image

People of Iran, Jesus has come to reign in Iran.

That was me with 3,000 of my brothers, soldiers who swore to fight Jesus and Christianity fall on their faces before Jesus.

I don’t know how to process what I just witnessed.

My name is Colonel Raza Amadi.

Until 4 days ago, I was a commanding officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC.

For 18 years, I served the Islamic Republic.

I led operations.

I enforced the regime’s will.

I believed in the revolution.

But on March 3rd, 2026, something happened that shattered everything I thought I knew.

This is my testimony.

I need you to understand who I was before I tell you what happened.

I wasn’t some low-level conscript.

I was Colonel Raza Amadi, IRGC 25th Division, stationed in Thrron.

My father served under Kmeni during the revolution.

My grandfather fought in the Iran Iraq war.

Military service wasn’t just my job.

It was my identity.

It was my family’s legacy.

It was everything we stood for.

I I grew up in a household where the Islamic Republic was sacred, where Kmeni’s picture hung in every room, where questioning the revolution was unthinkable.

My father used to tell me stories about the early days, how they overthrew the sha, how they built a new Iran based on Islamic principles, how they resisted American imperialism.

These weren’t just stories.

They were our scripture, our truth, the foundation of everything I believed about the world.

When I was 18 years old, I I joined the Revolutionary Guard.

It was the proudest day of my father’s life.

I remember him standing at attention when I came home in my uniform for the first time.

He saluted me, his own son.

And I felt like I was carrying forward something holy, something bigger than myself.

The IRGC wasn’t like the regular army.

We were the ideological backbone of the Islamic Republic.

We weren’t just soldiers.

We were guardians of the revolution.

We protected the Islamic system from internal and external threats.

And I took that responsibility seriously, deadly seriously.

Over the years, I rose through the ranks.

I led operations against Kurdish separatists.

I coordinated security during protests in 2009 and 2019.

I interrogated dissident who spoke against the regime.

I had arrested protesters.

I had led raids on underground churches.

I had done things in the name of the Islamic Republic that I thought were righteous, necessary, a patriotic.

I’m not proud of that now.

But back then, I believed I was protecting Iran from foreign influence, from Western corruption, from people who wanted to destroy our Islamic identity.

I believed Christians were agents of the West, that they were trying to colonize our minds the way the British and Americans had once tried to colonize our land.

I had personally overseen raids on house churches in Tehran.

I had seen the fear in people’s eyes when we broke down their doors.

I I had confiscated Bibles written in Farsy.

I had sent pastors to Evan prison.

And I had felt nothing but contempt for these people.

They were traitors to Iran, traitors to Islam, traitors to everything we had fought for.

But then February 28th happened.

Supreme Leader Kamay was killed in an Israeli air strike.

I’m sure you saw the news.

The whole world saw it.

The man who had ruled Iran for over three decades, gone in an instant.

The footage was everywhere.

the compound in flames on the emergency vehicles, the chaos.

But what you didn’t see was what happened inside Iran’s military in the hours and days that followed.

What you didn’t see was the absolute panic that gripped our command structure.

Because Kamoi wasn’t just our leader, he was the foundation of our entire system.

Without him, everything felt uncertain, unstable.

like the ground had disappeared beneath our feet.

Within hours of his death, the assembly of experts convened an emergency session and they began the process of selecting a new supreme leader.

Names were circulated, clerics, political figures, military commanders.

But there was no consensus, no clear successor.

And in that vacuum, something started to crack.

I was in the IRGC command center in Thran when the first report started coming in.

Strange reports, disturbing reports, reports that didn’t make any sense.

Soldiers were deserting, not just one or two, entire units, companies, battalions.

Oh, we started receiving calls from base commanders across the country.

Men were walking off their posts, abandoning their weapons, refusing orders.

At first, we thought it was fear.

We thought our soldiers were terrified that Iran was about to be destroyed, that American bombers were coming, that we were all going to die in retaliation strikes.

But then we started hearing something else, something that made my blood run cold.

We started hearing that these deserters were surrendering to Jesus and not surrendering to America, not surrendering to Israel, surrendering to Jesus Christ.

Some kind of mass religious hysteria was spreading through our ranks and we had no idea how to stop it.

I remember sitting in a briefing room with other senior officers on March 1st.

We were trying to make sense of the reports.

One general suggested it was a CIA psychological operation.

Another thought it was some kind of chemical weapon that caused hallucinations.

A third officer, a man I’d known for 15 years, stood up and said something I’ll never forget.

He said, “What if it’s real? What if God is actually moving in Iran?” The room went silent.

And then the commanding general ordered him removed from the meeting.

ordered him to report for a psychiatric evaluation.

Because in the IRGC, you don’t question the revolution.

You don’t question Islam.

