Escape from Kabul

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Joe Biden
Good afternoon. I’m speaking to you today from the Roosevelt in the White House after consulting closely with our allies and partners with the Congress and the Vice President, as well as with Mr. Ghani and many others around the world, I concluded that it’s time to end America’s longest war, it’s time for American troops to come home. The United States who began our final withdrawal, beginning on May one this year, will not conduct a hasty rush to the exit. We’ll do it responsibly, deliberately and safely, and we will do it in full coordination with our allies.

Sarah Zylstra
Joe Biden announced last April that all American troops would be leaving Afghanistan. Nobody familiar with the country thought it would be able to stand up against the Taliban. The wobbly Afghan government paid for and propped up by the United States since 2004. had never seen to grow any stronger, or any less corrupt. Meanwhile, the Taliban never seem to give up. The Islamic fundamentalist group had been overthrown by the US invasion in 2001 and had been waging a persistent insurgency ever since. When the cold of winter came each year, they would retreat south to Pakistan, where they would rest and reorganize. When the weather warmed up, they would emerge and take control mostly over southern rural areas of the country. US intelligence initially estimated that the Afghan national government could last about two years on its own. But you know this story in just 10 days in August, while the Americans were still in the country, the Taliban swept through every single provincial capitol, including Kabul. They advanced so quickly, they surprised even themselves, the Taliban is in control of Afghanistan by surprise caught off guard 1000s of Afghans began to run, especially those who feared for their lives, former employees of the collapse government, those who had worked with Americans and Christians, the Christians were especially interesting, because while conversion was illegal, even under the Afghan government, the number of believers had been steadily growing from an estimated 2000 in 2013, to about 10,000. In 2021. How are so many hearing about Jesus? With everybody keeping their faith a secret? How are they connecting with each other? And how on earth were they going to get out?

Sarah Zylstra
My name is Sarah Zylstra. And I record stories of where God is at work in the world for the gospel coalition. To hear this story, I had to fly halfway around the world, but not to Afghanistan. I landed in Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates. In many ways. The UAE is a bridge between the Middle East and the West. While technically a Muslim country, the leaders don’t suppress the religion of foreigners. And since this oil rich country is full of foreigners here for a job, literally nine out of 10 people are from somewhere else. That means the UAE has considerable freedom of religion. That fact is critical to this story, which actually starts a few hours northeast in Afghanistan, the country that replaced North Korea this year at the top of the World Watch List of the hardest places on earth to be a Christian.

Luke
I was born in Afghanistan, and the central parts of Afghanistan. Were another was the communism government. And then when I was great for the majority, then come and then when I was grade seven, the Taliban cam. And then when I was grade 10, the new democratic government after 911 calm so I left for region during my school.

Sarah Zylstra
That’s Luke Anwari. I’ve been careful with identification. However, the names and places I’ve been able to include are accurate. I’m sitting with Luke in his apartment in Dubai, where he lives with his wife and four daughters. Luke was born in 1987 into a pretty unstable country. Every few years, the government would change hands, which meant that Luke had to change his school uniform, his textbooks, even the definitions of his words, for example, under the Soviet communism meant justice, after they left it meant infidel. When the Taliban took over, Luke had to start wearing a turban school and taking a lot more classes on the Koran. In between while one power was trying to overthrow another one there was fighting and violence.

Luke
Fighters would come and they would want the city and especially our school was retrofitted from the airport so they would form a large airport so there was no windows no nothing because all broken because of the bomb. being under pressure for that.

Sarah Zylstra
And already in grade school, Luke knew how to hide from incoming air raids. You can duck down near a load bearing wall or a pillar hoping it will shield you from a collapsing roof or wall. Or even better you can race outside for the ditches where there is no building to fall on you. When Luke was in junior high, the Taliban took over Afghanistan. People were terrified. Taliban soldiers shoot first and ask questions much, much later, if at all, but they were big on religion. And Luke was too.

Luke
I was very passionate about the religion. I was really passionate about garden and meeting God. I would pray how fast I was in grade nine and 10 and eight and that those years were taller than control we would like go to the madrasa which is a regular school that of course half of that was still Islamic teachings. Apart from that they would go to mosque and get the religious teachings as well where I was like memorizing Quran, you read their interpretation of the Quran.

