Iran is a place where owning a Bible can land you in heaven prison.

But today, the Christian church is not just surviving.

It is exploding.

It is growing faster than anywhere else on the entire planet.

This is not a guess.

This is documented reality.

And this is where the mystery begins.

This is where a gap opens up.

One that human reasoning cannot explain.

How is that even possible? Foreign missionaries were all expelled years ago.

In fact, if you are caught with a stack of Bibles, you will be interrogated.

If you are an imam who converts to Christianity, there is a very real chance you will be executed or forced to flee the country forever.

In the silence of the night, across the Islamic Republic of Iran, thousands of Muslims, men and women who have never touched a Bible, who have never met a Christian, who have been taught their entire lives that Jesus was just a prophet and nothing more, are encountering him in a way that no government can censor.

They are meeting him in their dreams.

There is no space for Christianity to grow naturally through normal human means.

And yet it is growing faster than anywhere else in the world.

Researchers including those at Open Doors have called it the fastest growing church in the world today.

So I will ask the question again.

If humans cannot preach, if buildings are locked, if Bibles are illegal, if converts are punished, then how is this happening? The only answer that fits the evidence is this.

Jesus himself is doing the preaching.

And that brings me to the boy.

His name is Amir.

He is 15 years old.

He lives in one of the major cities in Iran.

And his story represents what is happening to thousands of others just like him right now.

Amir was raised in a religious Muslim home.

His father prayed five times a day.

His mother wore the hijab.

They fasted during Ramadan.

They went to the mosque.

They believed in Allah.

They believed Muhammad was the final prophet.

And they believed that Christians were lost.

That they had corrupted the true message.

And that the Bible had been changed and could not be trusted.

This is what Amir was taught from the time he was old enough to understand words.

Amir had never met a Christian in his life.

He had never seen a church.

He had never held a Bible.

He did not even know what the gospel was.

If you had asked him who Jesus was, he would have said Jesus was a prophet, nothing more.

He would have told you that Christians worshiped three gods and that they were misguided.

That is what every imam told him.

That is what his teachers told him.

That is what his family believed.

But one night everything changed.

Amir went to bed like he did every other night.

He was not thinking about religion.

He was not searching for anything.

He was just a teenager, tired, ready to sleep.

And then he had a dream, but this was not like any dream he had ever experienced before.

In the dream, Amir found himself standing in a place filled with light.

It was not the sun.

It was not a lamp.

It was a kind of light that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

And standing in front of him was a man.

The man was wearing a long white robe.

His face was shining.

Amir said later that he tried to look directly at the man’s face, but he could not.

It was too bright.

It was like trying to stare into the sun.

The man looked at him with eyes full of love.

Not anger, not judgment, just pure overwhelming love.

And then the man spoke.

He said, “Amir, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

Come to me.

I love you.

Follow me.

” Amir woke up.

His heart was pounding.

He was sweating.

He did not know what had just happened.

But he knew one thing.

That was not just a dream.

Amir did not tell anyone about the dream at first.

How could he? If he went to his father and said, “I saw a man in white who told me to follow him.

” His father would think he was losing his mind.

If he told his mother, she would panic and probably take him to the imam to have prayers said over him.

In their world, dreams could be important.

Yes.

But a dream like this, a dream that felt so real it left him shaking.

He had no categories for it.

He had no explanation.

So he kept it inside.

But the problem was he could not forget it.

Days went by and the image of that man stayed in his mind like a photograph that would not fade.

The words kept echoing.

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

Come to me.

I love you.

Follow me.

Amir had never heard those words before.

He did not know they came from a book.

He did not know they were scripture.

He just knew they had power.

For the next few nights, Amir could not sleep well.

He would lie in bed hoping the dream would come back, but also afraid that it would.

He started feeling different inside.

The anger he used to carry, the frustration he felt toward his family, the emptiness he had always tried to ignore, all of it started to feel lighter.

It was like something inside his chest had shifted.

He did not understand it.

He was still the same kid going to the same school, living in the same house, but now everything felt strange.

He started looking at his life differently.

When his father would lead prayers at home, Amir would bow down like always, but inside he felt distant.

When the imam at the mosque spoke about Allah, Amir found himself thinking, “Is that the same God I saw in the dream?” Because the man in white did not feel distant.

He did not feel angry.

He felt close.

He felt kind.

He felt like someone who actually loved him.

Weeks passed and Amir could not take it anymore.

He had to know who that man was.

He began to search in secret.

He could not ask his parents.

He could not ask his friends.

So he did the only thing he could think of.

He went online.

Now you have to understand the internet in Iran is heavily censored.

The government blocks thousands of websites.

They monitor social media.

They track search histories.

If you look up the wrong thing, you can get flagged.

But Amir was desperate.

He started searching carefully.

He typed things like man in white robe in dreams.

He typed prophet in shining clothes.

He tried different combinations of words hoping something would come up that made sense.

And then one night he found something.

He found a testimony.

It was a video, a woman also from Iran speaking in Farsy.

She was telling her story and she said the exact same thing.

She said, “I saw a man in white.

His face was shining.