And you certainly don’t suggest that Jesus Christ might be doing something in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

But the reports kept coming faster and faster.

A besieged garrison in Shiraz, 200 men deserted overnight.

an IRGC base in Mshad.

An entire mechanized unit abandoned their vehicles and walked away.

Artillery positions in Kerman Sha.

The crews just disappeared.

It was like our military was melting away before our eyes.

And then I started hearing the testimonies.

Soldiers who had been arrested for desertion.

When interrogators asked them why they left their posts, they all said the same thing.

And they said they had encountered Jesus.

They said he appeared to them in dreams, in visions, in moments of prayer.

They said he spoke to them, called them by name, told them to lay down their weapons and follow him.

I thought it was mass delusion.

I thought these men had been brainwashed by underground church networks, that Christian missionaries had somehow infiltrated our military and poisoned the minds of our soldiers.

So, I decided to investigate myself.

I I wasn’t going to sit in a command center and receive secondhand reports.

I was going to see this phenomenon with my own eyes.

On March 2nd, I drove to a Basie garrison south of Tehran.

This was a facility where an entire company, 200 men, had reportedly deserted the previous night.

I wanted to interview the officers who remained.

I wanted to understand what had happened.

I wanted to find the source of this infection so we could cut it out before it spread further.

Oh, when I arrived at the garrison, the scene was surreal.

The base was nearly empty.

Guard posts were abandoned.

Vehicles sat idle in motor pools.

The few officers who remained looked like they were in shock, like they’d witnessed something that broke them psychologically.

I found a captain in the operation center.

He was sitting alone at a desk staring at nothing.

I walked up to him and demanded answers.

I asked him where his men were.

He just looked at me with empty eyes.

And then he said something that haunts me to this day.

He said, “They met him, sir, and once you meet him, you can’t go back to what you were before.

” I grabbed him by his uniform.

I shouted in his face.

I demanded to know what he was talking about.

Who did they meet? Where did they go? Was this a coordinated operation? Was there a foreign agent involved? But he just kept staring at me with those empty eyes.

And then he started weeping.

A grown man, a military officer, weeping like a child.

I ordered him arrested on the spot.

I had him taken into custody for dereliction of duty and possible collaboration with enemy forces.

But even as I gave the order, something felt wrong.

This wasn’t the behavior of a traitor.

This was the behavior of someone who had seen something that shattered his understanding of reality.

I drove back to Thrron that evening with more questions than answers.

I filed my report.

Uh, I recommended a full-scale investigation into possible psychological warfare operations targeting our military.

I suggested we needed to crack down harder on underground church networks.

I even proposed that we should execute a few deserters publicly to send a message and restore discipline.

But that night, I couldn’t sleep.

I kept thinking about what that captain had said.

Once you meet him, you can’t go back.

Who was him? Jesus.

How could an entire company of soldiers meet Jesus? It It didn’t make sense.

It violated everything I understood about the world, about religion, about reality itself.

The next day, March 3rd, I received intelligence about a gathering.

Our informants reported that thousands of former soldiers were meeting in an abandoned warehouse district on the eastern edge of Thyron.

They were meeting with members of underground churches, Christian pastors, house church leaders.

This was it.

This was the conspiracy.

And this was where we would find the source of this movement and crush it before it destabilized the entire country.

I assembled a tactical team.

20 of my best men, veterans, loyal IRGC officers who had served with me for years, men I trusted with my life.

We loaded into three vehicles and drove toward the warehouse district.

Our mission was simple.

Raid the gathering, make mass arrests, confiscate any foreign materials, identify the ring leaders, and restore order.

It was evening when we arrived and the sun was setting over Tehran.

The city was unusually quiet.

Normally, you’d hear traffic voices, the sounds of urban life, but that night, everything felt muted, like the whole city was holding its breath.

We parked several blocks away from the target location and approached on foot.

I had my sidearm.

My men carried rifles.

We moved tactically using cover, staying in radio contact.

We were professionals.

We had done this a hundred times before.

We knew how to conduct raids.

Uh how to establish perimeters, how to neutralize threats.

But when we reached the warehouse district and saw the gathering, everything I knew, everything I had trained for became irrelevant.

There were not hundreds of people.

There were thousands.

The intelligence report had said thousands, but I hadn’t believed it.

I thought it was an exaggeration.

But no, there were actually thousands of people gathered there.

Former soldiers in civilian clothes, bas militia men, IRGC officers, men I recognized, a men I had served with, men I had trained.

They weren’t armed.

They weren’t plotting violence.

They weren’t organizing an insurrection.

They were kneeling.

Thousands of grown men on their knees, weeping, praying, singing songs I had never heard before.

And there was this presence, this overwhelming sense of something I couldn’t name, something powerful, something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I stopped.

My hand went to my weapon.

My training kicked in.

