#63: Escape from Kabul

#63: Escape from Kabul

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

AUDIO CLIPS: Love Thy Neighborhood… Discipleship and missions for modern times.

JESSE EUBANKS: Hey, it’s Jesse. So back in April 2021, U.S. military troops began leaving Afghanistan for good, and soon after the Taliban actually took over Kabul, the city’s capital, and was now in total control of the country’s government. Millions were displaced and forced to flee their homes, including Afghan Christians. Despite conversion to Christianity being illegal under the government, there’s actually been steady growth, with an estimated 2000 Christians in 2013 to around 10,000 in 2021. So we wanted to know – what happened that caused this massive growth of Christians in Afghanistan, and then what happened to them when war broke out? So today’s episode actually comes from The Gospel Coalition‘s long-form podcast, Recorded. Sarah Zylstra shares stories of Afghan Christians navigating life after a government takeover. Alright, here’s the episode – “Escape from Kabul.”

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PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN AUDIO CLIP: Good afternoon. I’m speaking to you today from the Roosevelt in the White House. After consulting closely with our allies and partners, with the Congress and the Vice President, as well as with Mr. Ghani and many others around the world, I’ve concluded that it’s time to end America’s longest war. It’s time for American troops to come home. The United States will begin our final withdrawal, begin it on May one of this year. We’ll not conduct a hasty rush to the exit. We’ll do it responsibly, deliberately, and safely, and we will do it in full coordination with our allies. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: When Joe Biden announced last April that all American troops would be leaving Afghanistan, nobody familiar with the country thought it would be able to stand up against the Taliban. The wobbly Afghan government, paid for and propped up by the United States since 2004, had never seemed to grow any stronger or any less corrupt. Meanwhile, the Taliban never seemed to give up. The Islamic fundamentalist group had been overthrown by the U.S. invasion in 2001 and had been waging a persistent insurgency ever since. When the cold of winter came each year, they would retreat south to Pakistan where they would rest and reorganize. When the weather warmed up, they would emerge and take control, mostly over southern, rural areas of the country. U.S. intelligence initially estimated that the Afghan national government could last about two years on its own. But you know this story. In just 10 days in August while the Americans were still in the country, the Taliban swept through every single provincial capital, including Kabul. They advanced so quickly they surprised even themselves. 

AUDIO CLIP: The Taliban is in control of Afghanistan by surprise… 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Caught off guard, thousands of Afghans began to run, especially those who feared for their lives – former employees of the collapsed government, those who had worked with Americans, and Christians. The Christians were especially interesting, because while conversion was illegal even under the Afghan government, the number of believers had been steadily growing from an estimated 2000 in 2013 to about 10,000 in 2021. How are so many hearing about Jesus? With everybody keeping their faith a secret, how are they connecting with each other – and how on earth were they going to get out? 

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NEWS CLIPS: Humanitarian crisis now unfolding. Children on the edge of starvation. A two year old weighing just 11 pounds. And with the Taliban now in control, ISIS is now taking aim…

SARAH ZYLSTRA: My name is Sarah Zylstra, and I record stories of where God is at work in the world for The Gospel Coalition. To hear this story, I had to fly halfway around the world – but not to Afghanistan. I landed in Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates. In many ways, the UAE is a bridge between the Middle East and the West. While technically a Muslim country, the leaders don’t suppress the religion of foreigners. And since this oil rich country is full of foreigners here for a job, literally nine out of 10 people are from somewhere else. That means the UAE has considerable freedom of religion. That fact is critical to this story, which actually starts a few hours northeast in Afghanistan, the country that replaced North Korea this year at the top of the World Watch list of the hardest places on earth to be a Christian. 

LUKE ANWARI: I was born in Afghanistan, in the central parts of Afghanistan when it was the communism government. And then when I was in grade four, the mujahideen came. And then when I was grade seven, um, the Taliban came. And then when I was grade 10, the new Democratic government after 911 came. So I have had four regimes during my school. Yeah…

SARAH ZYLSTRA: That’s Luke Anwari. I’ve been careful with identification. However, the names and places I’ve been able to include are accurate. I’m sitting with Luke in his apartment in Dubai, where he lives with his wife and four daughters. Luke was born in 1987 into a pretty unstable country. Every few years, the government would change hands, which meant that Luke had to change his school uniform, his textbooks, even the definitions of his words. For example, under the Soviets, “communism” meant “justice.” After they left, it meant “infidel.” When the Taliban took over, Luke had to start wearing a turban to school and taking a lot more classes on the Quran. In between, while one power was trying to overthrow another one, there was fighting and violence.

LUKE ANWARI: Fighters would come, and they would bomb the city. And especially our school was right opposite from the airport, so they would bomb a lot the airport. So there was no windows, no nothing because all broken because of the bombing and the pressure for that. And…

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Already in grade school, Luke knew how to hide from incoming air raids. You can duck down near a load-bearing wall or a pillar hoping it will shield you from a collapsing roof or wall, or even better, you can race outside for the ditches where there is no building to fall on you. When Luke was in junior high, the Taliban took over Afghanistan. People were terrified. Taliban soldiers shoot first and ask questions much, much later, if at all. But they were big on religion, and Luke was too.

LUKE ANWARI: I was very passionate about the religion. I was really passionate about God and, and, and, and, and meeting God. I would pray. I would fast. I was in grade nine and 10 and eight, and that, those years were Taliban-controlled. We would, like, go to the madrassa, which is a regular school that, of course, half of that was still Islamic teachings. Apart from that, we would go to mosque and get the religious teachings as well, where I was, like, memorizing Quran. We was reading (unclear) the interpretation of the Quran. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: When Luke was in ninth grade, a motivational speaker from Osama bin Laden’s camp came to his school. He talked for three hours about how America would probably attack, about how to prepare for a jihad against the infidels, and about how Osama bin Laden was a brother who needed protection. At the end, he gave an altar call – “whoever wants to dedicate themselves to the Holy War, step forward now.” Moved, Luke came forward. He did wanna give his life to Allah. He was given a black turban to wrap around his head, and everyone applauded. But later when he told his father what he’d done, his dad exploded, even chasing him around the house. He told Luke to go right back and take his name off that list. He did not want a life of violence for his son. Had Luke’s name actually been on the list, that would’ve been nearly impossible to do. But Luke was related to the school principal, who had not included Luke in his list of volunteers. “Hey,” he told Luke, “don’t make that kind of stupid decision again.” A few months later, Al-Qaeda terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a field in Pennsylvania. Al-Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, and a furious President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban extradite Osama bin Laden. The Taliban refused, and in early October a U.S.-led coalition easily toppled the regime. That fall Luke headed to medical school in Kabul where NATO and American forces were trying to set up a fledgling democracy. In his province of a million people, he’d been one of only 12 boys who’d been able to finish enough school to graduate. Around this time, Luke was having his own crisis. He read about God meeting Moses in the burning bush and on Mount Sinai. “Why can’t I meet with God?” he asked his teachers. “We’ll pretend we didn’t hear that,” they told him. “You aren’t supposed to ask questions like that.” Luke was confused by that and also discouraged by his prayers, which never seemed to do anything. Islam was starting to seem like a collection of made-up stories. Tired of it, Luke quit religion – but it was harder for him to quit God. 