Sarah Zylstra
When Luke was in ninth grade, a motivational speaker from Osama bin Laden’s camp came to his school. He talked for three hours about how America would probably attack about how to prepare for a jihad against the infidels, and about how Osama bin Laden was a brother who needed protection. At the end, he gave an altar call. Whoever wants to dedicate themselves to the holy war, stepped forward now moved, Luke came forward. He did want to give his life to Allah. He was given a black turban to wrap around his head and Everyone applauded. But later when he told his father what he’d done, his dad exploded, even chasing him around the house. He told Luke to go right back and take his name off that list. He did not want a life of violence for his son had Luke’s name actually been on the list that would have been nearly impossible to do. But Luke was related to the school principal, who had not included Luke and his list of volunteers. Hey, he told Luke don’t make that kind of stupid decision again.

Sarah Zylstra
A few months later, al Qaeda terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon in Washington DC, and a field in Pennsylvania. Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan and a furious President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban extradite Osama bin Laden. The Taliban refused, and in early October, a US led coalition easily toppled the regime. That fall Luke headed to medical school in Kabul more NATO and American forces were trying to set up a fledgling democracy in his province of a million people, he’d been one of only 12 Boys who’d been able to finish enough school to graduate. Around this time, Luke was having his own crisis. He read about God meeting Moses in the burning bush and on Mount Sinai. Why can’t I meet with God? He asked his teachers will pretend we didn’t hear that they told him you aren’t supposed to ask questions like that. Luke was confused by that. And also discouraged by his prayers, which never seem to do anything. Islam was starting to seem like a collection of made up stories. Tired of it, Luke quit religion. But it was harder for him to quit God.

Luke
Understanding not to me of human body, the first semester, the second semester, we were studying physiology, which more get into the system of body how it works. And I remember that our professor was explaining and it was saying that if you built machines to the function of our organs, that would be so many head we’d need a lot of space, a lot of energy and a lot of manpower to run them. And that was making me very curious that this should be a god that makes us

Sarah Zylstra
at school look, became friends with some South Koreans. They prayed like he’d never seen anybody pray before. He figured that since they were from the east, they were Buddhists. Nope. They told him, we’re Christians. More specifically, they were Presbyterians. Scottish and American Presbyterian missionaries brought Christianity into Korea in the late 1800s, where it was immediately popular. After the Korean War, Christianity continued to boom in South Korea more than tripling and followers from 1950 to 1970. By the early 2000s, when Luke was at medical school, the Korean church was sending out more missionaries than every other country except the United States. They didn’t stick to easy places either. South Korean missionaries have been kicked out of Pakistan, kidnapped and killed in Yemen and beheaded in Iraq. When Luke first asked his Korean friends for a Bible. They were too scared to give him one. Come to our house and you can read it here. They told him so every Friday he went. They started with the Gospel of John Luke couldn’t understand it, but his heart got caught on John 1010. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. in Farsi that phrase is translated as I have come to give you eternal on life,

Luke
and the very first time I made with my Korean friends, I went to that verse, I opened that and I said our question, explain to me what really this means, like I’m really upset that what does it mean to have eternal life? They said, If you believe in Jesus, you will have eternal life and you will not die. They said, No, I said, how not die like because your parents look at the graveyard steals crosses. On top of that the auditors people have not that they said that they’re their bodily, but not their experiments like this or not. If you believe in Jesus, you will have eternal life, which means that the Holy Spirit will live forever. Your Spirit will not experience hell or separation from God.

Sarah Zylstra
Intrigued, Luke decided to read the whole Bible. It took him two years. By the end, he was a believer, but he couldn’t tell anybody. The few times he tried to mention something to his friends, they told him to be quiet. Don’t talk to us about that. It’s crazy. It’s dangerous. But he did tell one person.

Sarah Zylstra
Before Luke was born, he was engaged to Sarah, a girl who also wasn’t yet born. their grandparents were from the same village and their fathers were friends. When their mothers became pregnant, their fathers decided that if the genders worked out, one boy and one girl, they’d cement their families long friendships with a marriage. Sara also knew how to hide from air raids, and what it was like to grieve loved ones killed by rockets. But unlike Luke, she had a huge gap in her education. years, the Taliban had been in charge, she’d had to stay home from school. Sarah was 17 and an eighth grade when she was formally engaged to Luke. They didn’t know each other well. But at their engagement party, he did confess to her that he was a Christian. She had no idea what that was. So she told him it was okay. After they got married. She noticed he wasn’t praying at the mosque with the other men. And so she asked him about it. And he gave her a Children’s Bible.