I should radio for backup.

I should establish a perimeter.

I should neutralize the threat.

But I couldn’t move.

I was frozen.

Not from fear exactly, but from something else, something I had never experienced before in my entire military career.

My men felt it, too.

I could see it in their faces, the way they slowed their pace, the way their hands trembled on their rifles, the way they looked at each other with confusion and something close to terror.

We were warriors, and we were trained to face danger without flinching.

But this wasn’t danger.

This was something else entirely.

And then I heard the singing.

Thousands of voices rising together, singing in Farsy.

But the words, the words were about Jesus, about his love, about his sacrifice, about his resurrection.

These were songs of worship, not whispered in secret, not hidden in underground gatherings, but proclaimed loudly, boldly, a by thousands of men who had once sworn oaths to defend Islam and the Islamic Republic.

I watched as one of my soldiers, a sergeant named Hassan, who had served under me for seven years, lowered his rifle.

Just lowered it without asking permission, without waiting for my command.

He took two steps forward, then another, and then he started walking toward the crowd, toward the thousands of kneeling men, and I shouted at him to stop.

I ordered him to return to formation.

But he didn’t even look back as he walked into that crowd and he fell to his knees and he started weeping.

And then another one of my men did the same thing.

And then another.

And within minutes all 20 of the soldiers I had brought with me had dropped their weapons and joined that gathering.

All 20 men without a single shot being fired, without any resistance.

I stood there alone, the only one still holding a weapon, the only one still trying to maintain some kind of military discipline, not the only one still clinging to the identity I had built my entire life around.

Colonel Reza Amadi, IRGC officer, guardian of the Islamic Republic, defender of the revolution.

But I could feel something pressing against that identity.

Something trying to break through.

Something that terrified me more than any enemy I had ever faced.

Because I knew in that moment that if I took one more step forward, everything I was would be destroyed.

Everything I had believed, everything I had fought for, everything that made me who I was.

And then I felt it.

Not a voice.

At least not a voice I heard with my ears, but a presence standing right behind me.

I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there.

As real as the ground beneath my feet, as real as the weapon in my hand, as real as the thousands of men kneeling before me.

And I knew without turning around, I knew it was him.

Jesus, the one these men were worshiping, the one they had encountered, the one they had surrendered to.

Or he was standing right behind me, waiting, not forcing me, not threatening me, just waiting, waiting for me to turn around.

Every instinct in my body screamed at me to run, to call for backup, to retreat to my vehicle and drive back to headquarters and pretend this never happened.

to maintain the lie that I was in control, that my worldview was intact, that I was still the man I had always been.

But I couldn’t run.

My legs wouldn’t move.

My body had stopped obeying my commands.

A and in that paralysis, I realized something.

I realized that I had been running my entire life.

Running from the truth.

Running from the doubts that crept in during quiet moments.

Running from the guilt I felt when I arrested innocent people.

Running from the emptiness I felt despite all my accomplishments in rank and power.

I had arrested Christians.

I had destroyed their churches.

I had torn apart their families.

I had sent pastors to prison where they were tortured and sometimes killed.

And I had told myself I was doing the right thing, that I was protecting Iran, protecting Islam, protecting the revolution.

But standing there in that warehouse district with thousands of former soldiers worshiping Jesus, I couldn’t lie to myself anymore.

I knew the truth.

I had always known it deep down.

I wasn’t protecting Iran.

I was protecting a system that ruled through fear, through violence, through oppression.

I wasn’t serving God.

I I was serving men who used God’s name to justify their power.

And Jesus was standing behind me.

The one I had been taught to respect as a prophet, but never worship as God.

The one I had been told was just a messenger, just a teacher, just a man.

He was standing behind me and he was so much more than anything I had been taught.

So much more than anything I could comprehend.

I dropped my weapon.

It clattered on the pavement and I fell to my knees.

Not because someone pushed me.

Uh not because I was physically weak.

I fell because I finally understood who I’d been fighting against all these years.

I finally understood what I had been running from.

I finally understood who was standing behind me.

And I turned around in my heart, in my spirit, in the deepest part of my being.

I turned around and I saw him.

Not with my physical eyes, but I saw him as clearly as I had ever seen anything in my life.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, was standing before me with eyes full of love.

Not anger, not judgment, not condemnation.

love.

Pure, overwhelming, incomprehensible love for me, for Colonel Reza Amadi, for the man who had spent 18 years enforcing a system that persecuted his followers, for the man who had arrested his servants, for the man who had destroyed his churches.

He looked at me with love and I wept.

I wept like I had never wept before.

deep wrenching sobs that came from a place I didn’t know existed inside me.

All the pain I had caused, all the lies I had believed, all the evil I had participated in, it all came pouring out of me in those tears.

And Jesus, he didn’t turn away.