He told me he loved me.

He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.

” Amir’s hands started shaking as he watched the video.

This woman had seen the same man.

She used the same words.

She described the same light.

And then she said something that made Amir’s heart stop.

She said that man was Jesus Christ.

Amir paused the video.

His mind was spinning.

Jesus, the prophet the Christians talk about the one his imam said was just a man, a messenger, nothing more.

But the imams also said Jesus never died on a cross.

They said he was taken up to heaven and someone else was crucified in his place.

They said Christians were confused and misled.

They said the Bible was corrupted and full of lies.

But if that was true, then why did this woman see him? Why did air see him? And why did it feel so real, so powerful, so full of love that even now, weeks later, he could not shake it? Amir kept watching.

The woman explained that after her dream, she started looking for answers just like he was doing now.

She found a secret group of Christians who met in a house.

She was terrified at first, but she went.

They gave her a Bible.

When she opened it and started reading the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, she started crying.

She said, “These are his words.

These are the exact words he spoke to me in the dream.

” She said that Jesus had reached her in the only way possible because there was no church she could walk into, no Christian she could safely talk to, no Bible she could buy in a store.

So he came to her himself and now she was a follower of Jesus living in secret but more alive than she had ever been before.

Amir watched that video three times that night.

And by the third time, he was crying too.

He did not know why.

He just felt something breaking open inside of him.

Something that had been locked his whole life.

But now Amir had a bigger problem.

He knew who the man in white was.

But what was he supposed to do with that knowledge? He lived in a country where becoming a Christian could destroy his entire life.

His family would disown him.

His friends would turn against him.

He could be arrested.

He could be beaten.

He had heard stories of kids his age being sent to detention centers for far less.

And even if none of that happened, he would have to live a double life forever, pretending to be Muslim on the outside while hiding his faith on the inside.

That is a heavy weight for a 15-year-old to carry.

Amir thought about giving up.

He thought about just forgetting the whole thing, pretending the dream never happened and going back to normal life.

But every time he tried, the face of that man would come back to him.

The love in his eyes, the words, “I love you.

Follow me.

” One Friday afternoon, Amir made a dangerous decision.

He decided he had to find real Christians, not just videos online, real people.

He had no idea how to do that.

It is not like there is a directory.

It is not like you can Google secret church near me and get results.

But he remembered something.

A few months earlier, one of his classmates, a girl named Nasarine, had been acting strange.

She stopped wearing her hijab as tightly.

She stopped talking the way she used to.

And one time, Amir saw her with a small book that she quickly hid when someone walked by.

At the time he did not think much of it, but now he wondered, could she be a Christian? It was a huge risk to even ask.

If he was wrong, she could report him.

If she told her family or a teacher, Amir could be in serious trouble.

But he felt something inside pushing him forward.

So one day after school, he followed her at a distance.

He watched where she went.

Nasarine did not go straight home.

She took a different route.

She walked through a neighborhood Amir did not recognize and then she went into a small apartment building.

Amir waited outside, heart pounding.

About an hour later, she came out.

But she was not alone.

There were three other people with her, all young, all quiet, all looking around carefully before they split up and went separate directions.

Amir knew.

He just knew that was a house church meeting.

The next week, he worked up the courage.

He waited near the same spot.

When Nasarine walked by, he stepped out and said her name.

She looked terrified.

She asked him what he wanted.

He said, “I need to talk to you.

It is important.

” She looked around, nervous, and then said, “Not here.

Follow me, but stay far behind.

Do not make it obvious.

” Amir did exactly as she said.

She led him to a park.

They sat on a bench far from other people.

Amir did not waste time.

He said, “I saw him.

I saw the man in white.

” Nasarin’s face went pale.

She stared at him for a long moment and then her eyes filled with tears.

She said, “You saw Jesus.

” Amir nodded.

He said, “I do not know what to do.

I do not know what this means.

” Nasarine took a deep breath and then she smiled.

She said, “It means he chose you.

It means he is calling you.

You are not crazy.

This is real.

I saw him too.

That is how I found the truth.

She explained that she had been a Christian for about 8 months.

She had also had a dream.

In her dream, Jesus told her, “You have been lied to, but I am the truth.

” She woke up and started searching just like a mirror.

She found other believers.

They took her in.

They taught her.

They gave her a Bible.

And now she was part of a small group that met in secret every week to pray, worship, and study the word of God.

Amir asked her, “Can I come? Can I meet them?” Nasarine hesitated.

She said, “It is dangerous.

If you come, you have to be sure.

You cannot tell anyone.

Not your parents, not your friends, no one.

If you are caught, we are all in danger.

” Amir looked her in the eyes and said, “I have to know more.

I have to understand who he is.

I cannot go back to how things were before.

” Nasarine nodded slowly.

She said, “Okay, I will talk to the others.

If they agree, I will bring you next week, but you have to be ready.

Once you step into this, your life will never be the same.

” Amir said, “I know and I am ready.

” That conversation changed everything.

One week later, Nasarine took a mirror to the house.

It was a small apartment on the fourth floor of an old building.

