By every law of physics, and by every law of Iran, I should be a corpse swinging in the wind right now.

But I am speaking to you.

I am breathing.

And I am going to tell you how the rope meant to kill me was broken by a hand you could not see.

You might be watching this and thinking that this is just a dramatic story from a far away land.

You might think that because you are not standing on a gallows in Iran with a hood over your head that you do not know what this feels like.

But I know you.

I know that you do not need a physical hangman to feel like you are suffocating.

Maybe your rope is not made of hemp.

Maybe your rope is a mountain of debt that you cannot pay no matter how hard you work.

You wake up at 3:00 in the morning with your chest tight, unable to breathe because the numbers just do not add up.

That is a rope.

Maybe your rope is a medical diagnosis.

The doctor said a word that sounds like a death sentence and now every day feels like you are walking toward a drop.

You look at your family and you wonder how much time you have left.

That is a rope.

Maybe your rope is loneliness.

You are surrounded by people, but you have never felt more isolated.

You smile at church.

You say you are fine, but inside you are screaming and nobody hears you.

You feel like you are falling and there is no floor beneath you.

I am telling you this story today not just so you can marvel at my survival.

I am telling you this because the same god who snapped the thick executioner’s rope around my neck is the same god who sees the invisible rope around yours.

You feel like it is over.

You feel like the trap door has already opened.

But I am here to tell you that the story does not end with the fall.

It ends with the catch.

If you are feeling that pressure around your neck right now, do not turn away.

This testimony is not about a woman who escaped.

It is about a God who intervenes when all hope is gone.

Listen closely because what happened to me is proof that your situation is not final.

I never thought I would say these words out loud.

For most of my life, the name of Jesus was just a word I heard in passing a name of a prophet.

We respect it, but did not follow.

I [snorts] was born Muslim.

I was raised Muslim and for the first 20 years of my existence, I never questioned a single thing.

I followed what my family taught me.

I followed what my neighbors believed.

I followed what the streets repeated every day.

In my world, you did not ask questions about faith.

You just lived.

You obeyed.

You stayed quiet.

Faith was something inherited, not chosen.

It was in your blood, like your DNA.

to question.

He was not just rebellion.

It was insanity.

Doubt was treated like a disease that could infect the whole community.

My life was safe.

It was predictable.

I wore my hijab perfectly.

I prayed five times a day.

I fasted during Ramadan.

I was the perfect daughter, the perfect example.

And I was completely empty.

Everything changed on a Tuesday night.

It was an ordinary night.

The heat of the day had finally broken and I fell into a deep sleep.

That is when I had the dream I cannot forget.

I am not saying this to sound special or dramatic.

I am saying it because it happened and because it ruined the safe version of my life forever.

In that dream, I saw a field.

It was greener than anything I had ever seen in my arid country.

And standing in the middle of that field was a man I did not know.

He was dressed in white, but the white was brighter than sunlight.

It hurt my eyes, but I could not look away.

He did not threaten me.

He did not argue with me.

He did not demand anything from me.

He just looked at me.

His eyes were not angry like the religious police in the streets.

They were not disappointed like my father when I made a mistake.

They were full of something I had never experienced before.

They were full of love.

Absolute overwhelming love.

He spoke to me but his lips did not move.

I heard his voice inside my chest.

He said simply follow me.

That was it.

Just two words.

Follow me.

I woke up shaking.

I was confused.

I was terrified.

My heart was racing and my sheets were soaked with sweat.

I sat up in the darkness of my room listening to the breathing of my sisters sleeping next to me.

For days I tried to ignore it.

I told myself it was stress.

I told myself it was imagination.

I told myself it was a test from Allah.

I prayed the way I had always prayed, hoping the feeling would disappear.

I recited the Quran louder, hoping to drown out the memory of those eyes.

Instead, the feeling grew.

It became a hunger.

I looked at my life and it felt like a performance.

I looked at the rituals and they felt like empty motions.

I needed to know who that man was.

I started searching.

This is a dangerous thing to do in my country.

You cannot just walk into a library and ask for a Bible.