He didn’t condemn me.

He didn’t remind me of my sins.

He just stood there loving me, accepting me, forgiving me.

I don’t know how long I knelt there.

Time lost all meaning.

It could have been minutes.

It could have been hours.

But at some point, I became aware of people around me, former soldiers, and men who had once served under me.

Men I had arrested in previous raids.

They were praying over me, laying hands on my shoulders, welcoming me into this new family, this family I had once persecuted.

And then I heard a voice, a physical voice this time, speaking in Farsy.

An older man knelt beside me.

He had a gray beard and kind eyes.

He introduced himself as Pastor Cyrus.

He had been leading an underground church in Tehran for 20 years.

I recognized him immediately, and I had arrested him in 2019.

I had personally transported him to Evan Prison.

I had testified against him at his trial.

He had been sentenced to 10 years, but here he was somehow released, somehow free.

And he was kneeling beside me with no trace of anger or bitterness in his eyes.

Only compassion, only love, the same love I had just encountered from Jesus.

He asked me if I understood what had just happened to me.

And I nodded.

I couldn’t speak.

My voice was gone, but I nodded and he smiled.

Aren said, “Welcome home, brother.

Welcome to the family of God.

” “Welcome home.

” Those words broke something else inside me because I realized I had been searching for home my entire life.

I thought I had founded in the IRGC, in military service, in the revolution, in defending Iran.

But none of that was home.

It was all just a substitute, a counterfeit, a shadow of the real thing.

Home was this.

Home was Jesus.

Home was being loved unconditionally by the God who created me.

E home was being welcomed into a family that transcended nationality and politics and military rank.

Home was finally belonging to something eternal, something that couldn’t be destroyed by air strikes or regime changes or political upheaval.

Pastor Cyrus helped me to my feet.

My legs were weak.

I could barely stand.

He put his arm around me and led me deeper into the gathering.

And as we walked, I looked around at the faces of the men there.

Thousands of faces, former soldiers, a former IRGC officers, former besiege militia men, men from every branch of Iran security forces.

All of them with the same expression, the same peace, the same joy, the same freedom.

These men had all encountered Jesus just like I had.

Some in dreams, some in visions, some through the testimony of Christian family members or friends, some through reading the Bible in secret.

But all of them had encountered the living Christ, and their lives had been transformed.

They had laid down their weapons.

I They had abandoned their posts.

They had walked away from everything the regime promised them.

And they had found something infinitely better.

I spent the rest of that night in that gathering, listening to testimonies, hearing stories, learning about Jesus from people who knew him personally.

Pastor Cyrus introduced me to other church leaders, former Muslims, former atheists, people from every background imaginable, all united by their encounter with Christ.

A one man, a former revolutionary guard colonel like myself, told me his story.

He had been in charge of a detention facility where political prisoners were held, Christians, activists, journalists.

He had overseen their interrogations, their torture, their executions.

He had blood on his hands just like me.

But two months earlier, he had a dream.

In the dream, Jesus appeared to him and called him by name.

And Jesus said, “Why are you persecuting me?” And the colonel said, “I don’t know who you are.

” And Jesus said, “I am the one you are persecuting when you persecute my followers.

Every time you torture one of my children, you torture me.

Every time you imprison one of my servants, you imprison me.

” And the colonel woke up from that dream and couldn’t stop weeping.

He went to work that day and resigned his position.

He told his superiors he was sick, that he needed medical leave, and he went searching for Christians.

He found an underground church.

I he showed up at their secret meeting place and fell on his face and begged for forgiveness.

And they forgave him just like that.

No conditions, no requirements.

They forgave him and welcomed him and taught him about Jesus.

And now he was here in this gathering of thousands helping other soldiers encounter the same grace he had received.

I looked at this man and saw myself, saw my future, saw what Jesus could do with a broken, guilty, bloodstained life like mine.

As the night went on, I I learned more about what had been happening in Iran over the past few days.

The gathering I was attending wasn’t the only one.

There were similar gatherings happening all over the country in Shiraz, in Mashad, in Isvahan, in Tre.

Thousands upon thousands of Iranians, especially soldiers and security forces, were encountering Jesus and surrendering their lives to him.

The underground church leaders said they had never seen anything like this in their entire lives, and they had been praying for revival in Iran for decades.

They had been interceding for their nation, risking their lives to share the gospel in secret, planting house churches, translating Bibles, discipling new believers, all in the face of constant persecution and danger.

But after Common’s death, something shifted in the spiritual realm.

It was like a dam broke, like chains fell off.

Like the powers that had kept Iran in darkness for so long suddenly lost their grip.

A and the spirit of God began moving across the nation in unprecedented power.

Pastor Cyrus told me that his network of house churches had baptized over 5,000 new believers in just the past 3 days.