LUKE ANWARI: I remember that we were studying anatomy of human body the first semester. The second semester we were studying physiology, which more get into the system of body, how it works. And I remember that our professor was explaining and he was saying that if you built machines to do the function of our organs there would be so many. It would need a lot of space, a lot of energy, and a lot of manpower to run that, and that was making me very curious that there should be a God that makes this… Yes, yes… 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: At school, Luke became friends with some South Koreans. They prayed like he’d never seen anybody pray before. He figured that since they were from the east they were Buddhists. “Nope,” they told him. “We’re Christians.” More specifically, they were Presbyterians. Scottish and American Presbyterian missionaries brought Christianity into Korea in the late 1800s, where it was immediately popular. After the Korean War, Christianity continued to boom in South Korea, more than tripling in followers from 1950 to 1970. By the early 2000s when Luke was at medical school, the Korean church was sending out more missionaries than every other country except the United States. They didn’t stick to easy places either. South Korean missionaries have been kicked out of Pakistan, kidnapped and killed in Yemen, and beheaded in Iraq. When Luke first asked his Korean friends for a Bible, they were too scared to give him one. “Come to our house, and you can read it here,” they told him. So every Friday he went. They started with the Gospel of John. Luke couldn’t understand it, but his heart got caught on John 10:10 – “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” In Farsi, that phrase is translated as, “I have come to give you eternal life.”

LUKE ANWARI: And the very first time I meet with my Korean friends, I went to that verse. I opened that, and I said, “I have a question. Explain to me what really this means. Like I’m really upset at that.” I said, “What does it mean to have eternal life?” They said, “If you believe in Jesus, you will have eternal life.” I said, “You will not die?” They said, “No.” I said, “How not die? Like where is your parents? Look at the graveyard, still has crosses on top of that, all these people are not dead.” They said that, “They’re dead bodily, but not – their spirit remains.” Like they said, “No. If you believe in Jesus, you will have eternal life, which means that your spirit will live forever. Your spirit will not experience hell or separation from God.” 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Intrigued, Luke decided to read the whole Bible. It took him two years. By the end, he was a believer – but he couldn’t tell anybody. The few times he tried to mention something to his friends, they told him to “Be quiet. Don’t talk to us about that. It’s crazy. It’s dangerous.” But he did tell one person. Before Luke was born, he was engaged to Sarah, a girl who also wasn’t yet born. Their grandparents were from the same village, and their fathers were friends. When their mothers became pregnant, their fathers decided that if the genders worked out – one boy and one girl – they’d cement their families’ long friendships with a marriage. Sarah also knew how to hide from air raids and what it was like to grieve loved ones killed by rockets. But unlike Luke, she had a huge gap in her education. The years the Taliban had been in charge, she’d had to stay home from school. Sarah was 17 and in eighth grade when she was formally engaged to Luke. They didn’t know each other well, but at their engagement party he did confess to her that he was a Christian. She had no idea what that was, so she told him it was okay. After they got married, she noticed he wasn’t praying at the mosque with the other men and so she asked him about it and he gave her a children’s Bible.

SARAH ANWARI: Can I read this one? I really like this story. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Yeah. 

SARAH ANWARI: And I said, “I love this story.” I really wanted to read. And I said, “Okay.” But he tell me, “Okay, after it, we have to read very secretly.”

SARAH ZYLSTRA: They did read secretly in their bedroom in his parents’ house. After the children’s Bible, they began reading the full Bible together. It was both confusing and lovely to her. She was living in a family in a culture that was Muslim, and she could see a difference in Luke. She could also see a difference in his friends. As you can imagine, it was tricky for Luke to get Christian friends. In his province of almost a million people, he was the only believer he knew. Even under the U.S. funded government, conversion was not allowed, and so he looked for foreigners. When a friend told him about three foreigners who prayed before they ate food, he knew he needed to meet them. The guys were on a humanitarian mission and had begun working at the hospital where Luke, now a radiologist, was taking x-rays. He was scared to tell them he was a believer, and when he did, they were scared to hear it. They checked with his South Korean friend to make sure he was telling the truth. Their fear was well-founded. Within the year, the secret police told the humanitarian workers to stop talking to people about Jesus, and they asked so many questions about Luke that his boss told him he would have to resign. But by then, Luke and the foreigners had built a friendship, reading the Bible and praying together and showing Sarah what Christian love looked like. That helped to convince her of the truth of Christianity. When the family began asking Sarah why she wasn’t praying in the mosque, she told them she was praying in the privacy of her room. She didn’t tell them she was praying to Jesus. 

SARAH ANWARI: Really feel like the lightness. I come from dark place to the light place. Before I’m really in the dark place. I dunno…

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Luke’s friends connected him with a Christian from Bangladesh, who connected him to a mission organization. He and Sarah did discipleship training for a few months in India, and they came back bolder. 

LUKE ANWARI: But I, I want to share my faith with others. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Right.

LUKE ANWARI: I don’t know how. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Right.

LUKE ANWARI: So then I learned about mission. I learned about, you know, how to share your faith. So really, like, it’s like a whole different chapter. And I said, “This is what I am going to do the rest of my life. This is what I want to do.”

SARAH ZYLSTRA: The timing couldn’t have been better. In 2010, Christianity was bubbling just a bit in Afghanistan. For example, a city that had one or two believers in 2005 had 15 believers in 2010. You could find Afghan Christians now if you were careful, and a small network was beginning to connect. One new believer was named Ramazan. He’d grown up in a Muslim family, and he was precocious. By the time he was 15, he had memorized 10 chapters of the Quran and was preaching in the mosque. He was also reading philosophers – Kant and Descarte and Sartre. Those thinkers stumped Ramazan on this question – if God created everything, who created God? Without a good answer, he gave up on Islam, but he couldn’t stop the longing in his heart for God. He’d heard about Jesus, and once – in a desperate situation, out of gas and far from home – he prayed to Jesus for help. He switched on the motor and miraculously made it another 25 kilometers. He told Jesus, “I am your soldier.” For the next two years, Ramazan looked for a Bible, finally finding one through some Americans. Immediately he took it home and shared the gospel with his friends and his family. Within a few years, he’d watched 12 people accept Christ. 

