One For Israel

Guest (Male): Shalom everyone and welcome to another special Pod For Israel. We are hearing a lot about the war that is going on out obviously. We're living under missiles attack and we're all praying for this amazing cooperation between the US and Israeli Air Force and for the people of Iran.

Dr. Erez Soref: Well, we are privileged to be with Farnoush, who can share her story with us and tell us how we can pray more specifically for the people of Iran.

Farnoush: Yes, praise God. All glory to God. I was born in Iran and when I was 15 years old, we left Iran. Originally my mom and my brother left Iran, but I didn't want to leave Iran because I just had a lot of friends and I loved it. That was until one day when I was just walking on the street and this religious police, who is not even wearing official clothing, came and harassed me and questioned me. I asked for identification and that's when he did a 360 kick to hit me. He jumped back and he just missed me to a point where I held my bag up and my bag went flying down the street.

If not for that movement, that would have been me flying down the street. I was only 15 and very innocent. I even had a little Quran in my backpack. Just being a girl, that was my crime. So at that point, it was just this stark awakening of my life as a woman in Iran and I told my dad, "I want to go."

Dr. Erez Soref: Wow. So you get to the United States. You're 15 or 16 years old and everything is completely unfamiliar—new school, new neighborhood, new everything. How was it for you? Tell us a little bit of your journey from that point.

Farnoush: Well, it was a complete culture shock, of course. High school was rough. I went from being the most popular kid in school in Iran to being bullied and all of that. When college time came around, it was very different. There were a lot of Middle Eastern people, so I started looking for God. I was saying that if there is a God, our priority should be that we worship him. So as soon as I got into wanting to find out who God is, I met these Middle Eastern people and I suppose I said, "Okay, I guess it's the God of Islam."

I was a Shia, of course, being in Iran, and I started going to the Muslim mosques in America which are mainly Sunni. I became a Sunni, which is the biggest no-no because that doesn't happen. But over time going to the Sunni mosque, I noticed some things. I was always trying to seek the truth, no matter what it cost me. Even though it was within the false God, I noticed that they're always talking about imams. 90% of the sermons are about imams and maybe 10% about God. I thought something is very off; it should be the other way around.

A lot of times Muslims try to kill ex-Muslims' testimony, of course, and one of the things that they say is that, "Well, you're Shia and it's different. You're Iranian, it's different because that's just your government, that's just Shia." But no, I've experienced it all. For about 10 years, I was a devout Sunni and it's all the same. As they say, we have one version of the book. It's the spirit of Islam, all the same. That was much of my life and I was with a Palestinian as well most of my life, 14 years, and very much stuck in that relationship until Jesus met me. He opened the Red Sea for me to leave that relationship and to come to the truth.

Dr. Erez Soref: Wow. What a journey. But how did that happen? If you're a devout Sunni, then you're very much in that world. How did Jesus penetrate? Because you said Jesus reached out and saved me, so tell us how it happened.

Farnoush: Well, Yeshua the Rescuer, he's an expert of the brokenhearted. I was at rock bottom. It was 2015. I was staring into the sunset and I just started talking to God from the bottom of my heart. Jeremiah 29:13 says, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with your whole heart." I didn't know that verse, but that's what I was doing, ripping my heart open and saying, "I don't care which God you are, I just know you're supposed to show up for me right now and you're not. I've loved you my whole life and now somehow it felt like a one-way relationship."

It felt like Allah was dead and I wasn't sure about any of this, but it was enough for me to dare to ask. I said, "If you're God of Buddha, if you're God of this, if you're God of that... I know there is a God, just which one are you?" And then I started asking if he was the God of Christianity and I dwelt a lot on that. Looking back, that was all the Holy Spirit because I was saying things that are so biblical and things I've never heard before.

I was saying, "You have to show me in a way, if you're the God of Christianity, that I cannot possibly deny because how can I go backwards?" They teach us in Islam that it's the same God, so it didn't make sense. It would have made more sense that he's some really far away God like a Buddhist God than the same God. And so I said that and he answered. He answered from the sunset and from the midst of me simultaneously, very much the nature of God and the Son of God simultaneous nature. He said, "I will."

I knew it was God but I still said, "No you won't. It's impossible. How can that happen? You won't do it." And then I heard the voice again from the sunset and from the midst of me say, "I will one day." So at that time, I was like, I'm not arguing with God. He said he will and I put it in the back burner of my life until a year later. This is 2017. It was time. It was the time that he said. Someone just casually mentioned something about Jesus and I said, as almost all Muslims say, "We love Jesus, we know Jesus, he's a prophet."