Speaker 1
This one, I really liked the story. Yeah. And I love the story. I would have wanted to read this, okay. But they tell me, Okay, after it, we’re after it were secretly

Sarah Zylstra
They did read secretly in their bedroom in his parents house. After the Children’s Bible, they began reading the full bible together. It was both confusing and lovely to her. She was living in a family and a culture that was Muslim, and she could see a difference in Luke, she could also see a difference in his friends. As you can imagine, it was tricky for Luke to get Christian friends in his province of almost a million people. He was the only believer he knew, even under the US funded government conversion was not allowed. And so he looked for foreigners. When a friend told him about three foreigners who prayed before they ate food. He knew he needed to meet them. The guys were on a humanitarian mission and had begun working at the hospital where Luke, now a radiologist was taking x rays. He was scared to tell them he was a believer. And when he did, they were scared to hear it. They checked with his South Korean friend to make sure he was telling the truth. Their fear was well founded. Within the year the secret police told the humanitarian workers to stop talking to people about Jesus. And they have so many questions about Luke that his boss told him he would have to resign. But by then looping the foreigners had built a friendship, reading the Bible and praying together and showing Sarah what Christian love looked like. That helped to convince her of the truth of Christianity, when the family began asking Sarah why she wasn’t praying in the mosque. She told them she was praying in the privacy of her room. She didn’t tell them, she was praying to Jesus,

Speaker 1
we really feel like the lightness account from dark place to the light place before I’m very in the dark place. I don’t know,

Sarah Zylstra
looks friends connected him with a Christian from Bangladesh, who connected him to a mission organization. He and Sarah did discipleship training for a few months in India. And they came back bolder.

Luke
Well, I want to share my faith with others, right? I don’t know how, right and I learned that with Misha and I learned the word, you know, the shoe fits really like it’s like, a whole different jobs. And this is what I’m gonna do and the rest of my life, this is what I want to do.

Sarah Zylstra
The timing couldn’t have been better. In 2010. Christianity was bubbling just a bit in Afghanistan. For example, a city that had one or two believers in 2005 had 15 believers in 2010. You could find Afghan Christians now, if you were careful. And a small network was beginning to connect. One new believer was named Ramadan. He’d grown up in a Muslim family and he was precocious. By the time he was 15. He had memorized 10 chapters of the Quran and was preaching in the mosque. He was also reading philosophers, Conte and Descartes and Sartre, those thinkers stumped Ramadan on this question. If God created everything who created God? Without a good answer, he gave up on Islam, but he couldn’t stop the longing in his heart for God. He’d heard about Jesus. And once in a desperate situation out of gas and far from home, he prayed to Jesus for help. He switched on the Moto and miraculously made it another 25 kilometers. He told Jesus, I am your soldier. For the next two years Ramadan looked for a Bible finally finding one through some Americans. Immediately he took it home and shared the gospel with his friends and his family. Within a few years, he’d watched 12 People accept Christ. Around the same time, a young Muslim named Rama went to visit his brother in India. Both their grandfather and their father were Mulas leaders in the mosque, but Rombouts brother told him he’d converted to Christianity while watching God TV, and a trip to Saudi Arabia. Rama was livid, attacking his brother with both his fists and his words. After he calmed down. His brother told him to try reading the New Testament. And because Rama was the younger brother, he did, by his second time through, he was hooked. Rama didn’t know any believers in Afghanistan, so he spent a few years outside the country. He felt called back in 2010, just as Christianity was starting to attract some attention. The problem was the attention wasn’t good. In the summer of 2010, a television station aired the baptism of some Christian converts. The reaction was intense. In two cities, hundreds rallied against Christianity and several lawmakers said publicly that those who converted should be executed. The government intensified its search for believers. In August they found Luke and Sarah.

