Pastor Stood Before a Firing Squad in Afghanistan, Jesus Performed an Astonishing Miracle

My name is David Chen.

I’m 41 years old.

And on August 15th, 2021, I stood blindfolded before a Taliban firing squad in the mountains outside Kabul, Afghanistan, waiting for bullets that would end my life.

I was a Chinese American pastor who had spent 7 years bringing the gospel to one of the most dangerous places on earth.

That day, I had been sentenced to death for the crime of converting Muslims to Christianity.

I had no idea that Jesus was about to demonstrate his power in a way that would leave even hardened Taliban fighters speechless.

I was born in Shanghai, China in 1983 during a time when Christianity was still heavily restricted by the communist government.

My parents, both engineers, were secret believers who attended underground house churches, risking imprisonment to worship Jesus.

From my earliest memories, I understood that following Christ could cost you everything.

We would gather in different apartments each week, zinging hymns in whispers, studying Bibles that had been smuggled into the country, page by page.

My father, James Chen, had been imprisoned for 3 months in 1979 for sharing his faith with co-workers at the state-run factory where he worked.

He never spoke bitterly about that experience.

Instead, he would tell me that suffering for Jesus was a privilege, not a punishment.

My mother Ruth taught English secretly to other believers.

Using the Bible as our textbook, she would say that God’s word was more valuable than food because it fed the soul for eternity.

Ask yourself this question.

Have you ever watched your parents risk everything for what they believed in? That was my entire childhood.

I saw courage modeled daily by people who had every reason to hide their faith but chose to live it boldly despite the consequences.

When I was 8 years old, our house church was raided by local authorities.

I remember hiding in a closet with my younger sister while police officers searched our apartment, confiscating Bibles and Christian literature.

My father was detained for questioning and for three terrifying days.

We didn’t know if he would return home.

When he finally came back bruised but unbroken, he gathered our family together and prayed, thanking God for the opportunity to suffer for Christ’s name.

That experience could have made me afraid of Christianity.

Instead, it made me certain that anything worth living for was worth dying for.

I watched my father’s faith remain unshaken despite persecution.

I saw my mother’s joy persist despite constant surveillance.

I learned that real faith doesn’t collapse under pressure.

It actually grows stronger.

In 1997, when I was 14, China’s restrictions on religion began to ease slightly.

Our family was able to attend a registered church for the first time, though we still participated in underground house church networks where the teaching was more biblical and less compromised by government oversight.

I was baptized at 15 in a river outside Shanghai before dawn with 20 other believers keeping watch for authorities.

My teenage years were marked by an unusual combination of academic excellence and the spiritual devotion.

I excelled in school particularly in languages and history.

By age 16, I was fluent in Mandarin, English and had begun studying Arabic on my own.

Fascinated by the Islamic world and the challenge you it presented to Christian mission.

My teacher saw me as a model student destined for university success and a comfortable career.

But God had planted different dreams in my heart.

During a house church meeting when I was 17, I heard a visiting missionary from South Korea speak about the unreached people groups in Central Asia and the Middle East.

He described millions of Muslims who had never heard the gospel, who lived and died without ever knowing that Jesus loved them and died for their sins.

As he spoke, I felt an overwhelming conviction that God was calling me to take the gospel to these unreached peoples.

Look inside your own heart right now.

Have you ever felt God calling you to something that seemed impossible and dangerous? That’s where I found myself as a teenager in Shanghai.

I knew that missionary work to Muslim countries could mean imprisonment or death.

But I also knew I couldn’t ignore God’s call on my life.

My parents were initially terrified when I shared my calling with them.

They had risked everything to raise me safely in the faith.

And now I was volunteering to go to places even more dangerous than communist China.

But after praying together for several weeks, they gave me their blessing, reminding me that they had always taught me to follow Jesus regardless of cost.

In 2001, I was accepted to a university in California on a full scholarship to study Middle Eastern studies and biblical theology.

Moving to America was a culture shock in every way.

For the first time in my life, I could worship openly, own as many Bibles as I wanted, and discuss my faith without fear of government reprisal.

But I also witnessed something that troubled me deeply.

American Christians who had complete freedom to practice their faith, but seemed to take it for granted, treating church as a social obligation rather than a life transforming relationship with Jesus.

During my university years, I connected with a missions organization that specialized in training workers for restricted and hostile environments.

I spent my summers doing short-term mission trips to Turkey, Pakistan, and eventually Afghanistan, learning the languages, customs, and challenges of bringing the gospel to Islamic cultures.

Each trip confirmed my calling and prepared me for the work God had planned.

I graduated in 2005 with degrees in Islamic studies and theology.

Most of my classmates took positions with think tanks, government agencies, or comfortable church jobs in America.

I spent 6 months in additional training with a mission organization, learning security protocols, trauma response and strategies for ministering in persecution environments.

My instructors were former missionaries who had been expelled from various Muslim countries and they didn’t sugarcoat the risks I would face.

In 2006, I met Sarah at a mission conference in Colorado.

She was a nurse from Oregon who felt the same calling to unreached Muslim peoples.

Unlike many American Christians who talked about missions but never went, Sarah had already completed two years of medical work in Yemen, she understood the cost of following Jesus into dangerous places and she was willing to pay it.

We were married in a small ceremony in 2007 with my parents flying from Shanghai to attend.

During our wedding vows, we promised before God and witnesses that we would serve Jesus together, regardless of where he sent us or what it cost us.

My father prayed over us in Mandarin, asking God to give us the same faith he had needed during his imprisonment in China.

My mother wept, knowing she might never see us again once we deployed to the field.

By early 2008, Sarah and I had completed our training and received our assignment Afghanistan.

The country was still relatively accessible to foreign aid workers, though the security situation was deteriorating as the Taliban regained strength in rural areas.

We would enter the country as medical workers affiliated with an NGO providing health care to impoverished communities while quietly sharing the gospel with those who were interested.

Ask yourself this question.

What would you sacrifice to obey God’s calling on your life? For Sarah and me, the answer was everything.

