On Monday, June 23, the earth shook beneath Tehran’s most feared address. Israeli missiles tore through the gates of Evin Prison, sending concrete and steel flying into the afternoon sky.
Within moments, something extraordinary happened.
Families began running toward the smoke and rubble, desperate to reach loved ones trapped inside the regime’s notorious “terror factory.” For 45 years, those gates had swallowed Iran’s finest minds, bravest souls and most faithful hearts. Now they lay broken, and the families and loved ones of the prisoners rushed toward them without fear. But this was actually the second time that the ayatollah’s prison walls had proven powerless against a greater force.
Since 1979, Evin Prison has served as the beating heart of Iran’s persecution machine. In its cells, tens of thousands of Christians have faced extreme torture, solitary confinement and death for the crime of following Jesus. The names of eight pastors who were martyred within its walls are whispered in house churches across the nation like prayers of remembrance. The regime designed Evin to permanently break spirits and minds, to make examples of those who dared believe in something beyond the ayatollahs’ iron grip.
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Every cell in Evin is meant to send a message: this is what happens to those who choose light over darkness, who call for freedom over tyranny. Yet the ayatollahs’ greatest miscalculation was believing they could kill what they couldn’t understand. The harder they squeezed, the more their revolution slipped through their fingers.
The numbers tell an impossible story. Over the past couple of decades, despite facing perhaps the world’s most systematic Christian persecution, Iran has become home to the fastest-growing church on earth. Conservative estimates suggest more than one million Iranians have converted to Christianity, transforming from a few hundred believers before 1979 to a movement that now dwarfs the regime’s own support. While the government demands adherence to Islam through violence and law, 50,000 of Iran’s 75,000 mosques have closed their doors due to empty “pews.” The people have voted with their feet, and they have chosen Jesus.
Violence in the name of Islam has caused widespread disillusionment with the regime. When your government promises paradise but delivers poverty, corruption and oppression, people begin searching for something real. Many have found it in the underground house churches, where believers risk everything gathering in small apartments, singing softly so neighbors cannot hear, studying Bibles that could cost them their freedom and even their lives.
For many years, ICC was involved in helping to train Iranian pastors. We would pull them “off the front lines” for rest, worship and study. Time with those pastors was a gift, and one pastor’s speech about the hunger for the Gospel in Iran always stays with me: “Brothers, you don’t understand evangelism in Iran. I go to a party, stand up and announce I’m a Christian. I say, if anyone wants to learn about Jesus, I’ll be in the corner. Then I’m mobbed by people for hours until I’m exhausted.” In Iran, the challenge isn’t creating interest in Jesus; it’s surviving the spiritual hunger and the regime that makes following Jesus so costly.
The regime’s persecution of Christians has transformed Christianity into something they never anticipated: the ultimate form of resistance. When everything else fails, when politics offers no hope and economics promise only poverty, faith becomes both hope and rebellion. Iranian women share the Gospel with strangers in bazaars. Taxi drivers turn their cars into mobile prayer meetings. Students risk expulsion to attend house churches. They do this knowing the consequences, knowing that Evin Prison waits for those most effective in spreading the faith.
The regime’s brutality was meant to strangle the Church, but watching Christians willingly suffer draws many to Christ. They ask the question that is a nightmare for the ayatollahs: “Who is this Jesus that people are so willing to suffer and die for?” One interrogator recently admitted to an imprisoned pastor, “We know we cannot stop the growth of Christianity.”
The recent bombing of Evin Prison was not just a military strike. It was a moment pregnant with symbolism. The sight of those broken gates offers a perfect metaphor for what is happening spiritually across Iran. For 45 years, the regime has tried to imprison the human spirit, to lock away hope and faith behind walls of intimidation. But some things cannot be contained. Love finds a way through concrete walls and iron bars. Faith slips past the guards and hope rises above the walls. And most incredible of all, sometimes the torturers come to faith, witnessing the suffering and death of the Christians.
This story transcends politics and partisanship. Whether one supports or opposes military action against Iran, the spiritual revolution unfolding inside the country deserves recognition. The Iranian people are not their government. They are not the regime that chants “Death to America” while stealing their future. They are human beings created in God’s image, searching for truth in a nation built on lies, seeking light in a place of great darkness.
For 45 years, the ayatollahs believed their prison gates could contain the human spirit. They have just learned what Iranian Christians have known all along: Some forces cannot be imprisoned, some doors cannot remain closed, and some revolutions begin not with bullets, but with belief.
Tonight, in apartments across Tehran, small groups gather in whispered worship, their soft songs rising through the darkness like prayers for freedom. The revolution continues.
Jeff King has served as ICC President since 2003 and is one of the world’s top experts on religious persecution. He has advocated for the persecuted everywhere, testifying before the U.S. Congress on religious freedom. He has been interviewed by leading media outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and The Washington Times. Jeff King is also available as a guest speaker. To learn more, go to Christian Persecution and Spiritual Growth Speaker | Jeff King Blog.