Around the same time, a young Muslim named Ramat went to visit his brother in India. Both their grandfather and their father were Mullahs – leaders in the mosque – but Ramat’s brother told him he’d converted to Christianity while watching God TV on a trip to Saudi Arabia. Ramat was livid, attacking his brother with both his fists and his words. After he calmed down, his brother told him to try reading the New Testament. And because Ramat was the younger brother, he did. By his second time through, he was hooked. Ramat didn’t know any believers in Afghanistan, so he spent a few years outside the country. He felt called back in 2010, just as Christianity was starting to attract some attention. The problem was the attention wasn’t good. In the summer of 2010, a television station aired the baptism of some Christian converts. The reaction was intense. In two cities, hundreds rallied against Christianity, and several lawmakers said publicly that those who converted should be executed. The government intensified its search for believers. In August, they found Luke and Sarah.

Luke knows how it happened. A Christian friend introduced him to a guy who was asking weird questions, like if he could get a hundred Bibles. 12 hours later, the police showed up – a lot of police, 50 to 60 officers from the Afghan intelligence service, from the prosecution department, from the anti-terrorism units.

LUKE ANWARI: And, and then they just raid our home. They said, “We know everything about you.” They just right away come to my bedroom and, and handcuff me on the back, and they – “sorry. Our kids are sleeping.” They are, they are sorry… (unclear)

SARAH ZYLSTRA: They asked if Luke was a Christian. He said yes. They asked where his Bibles were. He showed them. When they dragged him out of the house to the car, he could see the neighbors gathered around, could hear them cursing him and wishing they’d known he was an apostate so they could have burned him alive. 

LUKE ANWARI: But those things we expected. We then – when, when we, we knew that when we are arrested, when we are find out we are believers, we knew that people are not gonna be kind to us. There’s gonna be worse punishment to that. So we, we were not surprised by anything they would say or police would say. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Staring down the barrel of a gun, Sarah didn’t know what to do. When her daughter started crying, the woman accompanying the police – to make sure they weren’t alone with a woman – told them they’d have to leave the room so she could feed the child. After they were gone, she advised Sarah to play dumb – “Tell them you don’t know anything.” Sarah did and the police let her go, but Luke and one of his Christian friends were taken to the police station and then to the Afghan intelligence service because their crime – provoking differences between religions – was against national security. There was a lot of evidence against them – Bibles and books – but the most evidence was on Luke’s laptop, where he had documents and emails that would lead to other Christians. But God works even through corruption. Before Luke’s laptop could be processed, someone in the Afghan law enforcement stole it. No other Christians were arrested. Instead, for the next month, Luke and his friend were kept with dangerous prisoners – many of them Taliban extremists.

NEWS CLIPS: Pastor Terry Jones joins us now from Gainesville. Also with us from Orlando is Imam Muhammad Musri… He was going to burn the Korans…

SARAH ZYLSTRA: At that time, an American pastor named Terry Jones announced that he was going to burn the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11. The anti-Christian fervor in Afghanistan whipped up, with thousands taking to the streets. Inside the prison, Luke’s fellow inmates reasoned that if they killed him and his friend they would be rewarded by going to heaven. Only tribal warfare among the prisoners kept Luke and his friend breathing. The guards also tortured and questioned Luke and his friend – “Who else is a Christian? Where are you getting your money? Who’s persuading you to do this?” The hardest part was seven days in solitary confinement in a room too small to even lay down in. 

LUKE ANWARI: A small little window. You have to, like, jump, and then you will see the sky. Small cell. There’s nothing, no pillows, nothing. Very hard carpet there, and there’s absolutely nothing. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: How did you get through that? 

LUKE ANWARI: They just beat you and slap you and you have, like, a two times bathroom break for one minute in the morning and one minute in the evening. During the day, there’s nothing. Like, you just manage yourself.

SARAH ZYLSTRA: The physical pain from attacks by both the guards and the other prisoners lasted for weeks. Later, when Luke and his friend got out, they would need immediate medical care. The thing is – it wouldn’t have been hard for Luke to leave. All he needed to do was to come back to Islam. Honestly, it was tempting.

LUKE ANWARI: One, one, one day I said, “I’m gonna just get out of that.” I was worried about my family, about my girls – two year old and one year old – but I did not wanted them to be raised by a Muslim family. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Mm-hmm. 

LUKE ANWARI: And that was difficult. So, so then I’m gonna go and tell them. But then I, you know, kind of reviewing back to what happened into my life – how did I become a Christian? Because maybe they are right. Maybe it’s a coincidence.

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Right.

LUKE ANWARI: Maybe it’s not the truth. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Luke went back and reviewed everything in his mind. He had gone looking for God. He had asked to read the Bible. He had decided to follow Jesus. He had been called and directed by the Holy Spirit certainly. But he hadn’t been persuaded by anybody else.

LUKE ANWARI: That’s between me and God.

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Yeah. 

LUKE ANWARI: Whether it’s totally truth or totally lie, but it’s not – nobody persuaded me, and I’m not persuaded because of anything. This is not giving me asylum. This is not giving me any monetary benefits, nothing. So I know myself that, that I did not make this decision based on those things.