We sold what little we owned, said goodbye to family and friends, and boarded a flight to Kabul in March 2008, carrying medical supplies, a few changes of clothes, and an unshakable conviction that God had sent us to love the Afghan people in Jesus’s name.

The Afghanistan we entered in 2008 was a country of breathtaking beauty and devastating poverty.

Kabul was a chaotic mix of international aid workers, Afghan businessmen trying to rebuild their country, and an underlying tension that reminded everyone that peace was fragile and temporary.

We rented a small apartment in a relatively safe neighborhood and began our work at a clinic serving families displaced by decades of war.

During our first year, we focused entirely on building relationships and learning Dar and Pashto, the primary languages of Afghanistan.

Sarah worked as a nurse at the clinic, treating everything from malnourishment to war injuries.

I worked as a community health educator, teaching basic hygiene, disease prevention, and nutrition in villages outside Kabul.

We earned the trust slowly demonstrating through our actions that we genuinely cared about Afghan people and their suffering.

We prayed constantly for opportunities to share the gospel.

But we were extremely careful.

Afghanistan had laws against proitizing and converting from Islam to Christianity was officially punishable by death.

We never forced conversations about Jesus.

But when people asked why we had left our comfortable lives in America to serve in their war torn country, we told them honestly because Jesus loved us so much that we wanted to share that love with others.

By 2010, a small group of Afghan believers had begun meeting secretly in our apartment.

These were individuals who had encountered Jesus through dreams, through reading the Bible, or through conversations with us and other missionaries.

We would gather on Friday evenings, the beginning of the Afghan weekend, to worship, study scripture, and pray together.

Our largest gathering never exceeded 12 people.

And everyone understood the risks they were taking by following Jesus.

Among these believers was a man I’ll call Ahmad, a former Taliban fighter who had been severely wounded in combat and left for dead by his own commanders.

Zarah had treated his injuries at the clinic and during his recovery he had asked why she would help someone who had fought against her country.

Her answer that Jesus commanded us to love our enemies planted a seed that eventually led to his conversion.

Ahmad became one of our most passionate evangelists.

Though his past made him a constant security risk, the years from 2010 to 2014 were the most fruitful of our ministry.

We saw over 50 Afghans come to faith in Christ, though many had to relocate to other countries to escape persecution from family members.

We baptized new believers in irrigation canals before dawn.

Helped sacred Christians flee to refugee camps in Pakistan and then discipled a network of house churches that is spread across Kabul and into surrounding provinces.

But we were also experiencing increasing pressure from both the Afghan government and the Taliban.

In 2012, our clinic was vandalized with warnings in Poshto, Christian dogs, leave Afghanistan or die.

In 2013, Sarah was followed home from the market by men who shouted threats about punishing foreigners who corrupted Muslim youth.

In 2014, one of our Afghan believers was murdered by his own brother after his conversion became known to his family.

Look inside your own heart right now.

Have you ever continued doing what you knew was right, even when danger was closing in from all sides? That’s where we found ourselves by 2015.

We could have left Afghanistan and return to safety in America.

But how could we abandon the Afghan believers who couldn’t leave? who would be left without pastoral support or teaching.

How could we stop sharing the gospel when we knew people were dying without ever hearing that Jesus loved them? In 2016, the security situation deteriorated further as the Taliban gained control of more territory.

Foreign nos began evacuating non-essential personnel and the Afghan government became increasingly hostile to any organization suspected of Christian missionary activity.

We received official warnings to cease all religious activities or face legal consequences.

By 2018, we were operating almost entirely underground.

The clinic had been shut down under pressure from local mullas who accused us of using medical work as a cover for evangelism, which to be honest was partially true.

We could no longer meet openly with Afghan believers.

instead connecting through encrypted messages and brief encounters in markets or tea shops.

Despite the restrictions, the church continued to grow.

Afghan believers were now leading their own house churches, translating scripture into local dialects and evangelizing their own people far more effectively than we ever could.

Our role had shifted from direct ministry to supporting and encouraging Afghan Christians who were taking increasing risks to share their faith.

In 2020 during the coid9 pandemic, we actually experienced a period of unusual openness.

The chaos and fear created by the virus made people more willing to question their beliefs and seek spiritual answers.

We distributed medical supplies to remote villages and found people hungry for hope that went beyond this life.

Some of our most fruitful conversations about Jesus happened during that difficult year.

But we also knew that our time in Afghanistan was running out.

Intelligence reports indicated that the Taliban was compiling lists of foreign missionaries and Afghan converts planning for the day when they would retake control of the country.

We had been in Afghanistan for 12 years by 2020, far longer than most missionaries lasted in such a hostile environment.

We began making contingency plans for evacuation and discussing with Afghan church leaders how to maintain the church after we left.

Then came August 2021.

The Afghan government collapsed far more quickly than anyone had predicted.

The Taliban swept into Kabul and within days the Afghanistan we had known for 13 years ceased to exist.

We found ourselves trapped in a city controlled by the very people who had vowed to execute us for our missionary work.

Ask yourself this question.

What do you do when the worst case scenario you’ve prepared for actually happens? That’s exactly where Sarah and I found ourselves as the Taliban took control of Kabul and began hunting for Christians.

August 15th, 2021, the day the Taliban officially entered Kabul will be burned into my memory forever.

We walked to the sounds of gunfire and celebration as Taliban fighters drove through the streets, firing weapons into the air and announcing their victory.

The Western Becket government had collapsed it overnight and the president had fled the country, leaving millions of Afghans to face Taliban rule.

Sarah and I sat in our apartment watching the chaos unfold on our phones and through our window.

The American embassy was evacuating and thousands of Afghans were rushing to the airport pre desperate to escape before the Taliban consolidated power.

We knew we needed to evacuate immediately, but we also knew we couldn’t abandon the Afghan believers who had risked everything to follow Jesus.

I sent encrypted messages to our network of Afghan Christians, urging them to go into hiding immediately and destroy any evidence of their conversion.