He just boldly said, "No he's not a prophet, he's the Son of God." He just spoke a simple truth about Jesus. I believe this is an important part of my testimony because it does matter that we speak and we don't shy away when Muslims say they know Jesus. They know the false version of Jesus. The Holy Spirit just literally permeated through me. I couldn't reject it. Anytime if anyone would have ever said anything, it was always this wall and this rejection, but it just went inside of me. At this time, these little things start to happen and obviously nowhere close to believing or anything, but I went to the grocery store, I picked up a Bible and I brought it home to read it.

My ex saw it and he just lost his mind, cussing me out. I'm trying to read it in my walk-in closet a little bit and he's banging on the door and cussing at me, "You think this s*** can save you?" It was just very demonic now that I see it because even though he had shouted before, it was never like that. I knew at that point that this is so different. It was very different. So I go back to the store and I see they have a tiny pamphlet. I'm like, okay, I can hide this under my pillow and not have to deal with that.

I pick that up and I open it and it's talking about what active faith is. These words are just becoming alive like nothing I've ever experienced before. It's a very long time ago so I don't know if there was a specific verse, but it was just very short but talking to me and saying that to trust God means to not worry about something and that's the active faith that we can show God. From there on, something just came alive in me and I remember I went back to the grocery store and I felt literally angels surrounding me, going around me with support and comfort.

I just couldn't explain it and I just said, "I don't know what it is, but all I know is that ever since I walked in this way, there's been these things happening. I'm just going to put it on the side and then come to it later. I'm going to let it happen and not be afraid." I was gifted with faith, gift of faith for sure because with the things that were happening around me, if it wasn't for the gift of faith, I would think I was crazy. But instead, I just knew there was this living thing that had entered my life for the first time.

This happened all in January 2017 and on February 24, 2017, I was sitting on the edge of my bed and I was at just this next rock bottom. I said, "God, Creator, if you don't show me your love, I will never talk about God." My whole life was always God. I always loved God. I always knew he existed. Even when I would listen to just random music, I would always think about God, like nothing else—not romance, not this. And so I said, "I'm cutting it off. I'm not going to think about God, I'm not going to talk about God. If you don't show me your love right now, I am done."

And I was, and he knew. He bestowed grace and mercy, but suddenly I was transported to this other realm and I see a few hundred people in white robes and they're holding each other's hands the way Christians pray. I am in the presence of unconditional love. As I'm making my way around in this pure, holy place that I don't even know if I was allowed to be there, I cannot see anybody's faces because they're lit up. It was men and women and I could see everything perfectly clear, but their faces had light on them.

As I make my way through, I see one man's face and he turns toward me and he smiles. I am so overwhelmed by the presence of unconditional love. This was one minute and when I came out of it, every hurt and pain and hollowness of not knowing God's love was healed in one minute. 33 years of my life of not knowing God's love in Islam was all healed. When I came out, I just said, "I cannot call this love. What do I call this?" I thought, okay, we don't have this in this world, but maybe I can compare it with every mother's love for their infant in the whole world combined. Unconditional love.

At this point, my spirit has gone before me, way before me. A lot of these encounters, my mind catches up later, but the next day I leave Islam. And that's not something you do unless something real has happened. You wouldn't just leave your belief system. I couldn't, I wouldn't, but he shattered it all. He brought everything down and went through every barrier. So I'm pacing around my house for like a few weeks thinking, "Who was that man? Why could I only see one man's face? Who was he?"

At this point, two things had happened: I left Islam the next day and I keep saying Jesus is the way and the truth. But I'm not putting two and two together that that man was Jesus that I saw. Suddenly, through revelation, "Oh my gosh, that was Jesus!" I always wondered if I should share that when I saw him, I didn't recognize him. Something in me always wanted to share every detail because he's the God of details.

Just like a few months ago, I went to a conference and as I was sharing this testimony with a sister on the few-hour drive there, we arrived at the conference and the speaker is talking about a 1-800 hotline number now for the people that are seeing this man in a white robe and they don't know who he is. She turned around, she's like, "This is what you were just talking about!" Praise God, he answered me right there. I will share the details of it because he is showing up to Muslims' bedrooms and broken hearts. He is in a white robe and it's happening so much. I wish I had a 1-800 hotline number because I was going crazy. Why could I only see one face? Who was he? The revelations, the encounters, to this day they unfold. They're before my eyes, before my heart, and they still unfold. That's their power.