5,000 in 3 days.

And that was just his network.

There were dozens of other networks across Iran, all reporting the same thing.

Mass conversions, supernatural encounters, entire families coming to Christ, communities being transformed.

Uh, and the most remarkable thing was that the conversions were happening among the very people who had been most hostile to Christianity.

IRGC officers, Basiji commanders, intelligence agents, prison guards, government officials.

The architects and enforcers of persecution were becoming the targets of God’s grace, and they were falling like dominoes.

I asked Pastor Cyrus if he was afraid.

The regime would inevitably crack down on this movement.

They would arrest people, execute people.

I’d do everything in their power to stop what was happening.

And he just smiled and said, “Brother Raza, we’ve been afraid our entire lives.

We’ve lived with the threat of arrest and execution for 20 years, but perfect love casts out fear.

And now that we’ve encountered God’s perfect love, we’re not afraid anymore, even of death.

” His words pierced my heart because I realized I had lived my entire life in fear.

Fear of disappointing my father, fear of failing in my military career, fear of appearing weak, fear of questioning the regime, fear of eternal judgment if I abandoned Islam.

My whole life had been ruled by fear.

And I had compensated for that fear by becoming hard.

By becoming cruel, by becoming the kind of man who could arrest innocent people without feeling anything.

But Jesus was offering me something different.

He was offering me love instead of fear, freedom instead of bondage, life instead of death.

And all I had to do was surrender.

And all I had to do was lay down my weapons, both literal and metaphorical.

and follow him.

When the sun began to rise on March 4th, the gathering started to disperse.

People left in small groups carefully, knowing that the regime’s intelligence services would be hunting for them.

Pastor Cyrus gave me a Farsy Bible.

He told me to read the Gospel of John first.

He said it would help me understand who Jesus really is.

He also gave me a phone number, e a secure line to a network of safe houses where believers were hiding from the authorities.

He said I would need to go underground, that my name and face would be on every watch list by now, that the IRGC would be searching for me, that my own former colleagues would hunt me, and if they caught me, they would execute me as an apostate and a traitor.

I understood all of this.

I knew exactly what I was giving up.

My career, my rank, my pension, my status.

I My family, my father would disown me when he found out.

My entire identity as Colonel Reza Amadi of the IRGC would be erased.

I would become a fugitive in my own country.

But I also knew what I was gaining.

I was gaining eternal life.

I was gaining freedom from guilt and shame.

I was gaining a relationship with the living God.

I was gaining brothers and sisters who would lay down their lives for me.

I was gaining hope, real hope, not the hollow propaganda of the revolution, uh, but genuine hope rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I left that warehouse district as a different man than the one who had arrived the night before.

I was no longer Colonel Amadi.

I was no longer an IRGC officer.

I was no longer a guardian of the Islamic Republic.

I was Raza, a follower of Jesus, a new creation, born again.

Over the next few days, I stayed in a safe house in northern Thyron.

Other believers were there with me, former soldiers, former government workers, people from all walks of life who had encountered Jesus during this remarkable season.

We pray together.

We studied the Bible together.

We shared our testimonies.

We encouraged each other.

We became a family.

I devoured the Gospel of John like a starving man eating his first meal.

Every word jumped off the page.

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

Jesus wasn’t just a prophet.

He was God himself in human flesh.

E and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And we have seen his glory.

Glory as of the only son from the father full of grace and truth.

I read about Jesus healing the sick, forgiving sinners, welcoming outcasts, challenging religious authorities, laying down his life for his sheep, rising from the dead, conquering sin and death and hell.

And with every page, I fell more in love with him.

This Jesus was nothing like what I had been taught.

He was so much greater, so much more beautiful, so much more worthy of worship.

I also learned about what was happening in the rest of Iran.

The reports were staggering.

The new Supreme Leader, they had finally selected someone, a relatively unknown cleric, was calling for a massive crackdown on what he called the Christian Conspiracy.

He had ordered the arrest of anyone suspected of conversion.

He had authorized the execution of church leaders.

He had deployed IRGC units to hunt down deserters.

But the movement couldn’t be stopped.

Uh for every believer they arrested, 10 more came to faith.

For every church they shut down, five more started meeting in secret.

The more the regime persecuted, the faster the gospel spread.

It was like trying to stop a wildfire with gasoline.

I heard reports that the exact number of conversions was impossible to calculate, but estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000 in the first week after KA’s death.

Uh, and the majority of these converts were coming from the military and security forces.

The very people the regime depended on to maintain control were abandoning their posts and following Jesus.

This was creating a crisis for the Islamic Republic.

They couldn’t function without their military and security apparatus.

But that apparatus was crumbling from within.

Units were operating at half strength.

Officers were defecting.

Soldiers were refusing orders.

And the regime was losing its grip on power not through external invasion but through internal transformation.