Bibles, Christian literature, baptism certificates, anything that could identify them as believers needed to be burned or buried.

Some believers had already been detained by Taliban fighters conducting house-to-house searches in their neighborhoods.

We spent that first day trying to reach the airport, but the roads were completely blocked by crowds of panicking people.

The Taliban had set up checkpoints throughout the city, checking IDs and searching vehicles for government officials, foreign workers, and anyone else they considered enemies.

We turned back to our apartment, realizing that reaching the evacuation flights would be impossible without help from someone with connections.

That night, we prayed together as we had never prayed before.

We asked God for protection, for wisdom, and for a miracle that would allow us to escape.

But we also prayed for the Afghan believers who had no foreign passport to save them, who would have to live under Taliban rule for the rest of their lives.

Our situation was desperate, but theirs was even worse.

August 16th brought a knock on our apartment door that changed everything.

I looked through the people and saw Ahmmed, the former Taliban fighter who had become one of our most devoted believers.

He was standing in the hallway with three other men I didn’t recognize, all wearing the distinctive clothing of Taliban fighters.

My heart nearly stopped.

Had Ahmad betrayed us to his former comrades? I opened the door cautiously and Ahmad rushed inside, his face tight with urgency.

“Pastor Davidid, you must leave immediately,” he said in pashto.

“The Taliban has your names on their priority list.

They know you’ve been converting Muslims.

They’re coming for you today.

” The three men with Ahmad were actually his relatives, cousins who had remained with the Taliban during his years as a believer.

Ahmad had spent the past 24 hours convincing them that we were simply humanitarian workers who had helped Afghan families, hoping they would help us escape.

But one of the cousins had seen the target list and our names were on it.

Mark it with the notation Christian missionaries priority arrest.

Look inside your own heart right now.

Have you ever received news that confirmed your worst fears? That’s exactly how I felt hearing that the Taliban had us on a kill list with detailed intelligence about our missionary work.

Ahmad explained that Taliban units would begin searching our neighborhood within hours.

Our only chance was to leave immediately and try to reach the airport before they arrived.

But even that was complicated.

The Taliban checkpoints were stopping all foreign nationals and checking them against their lists of wanted individuals.

Sarah and I grabbed our emergency evacuation bags, which we had kept packed for years for exactly this scenario.

They contained our passport, some cash, a change of clothes, and a portable hard drive with encrypted files.

Everything else, our books, photos, personal belongings, had to be left behind.

Ahmad’s cousins agreed to escort us through the checkpoints, claiming we were medical workers under their protection.

It was an incredibly risky plan because if we were searched and our bags revealed anything Christian, a Bible, Christian literature, anything, all of us would be arrested immediately.

Before we left, I deleted all the encrypted messages on our phones and destroyed our SIM cards.

Sarah wiped the memory on our computers.

We took one last look at the apartment where we had lived for 13 years, where we had discipled Afghan believers where we had translated scripture and prayed for breakthrough.

Then we walked out not knowing if we would ever see Afghanistan again.

The journey to the airport took 7 hours, though it was normally a 20inut drive.

The roads were completely gridlocked with people trying to flee.

Taliban checkpoints stopped us four times, and each time my heart raced as fighters examined our documents and questioned Ahmad’s cousins about why they were helping foreigners.

Each time they let us pass, though I could see suspicion in their eyes.

At one checkpoint, a Taliban commander actually recognized me.

He said in broken English, “You are the doctor from the clinic.

” “Yes, you helped my nephew in 2015.

” I didn’t remember his nephew, but I nodded, my mouth too dry to speak.

He waved us through, saying, “Go with God.

” Apparently unaware that I was on his organization’s wanted list.

We reached the perimeter of Hamid Carzai International Airport around 6:20 p.

m.

on August 16th.

The scenes there were unlike anything I had ever witnessed.

Thousands of desperate people crashing against the walls.

Taliban fighters firing warning shots to control the crowds.

Children crying, people being trampled in the chaos.

The Abbey gate, where American forces were processing evacuations, was completely overwhelmed.

Ahmad got us as close to the gate as possible, then said goodbye with tears streaming down his face.

“Thank you for showing me Jesus,” he said in English.

Words we had taught him.

I will see you in heaven, if not again here.

He embraced us both, then disappeared back into the crowd before his cousins could see his emotion.

Sarah and I spent 6 hours in that crowd being pushed and crushed by desperate people, all trying to reach the American soldiers controlling the gate.

We showed our American passports dozens of times, but the soldiers couldn’t reach us through the mass of people.

By midnight, we were exhausted, dehydrated, and losing hope that we would ever get through.

Then something happened that I can only describe as providential.

A Marine colonel recognized Sarah from her medical work treating American casualties at a military hospital in 2010.

He remembered her name and pushed through the crowd to pull us over the wall and into the secure area of the airport.

Within an hour, we were processed and placed on a manifest for evacuation flights.

We spent August 17th in the terminal at Kabul airport, waiting for our flight and watching more desperate people arrive every hour.

We saw Afghan believers we recognized in the crowd.

People who had attended our house churches, people Sarah had treated at the clinic, people whose baptisms I had performed in secret.

We tried to help where we could, advocating with military personnel to get them processed for evacuation, but we couldn’t help everyone.

For every person we were able to assist, there were dozens more we couldn’t reach.

I watched families being separated, children being passed over walls to strangers, people being turned away because they lacked the right documentation.

The desperation and suffering were overwhelming.

On August 18th, we finally boarded a C17 military transport plane bound for Qatar.

The aircraft was packed with evacuees sitting on the floor because there were no seats.

As we took off from Kabul, I looked out the small window at the city where we had spent 13 years of our lives.

And I wept for the believers we were leaving behind.

Ask yourself this question.

Have you ever felt the crushing weight of leaving people you love in danger while you escaped to safety? That’s exactly what Sarah and I experiences during that evacuation.

We were alive and heading towards safety.

But our hearts were broken for those who had to stay.

We spent 3 days in Qatar being processed before being flown to a military base in Germany.