You cannot just Google questions about Christianity without someone watching.

I started reading quietly, carefully, always alone.

I found fragments of text online, clearing my browser history every 5 minutes.

I [snorts] found words about Jesus.

But reading online was not enough.

I needed the book.

I needed to hold it in my hands.

I remember the day I bought my first Bible.

It was a clandestine operation.

I had heard whispers of a man in the market who sold Forbidden books from the back of his shop.

I walked past his store three times before I gathered the courage to enter.

My hands were trembling under my chatter.

I looked over my shoulder constantly expecting a hand to grab me, expecting the police to be waiting.

When I finally held that book, it felt heavy.

Not physically heavy, but spiritually heavy.

It felt like I was holding a ball.

In my country, possessing this book is a crime.

Sharing it is treason.

[snorts] Believing it is a death sentence.

I brought it home, hidden under my clothes, pressed against my skin.

I waited until the house was silent.

I waited until my father was asleep and my sisters were dreaming.

Only then did I dare to light a candle and open the pages.

I read.

I read about a god who is not distant but close.

A God who does not demand blood but gives his own.

A God who calls himself father.

As I read, the words seemed to leap off the page and burn into my soul.

For the first time in my life, I was not reciting.

I was connecting.

I realized that the man in my dream was not just a prophet.

He was the answer to every question I had never dared to ask.

I became a double agent in my own life.

By day, I was the obedient Muslim daughter.

I cooked.

I cleaned.

I prayed the prayers.

But by night, I was a follower of Jesus.

I lived in constant fear of discovery.

Every knock at the door made me jump.

Every look for my father made me think he knew.

I thought I could keep it a secret forever.

I [snorts] thought I could live in two worlds.

But fire cannot be hidden in paper.

Eventually, the smoke begins to rise.

Can my smoke was about to be seen by the very people who loved me most.

You know, in the movies when the police come, they kick down the door.

There is shouting.

There is chaos.

But in my real life, the end of my freedom did not start with a bang.

It started with a whisper.

It started with my brother holding my Bible.

I had hidden it well.

Or so I thought, wrapped in a scarf, tucked behind loose floorboards under my bed.

But secrets in a strict household have a way of surfacing.

I walked into my room one afternoon, the sun casting long shadows across the floor, and saw him sitting on my bed.

The book was open in his hands.

He did not look angry.

He looked terrified.

In our culture, shame is worse than death.

And I had just brought the ultimate shame into our hole.

He looked at me and said, “Do you know what they will do to you? Do you know what they will do to us?” I wanted to lie.

I wanted to say it wasn’t mine, that I was holding it for a friend.

But looking at the pages where I had underlined the words of Jesus, the lies died in my throat.

I stood tall, though my knees were shaking, and I said, “I have found the truth, and the truth is set me free.

He did not hit me.

He just closed a book, stood up, and walked out.

” An hour later, the black car arrived.

They did not arrest me and let the criminal.

They collected me like garbage.

Two men in plain clothes, no uniforms, no [snorts] badges, just the absolute authority of the regime.

My mother was crying in the kitchen, but she did not come out to say goodbye.

My father stood with his back turned to me.

That silence hurt more than any being.

They took me to a facility I cannot name.

It was not a regular prison yet.

It was a holding center for moral crimes.

The interrogation room smelled of stale cigarettes and bleach.

the smell of people trying to clean away dirty deeds for 3 days.

They did not let me sleep.

They asked the same questions over and over.

Who gave you the book? Who is your leader? How many others are there? They wanted a network.

They wanted a conspiracy.

They could not understand that it was just me and God.

They brought in an imam to debate me.

He shouted verses at me.

He told me I was lost, that I was a for the west, that I had sold my soul.

I was exhausted, hungry, and terrified.

But something strange happened in that cold room.

Every time I opened my mouth to speak, I didn’t have to search for words.

The words were just there.

I [snorts] remembered the verse.

Do not worry about what to say or how to say it.

At that time, you will be given what to say.

I told them about the love of God.