Some analysts were calling it a revolution.

But those of us who had encountered Jesus knew it was something much bigger than a political revolution.

This was a spiritual awakening.

This was the fulfillment of prophecies that the underground church had been praying over for decades.

This was God moving in power to bring salvation to Iran.

And I also learned that my name was indeed on a wanted list.

The IRGC had declared me a deserter and an apostate.

They had revoked my rank and confiscated my pension.

They had raided my apartment and seized my belongings.

They had interrogated my father demanding to know where I was.

My father, according to sources in the IRGC, had disowned me publicly.

He had said I was dead to him, that I had brought shame on our family name.

This hurt.

I won’t pretend it didn’t.

My father had been my hero and the man I had spent my entire life trying to make proud.

And now he hated me.

He saw me as a traitor, as a fool who had been deceived by Western propaganda.

He would probably celebrate if they caught me and executed me.

But Jesus had warned his followers about this.

I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

Following Jesus costs something.

Sometimes it costs everything and but what you gain is infinitely more valuable than what you lose.

On March 8th, 5 days after my conversion, I participated in my first baptism.

Pastor Cyrus and several other church leaders had organized a secret baptism service in a location outside Thrron.

Over 300 new believers were being baptized that night.

300 former Muslims, former soldiers, former regime officials, all publicly declaring their faith in Jesus Christ.

The location was a river in a rural area.

We traveled there in small groups after dark to avoid detection.

When I arrived and saw the crowd, I was overwhelmed.

300 people, all risking their lives to be baptized, all willing to publicly identify with Christ, even though they knew it meant certain death if they were caught.

I stood in line with the others, waiting my turn.

My heart was pounding, not from fear, but from anticipation.

I was about to be baptized, about to publicly declare that I belong to Jesus, and about to bury my old life and rise to new life in Christ.

When my turn came, I waited into the cold water.

Pastor Cyrus was there along with another church leader.

They asked me if I believed that Jesus Christ is the son of God.

I said yes.

They asked me if I believed he died for my sins and rose from the dead.

I said yes.

They asked me if I was willing to follow him no matter the cost.

I said yes.

And then they baptized me.

And they lowered me under the water, baptizing me in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And I felt the weight of my old life wash away.

18 years in the IRGC.

18 years of enforcing oppression.

18 years of living a lie.

All of it was buried in that water.

And when I came up out of the water, I was born again fully, completely, irrevocably.

I was a new creation.

The old Raza was dead.

The old Colonel Amati was gone.

And in his place was someone new, a someone who belonged to Jesus.

The 300 of us who were baptized that night sang and prayed and celebrated together.

We knew we were likely signing our death warrants.

We knew the regime would hunt us.

We knew most of us would probably be arrested and executed within months.

But we didn’t care.

We had found something worth dying for.

Someone worth dying for.

Jesus Christ, the King of Kings.

Over the following days and weeks, I stayed connected with the underground church network.

I I moved between safe houses, never staying in one place too long.

I studied the Bible voraciously, learning everything I could about Jesus.

I prayed constantly, developing a relationship with God that was more real than any relationship I had ever known.

I also helped with the disciplehip of other new believers.

Many of them were former soldiers like me.

They needed guidance.

They needed someone who understood their background and their struggles.

And they needed someone who could help them navigate the massive identity shift they were experiencing.

I met former IRGC officers who were now leading Bible studies.

I met former prison guards who were now interceding for their former prisoners.

I met former intelligence agents who were now using their skills to help protect church networks from regime surveillance.

God was redeeming everything.

Every skill, every experience.

Every resource that had once been used for evil was now being repurposed for his kingdom.

The testimonies I heard were extraordinary.

One soldier told me he had been planning to commit suicide the night before Kamina was killed.

He had loaded his weapon and put it to his head.

But before he pulled the trigger, he heard a voice say, “Don’t do this.

I have plans for you.

Plans to give you hope and a future.

” He put the gun down and went to sleep.

And that night, he dreamed of Jesus.

And Jesus told him, “I love you.

I died for you.

Follow me.

He woke up weeping and immediately began searching for Christians.

Another man, a former Besi commander, told me he had been driving home from a rally where they had chanted, “Death to America, death to Israel.

” When he saw a vision of Jesus standing in the middle of the road, he slammed on his brakes.

The car behind him crashed into him.

But he didn’t care about the accident.

I He got out of his car and fell on his face right there on the highway and gave his life to Christ.

Other drivers stopped and thought he was injured, but he was just worshiping Jesus in the middle of Tehran traffic.

Story after story after story, thousands of supernatural encounters, thousands of lives transformed.

It was the most remarkable move of God’s spirit that any of the church leaders had ever witnessed.

Uh even the most optimistic among them had never imagined that God would move this powerfully in Iran.