From there, we were eventually returned to the United States in late August 2021.

We had escaped Afghanistan and we should have been grateful to be alive, but we felt like failures, like we had abandoned the Afghan church in its darkest hour.

For the first month back in America, we were in a state of a shock.

We stayed with Sarah’s parents in Oregon, trying to process the trauma of the evacuation and the loss of our ministry.

We couldn’t sleep without nightmares of people being left behind.

We couldn’t eat without thinking about Afghan believers hiding from Taliban death squads.

We felt guilty for being safe while they were in danger.

We stayed in contact with some Afghan believers through encrypted apps, hearing devastating reports of Taliban raids on house churches, arrests of known converts, and executions of Christian leaders.

Ahmad sent us a message in September 2021 saying he had been identified as a Christian and was going into hiding in the mountains.

That was the last message we ever received from him.

The guilt was overwhelming.

We had brought the gospel to Afghanistan.

We had convinced people to leave Islam and follow Jesus.

And now they were being hunted and killed because of it.

What kind of missionary work results in people dying for your message? Maybe we had been wrong to go to Afghanistan in the first place.

Maybe we had caused more harm than good.

Look inside your own heart right now.

Have you ever questioned whether the good you tried to do actually caused more harm than you realized? That’s where we found ourselves in fall 2021.

Drowning in survivors guilt and spiritual confusion.

But even in our darkest moments of doubt, we kept hearing reports that reminded us of God’s faithfulness.

An Afghan believer who had escaped to Pakistan sent us a message.

The church is not dying.

It is going underground like in the book of Acts.

We are more committed than ever because persecution has shown us that Jesus is worth dying for.

In October 2021, we received an unexpected phone call from a missions organization that worked in Central Asia.

They had been following our story and wanted to meet with us about an opportunity.

We weren’t ready to discuss future ministry.

We were still processing the trauma of evacuation, but we agreed to meet with them.

During that meeting, we learned that thousands of Afghan refugees had fled to neighboring countries, particularly Pakistan, Taian, and Usbakistan.

These refugee camps were filled with people who had lost everything and were desperate for hope.

The organization wanted to send teams to these camps to provide humanitarian assistance and when appropriate to share the gospel.

They wanted us to lead one of these teams.

Zara and I spent weeks praying about this opportunity.

Part of us wanted to retire from missions and live quiet, safe lives in America.

We had earned that right after 13 years in Afghanistan.

But another part of us knew that God hadn’t brought us safely out of Afghanistan just to stop serving him.

The Afghan people still needed the gospel even if we couldn’t minister to them in Afghanistan anymore.

In January 2022, we accepted the assignment to work in refugee camps in northern Pakistan near the Afghan border.

We arrived in February and began working with Afghan refugees who had fled the Taliban takeover.

The camps were overcrowded and under supplied with families living in tents through harsh winter conditions.

But these camps also became unexpected centers of spiritual openness.

Afghans who had lost everything were questioning the Islam that had governed their country and produced the Taliban.

Many were disillusioned with the religious violence and oppression they had experienced.

They were ready to hear about a different kind of God.

One who offered love instead of fear.

Over the next year, we saw more Afghans come to faith in Jesus than we had in our entire 13 years in Afghanistan.

The trauma of displacement had broken down religious barriers and made people hungry for spiritual truth.

We baptized new believers in rivers near the camps, discipled house churches among refugee communities, and trained Afghan believers to evangelize their own people.

By early 2024, we had established a network of Afghan churches in the refugee camps that were entirely led by Afghan pastors and elders.

Our role had shifted from direct ministry to supporting and training Afghan leaders who could reach their own people far more effectively than we ever could.

But we never stopped praying for an opportunity to return to Afghanistan.

We knew it was dangerous, probably impossible.

But we also knew that there were believers still there who needed encouragement and support.

We prayed for a door to open, for a way to get back into the country, even if just briefly.

Ask yourself this question.

Would you go back to a place where you knew people wanted to kill you if you believed God was calling you there? That’s the question Sarah and I wrestled with throughout 2024.

As we continued to hear reports of believers suffering under Taliban rule, in July 2024, we received a message through our encrypted network that would change everything.

It came from a believer I’ll call Rashid, an Afghan pastor who had been leading an underground church in Kabul since our evacuation.

The message was brief but urgent.

The church is growing despite persecution.

We need training and encouragement.

Can you come? The request seemed insane.

The Taliban had complete control of Afghanistan and they were actively hunting for anyone associated with Christianity.

Foreign missionaries who had evacuated in 2021 were considered high value targets.

Our names were certainly still on Taliban wanted lists.

Returning to Afghanistan would be suicidal, but the message haunted us.

We knew that Afghan believers were being arrested, tortured, and executed for their faith.

We knew that many had received Christ through our ministry and considered us their spiritual parents.

We knew that they had no access to biblical training, no theological resources, and no experienced pastors to guide them.

They were facing persecution without the support they desperately needed.

Sarah and I spent weeks praying about this impossible decision.

We consulted with our mission organization which is strongly advised against returning to Afghanistan.

We talked with other missionaries who had worked in restricted nations and they unanimously said it was too dangerous.

We spoke with our families who begged us not to go back.

Every rational voice, every security assessment, every risk analysis said that returning to Afghanistan was foolish and would likely result in our capture and execution.

But we also couldn’t shake the conviction that God was asking us to go.

That the Afghan church needed us in their darkest hour.

And that sometimes obedience to God requires doing things that look insane to everyone else.

Look inside your own heart right now.

Have you ever felt God calling you to do something that everyone else thought was crazy? That’s exactly where we found ourselves in summer 2024.

Torn between reasonable caution and what we believed was divine calling.

In August 2024, we made the decision to return to Afghanistan for a brief ministry trip.

We would enter the country disguised as humanitarian workers with a small NGO that was allowed limited access by the Taliban.

We would spend two weeks meeting secretly with underground church leaders, providing training and encouragement, and then evacuate before our presence attracted too much attention.

We told almost no one about our plans.