I told them that I did not hate Islam, but I had found the one my soul loved.

The more I spoke about love, the angrier they became.

Love is terrifying to men who rely on control.

The trial was a joke.

It lasted less than 10 minutes.

No lawyer, no jury, just a judge who looked at me with boredom.

He barely looked at the evidence.

He simply signed a paper.

Death by hanging, he said, to be carried out immediately.

Let this be an example to any other woman who thinks she can betray her faith and her nation.

They dragged me out.

As I walked down the hallway, chains rattling on my ankles.

I thought I would collapse.

But I felt a strange heat in my chest.

It wasn’t panic.

It was a fire.

I realized that they could kill my body, that they had absolutely no power over my soul.

If you are listening to this right now and you feel like the enemy has you cornered, like the verdict has already been read against you, I want you to listen to me.

The enemy’s voice is loud, but it is not the last voice.

The judge had signed the paper, but God had not yet signed the decree.

The morning of the execution was bright, too bright.

It felt insulting that the sun would shine so beautifully on the day I was going to die.

They put me in a van with two gods.

The drive to the public square took 20 minutes.

I counted every minute.

I looked out the barred window and saw people going to work, buying bread, living their lives.

It felt surreal.

How could the world keep churning when mine was stopping? We arrived at the square.

It was already full.

In my country, pexecutions are public spectacles.

Men, women, even children gather to watch.

Some come out of hatred, shouting insults.

Others come out of morbid curiosity.

When the van doors opened, a noise hit me like a physical wave, screaming, jeering.

The sound of thousands of people who wanted to see blood.

I stepped out.

My legs felt heavy, like they were made of concrete.

I had to force one foot in front of the other.

The platform was high, made of rough wood.

It stood in the center of the square.

I can halt her to fear.

I climbed the steps.

1 2 3.

With each step, I recited the Lord’s Prayer in my head.

Though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

My mouth was dry.

My heart was beating so fast it made my vision blur.

I reached the top.

The executioner was there.

He was a large man, his face covered by a black mask.

He didn’t speak.

He grabbed my shoulders roughly and positioned me over the trap door.

I could feel the seams of the wood beneath my thin shoes.

[snorts] Then hah, they placed a thick black sack over my head.

The world instantly disappeared.

The bright sun was gone.

The faces of the crowd were gone.

All I had left were my other senses, and they were screaming.

I could smell the executioner’s sweat sour and old.

I could smell the dust rising from the square.

I could hear the wind whipping the fabric of the hood against my ears.

And then the touch, the rope.

It was rough and scratchy.

He placed it around my neck and tightened it, but not dug into the sensitive skin behind my ear.

It was tight, choking.

It forced my chin up, making me look toward a sky I could no longer see.

I stood there in the darkness for what felt like an eternity.

I could hear the murmur of the crowd dying down.

They were waiting for the drop.

I stopped praying for rescue.

I started praying for reception.

Jesus, I whispered inside the hood.

Receive my spirit.

Do not let me be afraid in the final moment.

Take me home, I heard the judge’s voice weeding the sentence one last time.

His voice sounded distorted far away.

Then the sound of metal on metal.

The lever clank.

The floor beneath me vanished.

My stomach lurched into my throat.

The sensation of weightlessness was terrifying.

Gravity grabbed my ankles and pulled me down violently.

I waited for the snap of my neck.

I waited for the lights to go out.

I need you to understand physics for a moment.

When a human body drops 6 ft with a rope around the neck, a force is tremendous.

It is designed to break the vertebrae instantly.

It is not a gentle process.

It is violent.

It is final.

I fell.

The rope went taut and then dot dot dot snap.

It sounded like a gunshot, a loud, sharp crack that echoed off the buildings surrounding the square instead of swinging in the air.

I kept falling.

I hit the wooden deck below the platform, then tumbled onto the dusty ground of the squarer.

The impact knocked the wind out of me.

Pain shot through my knees can my shoulder.

I lay there in the dirt, gasping, trying to suck air into my lungs through the black hood.

They were still over my head.

The silence was absolute.