There were seven people inside, all sitting on the floor.

No songs playing loudly, no preaching, just quiet voices, a few Bibles, and a presence in the room that Amir had never felt before.

One of the men, an older believer named Reza, welcomed Amir.

He asked him, “Why are you here?” Amir told him everything.

The dream, the man in white, the words, the search, the video, the decision.

When he finished, Reza smiled and said, “Brother, you have been chosen by the Lord himself.

What you saw was not just a dream.

It was a vision.

Jesus is appearing to thousands of people across Iran right now.

You are not alone.

” Then Reza pulled out a Bible.

It was small worn and covered in a plain cloth to hide what it was.

He opened it to the Gospel of John 14 6.

He read out loud.

Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the father except through me.

” Amir’s eyes went wide.

He said, “Those are his exact words.

” That is what he said to me.

Reza nodded.

He said, “Yes, because he is alive.

He is not just a prophet.

He is the son of God.

And he wants you to know him.

That night, Amir prayed for the first time in his life to Jesus.

Not to a distant God.

Not to Allah as he had been taught, but to the man in white who had come to him in a dream, who knew his name, who loved him enough to break through every barrier just to reach him.

Amir did not understand everything yet.

He had a lot to learn, but he knew one thing for sure.

His life had changed forever.

He had met the risen Christ, and no law, no threat, and no fear could ever take that away from him.

Chapter 3 follows strictly now.

1,000 plus words grouped into 150word paragraphs.

No repetition flowing from where chapter 2 ended.

Simple English, no standalone lines.

Amir is not the only one.

That is the part of this story that should shake every one of us to the core.

What happened to him in that dream? What happened to Nasarin? What is happening right now in living rooms and bedrooms and prison cells across Iran is not rare.

It is not isolated.

It is not a one-time miracle that we can smile about and move on from.

This is a flood.

This is a wave of the Holy Spirit moving through one of the most closed and hostile nations on earth.

And it is happening on a scale that defies every natural explanation.

We are not talking about a handful of testimonies.

We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people who have encountered Jesus in dreams and visions.

People who had no access to the Bible, no contact with Christians, and no reason to even think about Jesus.

And yet, he came to them.

Let me give you the numbers again so you understand the scope.

In 1979, when the Islamic Revolution took over Iran and the Ayatollah Kmeni came to power, there were fewer than 500 known Iranian Christians in the entire country.

Most of them were ethnic Armenians or Assyrians, people who had been Christian for generations but were not ethnically Persian.

The number of Muslim background believers, Iranians who had left Islam to follow Jesus, was almost zero.

You could count them on your fingers.

The new government made it very clear that Iran was now an Islamic republic and there would be no tolerance for any religion that tried to challenge or replace Islam.

Churches were shut down.

Missionaries were kicked out.

Bibles were banned.

It should have been the end, but it was not.

Today, researchers estimate that there are between 800,000 and 1.

5 million Christians living in Iran.

And the vast majority of them are former Muslims.

These are not people who were born into Christian families.

These are men and women who grew up praying to Allah, fasting during Ramadan, memorizing the Quran, attending the mosque, and believing with all their hearts that Muhammad was the final prophet.

And then something happened.

For most of them, that something was a dream.

David Garrison, the researcher I mentioned earlier, did not just collect stories.

He conducted over 1,000 face-to-face interviews with former Muslims from across the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.

When he asked them what caused them to leave Islam, and follow Jesus, he gave them multiple options.

They could say it was because of a Christian friend or because they read the Bible or because they were attracted to the love they saw in believers or because of a miracle or because of a dream.

What Garrison found stunned him.

He found that dreams and visions were the number one catalyst for conversion among Muslims, especially in Iran.

In some regions, more than half of all new believers said that their journey to Christ began with a supernatural encounter.

And the descriptions were strikingly similar.

Over and over, people who lived in different cities, who did not know each other, who had no way to communicate or compare notes, described the same figure, a man in a white robe, a face shining with light, a voice that spoke with authority and love, and the words he spoke were not random.

They were scripture, phrases pulled directly from the Gospels.

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

I am the light of the world.

Come to me all who are weary.

Do not be afraid.

I am with you.

These people had never read those words before.

They had never opened a Bible.

But Jesus spoke them anyway.

Dr.

Hormma’s Shariat, the Iranian pastor and evangelist I mentioned earlier, runs a satellite television ministry that broadcasts the gospel into Iran every single night.

Millions of Iranians watch his programs in secret.

They lock their doors, turn down the volume, and tune in on illegal satellite dishes that they hide on their roofs or balconies.

Dr.

Shari has said in multiple interviews that almost every single Iranian believer he has ever met, whether in person or through letters and messages, has told him that their conversion involved a dream or a vision.

He has said publicly, “I have rarely met an Iranian Christian who came to faith without a supernatural experience.

” That is not an exaggeration.

That is his direct testimony based on decades of ministry.

He also said something that should make us stop and think.

He said, “God is not limited by our circumstances.

When man shuts the door, God opens the window.

When governments ban the Bible, Jesus himself becomes the preacher.