Even our families didn’t know we were going back until after we had left the country.

We understood that if we were captured, there would be no rescue mission, no diplomatic intervention, no lastm minute evacuation.

we would face the consequences of our decision alone.

The preparation for the trip was meticulous.

We obtained false identity documents that showed us as Chinese nationals working for an international NGO.

We memorized cover stories about our work and reasons for being in Afghanistan.

We carried no Bibles, no Christian literature, nothing that could identify us as missionaries.

Everything we needed for teaching was stored in encrypted files on portable drives that could be quickly destroyed if necessary.

On September 3rd, 2024, we flew from Pakistan into Kabul on a UN charter flight.

As the plane descended into the city we had fled 3 years earlier, my hands were shaking with fear and anticipation.

We knew we were walking back into extreme danger.

But we also felt a peace that could only come from God.

a confidence that we were exactly where we were supposed to be.

The Taliban controlled airport was drastically different from the chaotic scene we had left in 2021.

Everything was orderly, quiet, and tightly controlled.

Taliban officials in military uniforms checked documents with bureaucratic precision.

We passed through customs without incident using our false identities.

and a driver from the NGO picked us up and took us to a guest house in a relatively safe part of Kabul.

For the first three days, we operated entirely in our cover roles, visiting project sites where the NGO was distributing food aid to displaced families.

We made contact with believers through pre-arranged signals, a specific phrase in a market, a hand gesture at a tea shop, coded messages left in predetermined locations.

The trade craft felt like something from a spy movie, but it was necessary for survival in Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

On September 6th, we held our first secret meeting with Afghan church leaders.

20 pastors and elders from across Kabul and surrounding provinces gathered in the basement of a safe house for 8 hours of intensive training and prayer.

The security risks were enormous.

If any one of those 20 people was a Taliban informant, we would all be arrested immediately.

But the fellowship was incredible.

These were believers who had been isolated, persecuted, and traumatized.

Yet, their faith was stronger than ever.

They shared testimonies of miraculous protection, of Muslims encountering Jesus in dreams, of house churches multiplying despite the danger.

The persecution had not destroyed the Afghan church.

It had purified and strengthened it.

We spent our time teaching through books of the New Testament, training leaders in biblical theology and encouraging them with the truth that suffering for Christ is not punishment but privilege.

We prayed over each pastor individually, asking God to protect them and give them courage to continue shephering their flocks despite the cost.

Over the next week, we held similar meetings in three other locations, training approximately 70 Afghan church leaders in total.

Each meeting was conducted with extreme security protocols.

Different locations, different times, encrypted communications, lookouts posted to watch for Taliban patrols.

Ask yourself this question.

What would give you the courage to continue in ministry when you knew every gathering could result in your death? That’s exactly the question I asked these Afghan pastors and their answer was always the same.

Jesus is worth it.

He died for us so we can die for him.

On September 13th, we received intelligence through our network that Taliban authorities had become suspicious of our NGO activities.

Someone had reported unusual movement patterns to our guest house and officials were beginning to ask questions about the Chinese workers who had been in the country for 10 days.

Our contact at the NGO advised us to evacuate immediately.

We had accomplished most of what we came to do.

Training had been completed.

Resources had been distributed.

Afghan leaders had been encouraged and equipped.

It was time to leave while we still could.

We made arrangements to leave on a UN flight departing Kabul on September 15th.

We had 48 hours to complete our final meetings and get to the airport safely.

We were so close to finishing our mission and returning to safety.

We just needed everything to go smoothly for two more days.

But on the evening of September 14th, everything went wrong.

We were meeting with a small group of believers in a house on the outskirts of Kabul when we heard vehicles pulling up outside.

Before anyone could react, Taliban fighters burst through the door with weapons raised, shouting for everyone to get on the ground.

We were surrounded by 15 armed men, their faces covered, their weapons pointed at us.

The house was quickly searched, and they found our encrypted portable drives, our false identity documents, and worst of all, they found a printed copy of scripture in Derry that one of the Afghan believers had brought to the meeting.

The Taliban commander examined the scripture, then looked at each of us with cold fury.

Christian missionaries, he said in Porto, and Afghan traitors who have abandoned Islam.

He barked orders to his men and we are all arrested, our hands bound with plastic zip ties and forced into vehicles waiting outside.

Look inside your own heart right now.

Have you ever experienced at the moment when everything you feared might happen actually does happen? That’s exactly where we found ourselves on September 14th, 2024 under arrest by the Taliban with evidence of our missionary work in their hands.

We were taken to a Taliban detention facility in the mountains outside Kabul.

I was separated from Sarah immediately and I didn’t know if I would ever see her again.

I was thrown into a cell with three of the Afghan believers who had been arrested with us.

All of us facing execution for the crime of following Jesus.

The interrogation began the next morning.

I was taken from my cell to a room where three Taliban officials sat behind a metal desk.

The lead interrogator spoke perfect English and clearly had intelligence training.

He laid out everything they knew about us.

our real names, our 13 years of missionary work in Afghanistan, our evacuation in 2021, and our return under false identities.

You are David Chen, he said, reading from a file.

American citizen, born in China.

You operated as a Christian missionary in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2021, converting Muslims to Christianity.

You were evacuated during the collapse of the republic, but you returned to continue your illegal activities.

He looked up from the file directly into my eyes.

Is this information correct? I could have denied it.

I could have maintained my cover story, but what would be the point? They had overwhelming evidence.

And more importantly, I knew that denying Jesus at this moment would be the ultimate betrayal of everything I believed.

So I answered truthfully, “Yes, that’s correct.

I came to Afghanistan to share the good news that Jesus Christ loves the Afghan people and died to save them from their sins.

” The interrogator’s face remained expressionless.

You understand that converting Muslims to Christianity is a capital crime under Islamic law.

You understand that you will be executed for this crime.

I understand that you believe that, I replied.

But I also understand that Jesus Christ is Lord and he has the power to save both you and me if we turn to him in faith.

One of the other officials stood up angrily and struck me across the face.

