a strange kind of community.

People who understood each other because we had all fled the same nightmare.

We did not have to explain our fears or our grief.

We all knew.

One afternoon about a week after my arrival, a representative from a Christian news organization came to the safe house.

They had heard there was an Afghan pastor who had miraculously escaped execution.

They wanted to interview me, to share my story.

My first instinct was to refuse.

What if it put people back home in more danger?

What if the Taliban saw the interview and retaliated against my family or the network?

But the director encouraged me to consider it.

He said the world needed to know what was happening.

That silence was what the persecutors wanted.

That light was the enemy of darkness.

And telling the truth was shining light.

I prayed about it for two days and finally I agreed.

The interview took place in a small room at the safe house.

They set up a camera and recording equipment.

The journalist was a kind man, someone who had covered persecution stories for years, who understood the weight of what he was asking me to share.

He told me to just tell my story to start wherever I wanted and take as much time as I needed.

So I did.

I told him everything.

My family’s history, the secret church, my father’s death, the arrest, Hamid’s betrayal, the death sentence, the six execution attempts that failed, the impossible delays, the prison door that opened, the escape through darkness, the journey across the border.

I spoke for nearly 2 hours.

By the end, everyone in the room was crying.

The journalist, the camera operator, the aid workers who had gathered to listen.

The journalist told me this story needed to be heard, that Christians around the world needed to know what their brothers and sisters in Afghanistan were facing, that my testimony could wake people up, move them to action, inspire them to pray and give and advocate.

I felt overwhelmed.

I told him I was nobody special, just a man who had survived.

He said that was exactly why it mattered.

Because it was real, because it was authentic, because people could see themselves in me and understand that persecution was not something happening to strangers far away.

It was happening to family.

The article was published 2 weeks later.

The video went up on their website.

Within days, my email inbox was flooded.

Messages from Christians all over the world from America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia.

People writing to say they had no idea this was happening, that they were praying, that they were donating to organizations that helped persecuted believers, that they wanted to know what they could do.

Other news outlets picked up the story.

I was asked to do more interviews.

Christian media, secular media, podcasts, journalists who wanted to understand what life was like for Christians in Afghanistan.

Then invitations started coming.

Churches wanted me to speak.

Conferences wanted me to give my testimony.

Advocacy organizations wanted me to brief their staff and donors.

I was terrified.

I was not a public speaker.

I had never addressed large crowds.

I knew how to teach a small group in a basement.

Not how to stand in front of hundreds of strangers.

But I kept hearing that voice in my spirit.

Feed my sheep.

Tell their stories.

Be a voice for the voiceless.

A Pakistani pastor who had become a mentor to me told me about Moses.

How Moses made excuses to God saying he could not speak well, that he was not qualified.

And God’s response was simply, “I will be with you.”

If God had brought me through prison and execution and escape, he could bring me through speaking to crowds.

My first event was at a church in Islamabad, maybe 80 people.

I stood at the front with my notes written on paper, my hands shaking so badly the pages rattled.

I told them my story.

Not polished, not practiced, just honestly the way it had happened.

When I finished, the pastor gave an altar call, not for salvation, but for commitment.