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Twenty-three year old Karzan shared his testimony with the Remember team during the 2009 medical mission trip to Iraq. Raised in a devoutly religious family, Karzan took every opportunity to beat a Christian acquaintance who would try to share the gospel with him. “As I would try to find excuses to beat him, I realized that he was a peacemaker,” Karzan said. Time passed and the man continued to witness to him, despite his antagonism. “I was resisting him in a very strong way, because the influence of my family and society was holding me.” Karzan began to wonder why it was that the man would never retaliate even when he sought him out to attack. He asked him one day, and received a glimpse of the nature and character of Jesus that would change his life.

 

“I follow Jesus and Jesus is teaching me to treat people—especially our enemies—with love,” the man said. That simple statement planted a seed of curiosity within Karzan, and he began to seek to know this God of love. Rather than seek out the man to attack him, he started to question him about his faith and God. He read through the New Testament and discovered that the man and his ideas were right. In 2007, Karzan asked Jesus into his life.

 

After having family members beat him, Karzan’s father put him out of the house. “This is not your place,” he said. According to the Islamic law that his family believed, the punishment for converting to Christianity is death.  His father refused to let him return, not even allowing him to collect his identification card.

 

In the midst of being disowned by his family, the local church opened their arms to him, providing him with a place to stay and encouraging him in his newfound faith.

 

Karzan was arrested in May of 2008. Over the next four months he was beaten, interrogated, and tortured. When told by the prison director that he would be released if he converted back to Islam, he said, “I don’t want to leave this prison until you believe in Jesus.” 

 

During his time in prison, he would preach the gospel to his “captive audience” of 16 other prisoners in his hall. Two men accepted Christ, and despite being moved into individual cells, the three of them were able to continue speaking about Jesus through the walls.

Karzan was released from prison in August of 2008. Once again, the church took him in and provided him with food and clothing, continuing to encourage him to use his spiritual gift of evangelism.

 

His family still refuses to see him, but Karzan has no regrets for the decision that so shook up his life that day in the sandwich shop. “I thank God because He has anointed me to serve Him,” he said.  “He has fulfilled His plan in my life, and I have been anointed to evangelize and to proclaim the good news.”

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This Thanksgiving season as you gather to remember the many blessings God has bestowed on our country, please pause and remember Karzan and others like him whose faith comes at such cost.

For the persecuted,

Curtis Bostic