Sarah Zylstra
Look knows how it happened. A Christian friend introduced him to a guy who was asking weird questions like if he could get 100 Bibles. 12 hours later, the police showed up a lot of police 50 to 60 officers from the Afghan intelligence service from the prosecution department from the anti terrorism units.

Luke
They just raid our home this you know everything that will be there just right away come to my bedroom and handcuffed me on the bag and they serve our kids are sleeping there. They have sir, I’ve got what’s sitting on one corner. They asked

Sarah Zylstra
if Luke was a Christian, he said yes. They asked where his Bibles were. He showed them when they dragged him out of the house to the car, he could see the neighbors gathered around could hear them cursing him and wishing they’d known he was an apostate. So they could have burned him alive.

Luke
But those things we expected. We then when we knew that when we are a step when we are find out where believers we knew that people are not going to be kind to us, there’s going to be worst punishment for that. So we were not surprised by anything they would say or police would say,

Sarah Zylstra
staring down the barrel of a gun Sara didn’t know what to do. When her daughter started crying. The woman accompanying the police to make sure they weren’t alone with a woman told them they’d have to leave the room so she could feed the child. After they were gone. She advised Sarah to play dumb. Tell them you don’t know anything. Sarah did and the police let her go. But Luke and one of his Christian friends were taken to the police station, and then to the Afghan intelligence service, because their crime provoking differences between religions was against national security. There was a lot of evidence against them, Bibles and books, but the most evidence was on Luke’s laptop where he had documents and emails that would lead to other Christians. But God works even through corruption. Before Luke’s laptop could be processed. Someone in the Afghan law enforcement stole it. No other Christians were arrested. Instead, for the next month. Luke and his friend were kept with dangerous prisoners, many of them Taliban extremists.

News Anchor
Pastor Terry Jones joins us now from Gainesville. Also with us from Orlando is Imam Mohammed. He was going to burn the Koreans

Sarah Zylstra
at that time an American pastor named Terry Jones announced that he was going to burn the koran on the anniversary of 911. The anti Christian fervor in Afghanistan whipped up with 1000s taking to the streets. inside the prison, Luke’s fellow inmates reasoned that if they killed him and his friend, they’d be rewarded by going to heaven. Only tribal warfare among the prisoners kept Luke and his friend breathing. The guards also tortured and questioned Luke in his friend who else is a Christian. Where are you getting your money? Who’s persuading you to do this? The hardest part was seven days in solitary confinement in a room too small to even lay down in

Luke
a small little window you have to like jump and then you will see this guy, small cell there’s nothing no pillows nothing very hard carpet there and there’s absolutely nothing and they just get sloppy do they have like a two times bathroom break for one minute in the morning and one in the evening? During the day there is nothing just man was yourself

Sarah Zylstra
the physical pain from attacks by both the guards and the other prisoners lasted for weeks later, when Luke and his friend got out, they would need immediate medical care. The thing is, it wouldn’t have been hard for Luke to leave. All he needed to do was to come back to Islam. Honestly, it was tempting.

Luke
One last one there. So I’m going to just get out of that I was worried about my family. I want my girls three year old and a one year old. I wanted them to be raised by a Muslim family. That was difficult so so that we’re gonna go and tell them by then I know kind of reviewing back to what happened into my life. How do I become Christian? Because maybe they’re right, maybe it’s a coincidence, right? Maybe it’s not. That’s

Sarah Zylstra
Luke went back and reviewed everything in his mind. He had gone looking for God. He had asked to read the Bible, he had decided to follow Jesus. He had been called and directed by the Holy Spirit, certainly, but he hadn’t been persuaded by anybody else

Luke
that’s living in me and God. Yeah. Whether it’s totally truth or totally lie. My there’s not nobody persuaded me. And I’m not persuaded because of unearthing those not giving asylums is not giving me any monetary benefits, nothing so I know myself that might not make this decision based on those things.

