Over the past two months I have been helping my wife edit some letters she sent from Iran while she was there with Operation Mobilization (OM) from 1972-76. It is hard to imagine in today’s climate that from 1963-1978 hundreds of Christians went with OM to sell Christian books and Bibles door-to-door in Iran. I don’t have the exact figures but if it was anything like Bangladesh where we saw over 1 million Bibles sold in the first 15 years, this was a major evangelistic enterprise whose fruits are perhaps only now being realized.
One story stands out concerning a Muslim doctor who found Christ through OM’s work. Margareta was selling books in a small town next to the Caspian Sea when a little boy led her to a doctor’s clinic.
“We visited the doctor who found God when he was praying one day and asking that God would show him somehow that he was real. That day several OM fellows came and sold him Billy Graham’s book “How to find God”, in Persian. He became a Christian and an on-fire believer. It was an incredible experience to visit him and his wife and children. He travels 7 hours one-way every week to visit Tehran Bible Church. He has a vision for his little town and wants to see many people come to faith. Fifteen people gather in his home every week for Bible reading and prayer. He showed us a big room which he plans to use as a worship center. He showed us how you could open the doors to make room in adjoining rooms for even more people. We were astonished at his enthusiasm. We know how hard it can be working in a Muslim society. When we came he gathered his entire family and asked us to witness to them about how we came to faith. His son has come to faith but his wife is not sure if she believes in the forgiveness of sins, yet. His sister was also there and seemed quite indifferent to our message. The doctor enthusiastically translated everything we said to her in Farsi (Persian). In the afternoon he had office hours in his home. All the walls in his office were covered with Sunday school pictures of the life of Jesus. It was a real challenge for us to meet this brave Christian Iranian and see with what passion he witnesses for his faith. Would we dare to be so brave as Christians in a Muslim country?”
This is just a little snippet of missions’ history which I hope will not be lost. All of those books remain in Iran to this day as silent witnesses. We need to pray that many more will pick up those books on their shelves and find a way out from their bondage.
What can we learn from this Iranian doctor’s zeal to share the gospel?
David Cashin is professor of Intercultural Studies at CIU and currently on sabbatical this semester in New Zealand among other places.