Believer from Iran details story of answered prayer
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – A persecuted Christian from Iran who escaped to Switzerland detailed the conditions believers are facing in the Islamic Republic at the Family Research Council Wednesday, telling a story of how her father was told by God to hand their church over to the government.
Dabrina Bet Tamraz’s father Victor received a phone call in March 2009 from the government telling him to meet security agents at their Assyrian Pentecostal church, one of the denominations that is nominally allowed to operate in Iran.
Victor Bet Tamraz was given an ultimatum to “give up the keys of the church” or to assure the agents that only Assyrian-speaking people, and no Iranians, would be attending the congregation.
“Thank you very much. You have done us a great favor. We don’t know how to thank you. Please close down the church,” Tamraz remembered her father saying to the men.
After a few hours of prayer, the believers had received an answer from God that if the Ayatollahs closed down their church, He would “open the gates of Heaven.”
“My father said, ‘Thank you, because I can’t wait for God to open the gates of Heaven for people to shout Hallelujah on the streets,’” Tamraz said her father told the shocked security agents.
The number of Christians in Iran, operating mostly underground and constantly tailed by the government, has almost doubled since 2016, with Open Doors USA estimates that there are now around 800,000 secret believers in the country.