Sarah Zylstra
Luke signed a confession written by his captors, it said he had left Islam and converted to Christianity. He was proud of that decision, and he didn’t regret it. His jailers were thrilled confident he just written his own death sentence. But it also helped Luke settle into the peace of God’s presence. He shared the gospel with the guys around him, he was about to die, so why not? He answered questions explaining that No, Christians and Jews aren’t responsible for all of the evil in the world. And yes, Christian parents do love their children. With every moment that God was with him, he grew more and more confident in his faith. And then one day, Luke and his friend were moved to the capital city. As soon as they got off the plane, their guards took off their handcuffs and told them they were free. Look, didn’t believe that for a minute, maybe the guards were going to shoot them as soon as they walked away. Maybe they’re going to follow them to some other believers and arrest everybody. Luke and his friend did not know what to do. Like characters in an action movie, they left the airport jumped into a taxi road for a while, got out and jumped onto a bus going a different direction. They wandered around the streets this way, and that until they were lost, they cut their long beards bought new clothes, put on scarves and sunglasses. Finally, Luke called some of his foreign friends to ask for help tell us some of the things that we did together. They said to verify that it was him. And then they connected him to Christian Aid workers who could help days later when his body was rested and beginning to heal. lucquin To get Sarah and the girls who had been bouncing between his parents and hers. Seeing Luke’s arrest on TV with the first time anyone in their families even heard of his Christianity, and nobody was happy about it. Luke’s family suspected Sarah had turned him in and they would barely speak to her. Sarah’s family suggested a divorce so that she could marry again, the neighbors warned that somebody needed to take the kids away from both of them. After Luke was freed, everybody tried to keep him away from Sarah. She was locked in her room told if she saw him again, she would be erased from the family. Finally, after a lot of arguing her father brought her to Luke’s house. And here’s what she told Luke,

Speaker 1
and whoever you’re gonna go, I’m gonna go with you. I’m not stay here anymore, which is, I say, even in America, if you go into America, I’m gonna stay here and he said, Okay, you can pack your stuff. We don’t know where we’re gonna go.

Sarah Zylstra
Early in the morning, they ran away to cobble. They stayed three months too scared of another arrest to even sleep at night. Then they fled to Pakistan for a few months, or they connected with a mission organization for more discipleship training. When the police picked up two of their colleagues, they had to make a midnight escape. They stayed with a friend for a few weeks and then moved back to Afghanistan. Coming back was like a fresh start, but to an odd, unstable life. Luke and Sara would settle into a city where Luke would work a day job in finance or construction or whatever he could get. And they would find believers to pray with. At this point, they knew about 65 other Christians

Luke
every night after 10 o’clock, every one of them one by one come to our apartment and then we will sit down and pray for two three hours until midnight. They we are nobody’s getting out. We’re not showing our faces. All of us have been in prison. At this point. We don’t know what we will do, but we’re just sitting and praying and reading the Bible and pray.

Sarah Zylstra
And when they had time, four or five guys would buy some Coca Cola and then drive around the city or head to public park to read the Bible and pray. We drink a lot of coke, Luke said the group grew to 100 and then 120. Every few months, Luke would run into trouble. For example, a call from the Taliban threatening to bomb his home. Luke and Sarah started keeping a suit Case packed with some extra clothes and some food in case they needed to run immediately. If they had a little more time they could pack the whole house. Sarah got so good at it, she can box everything up in two days. In four years, they moved 11 times, and their network of Christian friends grew to 450. In November 2014, Luke was out of town and missed a meeting with some fellow believers. It saved his life. Armed Taliban insurgents, including a suicide bomber showed up. They shot dead a South African Christian, his two children and an Afghan believer, and then they set the place on fire. It was the third attack on a foreign guest house in 10 days, and it put a lot of pressure on the government. The police chief resigned. The Taliban spokesperson said hey, we were just trying to kill the Christians. The government knew who was supposed to be in the meeting, and they called Luke to come in for questioning. Luke and Sarah’s friends told them to get out of here. It’s not hard to get a tourist visa to the UAE. So that’s what Luke and Sarah did.

Sarah Zylstra
You can fly from Kabul to Dubai in three hours, but the two Muslim countries feel like they’re from completely different planets. Afghanistan is seriously Muslim and seriously poor. Its history is full of conflict and disarray. The UAE on the other hand, is modern, progressive and fabulously wealthy in downtown Dubai, you won’t see a piece of litter a weed in the imported flower beds or a pothole on the streets. The malls and the beaches are huge, clean and packed with people.