” Let me share a few more testimonies with you so you can see the pattern.

There is a woman named Leila from the city of Mashhad.

Mashad is one of the holiest cities in Iran.

It is home to the shrine of Imam Resa, one of the most important figures in Shia Islam.

Millions of pilgrims travel there every year.

It is a city soaked in Islamic devotion.

Ila grew up there.

She was a devoted Muslim.

She prayed.

She fasted.

She believed.

But she also felt empty.

She felt like no matter how much she prayed, there was no one listening.

One night after years of this emptiness, she cried out in frustration.

She said, “God, if you are real, show me the truth.

” That night she had a dream.

She saw a man standing in a garden filled with light.

He was wearing white.

His hands were stretched out toward her.

He said, “Lila, I am the truth.

I have been waiting for you.

Come to me and I will give you rest.

” She woke up and could not stop crying.

She did not know who that man was, but she felt peace for the first time in her life.

Ila started searching.

She found a Christian website.

She read the Gospels online in secret.

When she got to the book of Matthew 11 28, she read the words of Jesus.

Come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.

She gasped.

Those were the exact words the man in white had spoken to her.

She reached out to the website.

They connected her with a house church in her city.

She started attending in secret.

6 months later, she was baptized in someone’s bathtub at 3:00 in the morning.

Today, Ila is a believer.

She lives everyday knowing that she could be arrested.

But she says she would rather die as a Christian than live as a Muslim without hope.

There is a man named Bazad from Thrron.

He was not just a Muslim.

He was studying to become an imam.

He spent years in religious school learning Islamic law, studying the Quran and the hadiths, memorizing prayers and rituals.

He believed he was serving God.

But one night everything shattered.

In a dream, Beaad saw himself standing before a throne.

The throne was surrounded by light.

Sitting on the throne was a man.

The man’s eyes were like fire.

His voice was like thunder.

And he said to Ba, “Why do you teach lies in my name?” Baod tried to answer, but he could not speak.

The man said, “I am Jesus, the son of the living God.

You have been deceived.

Turn to me and I will show you the truth.

” Ba woke up terrified.

He could not eat.

He could not sleep.

For 3 days, he was paralyzed by fear.

Finally, he told his teacher at the religious school about the dream.

His teacher told him it was from Satan and that he needed to pray more and fast.

But Bea could not shake it.

He started reading the New Testament in secret.

He found a copy online and read it on his phone late at night.

When he read the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, he realized that everything he had been taught was wrong.

Jesus was not just a prophet.

He claimed to be God.

He claimed to forgive sins.

He claimed to be the only way to the Father.

And Basod realized that the man on the throne in his dream was the same man whose words he was now reading.

He left the religious school.

He abandoned his career.

He lost his family.

But he found Jesus.

Today, Bezod is part of an underground network of house churches.

He uses his knowledge of Islam to help other former Muslims understand the Bible.

He says, “I thought I was serving God, but I was serving a lie.

Jesus set me free.

” These are not madeup stories.

These are real people.

And there are thousands more just like them.

The organization Elam Ministries, which works directly with the underground church in Iran, has documented countless testimonies like these.

They train pastors.

They smuggle Bibles.

They provide disciplehip resources.

And they have confirmed over and over again that the primary way Iranians are coming to Christ right now is through dreams and visions.

Open Doors which tracks Christian persecution worldwide has also reported the same phenomenon.

They have called Iran the site of the fastest growing church in the world.

And the engine of that growth is not human strategy.

It is the direct intervention of the risen Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Amir’s story and the testimonies of Leila and Bezod are powerful.

But there is another category of encounter that is even more shocking.

Jesus is not only appearing to seeking hearts, to empty souls, to people crying out for truth in the darkness.

He is also appearing to his enemies.

He is showing up in the dreams of the very people who are trying to destroy his church.

This is not a new pattern.

This is exactly what happened 2,000 years ago on the road to Damascus when a man named Saul, a violent persecutor of Christians, was knocked off his horse by a blinding light and heard the voice of Jesus say, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” That same Jesus is doing the exact same thing today in Iran.

And the implications are staggering.

There is a documented testimony from a man I will call Javad.

Javad was not just a regular Muslim.

He was a member of the bases.

a volunteer paramilitary force that operates under the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

The Bas are the enforcers of Islamic law in Iran.

They patrol the streets during protests.

They arrest women who do not wear their hijabs properly.

They break up gatherings that the government considers dangerous and one of their main jobs is to hunt down underground churches.

Javad took his job seriously.

He believed he was doing the work of Allah.

He believed that Christians were spreading lies and corrupting Iranian youth.

He believed that shutting down house churches and arresting believers was a righteous act.

He had participated in several raids.

He had seen pastors dragged out of their homes.

He had watched as Bibles were confiscated and burned.

And he felt nothing but pride.

One night after a particularly intense raid where his unit arrested a group of young Christians who had been meeting secretly in a basement, Javad went home exhausted.

He fell asleep quickly.

But in his sleep, something happened that he was not prepared for.

He found himself standing in a courtroom.

The room was massive with walls that seemed to stretch up forever.