Dr. Erez Soref: Amen. And you know, I think God has heard your prayers all those years. In his wisdom, he chose that time, but it's very, very special and very encouraging. When did you meet other people that are followers of Jesus through your journey?

Farnoush: That's a good question. I had a very, very lonely walk. It was with me and the Holy Spirit and one song I thought was the only Christian song in the world because anytime I would search gospel music, that was the only song that would ever come up. I think there was something God didn't want me to see. It's called "I Surrender" by Hillsong and I would listen to it day and night for two years. I wouldn't read the Bible either because I was so afraid that the Bible would take away what Jesus had shown me: unconditional love.

I was lied to by religion before, and of course there were other things in the back of my mind. "I don't know who wrote this," things that were planted by Islam. It was just this very isolated, on-purpose time with the Holy Spirit. I do believe that I was always his. I believe that he knew me since I was in the womb and it was timing, but the journey was very important to be that way so that I know all of it was God. It was not something I was born into. It was not something that I learned from someone else or someone brainwashed me with. It was just all God and me.

I really thought I was the only person in the world that this stuff was happening to, and I didn't even know supernatural was a thing of Christianity. I kind of wish more Muslims knew that, and they don't. When I found out that what I'm saying is not weird to Christians four years later and it's in the Bible after I decided the Lord finally had me surrender to open the Bible and I'm reading things like the word "vision" and I'm like, this is it! This is what happened to me! And it's described in the same way I described it at the time: transported to another realm.

So many other things he showed me. I also had a divine dream six months after the vision where I was raptured. I walked through a door and first went to space in a void, then came down to regular life and then I chose, I said, "God, I just want to be with you," even though I knew where I was, it was just darkness and no presence of God. Suddenly I was raptured and I was surrounded by tangible glory of God. These vocabularies are things that were downloaded to me. I didn't know they were themes and major words of the Bible.

As I was going up, I was being lifted up in tangible glory. There's nothing like it. There were these wounds that were in my abdomen and I believe they represented the hurts from the world because prior to entering through that door, I was walking through the valley and I was thinking about all the people that wronged me in my life and I never even talk about them in truth. They make lies and I was weeping in the valley. There were lilies, white flowers right along the side. Then I walk and this door opens in a parking lot on a lower level in my dream.

Right before I enter, I see with my spiritual eyes these people standing behind the door. It's a strange thing to say that in your dream there were walls, there was the gate, it was a brass-colored gate that opened. But I could see with spiritual eyes through the walls that there were people so excited, so happy that I was about to walk through and they were just sitting down, kind of hiding. It was the Golden City. I could see a Golden City. I could see pillars. And then as I step in, I'm like, okay, I didn't expect this to go to void and darkness, but then I look down to Earth and I come down to Earth and then that's when I say I want to go back where God is.

I don't care if it's dying, I don't care if it's no presence. So as I'm being lifted up in tangible glory, praise God, all of this is from him. This light is coming through these wounds and they're shining and radiating through me and I'm looking down and I'm saying, "I wish I had more of these wounds." Not in regret, but it was just pure joy. This is so biblical: take pure joy in tribulations. It's real. We must because this is what's waiting for us. I was laughing as I was going up that we call this life "life" because I was in true eternal life. You can't compare it.

Dr. Erez Soref: You can't compare it.

Farnoush: No, it's like comparing a piece of paper that you write "life" on to actual life. And the love that he showed me, the same way. It's like writing the word "love" to actually experiencing love. That's the difference. At the very top, it was wholeness and that was the best of all. So that was the divine dream and when I got to the Bible, that's when I knew it was the Word of God because I was seeing the things that he had shown me over these four years in spirit being spelled out, even conversations that I had with him.

Whether it was the book of Job, whether here or there, I mean, it was just like this is a holy book. The other one they tell you is a holy book; this is actually a holy book and there's no other way to explain it. Then the time where I came to read the Bible, I believe was as important if not more important than even those encounters. I said, "Okay, I'm going to read this. I'm going to leave every prejudgment that I have." Now everybody knows I'm a Christian. My friends, all these Muslim friends say, "Oh, she's crazy, she became a Christian."