Sarah Zylstra
The vast majority of Emirati wealth comes from oil. But the economy is also expanding into tourism and international finance, both of which work better if you aren’t Islamic fundamentalists. For example, in December, the government suddenly announced that the Friday Saturday weekend built around the Muslim holy day of Friday would be switching to a Saturday Sunday weekend to match the west with a half day off on Friday for anyone who wanted to go to afternoon prayers. The UAE has always been relaxed about religious freedom for foreigners. That’s why back in 1972, missionaries and Christian oilman were able to start the United Christian Church of Dubai. The Evangelical church has grown to about 600 Christians who hail from all over the globe. About 15 years ago, they called a pastor named John Fullmer, who had come to faith at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, and been discipled by Pastor Mark Devere. Through the missionary connection from years before John met Luke.

John
We came to recognize this guy needs to be in our pastoral internship.

Sarah Zylstra
I’m sitting in John’s office listening to him and Associate Pastor John Welker, who oversees the pastoral internship program shortly after he landed in the UAE Luke did start the program. It took a while, though, before looters realized what else was doing.

John
Only slowly did we come to realize that Luke was orchestrating a parallel ministry back in Afghanistan, and he would tell us about phone calls he was having or decisions he had to make. And yeah, we we slowly came to realize that he was orchestrating dozens of relationships and house church leaders. These were guys he had been in partnership with in Afghanistan, before he had had to leave.

Sarah Zylstra
Most interns don’t come with an already established network of house churches. But Luke’s a natural leader. In fact, John compared Luke’s unofficial influence in the Afghan church to that of a bishop. And now Luke was being exposed to Reformed theology for the first time.

Luke
This is where I was exposed to the expository preaching healthy churches the material the resource and I was like, This is what we need. And this is like what really we need for Afghanistan because at this point, like I have different experience of church and things like that, which is like my perspective cam, more flavor of missionary perspective available for church but not really like how the church look like.

Sarah Zylstra
Luke loved everything he was learning. In February 2015. Only weeks after he started at UCC D. The interns attended a Simeon trust workshop, which aims to teach participants to rightly handle God’s word. Luke could hardly wrap his mind around what he was learning about expositional preaching, that the text not topics should drive the sermons and that the Old Testament stories point to Christ. He emailed Several Christian friends in Afghanistan, Rama and Ramadan and three others and said, Guys, can you get to India for a few days? Then you translated the Simeon trust questions into his language, Dari. He flew to India and held his own workshop. The guys went through Ephesians and practiced expository preaching to each other. The rest of his internship loop kept feeding what he was learning back to his Afghan network. Afterward, he began working with a UCC D church plant about an hour north of Dubai in the Emirate of Rasul. Khaimah there he and Pastor Josh manly started hosting Afghan pastors, some like Rama for a week of intense Bible training, some like Ramadan for a nine month internship.

Josh Manley
I mean, those were really sweet times and you knew that you were kind of with people that would be in a first generation house church in a very tough country.

Sarah Zylstra
That’s Josh Manley. I want to take a minute to tell you about him and his wife, Jenny, because they play a critical role in this unfolding story. Both were born in Mississippi and both grew up loving politics. They met their first day working in the US Senate in 2001. And they spent the next 10 years working their way up. Jenny to Chief of Staff for Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, and Josh to a staff position on the Appropriations Committee,

Josh Manley
loved our years in the Senate wouldn’t try them for anything but the church was far and away. The most formative thing the Lord was doing in our lives spiritually.

Sarah Zylstra
The church was Capitol Hill Baptist pastored by Mark Devere, the same pastor who had discipled John Fullmer than a Washington attorney, and showed him the beauty of ministry. Seven years later, Josh and Jenny followed John’s trajectory. Washington DC to seminary to the UAE, Josh’s church plant was two years old when Luke showed up and started flying in interns are certainly struck

John
by their hunger to learn. But yeah, just a hunger to know the word to understand different parts of it. And a commitment to do these were honestly, there would be six hour days, six, seven hour days, and

Sarah Zylstra
Josh and John taught them in biblical and systematic theology. section by section they went through the Bible, the Torah, historical books, wisdom, literature, prophets, Gospels letters, the group wasn’t huge, around 15 or 20. Guys on each trip, they called themselves the Afghan house church network, and they got right to work. They translated the 900 pages of Wayne Grudem Bible doctrine, Paul washers three book series and recovering the gospel. And every book Greg Gilbert has ever written. They started a website and have posted about 200 translated articles. They created Bible reading plans for YouVersion they started a podcast answering questions like, What is the Bible? What is the church? What is baptism, these were bold moves, given that everybody but Luke still lived in a country where converting to Christianity meant punishment by confiscation of property, imprisonment, or death. And then the guy started talking about making an even more obvious stand for Christ.

