On Friday, explosions echoed through the air in Iran, just days after the Muslim-majority country launched some 300 missiles into Israeli airspace — a marked escalation for a country that has, historically, attacked the Jewish state only via proxies, like the Gaza-based terrorist cell Hamas.
Tehran, though, is downplaying the reported Israeli attacks. Jerusalem hasn’t taken responsibility for the explosions, which caused no casualties or injuries, but it’s believed the drone attack came from Israel. Regardless, Iran has not indicated any plans to respond, likely in hopes of avoiding a region-wide war.
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There are some Iranians, however, who see war as the only way forward — and not because they oppose Israel, but because they are victims of their own corrupt government and they see outside forces like the Jewish nation as the only way to topple the evil regime lording over them.
Lily Meschi of Iran Alive Ministries appeared on a recent episode of CBN’s “Faith vs. Culture,” where she revealed what she’s hearing from Iranians on the ground in the Middle East.
Born in Tehran to a nominally Muslim family, Meschi is well acquainted with the feelings of many in the Middle East. Now a Christian, she works closely with Iranians as she shares the Gospel in the region and collaborates with believers in the Islamic nation.
“The Iranian government is totally separated from the citizens,” Meschi said. “The Iranian people are not for the government; they want the government to be toppled. They want to overturn this government, and they are seeking for democracy. Some of them — as heart-wrenching as a war could be — are looking forward to a war. They are saying, ‘We want Israel to attack Iran, because this might be the answer we’re looking for. We’re not living, but we’re just all surviving every single day.'”
She went on to explain many older Iranians she’s spoken to have told her they would “rather die in a war” so the “next generation [can] live a better life of freedom and democracy.”
“Some of them are saying, ‘This could be the answer that we’re looking for, because, no matter how many protests, how many people gather in the streets of Iran to protest against the government, they’re not going anywhere,'” Meschi said. “They don’t get support from any other countries. … They feel hopeless and they feel like this is not life, [so they] might as well do something for the next generation.”
Women Have Become ‘Agents’ for Gospel in Iran
Since the revolution of the late 1970s, the chief victims of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been women.
That became profoundly apparent in the wake of the death in September 2022 of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian woman in her early 20s killed in the custody of Iran’s so-called “morality police” because she wasn’t wearing her head covering — or hijab — the way the government demanded.
Amini’s death sparked an outpouring of protests in the region over the fact “everything has been designed against women” in Iran, Meschi said.
“Iranian women, when they come to faith — because of how much wrong has been done to them, because of all the injustice, because of how much they’ve been crushed and persecuted and oppressed — when they realize who they are in Christ, when they realize they are daughters of the Most High God, they are valued for who they are not what they can do, they become agents of transformation,” she said.
Emboldened by the freedom of the Gospel, Meschi said women who have come to Christ have often served as the chief evangelizers in their communities, among their families, friends, and neighbors.
“They are on the forefront of this movement in Iran,” she explained, noting some 80% of Iran Alive Ministries’ leaders on the ground in Iran are women. “They’re pretty strong. They’re really discipling women, younger women. That’s encouraging to us how, where there is darkness, the grace of God shines ever greater. Because they are the most heartbroken people in Iran, the grace of God, for them, is so much greater and they’re now doing great work inside of an unreached nation. That’s amazing to me.”
You can watch the full episode of “Faith vs. Culture” and hear Meschi’s own powerful testimony below:
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