More Iranians have turned to Christianity in the past 20 years than in the previous 13 centuries. Elam Ministries which was founded by Iranian church leaders reports that new house churches are opening every week despite the threat of persecution.
It notes that more than 40 years ago at the time of the Iranian Revolution there were just 500 Christians with a Muslim background. Elam estimates there could be more than a million now.
The spike in believers coincides with mass closures of mosques in recent years. A senior Iranian cleric claims more than two-thirds of the nation’s 75,000 mosques have been shut down. Worthy News reports he publicly declared that there is a broad disillusionment with Islam in Iran.
Human rights activist Farrukh H. Saif, whose Emergency Committee to Save the Persecuted and Enslaved (ECSPE) has rescued Christian converts, said it was referring to cleric Mohammad Abolghassem Doulabi who’s an advisor to Iran’s rulers and a liaison between President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration and Iran’s Islamic seminaries.
Maluana Doulabi, who is also a member of the Assembly of Experts which appoints the Supreme Leader, noticed the broad disillusionment of people with the outcome of Islam in Iran. “When people look at the output of the religion, they decide to enter the religion or leave the religion,” he said in published remarks.
He admitted that Iranians complained about “the humiliation of people in the name of religion; falsification of religious concepts and teachings; and the depriving of people of a decent life and creating poverty in the name of religion.”
Read the article by Tony Davenport on Vision Christian Media.