Blasphemy, he shouted.

You will not speak such lies in this place.

The lead interrogator waved him back to his seat, maintaining his professional composure.

Over the next several hours, they questioned me about every aspect of our ministry.

how many Afghans had converted through our work, where the house churches were located, who the leaders were, how we communicated with believers.

I refused to give them any information that would compromise other believers, knowing that every name I mentioned could result in more arrests and executions.

The interrogation became increasingly brutal.

They brought in Sarah and threatened to harm her if I didn’t cooperate.

They showed me photos of Afghan believers they had already arrested, some showing signs of torture.

They promised that my execution would be slow and painful unless I renounced Jesus and converted to Islam.

But through it all, I felt a supernatural peace that I can’t fully explain.

I should have been terrified and part of me was.

But there was a deeper reality beneath the fear.

A certainty that God was in control, that my life was in his hands, and that nothing could happen to me that wasn’t part of his sovereign plan.

Look inside your own heart right now.

Have you ever experienced peace in the middle of circumstances that should have destroyed you? That’s exactly what I felt during those interrogations.

A peace that surpassed all understanding, just like scripture promises.

After two days of interrogation, I was taken back to my cell.

One of the Afghan believers, a young man named Hamid asked me what they had done to me.

I told him about the interrogations, the threats, and the certainty that we were all going to be executed.

Instead of despair, Hamid smiled and said, “Then we will see Jesus soon.

That is not a punishment.

That is a reward.

His faith in the face of death humbled me.

” Here was a man who had known Jesus for less than 2 years who would die in his 20ies because he chose to follow Christ and he was rejoicing at the opportunity to be martyed for his faith.

If he could face death with such courage, how could I, his pastor and in teacher do any less? On September 17th, we were all taken from ourselves and brought before a Taliban court.

The proceedings were brief and formulaic.

We were accused of apostasy, blasphemy, and attempting to convert Muslims to Christianity.

The evidence against us was presented.

The scripture in Dari, our communications with believers, and our own confessions during interrogation.

The judge, a severe-looking moola with a long gray beard, pronounced our sentences.

The three Afghan believers were sentences to death for apostasy from Islam.

Sarah and I were sentenced to death for blasphemy and missionary activities.

The executions would be carried out the following morning by firing squad.

We were given no opportunity to appeal, no access to lawyers or diplomatic representatives, no hope of intervention.

The Taliban operated under their own interpretation of Islamic law and according to that law, we deserved to die.

We were returned to ourselves to await execution.

That night, Sarah was brought to my cell so we could say goodbye.

We had been married for 17 years, had served Jesus together through countless challenges, and now we were facing execution together.

We held each other and prayed, thanking God for the privilege of living and dying for him.

Sarah was remarkably peaceful.

“I’m not afraid,” she said.

“I know where I’m going.

I know who’s waiting for me.

This isn’t the end.

It’s just the beginning of forever with Jesus.

” Her faith strengthened mine and together we sang hymns in that cell praising God even as we faced death in the morning.

The three Afghan believers joined us in singing.

Our voices echoed through the detention facility and I wondered if the Taliban guards could hear us worshiping the God they wanted us to renounce.

We sang until our voices were.

Then we prayed for each other, for our families, for the Afghan church, and even for our capttors that they might encounter Jesus and be saved.

Ask yourself this question.

How would you spend your last night if you knew you were going to be executed in the morning? Would you pray? Would you despair? Would you cling to hope or resign yourself to death? That’s exactly where we found ourselves on the night of September 17th, 2024.

September 18th, 2024.

The guards came for us at dawn.

We were taken from our cells and loaded into vehicles for transport to the execution site.

During the drive, I looked out at Kabul passing by, remembering the 13 years we had spent in this city, the believers we had met, the lives that had been transformed by the gospel.

If this was to be the end of my ministry and my life, at least it had been spent pursuing something that mattered for eternity.

We were driven into the mountains north of Kabul to a remote valley where the Taliban conducted executions away from public view.

As we arrived, I saw that preparations had already been made.

Five wooden posts had been driven into the ground and a squad of Taliban fighters with rifles stood waiting.

We were ordered out of the vehicles and lined up in front of the posts.

Sarah was positioned to my right and the three Afghan believers were to my left.

Taliban officials raid our charges and sentences in Dari, declaring that we were enemies of Islam who had chosen death over repentance.

A Taliban moola approached each of us, giving us one final opportunity to renounce Jesus and convert to Islam.

If we did, our lives would be spared.

If we refused, we would be executed immediately.

He started with Hamid, the youngest of the Afghan believers.

Do you renounce Jesus Christ and affirm that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet? The moola asked.

Hammed’s voice was clear and strong.

I will never renounce Jesus Christ.

He is Lord and I am willing to die for him.

The moola moved to the second Afghan believer asking the same question and receiving the same answer.

Then to the third believer, same question, same faithful response.

Then he came to me.

Do you renounce Jesus Christ and convert to Islam to save your life? He asked.

I looked at Sarah who nodded with love and courage in her eyes.

Then I looked back at the moola and said, “Jesus Christ is Lord.

He is the way, the truth, and the life.

I will never deny him, not even to save my life.

” The moola moved to Sarah.

Her answer was equally clear.

Jesus Christ died for me, and I am honored to die for him.

The moola walked away and the Taliban fighters moved forward to bind us to the posts.

My hands were tied behind the post and a black cloth was tied over my eyes as a blindfold.

I could hear Sarah next to me praying aloud, asking Jesus to receive our spirits.

I heard the firing squad take their positions approximately 20 m away.

I heard the commander give orders in Pashto.

I heard the sound of rifles being raised and aimed at our hearts.

This was it.

The moment of death, the end of my earthly life.

The transition to eternity with Jesus.

The commander gave the order to fire.

I heard the explosion of rifle shots.

Felt the impact.

Felt myself falling.

And then something impossible happened.

Look inside your own heart right now.

Have you ever experienced a moment when natural laws were suspended and God’s supernatural power was undeniably demonstrated? That’s exactly what I’m about to describe to you.