I don't have a problem talking about it, but I was this Christian that was in spirit, knowing Jesus is the way, the truth, and he's unconditional love. So I say, "Okay, I'm going to leave every prejudgment, every preconception out. I'm not saying I'm coming believing it." I believe this is so important and this is what I tell Muslims all the time: just go in empty. My background is in science and if there's one thing I know is when you test a hypothesis, you test it for that one variable. You don't bring anything else in it. And so I was able to use that and I said, "Okay, this I know, so I'm going to read it and if it's true, I can decide at the end."

So as I open it, I start reading and I come across the word "Israel." This is where the Israel journey begins.

Dr. Erez Soref: That's what I wanted to ask you about. What did you know before and then you meet it?

Farnoush: Yeah, I saw the word "Israel" after all that excitement and scientific hypothesis. I closed it. I said, "I can't do this." That's just how much hatred of Israel... I was a very big pro-Palestinian activist throughout college—protest, having debates on Middle Eastern affairs, and very, very active. This is before everybody and their mothers become pro-Palestinian. So of course believing all those lies that I was fed and unfortunately many are believing those lies because on paper they can make sense. But in truth, the story is very different.

It was one minute between the time I closed it after I saw the word "Israel" and I said, "I can't do this." I just said that I will read it with no prejudgments and I opened it back up. The moment I opened it back up, letting go of the hatred for Israel, at least even fake it till I make it, just by faith... it was like a token of faith. This word is popping off the page. I'm in it, it's in me. Why is Israel so important? It was a short thought, but like I knew that's when it just happened and that was a token of faith on that day, and I guess it was great enough that the words came alive truly.

Dr. Erez Soref: So growing up, like growing up when you're still in Iran, what do you hear about Israel as you grow up?

Farnoush: The country that doesn't care about the people. Nobody ever talks about us ever or anything, just like Palestine. And of course every morning, as everybody hopefully knows by now that it's a real thing happening to this day, children chanting "Death to Israel," "Death to America." I mean, talk about brainwash. I remember even a week before I came to America, they had us on a field trip with multiple schools to burn the flags of Israel and America.

Dr. Erez Soref: That's like you say, it's kind of a form of brainwash. But it's really amazing to hear the hatred for Israel and for America representing Christianity, I guess, in some way. I mean, the small Satan, the big Satan kind of thing. At the end of the day, it's really a spiritual thing. The war is raging again. Between on the one hand, you have the United States and Israel—this time we're very much on this together—and on the other hand... and it's very important for me to make this distinction: it's the Ayatollah regime in Iran.

It's not the people of Iran. Not at all. Israelis feel that very strongly, by the way, that it's not the people, it's the regime. I'm curious, how do you feel about that? What do you see? What do you think is happening spiritually on all this?

Farnoush: It is very spiritual. When I start reading the Bible and I realize that this is not just... Islam isn't just some false religion. It's actually orchestrated and well-engineered to go against the children of God, the Jewish people, Israel, the two foundations of the Bible: Old Testament, New Testament, the God of Israel and the divinity of Jesus Christ and salvation and us being the children of God. It is not an accident; it's very well-engineered.

Dr. Erez Soref: I hear from a lot of my former Muslim friends that this realization has been that we have been lied to. I mean, we've been sincere and our families are sincere. We sincerely believe that, but we were lied to. This is keeping us away from the true God. Now I don't intend to put words in your mouth, but this is what other people that come from Muslim backgrounds have shared with me.

Farnoush: Absolutely. And that's why the enemy just keeps trying to silence ex-Muslims because when we come to the truth and we know we were lied to, we are so appreciative of the truth. We give our whole life. I mean, we're unstoppable. And this is what's going to happen in Iran very soon. I am very excited for what's coming to Iran. It's come to me in revelation what's coming and it's going to be the work of God's hand and the world is going to know God is real and Jesus is the way.

These people that have been with a false God and begging for freedom, the truth will set them free. They've been asking, crying for a king and they're going to have the King of kings be their King. And this wave, this fire is going to go to Israel, go all across the world and people are going to say God is real. And this revival, I believe with my whole heart that Iran is going to be the epicenter of it all and this is what I'm excited for.

Dr. Erez Soref: Well Farnoush, it's been such a pleasure to begin to know you and I look forward to more times. I look forward to a time where we can meet in person and talk about many, many more things and do this again. Please know we are praying, not just for you—obviously for you—but also for a true revival together with you, a true revival in Iran.

We pray for a revival in Israel, we pray for revival in the United States at this time, I mean on the whole earth. And we pray that those times that we are in tears, those tears will reap in joy as we read in scripture. So again, deeply thankful for this initial conversation. Look forward to continuing it at other times.

Farnoush: Same here.