Source: SAT-7, November 6, 2015
As a drummer, Sadegh loved to watch Arab music on TV. He first came across SAT-7 by watching its Arabic music programs such as We Will Sing [featuring] popular Egyptian musician Maher Fayez.
“Sometimes I found myself watching several hours of SAT-7 although I didn’t understand what they were saying,” he remembers. “Then I found the Farsi channel and started watching that.”
Around this time, Sadegh [then living in Iran] received an email message from a friend in England that included a Gospel of John. As he read this, a flood of questions came: surely Jesus was more than a prophet if he raised the dead and healed people? But, when he raised this with his mother, she asked “Who are you listening to now, what TV are you watching?”
Sadegh realized he would have to continue his spiritual search in secret. As he carried on reading the Gospel he had hidden beneath his carpet, his belief that God was aloof and distant was blown apart.
“It was when I came to this point in John 3:16. It said God so loved the world, I thought ‘I am part of this world so God loves me. He loved me so much that He sent His Son.’
“I found myself on my knees,” Sadegh says, “I cried out to God: I want to live for eternity, I don’t want to die.” He describes how he felt “covered with love” as he “spent hours on the floor crying with joy. It was like something very deep coming out of my heart—this root of selfishness, pride, hatred,” he recalls.
The old Sadegh was gone: The new one became a secret believer, constantly reading John’s Gospel, but afraid to ask others about Jesus or try to obtain a full Bible because of Iran’s secret police.
» Interested in Persian culture? See 11 Persian Sayings that Make No Sense in English (Chai and Conversation) and read about Amsterdam’s Persian storyteller (Global Voices). We also just picked up on a story that 450 new believers have recently been baptized in Iran (GodReports).