Good News About The Good News

Monday, March 5, 2007

Iranian Imam Receives Christ Via Satellite TV, Escapes Country
Four More Imams Are Underground Believers

By Mark Ellis
Senior Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

WOODLAND HILLS, CALIFORNIA (ANS) -- One of the top Islamic leaders in Iran accepted Christ and left the country after facing death threats and imprisonment, according to an Iranian pastor living in the U.S.

“This man has been watching Christian TV programs for the past two years,” said Pastor Elnathan Baghestani, founder of Iran for Christ Ministries. (www.iranforchrist.com) Pastor Baghestani and his wife provide Christian programming to the Mohabat Network satellite, which broadcasts 24/7 into Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.

The imam called one of the phone counselors connected to Iran for Christ Ministries and prayed to receive Christ in early February. “The man has been watching Christian TV programs for the past two years,” Baghestani said. “He said he has believed since he began watching the programs but his salvation was sealed through his confession.”

“This man knows all the verses of the Qur’an by heart,” he added. “After he began watching, doubt began in his heart about the Islamic faith.” The man spent nine months in prison after he questioned the violence of radical Islam. Following his release from prison, he faced numerous death threats and escaped the country.

Several other religious leaders may follow suit. “He knows four other high-ranking imams that are in the same condition and want to leave Iran,” Baghestani said.

While it is illegal to own satellite dishes in Iran, many hide them on their roofs or other locations on their property. “They arrest people for having satellite dishes because they know the Christian programming is effective,” Baghestani noted.

The imam who fled left everything behind. “His salary was 700,000 of their monetary units every month,” Baghestani said. “He was honored and respected, but when the gospel came to him he lost everything,” he noted. “Now he is a poor refugee in a foreign country.”

“God is shaking the foundation of Islam in Iran,” Baghestani said. “We have been praying for some of the main government officials to come to Christ and God is answering us,” he reports. “I pray God will open more doors for us to send the gospel to the Middle East.”

(Reprinted by permission)

Cheeky Monkey

Robert C. Cheeks writes in The American Thinker about the life and thought of Alexksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn; 'Solzhenitsyn, the Prophet':

"In his corpus Isaevich teaches us the history and pathological reality of Soviet Man, who in reality very much mirrors Western Man. He also makes us aware that the foundation of the Marxist System is the Enlightenment project and the triumph of its heresies. From doubting God, to destroying God, to the Gulag, Western man's egophanic revolt results in a profound disorder of language and articulation, a destruction of the noetic symbols of transcendence, and the loss of the cosmic order. There can be little wonder, then, that modernity collapsed into relativism, nihilism, objectivism, and the resultant postmodern age is best described as the anti-philosophical triumph of "groundlessness," the epoch devoid of the meta-narrative, the age without God."

If I've said that once, I've said it a thousand times.