But we also heard the darker reports.

The regime was responding with brutal force.

Public executions of Christians were increasing.

They were hanging people in city squares as a warning.

They were raiding house churches and arresting everyone present.

They were torturing believers to get information about church networks.

Many of our brothers and sisters were being martyed.

K.

Pastor Cyrus himself was arrested on March 15th.

I heard that he was executed 3 days later, hanged publicly in Thrron.

His crime, apostasy and spreading corruption on earth.

his real crime, loving Jesus and refusing to deny him.

When I heard about his death, I wept.

This man who had shown me such kindness, who had welcomed me despite everything I had done to him, who had baptized me, who had given me a Bible and a phone number and hope.

He was gone, executed by the regime I had once served.

But even in death, Pastor Cyrus’s testimony continued.

Reports said that at his execution, he sang hymns of worship as they placed the noose around his neck.

He proclaimed Jesus Christ as Lord with his last breath.

And several of the revolutionary guards who witnessed his execution later came to faith because they couldn’t forget the peace and joy on his face as he died.

The blood of the martyrs was becoming the seed of the church just like it had in the early centuries of Christianity.

The regime thought they could stop the movement through violence and fear, but they were only accelerating it.

Every martyr created 10 more bold witnesses.

Every execution sparked a hundred more conversions.

I knew my time was limited.

I knew eventually they would find me.

I knew I would likely face the same fate as Pastor Cyrus, but I was at peace with that.

Jesus had given me new life, real life, eternal life, and if he called me to seal my testimony with my blood, I was ready.

In the meantime, I continued to serve the underground church.

I used my military training to help them establish secure communication networks.

I taught them counter surveillance techniques.

I helped plan safe routes for secret gatherings.

I did everything I could to protect my new family from the regime I had once served.

And I recorded this testimony because the world needs to know what is happening in Iran.

The world needs to know that Jesus Christ is alive and moving in power.

The world needs to know that the Islamic Republic’s days are numbered not because of external military pressure, but because of internal spiritual transformation.

Thousands of Iranian soldiers have laid down their weapons and surrendered to Jesus.

Thousands more are encountering him every day.

The underground church is growing exponentially.

The gospel is spreading like wildfire.

and nothing the regime does can stop it.

Because you cannot fight against God and win.

I don’t know what the future holds for Iran.

I don’t know if the Islamic Republic will collapse completely or if it will limp along for a few more years.

I don’t know if I’ll survive the next month or the next week.

I don’t know if this recording will even make it out of Iran.

But I know this.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

He died for the sins of the world and rose from the dead.

He is offering salvation to anyone who will turn to him and believe.

Iranian, American, Israeli, Arab, it doesn’t matter.

He loves all people.

He died for all people and he is calling all people to surrender to him.

My name is Colonel Reza Amadi.

I was a commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

I persecuted Christians.

I enforced the regime’s oppression.

I believed lies.

I served evil.

But on March 3rd, 2026, I encountered the living Christ and he forgave me and he transformed me and he gave me a new identity and a new purpose and a new hope.

I I am no longer a colonel.

I am no longer an IRGC officer.

I am no longer a guardian of the Islamic Republic.

I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a child of God, a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.

And if you are watching this, whether you are in Iran or anywhere else in the world, know this.

Jesus sees you.

He knows you.

He loves you.

And he is calling you to surrender to him.

You don’t have to be perfect.

You don’t have to have your life together.

You don’t have to understand everything.

Ha.

You just have to turn around.

You just have to call on his name.

You just have to say, “Jesus, I need you.

Forgive me.

Save me.

I surrender.

” And he will because that’s who he is.

That’s what he does.

He saves sinners.

He transforms lives.

He turns darkness into light.

He turns death into life.

He did it for me.

A man with blood on his hands.

A man who persecuted his church.

A man who had no right to receive his grace.

But he gave it to me anyway.

And he will give it to you, too.

And this is my testimony.

This is my story.

This is what Jesus Christ has done in my life and in the lives of thousands of Iranians like me.

May his name be glorified.

May his kingdom come.

May his will be done in Iran as it is in heaven.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

(1848, Macon) Light-Skinned Woman Disguised as White Master: 1,000-Mile Escape in Plain Sight

The hand holding the scissors trembled slightly as Ellen Craft stared at her reflection in the small cracked mirror.

In 72 hours, she would be sitting in a first class train car next to a man who had known her since childhood.

A man who could have her dragged back in chains with a single word.

And he wouldn’t recognize her.

He couldn’t because the woman looking back at her from that mirror no longer existed.

It was December 18th, 1848 in Mon, Georgia, and Ellen was about to attempt something that had never been done before.

A thousand-mile escape through the heart of the slaveolding south, traveling openly in broad daylight in first class.