There was a throne at the front and sitting on that throne was a man dressed in white.

His face was glowing.

His eyes were filled with both love and fire.

Javad felt terror rise in his chest.

He tried to move but he could not.

He tried to speak but his voice would not work.

The man on the throne stood up and as he did the entire room shook.

The man walked toward Javad slowly and with every step Javad felt the weight of his own guilt pressing down on him like a mountain.

When the man was standing right in front of him, he spoke.

His voice was not loud but it filled the entire space.

He said, “Javad, why are you persecuting me?” Javad wanted to say, “I do not know you.

I have never persecuted you.

I have only been fighting against Christians.

” But before he could speak, the man said, “When you persecute them, you persecute me.

I am Jesus.

They are my body and you have been hurting me.

” Javad tried to pull away.

He tried to run but he felt a hand on his shoulder, firm but not violent.

The man looked into his eyes and said, “I do not want to condemn you.

I want to save you.

Stop fighting me.

Surrender.

Come to me and I will forgive you.

” Then the dream ended.

Javad woke up drenched in sweat, his heart pounding so hard he thought it would burst out of his chest.

For 3 days, Javad could not function.

He went to work, but his mind was somewhere else.

He kept hearing the voice.

Why are you persecuting me? He kept seeing the face.

Those eyes that looked at him with love, even while confronting him with the truth.

Javad had been taught his entire life that Jesus was just a prophet, a good man, nothing more.

But the figure he saw in that dream was not just a man.

That was God.

Javad knew it in his bones.

He did not tell anyone.

He could not.

If his commanders found out he was having dreams about Jesus, he would be fired, maybe even arrested.

But the guilt would not leave him.

He started thinking about the Christians he had arrested.

He started remembering their faces.

They had not looked like criminals.

They had looked peaceful.

Some of them were even smiling when they were taken away.

He could not understand it then, but now he did.

They had something he did not.

They had Jesus.

Javad began searching in secret.

He used a VPN to access blocked websites.

He found testimonies online from other Iranians who had dreamed of Jesus.

He found videos of Dr.

Horma’s chariot preaching the gospel.

He started reading the New Testament on his phone, hiding it from everyone around him.

And the more he read, the more everything made sense.

Jesus was not just a prophet.

He was the son of God.

He died for sins.

He rose from the dead.

He was alive and he had come to Javad personally not to destroy him but to call him.

One night alone in his apartment, Javad got on his knees and prayed for the first time in his life to Jesus.

He said, “I am sorry.

I did not know.

Forgive me.

I surrender.

I want to follow you.

” And in that moment, he felt something break inside of him.

All the anger, all the hatred, all the pride, it all melted away.

He felt clean.

He felt free.

But now Javad had a serious problem.

He could not keep working for the bases.

He could not keep raiding churches.

He could not keep arresting his own brothers and sisters in Christ.

So he quit.

He made up an excuse, said he had health problems, and walked away.

His family was confused.

His friends were suspicious, but Javad did not care.

He reached out secretly to one of the pastors whose church he had helped shut down months earlier.

It took weeks to build trust.

But eventually, the pastor agreed to meet him.

When Javad confessed what he had done, the pastor cried and then he hugged him.

He said, “Brother, if Jesus can forgive you, so can I.

Welcome to the family.

” Javad was baptized in secret two months later.

Today he is part of the underground church.

He uses his knowledge of how the bases operate to help protect other believers.

He warns them when raids are coming.

He teaches them how to stay safe.

He has become a guardian of the very people he once hunted.

This is not fiction.

This is a real pattern that keeps happening.

There are multiple reports from ministries working in Iran of former members of the Revolutionary Guard, former Basage soldiers, even former informants who were paid by the government to infiltrate churches.

All of them encountering Jesus in dreams and visions and turning their lives completely around.

One ministry leader said that in the past 5 years, they have personally met at least 12 former persecutors who are now believers.

12.

And those are just the ones they know about.

How many more are out there who have had the same experience but are still too afraid to come forward? How many more are living double lives right now, working for the regime on the outside but worshiping Jesus in secret? This is exactly what happened to Saul of Tarsus.

He was on his way to Damascus with letters of authority to arrest Christians.

He was breathing threats and murder.

He believed he was serving God by wiping out the followers of Jesus.

And then Jesus appeared to him in a blinding light and said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Saul asked, “Who are you, Lord?” And Jesus said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

” That encounter turned Saul into Paul, the greatest missionary the world has ever known.

The same Jesus who confronted Saul is confronting Iranian soldiers today.

The same power that knocked Saul off his horse is knocking hardened persecutors to their knees in Thrron, in Mashhad, in Shiraz, in Isvahan.

And they are getting up as new creations, forgiven, transformed, and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Why does this matter? Because it proves that no one is beyond the reach of Jesus.

It proves that no heart is too hard.

It proves that the most violent enemy of the gospel can become its most passionate defender in a single moment if Jesus decides to reveal himself.

It also proves that this movement in Iran is not the result of clever human strategy.

You cannot plan this.

You cannot organize this.

You cannot create this with marketing or programs or outreach events.