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Luke signed a confession written by his captors. It said he had left Islam and converted to Christianity. He was proud of that decision, and he didn’t regret it. His jailers were thrilled, confident he’d just written his own death sentence, but it also helped Luke settle into the peace of God’s presence. He shared the gospel with the guys around him. He was about to die, so why not? He answered questions explaining that, no, Christians and Jews aren’t responsible for all of the evil in the world. And yes, Christian parents do love their children. With every moment that God was with him, he grew more and more confident in his faith. And then one day, Luke and his friend were moved to the capital city. As soon as they got off the plane, their guards took off their handcuffs and told ’em they were free. Luke didn’t believe that for a minute. Maybe the guards were going to shoot them as soon as they walked away. Maybe they were going to follow them to some other believers and arrest everybody. Luke and his friend did not know what to do. Like characters in an action movie, they left the airport, jumped onto a taxi, rode for a while, got out, and jumped onto a bus going a different direction. They wandered around the streets this way and that until they were lost. They cut their long beards, bought new clothes, put on scarves and sunglasses. Finally, Luke called some of his foreign friends to ask for help. “Tell us some of the things that we did together,” they said, to verify that it was him. And then they connected him to Christian aid workers who could help. Days later, when his body was rested and beginning to heal, Luke went to get Sarah and the girls, who’d been bouncing between his parents and hers. Seeing Luke’s arrest on TV was the first time anyone in their families even heard of this Christianity, and nobody was happy about it. Luke’s family suspected Sarah had turned him in, and they would barely speak to her. Sarah’s family suggested a divorce so that she could marry again. The neighbors warned that somebody needed to take the kids away from both of them. After Luke was freed, everybody tried to keep him away from Sarah. She was locked in her room, told if she saw him again, she would be erased from the family. Finally, after a lot of arguing, her father brought her to Luke’s house. And here’s what she told Luke.

SARAH ANWARI: And where you gonna go, I’m gonna go with you. I’m not stay here anymore. Which is – I say, “Even in America, if you going to America, I’m not stay here anymore.” 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Yeah. 

SARAH ANWARI: He said, “Okay, you can pack your stuff,” when we don’t know where are we gonna go.

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Early in the morning, they ran away to Kabul. They stayed three months, too scared of another arrest to even sleep at night. Then they fled to Pakistan for a few months, where they connected with a mission organization for more discipleship training. When the police picked up two of their colleagues, they had to make a midnight escape. They stayed with a friend for a few weeks and then moved back to Afghanistan. Coming back was like a fresh start, but to an odd, unstable life. Luke and Sarah would settle into a city, where Luke would work a day job in finance or construction or whatever he could get, and they would find believers to pray with. At this point, they knew about 65 other Christians. 

LUKE ANWARI: Every night after 10:00, every one of them one by one come to our apartment and then we will sit down and pray for two, three hours until midnight. They, we, nobody is getting out. We’re not showing our faces. All of us have been in prison. At this point we don’t know what we will do, but we are just sitting and praying and reading the Bible and praying. And then…

SARAH ZYLSTRA: When they had time, four or five guys would buy some Coca-Cola and then drive around the city or head to a public park to read the Bible and pray. “We drank a lot of Coke,” Luke said. The group grew to 100 and then 120. Every few months, Luke would run into trouble – for example, a call from the Taliban threatening to bomb his home. Luke and Sarah started keeping a suitcase packed with some extra clothes and some food in case they needed to run immediately. If they had a little more time, they could pack the whole house. Sarah got so good at it she can box everything up in two days. In four years, they moved 11 times, and their network of Christian friends grew to 450. In November, 2014, Luke was out of town and missed a meeting with some fellow believers. It saved his life. Armed Taliban insurgents, including a suicide bomber, showed up. They shot dead a South African Christian, his two children, and an Afghan believer, and then they set the place on fire. It was the third attack on a foreign guest house in 10 days, and it put a lot of pressure on the government. The police chief resigned. The Taliban spokesperson said, “Hey, we were just trying to kill the Christians.” The government knew who was supposed to be in the meeting, and they called Luke to come in for questioning. Luke and Sarah’s friends told them to “get out of here.” It’s not hard to get a tourist visa to the UAE, so that’s what Luke and Sarah did.

JESSE EUBANKS: Now that Luke and Sarah have a tourist visa, what will life be like in the UAE? Will they ever get back to Afghanistan? We’ll get back to their story after the break. Stay with us.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. Jesse Eubanks. We’ve been listening to the story of Luke and Sarah from The Gospel Coalition‘s podcast, Recorded. Luke and Sarah are Afghan Christians who have just narrowly avoided a Taliban attack and a suicide bomber. After Luke is investigated by the government, they have no choice but to leave Afghanistan, and now they’re headed to the United Arab Emirates. That’s where we’ll pick up.

SARAH ZYLSTRA: You can fly from Kabul to Dubai in three hours, but the two Muslim countries feel like they’re from completely different planets. Afghanistan is seriously Muslim and seriously poor. Its history is full of conflict and disarray. The UAE, on the other hand, is modern, progressive, and fabulously wealthy. In downtown Dubai, you won’t see a piece of litter, a weed in the imported flower beds, or a pothole on the streets. The malls and the beaches are huge, clean, and packed with people. The vast majority of Emirati wealth comes from oil, but the economy is also expanding into tourism and international finance, both of which work better if you aren’t Islamic fundamentalists. For example, in December, the government suddenly announced that the Friday-Saturday weekend – built around the Muslim Holy Day of Friday – would be switching to a Saturday-Sunday weekend to match the West, with a half day off on Friday for anyone who wanted to go to afternoon prayers. The UAE has always been relaxed about religious freedom for foreigners. That’s why, back in 1972, missionaries and Christian oilmen were able to start the United Christian Church of Dubai. The evangelical church has grown to about 600 Christians who hail from all over the globe. About 15 years ago, they called a pastor named John Fullmer, who had come to faith at Capitol Hill Baptist Church and been discipled by Pastor Mark Dever. Through the missionary connection from years before, John met Luke.

JOHN FULLMER: Over time, we came to recognize this guy needs to be in our pastoral internship program. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: I’m sitting in John’s office listening to him and Associate Pastor John Welkner, who oversees the pastoral internship program. Shortly after he landed in the UAE, Luke did start the program. It took a while though before leaders realized what else Luke was doing.

JOHN FULLMER: Only slowly did we come to realize that Luke was orchestrating a parallel ministry back in Afghanistan, and he would tell us about phone calls he was having or decisions he had to make. And yeah, we, we slowly came to realize that he was orchestrating dozens of relationships and house church leaders. These were guys he had been in partnership with in Afghanistan before he had had to leave. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Most interns don’t come with an already established network of house churches, but Luke’s a natural leader. In fact, John compared Luke’s unofficial influence in the Afghan church to that of a bishop. And now Luke was being exposed to Reformed theology for the first time.

LUKE ANWARI: This is where I was exposed to the expository preaching, healthy churches, the material, the resource, and I was like, “This is what we need, and this is like what really we need for Afghanistan.” Because at this point, like, I have different experience of church and things like that, which is like my perspective come more from like a missionary perspective of the church, but not really like how the church looked like.

