Let My People Go!

“Let My people go“ (Exodus 8:1). A few days ago, Rev. Dr. Gottfried Martens of Trinity Lutheran Church (SELK) in Berlin-Steglitz and some thirty members of their Persian young adult group traveled to Hamburg on their annual field trip. This busload was only a fraction of that church’s young adult group that is about one hundred strong. After a tour of sister church Trinity Hamburg given by Rev. Andreas Rehr, the young people enjoyed a tasty pasta lunch to which I was also invited. The delicious meal was prepared by Pastor Rehr’s wife Sigrid. I sat next to an Iranian in his early 20s who is studying vet medicine and has a side job as a bouncer in a Berlin dance club, as he shared. Enjoying our macaroni garnished with freshly grated cheese, I mentioned that there was once a time when their bus would have had to pass through two rigorous border checks (from West Berlin to East Germany, and then again from East to West Germany) to get to Hamburg (something I experienced several times back in the day). People in the German Democratic Republic were basically convicts, I explained, surrounded by 13-foot walls topped with barbed wire, and prevented from escaping by cold-blooded soldiers armed with AK-47s. Most East Germans opposed the Communist regime that subjugated them. My Iranian friend offered a modern-day comparison: the predicament of his fellow Iranians (of whom as many as 1/3 are secretly Christian!), the vast majority of whom oppose the cruel Islamists who took control of their country in 1979. There are indeed many similarities between extinct East Germany and today’s Iran. But could there be another parallel? East Berlin’s cruel regime collapsed one night almost 35 years ago—without a single shot being fired. With things perhaps coming to a climax in Iran in the coming days and weeks, let us pray that God might sweep away Tehran’s barbarous regime as painlessly and bloodlessly as He did East Berlin’s government so that His people in Iran would be liberated and Christianity might blossom throughout Persia.