This is the sovereign work of God.

This is Jesus building his church and the gates of hell cannot stop him.

Not the Iranian government, not the revolutionary guard, not the bas.

Not the imams, not the fatwas, not the prison cells.

Nothing can stop him.

Now we have to step back and ask the hard question that every skeptic, every doubter, and even some believers are probably asking right now.

Why dreams? If Jesus is truly appearing to people, if he is truly reaching into the heart of one of the most closed nations on earth, then why does he not just appear in broad daylight? Why does he not show up in the middle of Thron in front of thousands of people and prove once and for all that he is real? Why does he work in the shadows, in the privacy of sleep, in the quiet of the night? It is a fair question.

And the answer is not only biblical, it is beautiful.

There are two major reasons why God is using dreams and visions as his primary tool in Iran right now.

And both of them reveal the wisdom and the mercy of God in ways that should make us fall on our faces in worship.

The first reason is cultural.

Dreams are taken very seriously in Middle Eastern and Islamic culture.

This is not like the West where if you tell someone you had a vivid dream, they might smile politely and say that is nice and then move on with their day.

In Iran, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, across the entire Muslim world, dreams are seen as possible messages from the spiritual realm.

The Quran itself talks about dreams.

There are stories in Islamic tradition of prophets receiving revelation through dreams.

Muhammad himself claimed that some of his encounters with the angel Gabriel happened in dreamlike states.

Because of this, when a Muslim has a powerful dream, especially one that feels different from normal dreams, they do not just dismiss it.

They pay attention.

They ask what it means.

They search for interpretation.

And that is exactly what is happening right now with these encounters with Jesus.

When Amir had his dream, he did not wake up and say, “Oh, that was just my brain playing tricks on me.

” He woke up knowing that something significant had happened.

When Ila saw the man in white, she did not brush it off as random images from her subconscious.

She recognized it as a message.

When Javad was confronted by Jesus in his dream, he knew instantly that this was not ordinary.

This cultural openness to dreams is something God is using masterfully.

He is not forcing himself into a framework that the Iranian people cannot understand.

He is meeting them exactly where they are.

He is speaking their language.

He is using a door that their own culture has already left open.

This is the same God who became a Jewish man to reach the Jewish people.

The same God who spoke Greek philosophy to reach the Greeks.

The same God who meets every generation, every culture, every people group in the way that will reach them most effectively.

And right now in Iran, that way is dreams.

The second reason is even more powerful and it is rooted in prophecy.

In the Old Testament, in the book of Joel 2:28, God makes a promise about what will happen in the last days.

He says, “And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.

Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.

” This is not symbolic language.

This is a direct promise that in the time leading up to the return of Christ, the Holy Spirit will move in supernatural ways.

Dreams and visions will become normal.

They will not be rare.

They will not be reserved for a few special prophets or apostles.

They will be poured out on all flesh, on men and women, on young and old, on people from every nation and every background.

The Apostle Peter quoted this exact passage on the day of Pentecost in the book of Acts chapter 2.

When the Holy Spirit fell on the believers in the upper room and they began to speak in tongues, the crowd thought they were drunk.

But Peter stood up and said, “No, this is not drunkenness.

This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.

This is the spirit being poured out.

” And that outpouring did not stop in the book of Acts.

It is still happening today.

What we are seeing in Iran is the direct fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy.

God is pouring out his spirit on Iranian flesh.

Iranian sons and daughters are prophesying.

Iranian old men are dreaming dreams.

Iranian young men and women are seeing visions.

This is not strange.

This is not weird.

This is not some fringe phenomenon that we need to be suspicious of.

This is scripture being lived out in real time right before our eyes.

And here is the part that should blow your mind.

The Holy Spirit cannot be legislated.

You can pass a law that says Bibles are illegal.

You can pass a law that says evangelism is a crime.

You can pass a law that says changing your religion is punishable by death.

But you cannot pass a law that stops the Holy Spirit from entering someone’s dream.

You cannot build a wall high enough to keep God out of a bedroom.

You cannot station enough guards to prevent Jesus from appearing in a vision.

The Iranian government has done everything in its power to crush Christianity.

They have shut down churches.

They have arrested pastors.

They have jammed Christian satellite signals.

They have blocked websites.

They have tortured believers.

And yet, the church is growing faster than ever.

Why? Because the Holy Spirit is like a river that cannot be damned.

When you try to block it in one place, it overflows in another.

When man shuts the front door, God crashes through the roof.

This is why the Iranian government is so terrified right now.

They are not afraid of a few scattered house churches.

They are afraid of a movement they cannot control.

They can spy on phone calls, but they cannot monitor dreams.

They can track internet activity, but they cannot stop visions.

They can arrest someone for owning a Bible, but they cannot arrest someone for seeing Jesus in their sleep.

And this is driving them crazy.

There have been reports from inside Iran that some imams are now preaching sermons specifically warning people not to trust dreams about Jesus.

They are telling their congregations that if you see a man in white in your dreams, it is a trick from Satan.

It is a deception.

Do not listen to it.

But that strategy is backfiring.

Because now even more people are curious.