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Luke loved everything he was learning. In February 2015, only weeks after he started at UCCD, the interns attended a Simeon Trust workshop, which aims to teach participants to rightly handle God’s Word. Luke could hardly wrap his mind around what he was learning about expositional preaching, that the text – not topics – should drive the sermons and that the Old Testament stories point to Christ. He emailed several Christian friends in Afghanistan, Ramat and Ramazan and three others, and said, “Guys, can you get to India for a few days?” Then he translated the Simeon Trust questions into his language, Dari. He flew to India and held his own workshop. The guys went through Ephesians and practiced expository preaching to each other. The rest of his internship, Luke kept feeding what he was learning back to his Afghan network. Afterward, he began working with a UCCD church plant about an hour north of Dubai in the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah. There, he and Pastor Josh Manley started hosting Afghan pastors – some, like Ramat, for a week of intense Bible training, some, like Ramazan, for a nine-month internship.

JOSH MANLEY: I mean, those were really sweet times, and you knew that you were kind of with people that would be in a first generation house church in a very tough country. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: That’s Josh Manley. I wanna take a minute to tell you about him and his wife Jenny because they play a critical role in this unfolding story. Both were born in Mississippi, and both grew up loving politics. They met their first day working in the U.S. Senate in 2001, and they spent the next 10 years working their way up – Jenny to Chief of Staff for Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran and Josh to a staff position on the appropriations committee.

JOSH MANLEY: Loved our years in the Senate, wouldn’t trade ’em for anything, but the church was far and away, uh, the most formative thing the Lord was doing in our lives spiritually. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: The church was Capitol Hill Baptist, pastored by Mark Dever, the same pastor who had discipled John Fullmer, then a Washington attorney, and showed him the beauty of ministry. Seven years later, Josh and Jenny followed John’s trajectory – Washington D.C. to seminary to the UAE. Josh’s church plant was two years old when Luke showed up and started flying in interns. 

JOSH MANLEY: I was certainly struck by their hunger to learn, but yeah, just a hunger to, to know the Word, to, to understand different parts of it, and a commitment to do these were honestly – uh, there would be six hour days. Six, seven hour days. And they…

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Josh and John taught the men biblical and systematic theology. Section by section, they went through the Bible, the Torah, historical books, wisdom literature, prophets, gospels, letters. The group wasn’t huge, around 15 or 20 guys on each trip. They called themselves the Afghan House Church Network, and they got right to work. They translated the 900 pages of Wayne Grudem’s Bible Doctrine, Paul Washer’s three book series on recovering the gospel, and every book Greg Gilbert has ever written. They started a website and have posted about 200 translated articles. They created Bible reading plans for YouVersion. They started a podcast, answering questions like – “What is the Bible? What is the church? What is baptism?” These were bold moves, given that everybody but Luke still lived in a country where converting to Christianity meant punishment by confiscation of property, imprisonment, or death. And then the guys started talking about making an even more obvious stand for Christ. On every Afghan identity card is a line for religion – “Islam” or “Other.” The card is electronic, so when it gets scanned, more information about you pops up. And that’s where it shows what “other” means for you – if you’re Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Christian. A few years ago, the Afghan House Church Network started talking about changing their IDs.

LUKE ANWARI: And so that’s the number of people they gathered and they prayed about it and they thought we were doing that but just because we wanna, you know, honor God and we want to have this for our kids because in the future – for their marriage, for their education, everything – if their ID says Islam, then they have to go through the education.

SARAH ZYLSTRA: By the summer of 2021, after years of thinking and praying, Ramat and Ramazan and some others were ready to make the change. But on top of the normal consequences for conversion – they had seen what had happened to Luke – there was now an added complication. In April, President Biden announced he’d be pulling out the last of the American troops.

LUKE ANWARI: May, and we know that this is gonna come. We know the Taliban are gonna come, especially the troops moving forward. It’s getting tense. We might lose some provinces, but nobody thought that Kabul would fall that, that fast. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: In their Zoom meetings that summer, Luke talked with the Afghan Christian leaders about getting them out of Afghanistan. They knew that even if the Taliban didn’t take over, the government would be harsher without the NATO presence. They figured they could get some of the more prominent guys into the UAE for internships and after that they could take stock of their next move. And then they talked about the decision to change their IDs.

LUKE ANWARI: I was like, you know, “Are you guys sure that this is really what you want to do?” They said, “No, we have no problem with that.” So we…

SARAH ZYLSTRA: It seems like they were looking at a closing window. If they moved before the Americans left, there was a better chance they could safely change their IDs. If they waited, they might not ever get another shot to do it. Ramat and Ramazan went first, along with their wives and children. They had no problems. “You sure you wanna do this?” the officials asked. “Yes? Okay, then.” 

JOHN FULLMER: It is a strange mystery, a providence of God that that happened. And, you know, was it because the government was distracted and not, and didn’t care, you know, that this, that this happened? But yes, that officially happened. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Emboldened, other Christians got in line. Around 120 people safely changed their IDs. 40 more were in the pipeline. It felt like a miracle. Everyone was elated at how smoothly things were going. And then – August.

NEWS CLIPS: Humanitarian crisis now unfolding. Children on the edge of starvation. A two year old weighing just 11 pounds. And with the Taliban now in control, ISIS is now taking aim… 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: There weren’t a lot of NATO troops left in Afghanistan in early 2021 – less than 10,000. By the end of May, only American troops were left – and only 2,500 of them. As the U.S. moved out, the Taliban began moving in, grabbing control of more and more rural areas. By the middle of June, U.S. intelligence had revised its estimates – “It won’t take two years for the Taliban to take over after we leave. It might only take six months.” On August 6, three weeks before the deadline for American troop withdrawal, the first provincial capital fell to the Taliban.

LUKE ANWARI: Turn on the TV from my hometown. It’s 3 or 3:30. All of a sudden, the TV stops. There’s no broadcasting. And I pulled the phone and I called, called my uncle and I said, “Is it, everything is okay?” He said, “No, Taliban – right now our area where our, our homes are, it’s under Taliban. And the fighting is like, you know, a few streets over there and you could hear the shooting that’s going off and the TV went off. It’s because Taliban captured that area. So the, all the, all the, um, staff from the TV station, they, they flee. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: As soon as he hung up, Luke’s phone started to ring again. He could track the Taliban’s advance in phone calls. As the fighters moved through each area, believers there called him. “What should we do? Where should we go?” He told them all the same thing – “Run.” Almost everybody ran because Taliban soldiers are their own judge and executioner. There’s no due process or human rights. If a Talib thinks you’ve sinned and kills you, there are no repercussions. Afghans knew this, and they ran. 

