Unknown Nations Podcast

  This is the Unknown Nations Podcast, where we'll be sharing about reaching the nation where Jesus is unknown. 

Well, welcome to the Unknown Nations Podcast highlighting what God is doing in the most spiritually dark places in the world. And today, we're certainly talking about a dark place.. We are going to be going to the country of Iran, and we are going to do a dive on that. And we're going to learn together about what God is doing there with some of the challenges that remain. And the fact that it's the fastest growing Evangelical movement in the world. Who would have thought when you say what's the fastest growing church in the world that someone would say Iran. But today that's exactly what we're going to talk about. And of course, my name is Greg Kelley.

I have the privilege of being the CEO at Unknown Nations, where we have the honor to serve God by helping reach the most zero-access-barrier-ridden-spiritually-antagonistic-spoken-word-reliant people groups on the planet giving birth to the church In impossible places. And if you were to come up with a list of impossible places, I'm sure Iran would be on a lot of people's lists, as well as Afghanistan, which happens to be the second fastest growing church in the world. But let's talk about Iran a little bit.

I don't know how much you know about it. Uh, it's very interesting country. It's, it's a beautiful country. My goodness, when you see inside of Iran, you will see some of the most gorgeous landscapes imaginable.. I mean, think about some of the beautiful national parks that we have in America, and Iran is gonna match up with so many of the, the beautiful spots in America.

It's about the size of alaska. So it's, it's a pretty large  country 90 million people living there, 98 percent of that country are followers of the Muslim religion.  You have different people groups totaling 94, so remember at Unknown Nations, we talk about the nations or IE, the people group, the ethnos.

That's what Jesus called us to when he said, "Go make disciples of all nations." He wasn't talking about Iran. He was talking about the nations or the ethnea within a country like Iran. And so, inside of Iran, there are over 90 different people groups or ethneam within it. And the number one, the largest people group, or ethnea, inside the country of Iran are the Persian people,

nearly 43 million people, only 1.5 percent followers of Jesus. So think about that. There's a massive, just gathering of people over 40 million that speak the same language. They have the same dialect.  They have the same cultural understanding and background. And obviously the exact same language less than, uh, one, one out of a hundred basically are followers of Jesus.

So when you think about the location of Iran too, uh, it's got some interesting neighbors. When you go to the Western border of Iran. Mainly, you're talking about the country of Iraq on the western border. And then when you go to the eastern border of Iran, you have Afghanistan. So, it's a real tricky location.

And then it also borders a country like Turkey, which actually becomes a real access point. Iran, iraq, Afghanistan, all incredibly difficult places to have infrastructure. When we talk about training, when we talk about churches, very difficult, any one of those three countries, especially Iran, but Turkey is a different matter.

So, we're going to talk a little bit about that today. Uh, there's also this notion, we're not going to do a deep dive on this, maybe another podcast, we will talk about the difference between Shia and Sunni, but it's a very fascinating idea. And it's important for us to understand the body of Christ, because even though Islam is the second largest religion in the world after Christianity, there's nearly two billion Muslims in the world today. They are broken into two groups that are very different from one another, uh, in the sense of the origin, their view of the perspective of, of how kind of the, it should have been passed on from Muhammad because they both believe that Muhammad was the, the final messenger of Allah.

And they both, that's Shia and Sunni, believe that the Quran is sort of their word of God, if you will. It's a divine  writing that's in their belief, but the difference is really in the succession of Muhammad and the what the Shia think is that Muhammad's cousin, or his son in law rather, named Ali was the rightful successor of the Muslim faith.

That he was the first in line from a hereditary standpoint of the Imams. So, you think of, who aligns with the Shia belief? And it's only about 10 percent by the way of all Muslims believe in that sort of aspect of Islam. That would be Iran. It would actually be when we think about radical groups, we talk about ISIS, we talk about  Boko Haram, we talk about Hamas, we talk about Hezbollah, those are some of the more fundamentalist, radical groups of Islam. And Hezbollah, interesting from the country of Lebanon, they are Shia. So, they identify with the Iranian version of it. And then you've got the Sunni, which are the, the much larger group. Nearly 90% of all Muslims would say that they're Sunni.