They are thinking why are the imams so afraid of a dream? What are they trying to hide? There is also a deeper theological reason why dreams are so effective in this context.

Christianity is not primarily about information.

It is about relationship.

Yes, we need the Bible.

Yes, we need sound doctrine.

Yes, we need teaching and disciplehip.

But at the core, Christianity is about knowing a person.

It is about encountering the living God.

And dreams allow for that kind of personal, direct, undeniable encounter.

When someone reads about Jesus in a book, they can argue with it.

They can say, “Maybe this is just a nice story.

Maybe this was written by men with an agenda.

Maybe this is not true.

” But when someone sees Jesus face to face in a vision, when they hear his voice, when they feel his presence, there is no argument.

There is no debate.

You cannot unsee what you have seen.

You cannot unhear what you have heard.

That encounter changes everything.

This is exactly what happened to the Apostle Paul.

Yes, he was a brilliant scholar.

Yes, he knew the scriptures.

But what turned him from a persecutor into a preacher was not a theological argument.

It was a face-to-face encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus.

After that moment, Paul spent the rest of his life saying, “I know whom I have believed, not what I have believed whom.

” It was personal.

It was relational.

It was real.

And that is what is happening to thousands of Iranians right now.

They are not being convinced by arguments.

They are being confronted by a person.

And once you meet him, once you see him, once you hear him call your name, everything else becomes secondary.

Let me say this clearly.

God is not limited to dreams and visions.

He can use anything.

He can use a sermon.

He can use a conversation.

He can use a book.

He can use suffering.

He can use nature.

He can use silence.

But in Iran right now in this specific moment in history, he has chosen dreams as his primary method.

And it is working.

It is working so well that the fastest growing church in the world is in a country where Christianity is illegal.

It is working so well that former Muslims are being baptized every single week in bathtubs and rivers and lakes in the middle of the night.

It is working so well that entire families are coming to Christ, that former imams are planting house churches, that ex-terrorists are now evangelists.

This is not theory.

This is not wishful thinking.

This is documented, verifiable, undeniable reality.

And here is the part that should shake us.

This same Holy Spirit that is moving in Iran is available to us.

The same Jesus who is appearing in dreams to Muslims is alive and present with us right now.

The same power that is breaking through government censorship and religious oppression is the same power that lives inside every believer through the Holy Spirit.

So why are we so cold? Why are we so comfortable? Why are we so distant from the fire that is burning in the underground church? We have every resource.

We have freedom.

We have buildings and microphones and platforms and apps and translations and commentaries.

And yet so many of us are spiritually asleep.

We have access to everything and we treasure nothing.

Meanwhile, in Iran, teenagers are risking execution just to own a single page of the Gospel of John.

What does that say about us? The contrast is unbearable when you really stop and think about it.

Right now, as you are reading this, there is a 15-year-old boy in Iran who is hiding a Bible under his mattress.

If his parents find it, they will burn it.

If the authorities find it, he will be arrested.

But he reads it every night by the light of his phone, under his blanket, with his heart pounding, because those words are more precious to him than his own safety.

There is a woman in her 30s who walks 15 km on foot in the dark just to attend a 2-hour house church meeting in someone’s basement.

She tells her family she is visiting a friend.

If they knew the truth, they would disown her.

But she goes anyway because she is starving for fellowship, starving for worship, starving to be with other believers, even if only for a few hours.

There is a man in his 50s who lost his job, lost his pension, lost his reputation, and lost contact with his children because he refused to deny Jesus.

He could have kept quiet.

He could have stayed Muslim on the outside and Christian on the inside.

No one would have known, but he could not do it.

He could not pretend anymore.

So, he told the truth, and it cost him everything.

And when someone asked him if he regretted it, he said, “Regret what? I lost nothing.

I gained Christ.

That is the level of faith we are talking about.

That is the kind of fire that is burning in the hearts of Iranian believers right now.

And it should make every single one of us who live in freedom feel both inspired and convicted at the same time.

We live in nations where we can walk into a store and buy 10 different translations of the Bible without fear.

We can go to church on Sunday morning, sing as loud as we want, raise our hands, pray out loud, and no one will arrest us.

We can post scripture on social media.

We can wear cross necklaces.

We can put Christian bumper stickers on our cars.

We can talk openly about Jesus at work, at school, in the park.

And the worst thing that will happen is someone might roll their eyes or disagree with us.

That is it.

No jail, no torture, no execution.

And yet, how many of us are silent? How many of us are embarrassed? How many of us have Bibles sitting on our shelves collecting dust while believers in Iran are copying out verses by hand on scraps of paper because they do not have access to a full copy? This is not meant to shame anyone.

This is meant to wake us up.

Because the truth is, comfort kills passion.

When everything is easy, when everything is available, when there is no cost and no risk, faith becomes casual.

It becomes a hobby, it becomes something we do on Sundays.

If we are not too tired, but when following Jesus could cost you your life, suddenly every word of scripture becomes precious.

Every prayer becomes urgent.

Every gathering becomes sacred.

The Iranian church does not have the luxury of being lukewarm.