Thousands of people were watching, but for 3 seconds, nobody breathd.

The only sound was my home gasping coughs.

Then chaos erupted.

I tore the hood off my head.

The light blinded me for a second.

When my eyes adjusted, I looked up.

And this is the moment I want you to see.

Not me on the ground, but them on the platform.

I looked up at the executioner, the man who moments ago had handled me with rough indifference.

He was gripping the railing of the platform, his knuckles white.

He was staring down at me and his body was shaking, visibly shaking.

This was a man who killed for a living.

He had seen dozens of people die.

He knew how ropes worked.

He knew how knelled.

He knew the thick industrial hemp does not just snap in the middle.

I saw terror in his eyes.

Not surprise, terror.

He backed away from the edge as if an invisible fiery just flared up between us.

I looked at the judge.

He had stood up from his chair, his face pale, his mouth hanging opening.

The paper with my deaf sentence dropped from his hand and fluttered down to the dirt next to me.

The crowd began to scream.

But they weren’t screaming, “Kill her anymore.

” I heard cries of miracle.

I heard women wailing.

I heard men shouting, “Alahuar!” In confusion, the guards rushed toward me, but they stopped five feet away.

They had their batons raised, but they didn’t strike.

They circled me like I was a radioactive object, like I was dangerous.

I was a bruised small woman sitting in the dirt with a broken rope around my neck.

I was defenseless, but they were terrified of me.

Why? Because in that moment, the hierarchy of power had flipped.

They had the guns, the laws, the prisons, and the ropes.

But I had the living God.

And when the rope snapped, everyone in that square knew that authority higher than the regime had just spoken.

The executioner refused to come down.

He refused to touch the new robe.

He waved his hands, signaling he was done.

He wanted no part of fighting against whatever power had just saved me.

This is what you must realize about the enemy.

The devil puts on a show of power.

He builds high platforms.

He shouts loud sentences.

He displays his weapons to make you tremble.

But beneath the mask, the enemies terrified of the Christ in you.

The gods finally grabbed me, but their grip was different now.

It wasn’t rough with arrogance.

It was tentative with fear.

They dragged me back to the van, not to punish me, but to hide me.

They needed to get me out of sight because my very existence had become a threat to their control.

As the van doors slammed shut, leaving the confused crowd behind, I touched my neck.

The skin was burned.

It was bruised, but there was a pulse, strong, steady, alive.

I sat in the darkness of the van, weeping, not from sorrow, but from an overwhelming realization.

The rope didn’t break because it was old.

The rope didn’t break because of a manufacturing error.

The rope broke because the finger of God touched it.

And if God can break a hangman’s noose, what makes you think he cannot break the chain of addiction holding you? What makes you think he cannot snap the cycle of depression in your family? Before we continue to what happened next because the story didn’t end there.

The real battle was just beginning in the prison.

I want to ask you something.

Have you ever seen the enemy tremble? Have you ever stood your ground long enough to see the fear in the eyes of the thing that was trying to kill you? If this testimony is speaking to your spirit right now, if you feel your faith rising, take a second to subscribe to this channel.

We are building a community of believers who refuse to bow to fear.

Join us because what happened in the prison was even harder than the hanging.

[snorts] And you need to hear how God showed up in the darkness.

Most people think the hardest part of my story was the rope.

They think the climax was the snap.

But they are wrong.

The rope was physical pain.

It was sharp.

It was quick.

It had a beginning and an end.

What happened next? Dot dot.

That was a different kind of torture.

That was a slow poison.

They threw me back into the van.

At this time, there was no shouting.

The guards didn’t insult me.

They didn’t even look at me.

It was as if I had become a ghost in the machine of their system.

A glitch they couldn’t explain.

and therefore couldn’t look at.

We drove for hours.

When the doors opened, I wasn’t at the holding center anymore.

I was at Evan prison.

If you live in the west, you might not know this name.

But in Iran, Evan is a word that stops conversations.

It is a place where people disappear.

It is a black hole.

They walked me down a long corridor.

The air smelled of mold and old fear.

Continue reading….
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