But there was a problem that made the plan seem utterly impossible.

Ellen was a woman.

William was a man.

A light-skinned woman and a dark-skinned man traveling together would draw immediate suspicion, questions, searches.

The patrols would stop them before they reached the city limits.

So, Ellen had conceived a plan so audacious that even William had initially refused to believe it could work.

She would become a white man.

Not just any white man, a wealthy, sickly southern gentleman traveling north for medical treatment, accompanied by his faithful manservant.

The ultimate disguise, hiding in the most visible place possible, protected by the very system designed to keep her enslaved.

Ellen set down the scissors and picked up the components of her transformation.

Each item acquired carefully over the past week.

A pair of dark glasses to hide her eyes.

a top hat that would shadow her face, trousers, a coat, and a high collared shirt that would conceal her feminine shape, and most crucially, a sling for her right arm.

The sling served a purpose that went beyond mere costume.

Ellen had been deliberately kept from learning to read or write, a common practice designed to keep enslaved people dependent and controllable.

Every hotel would require a signature.

Every checkpoint might demand written documentation.

The sling would excuse her from putting pen to paper.

One small piece of cloth standing between her and exposure.

William watched from the corner of the small cabin they shared, his carpenter’s hands clenched into fists.

He had built furniture for some of the wealthiest families in Mon, his skill bringing profit to the man who claimed to own him.

Now those same hands would have to play a role he had spent his life resisting.

The subservient servant bowing and scraping to someone pretending to be his master.

“Say it again,” Ellen whispered, not turning from the mirror.

“What do I need to remember?” William’s voice was steady, though his eyes betrayed his fear.

Walk slowly like moving hurts.

Keep the glasses on, even indoors.

Don’t make eye contact with other white passengers.

Gentlemen, don’t stare.

If someone asks a question you can’t answer, pretend the illness has made you hard of hearing.

And never, ever let anyone see you right.

Ellen nodded slowly, watching her reflection.

Practice the movements.

Slower, stiffer, the careful, pained gate of a man whose body was failing him.

She had studied the white men of Mon for months, observing how they moved, how they held themselves, how they commanded space without asking permission.

What if someone recognizes me? The question hung in the air between them.

William moved closer, his reflection appearing beside hers in the mirror.

They won’t see you, Ellen.

They never really saw you before.

Just another piece of property.

Now they’ll see exactly what you show them.

A white man who looks like he belongs in first class.

The audacity of it was breathtaking.

Ellen’s light skin, the result of her enslavers assault on her mother, had been a mark of shame her entire life.

Now it would become her shield.

The same society that had created her would refuse to recognize her, blinded by its own assumptions about who could occupy which spaces.

But assumptions could shatter.

One wrong word, one gesture out of place, one moment of hesitation, and the mask would crack.

And when it did, there would be no mercy.

Runaways faced brutal punishment, whipping, branding, being sold away to the deep south, where conditions were even worse.

Or worse still, becoming an example, tortured publicly to terrify others who might dare to dream of freedom.

Ellen took a long, slow breath and reached for the top hat.

When she placed it on her head and turned to face William fully dressed in the disguise, something shifted in the room.

The woman was gone.

In her place stood a young southern gentleman, pale and trembling with illness, preparing for a long and difficult journey.

“Mr.

Johnson,” William said softly, testing the name they had chosen, common enough to be forgettable, refined enough to command respect.

Mr.

Johnson, Ellen repeated, dropping her voice to a lower register.

The sound felt foreign in her throat, but it would have to become natural.

Her life depended on it.

They had 3 days to perfect the performance, 3 days to transform completely.

And then on the morning of December 21st, they would walk out of Mon as master and slave, heading north toward either freedom or destruction.

Ellen looked at the calendar on the wall, counting the hours.

72 hours until the most dangerous performance of her life began.

72 hours until she would sit beside a man who had seen her face a thousand times and test whether his eyes could see past his own expectations.

What she didn’t know yet was that this man wouldn’t be the greatest danger she would face.

That test was still waiting for her somewhere between here and freedom in a hotel lobby where a pen and paper would become instruments of potential death.

The morning of December 21st broke cold and gray over min.

The kind of winter light that flattened colors and made everything look a little less real.

It was the perfect light for a world built on illusions.

By the time the first whistle echoed from the train yard, Ellen Craft was no longer Ellen.

She was Mr.

William Johnson, a pale young planter supposedly traveling north for his health.

They did not walk to the station together.

That would have been the first mistake.

William left first, blending into the stream of workers and laborers heading toward the edge of town.

Ellen waited, counting slowly, steadying her breathing.

When she finally stepped out, it was through the front streets, usually reserved for white towns people.

Every step felt like walking on a tightroppe stretched above a chasm.

At the station, the platform was already crowded.

Continue reading….
Next »