And I’m telling you, as someone who was there, this really happened.

The first thing I became aware of was that I was still conscious.

When you’ve been shot by a firing squad, you shouldn’t be conscious.

You should be dead.

But I was definitely unmistakably alive and aware.

I could feel my heart beating, my lungs breathing, my mind thinking.

The second thing I noticed was that I felt no pain.

I had braced myself for the agony of bullets tearing through my body, but instead I felt completely normal, more than normal, actually.

I felt an overwhelming sense of peace and joy.

The third thing I heard was shouting in pashto.

Taliban fighters were yelling in confusion and what sounded like fear.

I heard footsteps running toward us.

Heard the moola’s voice is speaking urgently.

heard chaos where there should have been silence after a successful execution.

Someone ripped the blindfold from my eyes and what I saw was beyond comprehension.

All five of us, Sarah, the three Afghan believers, and myself were standing upright at the posts where we had been bound, but we were no longer tied.

The ropes that had secured our hands behind the posts were lying on the ground, cleanly cut, though no one had touched them with a knife.

But that wasn’t even the most astonishing part.

The wooden posts behind us were riddled with bullet holes.

The Taliban firing squad had fired their weapons.

The evidence was clear in the shattered wood, but not one bullet had touched any of us.

All five of us stood unharmed without a scratch, wound, or injury.

The Taliban fighters were backing away from us, their weapons lowered, their faces showing a mixture of terror and confusion.

The commander who had ordered the execution was staring at us like he had seen ghosts.

Some of the fighters had fallen to their knees.

And I could hear them reciting Quranic verses like prayers of protection.

Ask yourself this question.

What would you do if you had just witnessed an execution where the condemned people survived without any logical explanation? That’s exactly what these Taliban fighters were experiencing and their response was pure shock.

The Taliban Müller, who had offered us the chance to convert, approached cautiously, his eyes wide with disbelief, he examined the posts behind us.

Counting the bullet holes, then examined each of us, searching for wounds that should have been there, but weren’t.

He spoke in Pashto to the commander, his voice shaking.

This is not possible.

The rifles fired, the bullets hit the posts, but these people, they are untouched.

This is from Allah.

Sarah grabbed my hand and we stood there trying to process what had just happened.

We should have been dead.

We had heard the rifles fire.

We had felt the impact of bullets.

But somehow, miraculously, impossibly, we were alive and completely unharmed.

God had intervened in the most dramatic way possible, demonstrating his power over death itself.

Hammed, the young Afghan believer, began praising Jesus in Dari, his voice filled with joy and wonder.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

He has power over death.

He has saved us.

The other Afghan believers joined him in worship, their voices echoing across the valley.

The Taliban fighters were in complete chaos.

Some were arguing with each other about what had happened.

Some were insisting there must be a rational explanation.

defective ammunition, rifles that misfired something, but the evidence was undeniable.

The posts showed where the bullets had struck, but our bodies bore no marks whatsoever.

The moola ordered us to be taken back to the detention facility while he consulted with Taliban leadership about what to do with people who had survived a divine intervention.

As we were loaded back into the vehicles, I heard Taliban fighters arguing among themselves.

Some were saying it was a miracle from Allah protecting innocent people.

Others were insisting that Christians couldn’t receive miracles from Allah.

The theological confusion was evident in their discussions.

Look inside your own heart right now.

Have you ever witnessed something so miraculous that it challenged everything you thought you knew about reality? That’s exactly what these Taliban fighters were experiencing.

and the cognitive dissonance was tearing apart their certainty.

We were returned to the detention facility, but this time we were treated very differently.

Instead of being thrown into cells, we were placed in a guarded room with beds, food, and water.

Taliban officials came in groups throughout the day to stare at us like we were museum exhibits, examining our bodies for bullet wounds that weren’t there.

That evening, we were visited by a highranking Taliban official who identified himself as a judge within the Islamic Emirates judicial system.

He spoke excellent English and had clearly been educated abroad.

He sat down across from us and asked us to explain what had happened.

I have seen the execution site, he said.

I have examined the posters and counted the bullet holes.

I have inspected the weapons and confirmed they were functioning correctly.

I have interviewed every member of the firing squad and they all confirmed that they fired their weapons as ordered.

Yet you stand before me without injury.

This should not be possible according to natural law.

I took a deep breath and said, “What you witnessed was not natural law.

It was supernatural intervention.

” The God we serve, Jesus Christ, has power over life and death.

He protected us because he has work for us to continue doing.

This miracle is his way of demonstrating that he is real, that he is powerful, and that he loves even those who want to kill his followers.

The judge was silent for a long moment.

Then he said something I never expected to hear from a Taliban official.

I am educated in both Islamic law and Western science.

What happened today cannot be explained by either.

You should be dead, but you are alive.

Your God either protected you or he paused struggling with what he was about to say or there is something about your faith that I do not understand.

Over the next 3 days, we remained in detention while Taliban leadership debated what to do with us.

Some wanted to execute us again, arguing that the first attempt had failed due to equipment malfunction, not divine intervention.

Others argued that attempting to execute people who had been miraculously protected would be fighting against Allah’s will.

Still others suggested that we should be expelled from Afghanistan but allowed to live.

During those three days, we had extended conversations with the judge and several other educated Taliban officials.

They asked us questions about Christianity, about why we believed Jesus was more than a prophet, about how we could claim that God loved us enough to die for us.

These were genuine theological discussions, not interrogations.

And I sensed that something was shifting in their hearts.

Ask yourself this question.

What would it take for you to reconsider everything you believed about God? For some of these Taliban officials, witnessing an undeniable miracle had created cracks in their certainty about Islam and opened them to at least considering the possibility that Jesus was who he claimed to be.

On September 21st, we received word that Taliban leadership had reached a decision.

We would be expelled from Afghanistan immediately and permanently banned from returning.

The three Afghan believers would be released on the condition that they leave Kabul and never speak about their faith publicly.