And really the, the biggest difference there is they didn't think there was a successor. Someone that was explicitly named, uh, more of kind of a, a consensus that's, that will vote on who the, the leader would be. And that would be a group that would be more like Hamas. So you think North Africa, you think, Indonesia, the most populated Muslim country in the world.

They are Sunni. And so there is a dividing line and you'll see tensions between, Shia and Sunni from time to time. But at the end of the day, they all would, would view themselves as a, as a Muslim, whether you're Shia or whether you're Sunni. But it's just a fascinating thing to point out when you talk about Iran. And of    course, there's rich, rich history in the Bible when you're talking about Iran. And really the Bible would be talking about it from a standpoint of is Persia.

Right? And so you think about probably the most famous story that's referencing that is in the book of Esther, where we have Queen Esther. Think about this, the irony here, the Jewish woman who would become queen. Yeah, you're, we're talking about in Persia, in the, the Persian empire, God's protection of his people.

Queen Esther, what a precious, precious story that brings Iran to life in the, in the Old Testament. And then of course, Ezra and Nehemiah, where you have the Persian kings like Cyrus, who allowed the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple walls. Yeah, I mean, all this connection to the Persian, um, from a geographic standpoint, it's all in that, that region of the world, that the Iran, the largest nation, again, the Persian people all out of Iran.

And of course, in Isaiah 45, uh, in the first few verses, it talks about Cyrus, the king, the Persian king that's referred to as God's anointed used to fulfill his purposes. So there's all kinds of references that are talking about Persia in, in the Bible. And of course we can tie that directly to, to Iran.

But when you come to today, maybe the things that would be more relevant for many of us who were alive around 19, the late 70's and early 80's, there was a massive upheaval in the country of Iran. That was largely, um, the result of the, the monarchy being overthrown. That was the Shah who was leading the country throughout the 70s through a very difficult time, a lot of corruption.

There was just this upheaval and the people really had enough. And this massive uprising in 1979 is referred to as the Islamic Revolution. And it, it basically pushed out the Shah and ushered in the Ayatollah regime. And the Ayatollah regime really is a reference to the supreme leader where there's been many since that time.

But it has been an incredibly difficult time. It's brought in a lot of fundamentalism, a lot of, sort of radical aspects of Islam being deployed, a tremendous persecution. And it, and quite honestly just a lot of suffering. They were in war with Iraq, where they say over a million people were killed during the years in the 80s.

So just a lot of suffering, a lot of difficulty, for the, the country of Iran. And anytime you look at places that there's been physical suffering, like Iran certainly has endured, you have to look at the gospel implications. And Iran has really been shut off from the outside world, making missions very, very difficult.

But like, what we like to say, at Unknown Nations as you cannot contain the Holy Spirit. So, what else it takes is a few bold courageous people who will go in and share the good news of Jesus Christ. And you might say, "Well, Greg, how does that even work? How do you go into a place?" 

I mean, for someone, if I were to suggest, "Okay, we're going to get on an airplane, and we're going to fly into Tehran."

There's been movies put on about this, and it looks terrifying, quite honestly. As beautiful as that country is, the notion you of getting on an airplane and doing some tourist trip to Tehran.

I mean, that's like the last place I'm going to pick to go to, because I understand the intensity and the violent oppression against Christianity in particular. But there is what we call a diaspora. So the diaspora is a word in missions that really talks about the people, or the nations, being spread out.

That doesn't necessarily mean they're refugees, or that they've been displaced for some reason. They just live in other lands. And Iran has a rich diaspora that is really all around the world. Many are in some of these neighboring countries that I had mentioned, like Afghanistan. There's nearly 700, 000 Iranians.