LUKE ANWARI: A lot of the people run from this provinces. They went to Kabul. You know, we have to find house for them. We have to send money for them. Western Union is not working. Banks doesn’t have enough money. ATMs are not working. And it’s like the (unclear) the desperate, you know, like hundreds of desperate families around that they’re fleeing to the next city and to next city and to next city and trying to figure out a way out. There is nothing. There’s no way that you can live. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Luke got busy arranging safe houses, calling to see who could host how many and for how long. When someone panicked that their daughters were at work and not dressed to the Taliban dress code, Luke sent his uncle over with Burkas. He texted all the church leaders – “Get rid of your Bibles, hide your books, delete your materials.” As the provincial capitals fell – the first on August 6, the second on August 7, the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth on August 8 – everybody was heading for Kabul. The U.S. troops were there. The seat of the government was there. It couldn’t fall, at least not right away. 

LUKE ANWARI: Then the leaders understood that this is not something that’s coming probably three months maximum to get to Kabul. At that point, there was only way to get a, a visa option was to apply for a visa for Pakistan and that would take about a month to get a visa because they have to wait that long on the embassy to get that and it’s because there was no flight options. So we booked flight for them for August 24. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: August 24 would be too late. 

Ramat lives in Kabul. On August 15, he was sitting in his home office around 10:00 in the morning when a church member showed up. “Let’s go,” the visitor said. “The Taliban have arrived.” “Are you kidding me?” Ramat asked. “I’m not,” the church member said. “Let’s move.” Ramat called Luke. “The Taliban are here in Kabul,” he said. “That can’t be,” Luke told him. “I can hear them shooting,” Ramat said. “They are here right now.” Luke told him – “Run.”

Ramazan was also in Kabul. Leaders from his church came to his house too. They helped him destroy his documents. They erased his flash drives. They deleted even his wedding photos. He’d married a beautiful Christian convert named Shamzia. He said he couldn’t bring himself to burn the books, so they put them out on the street where people were looting – who knows, maybe somebody would take them home and read them. A few hours later, a Muslim relative came to Ramazan’s place searching for him. We don’t know why, but we can’t assume it was to be helpful. Maybe it was to warn him, but it might have been to turn him in or to loot his things or to take away his wife and children. But by that time, nobody was home. With passports, a laptop, and a change of clothes, Ramazan, his wife Shamzia, and their children were gone. 

Joe Biden wanted the American withdrawal to be done responsibly, deliberately, and safely. Instead, the world watched panic Afghans swarming the tarmac of the Kabul airport and hanging off the fuselages of departing jets. “Miscue After Miscue, U.S. Exit Plan Unravels,” the New York Times reported. “Chaotic Afghanistan Pullout Caps Two Decades of Missteps,” the Wall Street Journal agreed. The Atlantic called it “Joe Biden’s Saigon.” There were undeniable parallels. As the Taliban rolled in, American commandos were breaking hard drives and burning papers. The U.S. knew it had to evacuate Afghans, especially those who had endangered themselves by working for the Americans, but the average wait time for an Afghan to get a special immigrant visa to America was four years. On August 2, the Biden administration announced a priority refugee program, but it didn’t actually have staff or a process. And anyway, all of the embassies in Kabul were shutting down, their staff heading for the airport. There was no way out. In the end, the American government would leave close to a hundred Americans and at least 62,000 endangered Afghan interpreters and others behind.

America’s military disaster wasn’t a secret. As it became clear that the government was unprepared to handle evacuations, private rescue operations kicked into gear – Army veterans, nonprofit employees, defense contractors, regular people. Anybody who knew anybody in Afghanistan, it seemed, was trying to help. The problem was very few people actually know how to evacuate refugees from an unstable Islamic fundamentalist state. In the UAE, Josh and Jenny were praying and watching the attempts to help, but they were seeing gaps – basic paperwork that hadn’t been filled out, boxes that hadn’t been checked. With their backgrounds, it seemed like they should be able to do something, so they made some phone calls. One of those calls was to their friend Jess, who worked in D.C. As it happened, the next week she was heading their way, spending some vacation time with them in the UAE. One night when she was there, Jess and Jenny drove over to Luke and Sarah’s place.

JENNY MANLEY: We just drove down to Ajman, and we were like, “We’re gonna all sit in a room together. We’re gonna call the people that we know. You’re gonna call the people – let’s just see what can happen.” And we stayed up 24 hours and called, you know, people in D.C., called people that worked for the U.S. government who were at the airport, called, I mean, everybody we could, and Luke was calling. We were trying to connect all these people.

SARAH ZYLSTRA: It worked. Luke, Jess, and Jenny were able to connect 18 believers, some of them in Luke’s family, to U.S. troops. On August 28, the Afghans boarded an American military plane in Kabul. Luke, Jess, and Jenny tracked their flight radar the entire three hours to Doha, where they were taken to an American military base. “Okay,” the UAE team thought. “We can do this.” Next up – Ramazan and Ramat, who, along with 20 other Christians, were waiting outside the airport walls. Kabul only has one airport, built by the Soviets back in 1960. Over the past 20 years, it’s served as a military base for NATO, the Americans, and the Afghan national forces, as well as a place to catch a commercial flight to, say, India or Turkey. When the Taliban entered Kabul on August 15, the Afghan national forces immediately fled, handing the airport over to NATO. Maybe you’ve seen the pictures or the videos. The place was a frantic mess. People were swarming all over the jet bridges, the planes, the runways. The perimeter was lined with troops facing hundreds of people desperate to escape. Two of those people were Ramat and Ramazan.

JOSH MANLEY: The, the group had gone to the airport. They went twice. And the first time that they went, they stayed there for days and nights, just living outside, trying to get in. It was terrible conditions. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Ramat and Ramazan were sending their GPS coordinates to Luke every hour. Josh, Jenny, Jess, and Luke were working every angle they could think of. The situation at the airport was hellish, crowded, and confusing with no water, no food, no bathrooms, sporadic gunfire, and a suicide bomber. The kids – there were five under five – got dehydrated. 

JOSH MANLEY: You know, obviously that, that kind of, I think, stress and tension went on for the entire time that the U.S. was still in the country. Until the last plane left, there was always a hope that they could get on another flight. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: It was Josh’s job to call Ramat and Ramazan and to tell them that the last flight had left. 

