Report on the emergence of a community in Iraq
My name is Shahin Avakian* and I was born on March 18, 1969, into an Armenian Orthodox family. My father was an atheist, and my mother practiced a traditional faith. She often went to church but only read the Bible very sporadically. From childhood on, I felt a burning desire to learn more about faith in Jesus Christ. At the age of 16, my passion for this faith intensified even further.
I received no support while reading the Bible and other spiritual books in Arabic. Yet in every prayer, I felt God's voice urging me to serve Him. Finally, I received a vision from the Lord and became a servant of Jesus Christ.
During Saddam Hussein's rule, there were no evangelical churches in Iraq, and it was forbidden to establish one. Only Catholic and Orthodox churches existed. Having no other choice, at the age of 20, I asked the leaders of the Armenian Orthodox Church to accept me. I served in this church, filled with the teachings of the Bible, which had been my lifelong confidante. I assumed that everyone who served there felt the same way I did.
However, over a long period of time, I noticed in my interactions with young people serving as deacons that they knew almost nothing about the Bible. Their knowledge was limited to monotonous rituals such as melodies, movements, and excerpts from the Psalms. At the age of 25, I married my wife. Year after year, I received ordination from the Armenian Orthodox Church. This meant I fulfilled the role of a government official and served in church every Sunday and on all religious holidays.
The parishioners loved me very much because I was different. On February 11, 1999, I became a priest in the Armenian Orthodox Church. After my ordination, I came into contact with other priests and bishops and discovered that everything was merely for show, devoid of any spiritual life. They were empty shells, smoking the most expensive cigarettes, drinking the most costly alcoholic beverages, and were materially and sexually depraved.
“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world” (1 Peter 5:8-9).
I hated that environment and began to feel like a prisoner among devils. They wanted to influence me to be like them, but the grace of the Lord and the Holy Spirit wouldn't allow it. Every time I came home from church, I would kneel at night and ask the Lord in prayer why He had brought me into that corrupt environment where serving seemed impossible. And the Lord helped me by giving me the idea to offer Bible studies because people knew nothing from the Bible.
So I began to teach the young deacons, in whom God's Spirit dwelt but who had no teacher. I started to gather them in my house, to pray and read the Bible. Thus I was filled with the Holy Spirit and began to pray in tongues. As our numbers steadily increased, we began to meet in people's homes. The bishop, who had spies everywhere, found out what I was doing.
He then invited me to his private office and informed me that he was aware of my activities. I replied that there was nothing wrong with what I was doing. He disagreed, however, saying that direct prayer to God was not permitted and that the Old Testament was irrelevant to them, while I taught the opposite of what was practiced in the church. He warned me and punished me severely, but I was not afraid and remained steadfast in my faith. Following this, the bishop revealed to the government's intelligence service that I was organizing meetings in people's homes.
In 2002, I was arrested by the secret service. They tortured me and demanded information about these meetings. Eventually, they let me go, as they found nothing suspicious. However, the church forbade me from preaching from the Old Testament on Sundays, and after some time, from preaching from the New Testament as well. In 2003, the Lord gave me a vision: I saw myself in a church, and a hand holding a staff reached out to me, telling me to take hold of that staff and lead his sheep out of that church.
After initially refusing, the voice repeated the request. I then asked how this was possible, since I owned nothing and didn't know how or where to lead his sheep. The voice replied that I should lead his sheep and that he would send someone to help me. A few days after this vision, the church began to persecute me and dismissed me.
So, at the beginning of 2004, I was excommunicated. By that time, I already had a group of deacons as allies who left the Armenian Orthodox Church along with some other people. A few years before our excommunication, we had been just three people seeking the Lord; shortly before my excommunication, we were already more than 60 people.
When the government was overthrown, we used this freedom to establish an evangelical church. We began proclaiming the name of Jesus everywhere, and so the Lord brought new souls into our church daily. Even today, we suffer from persecution of traditional churches, Muslims, the economic situation, terrorists, and the general insecurity in the country, but the church continues to grow even in the shadow of the Valley of the Dead.
Glory to Jesus.
*Names have been changed; any resemblance to actual names and persons is purely coincidental.