The diaspora of Iran living inside of Afghanistan. Iraq, of course, has hundreds of thousands. But even when western countries, Germany: over two hundred thousand Iranians live in Germany. Canada: over a hundred thousand . And then when you talk about the U.S., there's nearly a million diaspora of Iran that are living right here in America.

So, they can be reached with the good news of Jesus Christ. And I believe that's what God's done. As Iran has been scattered, uh, they have been receptive to the gospel, in a culture of freedom, in the absence of persecution and hostile reaction. And I think because of that, the gospel has actually gone back into Iran and seeds of the gospel have taken place.  The country of Turkey, I had mentioned earlier, is super strategic, because you can actually go into Turkey. There's not a lot of countries you can go into with an Iranian passport and get into. It's a very short list. Turkey's one of them. You can very easily go into there for a 90 day period, uh, without really sort of scrutiny. Uh, you'd have to go back into Iran, because if you stay in Turkey, and we met a number of Iranians who have left Turkey for the sake of persecution, uh, really, literally their lives are endangered if they go back because they've been identified as a Christian, that's a different matter.

But for people who are just sort of viewed as tourists, they can, they can go across into Turkey fairly easily. So, just a couple of things I wanted to mention, you know, as it relates to the challenge of some of these people that are  living in other places like a Turkey. We had met one woman who had gone in there.

Uh, she got identified as a follower of Jesus. She became on the radar. She stayed over 90 days. The Turkish people, there's, there's a long history of Iranians being deported, on just no notice, not even a moment's notice, just almost immediately if you get caught. And she got identified by a co worker and they came, the secret police, they call them, came to get her.

She just ran. She just fled. So she, she's literally living in hiding. Can you imagine that on a day to day basis? Other Iranians who are in Turkey are working and once the employer knows that, sometimes they'll just, they, they, they persecute them from a perspective of "Well I'm, just not going to pay you" knowing there's no recourse that they have. There's no one they can take their complaint to and get justice for because of fear that they'll be deported back to Iran.

So Iranians have a very difficult time. But I can tell you this, the church inside of Iran, whether it's inside Iran proper, or in a place like Turkey, is hungry for the gospel. I have never seen an explosion and intensity of hunger for the gospel like i've seen in the country of Turkey among Iranians. I preached in an underground church in Turkey of exclusive Iranians. And there was such a joy, and a passion to know about Jesus, and to grow in Jesus, a nd to share Jesus. Make no mistake when Iranians who are outside the diaspora, outside of Iran, as soon as the opportunity presents itself and that's probably gonna mean when the ayatollahs are no longer in control,  and that that country is right on the teetering, on the brink of really collapse before for, for, for economic reasons, for political reasons, there's so much  dissatisfaction among the regular people who live in Iran. That that day is coming.

And when it does, there is going to be a flood of missionaries, Iranians who are going back into the country of Iran, sharing the love of Jesus Christ. So there's, there's so many beautiful things and it's, it's a story of revival in the midst of adversity and oppression  that we see around the world, in the underground church. But it's amazing how it's being led by women and children. They are, they are some of the leaders, the front edge of this church in Iran That is, that is just really on the midst of revival right now.

Well, what can you do? You can be praying. Join us! Be praying for Iranian believers in the underground church. Support ministries that are bringing resources and training Iranian Christians, so that they're equipped to impact the diaspora, but also to go back into Iran. And would you share this story with other people? Encourage others!

Tell them what God is doing in Iran. They can be a part of it. How can you be a part of it? You can visit our website, uh, you can go to Unknownnations.com. You can learn more about, you can get involved. You can share this podcast! Give us a favorable review, share it with your your friends and family. Subscribe and follow us.  Friend the, the impact that you can have is immeasurable, and together, we can see God's Kingdom expand into the darkest corners of the Earth. God bless you.