They are either allin or they are out.

There is no middle ground.

And that fire, that intensity, that desperation for God is something we have lost in much of the Western church.

But here is the good news.

That same fire is available to us.

We do not need to wait for persecution to come before we get serious about our faith.

We do not need to be thrown in prison before we start valuing the word of God.

We can choose right now today to pursue Jesus with the same passion that our brothers and sisters in Iran are pursuing him.

We can choose to stop being distracted by comfort and entertainment and convenience.

We can choose to fall in love with Jesus again.

Not because we have to, but because he is worthy, because he is beautiful, because he gave everything for us, and because the same spirit that is pouring out dreams and visions in Thrron is living inside of us, waiting to be unleashed.

Let me tell you what is happening in the Iranian church right now that most people do not know about.

It is not just about conversions.

It is not just about numbers.

It is about the quality of disciplehip.

These new believers are not playing around.

They are not treating Christianity like a self-help program or a social club.

They know that following Jesus might cost them their lives, so they take it seriously.

When they get access to a Bible, they devour it.

When they gather for worship, they do not check their watches.

When they pray, they are not reciting empty words.

They are crying out to God with everything they have.

They are fasting.

They are memorizing scripture.

They are sharing the gospel with their neighbors even though it is dangerous.

They are living like the book of acts is not just history but a manual for how the church is supposed to function.

And this is creating a ripple effect.

When someone in Iran comes to Christ, they do not keep it to themselves.

They immediately start telling others.

They start looking for family members who might be open.

They start praying for their friends.

they start taking risks.

There are stories of single believers leading 5, 10, even 20 people to Christ within the first year of their own conversion.

There are reports of house churches multiplying so fast that the networks can barely keep up.

One leader of an underground church network said that they are now training new pastors every single month because the growth is so explosive that they cannot find enough mature leaders to shepherd all the new believers.

This is a problem they are happy to have.

There is also something supernatural happening in the Iranian church that goes beyond dreams and visions.

There are reports of healings.

There are reports of demonic deliverances.

There are reports of people being protected in miraculous ways when they should have been caught.

One story tells of a house church meeting that was raided by the bas.

The soldiers knocked on the door.

The believers inside froze.

They knew they were trapped.

There was no back exit, no way to escape.

They started praying silently, desperately.

The soldiers knocked again louder this time.

Then they started banging, but for some reason, they did not break down the door.

After a few minutes, the believers heard them talking outside.

One soldier said, “This is the wrong address.

Let us go.

” And they left.

When the believers opened the door later, they saw boot marks on the door frame where the soldiers had been standing.

They had been at the right address, but God had confused them.

Another testimony comes from a young woman named Miriam, who was arrested for sharing the gospel with her co-workers.

She was taken to a detention center and interrogated for 3 days.

They wanted her to give them the names of other Christians.

They wanted her to tell them where the house churches were meeting.

They threatened her.

They screamed at her, but every time they asked her a question, she felt a supernatural peace.

She said it was like someone was standing behind her whispering, “Do not be afraid.

I am with you.

” She refused to give any names.

On the third day, one of the interrogators looked at her and said, “You are different.

I have interrogated hundreds of people and they all break.

But you are not afraid.

” Why? Miriam said, “Because I belong to Jesus and he is stronger than you.

” The interrogator stared at her for a long time.

Then he let her go.

No charges, no explanation.

He just told her to leave and never come back.

These kinds of stories are not rare.

They are becoming normal.

The Iranian church is experiencing the book of Acts in real time.

They are seeing God move in power because they have no other choice.

They cannot rely on buildings or programs or marketing or money.

All they have is prayer, faith, and the Holy Spirit.

And it turns out that is more than enough.

In fact, it is everything.

This should challenge every single one of us in the west who have built our churches on systems and structures and strategies.

There is nothing wrong with organization.

There is nothing wrong with planning.

But when we rely more on our methods than we do on the power of God, we have missed the point.

The Iranian church is showing us what happens when you strip away all the extras and get back to the raw, unfiltered, spiritfilled essence of what it means to follow Jesus.

And here is the most convicting part.

The Iranian believers are praying for us.

Yes, you read that right.

The people who are being persecuted, the people who are losing their jobs and their families and their freedom, the people who are risking their lives every single day, they are praying for the church in the west.

They are praying that we would wake up.

They are praying that we would stop being distracted.

They are praying that we would remember what we have and use it for the glory of God.

One Iranian pastor said in an interview, “We do not need your pity.

We need your passion.

We are fine.

Jesus is with us.

But you, you have so much freedom and you are wasting it.

Wake up before it is too late.

That statement should hit us like a hammer.

We are being called out lovingly but firmly by believers who have every right to complain but instead are filled with joy.

They are not asking for comfort.

They are not asking for safety.

They are asking us to stop being lazy.

They are asking us to stop treating our faith like a boring routine.

They are asking us to encounter Jesus the way they have encountered him with desperation, with hunger, with everything we have.

Because the truth is we serve the same God.

We have the same Holy Spirit.

We read the same Bible.

The only difference is that they have decided to take it seriously and many of us have