The official statement was that our execution had been postponed pending further investigation.

But unofficially, we were being allowed to leave because no one wanted to risk angering a god who could stop bullets.

We were escorted to the airport under heavy guard and placed on that UN charter flight to Pakistan.

As the plane took off from Kabul, I looked it back at the city one more time, thanking God for the incredible privilege of serving there and for the miraculous protection he had provided.

Zarah and I arrived in Pakistan on September 22nd, 2024.

Within days, news of our miracle had spread throughout the Christian networks in Central Asia.

Afghan believers who had heard the story were emboldened in their faith, seeing it as confirmation that Jesus was with them even in the darkest persecution.

Even some Muslims who heard the story began questioning whether the God of Christians might have power that exceeded their understanding.

The three Afghan believers who had survived execution with us were able to escape to Pakistan within weeks.

Hammed contacted us in October to tell us that the experience had given him an unshakable courage to share the gospel.

If Jesus can stop bullets, he said, “Then what do I have to fear from people who only have words? Look inside your own heart right now and ask yourself this question.

What would you do if God performed an undeniable miracle in your life? Would you hide it? Would you dismiss it? or would you share it boldly knowing that it was given to you to build faith in others? We have spent the past months since our miraculous survival sharing this testimony everywhere we can.

We’ve spoken at churches across America, recorded podcasts and interviews, written articles, and met with mission organizations.

The response has been overwhelming.

People are hungry for evidence that God is still active, still powerful, still performing miracles.

But the greatest impact has been among Muslim communities.

We have received hundreds of messages from Muslims around the world who heard our story and started asking questions about Jesus.

Some have had dreams and visions of Jesus after hearing our testimony.

Some have begun reading the Bible in secret.

Some have converted to Christianity, telling us that the miracle proved to them that Jesus has power over death.

In December 2024, we received an encrypted message that stunned us.

It came from the Taliban judge who had interviewed us after our survival.

The message was brief.

I cannot stop thinking about what I witnessed.

I have begun reading the Christian Bible in secret.

Please pray for me.

I want to know if your Jesus is truly God.

We are still in contact with this Taliban official, discipling him carefully and praying for his safety.

If a Taliban judge can encounter Jesus through this miracle, then no one is beyond the reach of God’s grace.

That gives us hope for the future of Afghanistan and for the Muslim world.

Sarah and I continue working with Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

But now our ministry has an added dimension.

We are living testimonies that Jesus has power over death itself.

Every person we meet, every story we share, every conversation we have is shaped by the reality that we should be dead, but we’re alive because Jesus intervened.

Our children, Michael and Grace, are now old enough to understand what happened to their parents.

We have told them the full story of the miracle and they have been shaped by it.

They understand that following Jesus sometimes means facing death.

But they also understand that Jesus has power to protect his people when he chooses to do so.

Ask yourself this question.

If Jesus could stop bullets fired by a Taliban execution squad, what else can he do in your life? What prayer seems too impossible? What situation seems too hopeless? What dream seems too big? The same Jesus who performed this miracle is alive today and able to work in your life.

I want to be clear about something important.

God doesn’t always intervene physically to save his people from persecution.

Throughout history, thousands of faithful Christians have been martyed for their faith.

And God allowed them to die because he had different purposes for their lives.

Our survival wasn’t because we were more faithful than those who have been martyed.

It was simply because God chose to demonstrate his power in this particular way for his own purposes.

But what this miracle proves is that Jesus is alive.

That he has authority over life and death and that he is actively involved in the lives of his followers.

Whether he chooses to save us from physical death or allows us to pass through it into his presence, he is always in control, always loving us, and always working all things for our ultimate good.

Today, Sarah and I are preparing to return to Central Asia for continued ministry among Afghan refugees.

We know the risks.

We know that Taliban reach extends beyond Afghanistan’s borders.

We know that we could face persecution again.

But we also know that the God who stopped bullets can protect us wherever he sends us.

And even if he chooses not to, eternity with him is worth any suffering we might face in this life.

The Afghan church continues to grow despite intense persecution.

House churches meet in secret.

Believers worship at risk of death.

New converts are baptized in hidden locations.

The gospel is spreading through one of the most difficult mission fields in the world.

And nothing the Taliban does can stop it because Jesus is building his church and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.

Look inside your own heart one final time.

Jesus is calling you right now just as he called me in Shanghai as a teenager.

Just as he called Sarah in Oregon, just as he called those Afghan believers who faced a firing squad with us, he’s calling you to follow him, to trust him, to surrender your life completely to his purposes.

You might not face a firing squad, but you will face choices about whether you’ll live for yourself or for Jesus.

You will face decisions about whether you’ll play it safe or take risks for the kingdom.

You will face moments when following Jesus costs you something significant.

Comfort, reputation, relationships, security.

And in those moments, I want you to remember that the same Jesus who stopped bullets fired by Taliban executioners is with you.

The same Jesus who protected us in Afghanistan is available to you wherever you are.

The same Jesus who turned our death sentence into a miracle testimony can transform your life into something that brings him glory.

The Muslim pilot who burned Bibles found Jesus and changed everything.

The Taliban fighters who fired their weapons at us witnessed a miracle that challenged everything they believed.

And you reading or hearing this testimony right now are being invited to encounter the same Jesus who has the power to change your life forever.

Don’t wait for a miracle to believe.

Don’t wait for a dramatic sign to surrender.

Jesus is knocking on the door of your heart through this very testimony offering you forgiveness, love, purpose, and eternal life.

All you have to do is ask him in, confess that you need him, and trust that he will save you.

The same Jesus who saved 261 people from a plane crash.

The same Jesus who stopped bullets in an Afghan valley.

The same Jesus who has transformed millions of lives across 2,000 years of history is ready to save you today.

Will you let him? Will you surrender to him? Will you discover the love that changes everything? Ask yourself this final question.

If Jesus performed a miracle to save your life today, would you spend the rest of that life telling others about him? because that’s exactly what he’s given me the privilege to do and is the greatest joy I have ever known.