The Great Smoky Mountain Journal
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Posted: Tuesday, January 01, 2019 02:22 PM
Iranian Muslim Convert Changing Muslim's Lives With The Gospel Of Jesus
Parsan, a convert from Islam to Christianity and mother of two, has emerged as one of the most prominent religious figures in Europe, both because of her unlikely geographic and spiritual pilgrimage and her decision to reach out to Muslims with the gospel -- at great personal risk.
“My life is completely different since coming to Jesus,” said the 47-year-old Parsan, whose memoir, “Stranger No More: A Muslim Refugee Story of Harrowing Escape, Miraculous Rescue and the Quiet Call of Jesus,” was published late last year.
Parsan was raised in a Muslim home in the ancient Iranian province of Isfahan with her parents and four siblings, she told Fox News. She was married at 16, and just after Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979 she gave birth to a boy, Daniel. Iran quickly became a different place under the Ayatollah Khomeini, and when Parsan’s beloved husband was tragically killed in a car accident – she was just 18 – she was forced to surrender custody of her son to her husband’s father, in accordance with the law. After several months, she bravely and successfully fought to get back her son.
“After two years, I decided to marry again. His situation was like mine;
his wife had died,” Parsan recalled. “But soon, he began beating my son
very badly… I was pregnant again, and it was impossible for me to
divorce.”
On the heels of bringing a daughter she named Roksana into the world and
with the Iran-Iraq war raging around them, Parsan’s husband Ashgar
compelled them to flee in 1984 across frozen mountains into Turkey in
the dead of winter. Without identification papers or passports, Turkish
authorities tossed Parsan and her husband into a terrifying prison in
the country’s Agri district for illegal entry. However, after a
harrowing month they were released and traveled to Istanbul. There they
spent nine months scrounging for enough funds to make it to Denmark.
It was in this tiny Scandinavian country where the seeds of her eventual
spiritual transformation were planted.
“In about the first or second month there, a woman came to the door to
speak about God. But it was not in my interest,” Parsan recalled. “I was
so angry, I was so unhappy. But she came back the next day with a small
Bible, so this time I asked Jesus to help me.”
Parsan said
that over the next year she started to read the Bible, which she had to
keep secretly from her husband. Eventually she asked God for answers to
her questions and immediately felt a sense of calm and peace of mind
that she had never before experienced.
“It was magic,” she avowed.
But the calm and peace did not last. After one especially brutal
outburst from her abusive husband, during the Christmas of 1989, Parsan
tried to take her own life by overdosing on sleeping pills. She woke up
in the hospital, her survival itself a virtual miracle, and suddenly the
pieces of her disjointed life seemed to her to fall into place.
“I was too scared to go home and the police came to the hospital to talk
to me. Many people were helping me find a safe place to live, and I knew
it was Jesus,” she said. “And soon, the police called to tell me that
they had uncovered a plot in which my abusive husband had planned to
kidnap the children back to Iran. After that, we moved to Sweden, and
the policeman told me that I have an angel on my shoulder.”
After two years there she took the leap and was baptized. She and her
children then lived quietly in the Swedish capital for a number of
years.
Then in 2006, after surviving a horrific car accident, she decided that
God had spared her life so she could spend it helping other Muslims come
to faith in Christ.
After five years of intense study Parson was ordained in 2012 as a
minister in the Church of Sweden.
My life is completely different since coming to Jesus.
- Former Iranian Muslim Annahita Parsan
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The former refugee is now the leader of two congregations in Sweden. She
not only evangelizes Muslims, but she frequently trains churches to
reach out to Muslims and disciple them once they join the church.
“I work specifically with the Muslim community, many are also Farsi
speaking,” Parsan said. “Sometimes they come to the church because they
are curious. Sometimes they are asylum seekers and sometimes they are
just visiting from places like Iran and Afghanistan, so they secretly
get baptized and then they go back.”
She says she has been instrumental in the conversion of more than 1,500
people over the past five years.
Because of her successes, Parsan faces risks other Church of Sweden
ministers do not face.
“I have serious threats at least a couple of times per year, a threat of
a knife attack or a bomb attack. I have a police officer attached to my
case I can always call, and we have security during our services. I have
other threats from my own distant family members,” she added. “But for
me, what I do is worth it.
“I hope people out there who have lost their faith, will maybe hear my
story and be inspired to come back,” Parsan said.
Hollie McKay has been a FoxNews.com staff reporter since 2007. She has
reported extensively from the Middle East on the rise and fall of
terrorist groups such as ISIS in Iraq. Follow her on twitter at @holliesmckay