JOSH MANLEY: The night that we pulled out of Afghanistan completely when the, the ambassador left and calling them and honestly just in tears telling that we love ’em and honestly just saying how much we respect them and their faith and what amazing fathers and husbands and ways they’ve led their children and their wives, uh, through this debacle. And then say, “We’re not gonna quit, you know. We’re gonna, we’re gonna try our best now. We’ll figure out…”

JESSE EUBANKS: After the break, we hear what happens to Ramat, Ramazan, and their families as they hide and wait out their Taliban pursuers. We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. Jesse Eubanks. So before the break, we heard that the Taliban had fully taken over Kabul. American troops and Afghan people were being evacuated as fast as possible by plane. Afghan Christians Ramat, Ramazan, and their families waited at the airport for days, but they missed all the planes, they are still stuck in Kabul, and that is where we’ll pick up.

SARAH ZYLSTRA: The Christians couldn’t go home, especially the leaders who had changed their identification, and so they went into hiding. They stayed with friends, in hotels, or in empty apartments. They moved often. The men grew beards and wrapped turbans on their heads. The women covered up. Everyone was grateful for COVID masks that hid their faces. It was terrifying. In one hotel, the Christians noticed Taliban fighters in the lobby.

JENNY MANLEY: And that was alarming, and then later they said there’s Taliban on their floor. And then, and then they had said they’re, they’re really all over this floor, the, this hotel – this is like a Taliban hotel, basically. They’re everywhere. And I remember them saying, “We know we, we might not make it,” and feeling the weight of that moment of – “I mean, is there really a possibility that our friends might not live through the night and this is the last time we’ll speak to them? And is this the last call they’ll have?” And feeling the weight of that moment of – “What do you say to someone who thinks they might could be martyred?”

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Jenny remembers her prayer for them – “Lord, if the Taliban come and start shooting, please let them kill everyone. Please don’t let them kill the men and take the women for their brides.” Over the following days, Jess in the U.S., Josh, Jenny, and Luke in the UAE, and the guys in Afghanistan traded ideas over text – “Is the border to Pakistan open? How about Uzbekistan? Is there any way to get a helicopter in?” They encouraged each other with song lyrics – “He Will Hold Me Fast,” “A Mighty Fortress,” “In Christ Alone” – and Bible verses – “We rejoice in our sufferings… He chose us in him before the foundation of the world… Some trust in horses and chariots, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” From the Christians in hiding, continually scared and bored and increasingly hopeless, the messages sometimes sounded discouraged – “We are all afraid. My daughter especially is afraid. All the doors are closed. All the ways are blocked. How long can we survive through escaping and hiding? Let’s give up.” On text, Josh and Jess and Jenny said the same things over and over – “No matter what, you are safely in the hands of our good and sovereign God. So many people around the world have prayed for you today. We love you.” Everybody’s nerves started fraying. Nobody was sleeping. The Afghans were terrified of a raid in the night. They were getting messages from those who knew they were Christians, some along the lines of, “We are hunting you” and others more like, “Watch out. The Taliban were here looking for you.” Josh, Jenny, and Luke spent their daytime hours coordinating with Afghanistan and their nights coordinating with Washington D.C. At this point, they were tracking about 60 Christian Afghan families in safe houses. All of them needed food, clothing, and to be moved every few days. The whole thing was costing about $10,000 a day. “The only hope is Jesus,” Ramazan texted. “Otherwise, we’d lose our hope and our minds.”

Realistic avenues for leaving gradually emerged. Army veterans, nonprofits, defense contractors, and interested donors were pooling their resources, making deals with airlines and governments to operate chartered flights into Afghanistan. Those flights were hard to get onto, but they were the best option. If you were on a flight, that meant you had a ticket, a passport, and somewhere to go. You were moving legally. A quicker, more certain path out was by land. For $600, you could buy a fake visa and a gate pass and make your way over the border to a country like Iran, Pakistan, or Uzbekistan. That meant you’d be out of Afghanistan. However, without official documentation, you’d also be a refugee with very limited options for your future, many of them dangerous. The Afghan Christians were constantly weighing their choices. Waiting for a legal route was better, but only if you didn’t get killed first. 

JENNY MANLEY: We had a solid option here and a solid option here and we’d have 90% of the way, but then there was something holding it back. So, you know, at one point we had a big whiteboard up that we were like, “Alright, option – here’s our, our first tier options and our second tier.” You know, and it was all going to different countries in different ways and some were crazy and, um, all because dear brothers and sisters in D.C. that jumped in and, um, just volunteered countless hours and trying to help in every way they could.

SARAH ZYLSTRA: It took three weeks for Luke, Jess, Josh, and Jenny to find Ramat and Ramazan and their friends a flight out. The whole time the Christians were moving to new safe houses, changing phone numbers, and smiling at the Taliban in hopes that they looked happy to see them. There was never enough information, nutrition, or good rest. New developments were rarely good. Someone was taking their picture or asking their name. There was gunfire outside. There were rumors that the Taliban was after anyone who spoke English. The Afghans worried more for their kids than for themselves. If they didn’t get out, what kind of future would they have? Already the kids were starting to get sick, and sometimes they had to spend a night in the hospital. After a while, they heard rumors of flights taking off from Mazar-i-Sharif. Figuring it was worth a shot, the group traveled by bus for 10 hours over broken roads, passing through 16 Taliban checkpoints. Once they arrived, there was good news and bad news. Their 22 names were on the flight manifests thanks to the folks in D.C., but each takeoff had to be negotiated with the Taliban. The cycle went like this – “We think the flights will go soon. Get ready. Nope, no flights today. Standby.” Finally, finally, it was time. The Christians scooted past the Taliban checkpoints, perhaps because they were given handwritten tickets instead of having to scan into the biometric system. They were boarding the plane when Ramazan sent a voice text. 

RAMAZAN AUDIO CLIP: They stopped Zahir and his family. They said it’s copy. His, his paper – it’s copy. His name is not, not in the list. I don’t know. What should we do? Right now they are going to check somehow, and, uh, yeah, please do pray about that. I don’t know what’s going on.

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Messages started flying back and forth – “Who didn’t get on the plane? Zahir? He had a boarding pass, right? Did he make it through security? Was his name on the flight manifest?” There was nothing to do but pray. Zahir was from the Mazar area and known for his faith. Perhaps he looked familiar to the Taliban. In any case, during some confusion over the spelling of his name, an airline worker told him to run onto the plane. He did. “Is Zahir on the plane?” Josh texted. “Yes,” texted Ramat. “Hallelujah,” Josh sent back. He used seven exclamation points. “Praise God. We love you so much,” Jess added. “The plane is taking off now,” Ramat wrote. And then, a few hours later – “We just got to Doha.”

RAMAZAN AUDIO CLIP: All this moments, every seconds he was with us. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: That’s Ramazan talking to me a few weeks later from an army base in New Mexico. 

RAMAZAN AUDIO CLIP: I was thinking about Matthew 14 when Jesus asked his disciples to go to other side of, of the sea. In the middle of the sea, there was a storm, there was darkness, there was fear, and they thought, “We’re gonna die.” But Jesus was walking right in that time, right in that moment, in the, in the middle of that, that darkness, in the middle of that difficulties. I was, during this two months, I was thinking the same thing – “Where is God?” But immediately I was, I was thinking in that part of, of, uh, about that part of the gospel, of the, of (unclear) God is here, but focus on, on Jesus, not in difficulties. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Josh and Jenny were elated at the happy ending. They invited Luke and Sarah over for a celebration. But the whole time, Luke’s phone was going off.

JENNY MANLEY: He’s taking all these calls from these desperate believers in Afghanistan and he’s taking calls from people from the West who have money that wanna help fund it and everybody’s coming to him saying, “Help me. Connect me.” 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: So Jenny, who had always wondered why she’d spent that long season in D.C. before moving overseas for ministry, went back to her whiteboard and Excel spreadsheet and phone calls. So far, she and Luke have helped to coordinate the escape of at least 40 Afghans to the U.S., 50 to Tajikistan, 80 so far to Brazil, 120 to the UAE, and 200 to Iran. But there are still hundreds trapped in Afghanistan, including some who have changed their ID to Christian. They are her highest priority. Every year, Open Doors, which is a group that keeps an eye on Christian persecution around the globe, puts out a list of the hardest places to be a Christian. For the last 20 years, it has been North Korea – and honestly, I thought it always would be. But this January, Afghanistan knocked North Korea out of first place because, now in Afghanistan, Christians are enemies of the state. Not only can they be banned from shopping or medical care, but they can be killed without due process. To those of us outside the country, it can seem as if God abandoned Afghanistan altogether. The Islamic fighters moved in with imprisonments, beatings, and killings. Women were shrouded and sent back home. Today, most girls can only attend school through sixth grade, and only a handful of women have been able to go to work. Women can’t take a long journey without a male relative or appear in public without being covered. Those who protest sometimes disappear. The economy is also collapsing after the removal of the foreign aid that was propping it up. The educated continue to flee the country, there are few jobs, and those who work for the government haven’t been paid. At the same time, there is a drought, and wheat and flour prices have skyrocketed 50% over the last six months. That means that on the heels of the economic crisis is a humanitarian one. Already, children are dying of malnutrition. There are stories of families trading children for food. Afghans who have protested the Taliban, even just suggesting on Facebook that the government should pay teachers and other civil servants, have been beaten, arrested, or killed. And remember that Taliban spokesperson who claimed responsibility for the murder of the South African family? He’s now the Deputy Minister of Information and Culture. The little flame of Christianity seems to be nearly extinguished. Luke estimates there were between 8,000 to 10,000 Christians in Afghanistan before August. It’s impossible to know how many are left or how many will be left in a few years, certainly fewer and most certainly have to be quieter than they were. But don’t think for a minute that God isn’t at work. 

RAMAT AUDIO CLIP: Honestly, from the very beginning till now, I could see his, his hand, his presence, his miracle with us. I really believe. I really see. Before I was born, God made this day for us to be here. That’s why we are here. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: That’s Ramat. He and the other Afghan house church leaders are now scattered across a handful of countries, but they’re still connected and they’re still busy writing and podcasting good theology, now with much more freedom. Luke built a Nine Marks page in Dari. Shamzia did a Simeon Trust workshop in Nashville with Nancy Guthrie. Others are plugging in at local churches. Already, Ramat is teaching a class at his church in Dari for other Afghan refugees. Some are even eyeing seminary. And suddenly, what seemed impossible a year ago – that any of these Afghan church leaders would ever be able to get more than a few months of training with Josh and John in the UAE – is not only possible but probable. These days, Ramat and his family live in Louisville, where he’s part of Emmanuel Baptist Church. Ramazan lives around the corner. He goes to Third Avenue Baptist, where his pastor is Greg Gilbert. Ramazan has all of his books. And there’s more.

LUKE ANWARI: It’s toward January we start seeing a lot of Afghans inside Afghanistan that are interested in the gospel, including many of my family members who call, who contact. This is how we find out. We just send them the link to read the Bible. 

SARAH ZYLSTRA: Luke’s social media platforms are lighting up with messages, hundreds of them from people in Afghanistan with spiritual questions – “Where is God? Does God exist? Is he good or not?” 

LUKE ANWARI: Looking back to three months from January or four months from January that I was very discouraged, very disappointed to what the church is gone, is that, no, it’s not gone. God is there. God’s presence is there. His spirit is at work there. We don’t know how God will use this story for his kingdom, for his glory, but definitely our work is not done in Afghanistan.

SARAH ZYLSTRA: It’s not done in Louisville either or in Brazil or in the UAE. In one sense, the Afghan church has just sent out hundreds of missionaries, all of whom came to faith in the most unlikely of circumstances, endured tremendous persecution, and watched God perform an amazing rescue. 

JOSH MANLEY: That’s – it’s a, it’s a glorious story because these brothers and sisters held to their faith, they were faithful, they were going to be faithful until the end, they were willing to pay the highest cost, and the Lord rescued them, and it’s absolutely glorious. The Lord did what he has done many times over for his people. And this story – I mean, obviously we’ll know the full ramifications of it in eternity – but it’s been such a privilege to see what the Lord’s done.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Special thanks to The Gospel Coalition and the Afghan House Church Network for sharing the stories that you heard today. Recorded is part of The Gospel Coalition‘s podcast network. It’s written by Sarah Zylstra and produced by Josh Diaz. Their media director is Brannon McAllister. Editor-in-chief is Collin Hansen. Find more podcasts from The Gospel Coalition at tgc.org/podcast.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Our senior producer and host is me, Jesse Eubanks. Anna Tran is our media director and producer. If you want a hands-on experience of missions in our modern times, come serve with Love Thy Neighborhood. We offer internships for young adults ages 18 to 30 through the areas of service, community, and discipleship. You’ll grow in your faith and your life skills. Learn more at lovethyneighborhood.org. Which of these was a neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, “Go, and do likewise.”