Sarah Zylstra
On every Afghan identity card is aligned for religion, Islam, or other the card is electronic. So when it gets scanned, more information about you pops up. And that’s where it shows what other means for you. If you’re Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Christian, a few years ago, the Afghan house church network started talking about changing their IDs.

Luke
So that’s the number of people they gathered, and they prayed about it. And they thought we were doing that. But just because we want to, you know, honor God and the wonders of this for our kids, because in the future for their marriage, for their education, everything of their ID says Islam than they have to go through the education

Sarah Zylstra
by the summer of 2021, after years of thinking and praying, Rama and Ramadan, and some others were ready to make the change. But on top of the normal consequences for conversion, they had seen what had happened to Luke, there was now an added complication. In April, President Biden announced he’d be pulling out the last of the American troops

Luke
May and we know that this is going to come we know that Taliban are going to come especially the troops moving forward, it’s getting tense, we might lose some provinces. But nobody thought that Kabul would fall that that fast.

Sarah Zylstra
In their zoom meetings that summer, Luke talked with the Afghan Christian leaders about getting them out of Afghanistan, they knew that even if the Taliban didn’t take over the government would be harsher. Without the NATO presence. They figured they could get some of the more prominent guys into the UAE for internships. And after that they could take stock of their next move. And then they talked about the decision to change their IDs.

Luke
I was like, you know, Are you guys sure that this is really what you want to do? They said, No, we have no problem with that. So it seems

Sarah Zylstra
like they were looking at a closing window. If they moved before the Americans left, there was a better chance they could safely change their IDs. If they waited, they might not ever get another shot to do it. Rama and Ramadan went first along with their wives and children. They had no problems. You sure you want to do this? The officials asked? Yes. Okay. Then

John
it is a strange mystery of providence of God that that happened. And you know, was it because the government was distracted and not and didn’t care? You know, that this that this happened? But yes, that officially happened.

Sarah Zylstra
Emboldened other Christians got in line. Around 120 people safely changed their ideas. 40 more were in the pipeline. It felt like a miracle. Everyone was elated at how smoothly they So we’re going and then the August history is that a ceasefire that has been mandatory, holding children on the edge of starvation wave.

Unknown Speaker
And with the Taliban now in control, ISIS is now taking a

Sarah Zylstra
mayday there weren’t a lot of NATO troops left in Afghanistan in early 2021, less than 10,000. By the end of May, only American troops were left and only 2500 of them. As the US moved out. The Taliban began moving in grabbing control of more and more rural areas. By the middle of June, US intelligence had revised its estimates, it won’t take two years for the Taliban to take over after we leave, it might only take six months. On August 6, three weeks before the deadline for American troop withdrawal. The first provincial capital fell to the Taliban, the TV

Luke
from my hometown, it’s three or 330 All of a sudden the TV stops there is no broadcasting. And I pull the phone and I call called my uncle and I said is everything is okay. He said, no taller one. Right now our area we have our our homes are, it’s under Taliban. And the fighting is like, you know, a few streets over there. And you could hear the shooting that’s going on and the TV went off is because Taliban captured that area. So the all the all the stuff from the TV station, they they flee.

Sarah Zylstra
As soon as He hung up Luke’s phone started to ring again, he could track the Taliban’s advance in phone calls. As the fighters moved through each area believers, they’re called him, what should we do? Where should we go? He told them all the same thing, Ron.

Sarah Zylstra
Almost everybody ran because Taliban soldiers are their own judge and executioner. There’s no due process or human rights. If a Taliban thinks you’ve sinned and kills you, there are no repercussions. Afghans knew this. And they ran

Luke
a lot of the people run from this provinces they went to Kabul, you know, we have to find house for them. We have to send money for them. Western Union is not working bank doesn’t have enough money. ATMs are not working. And it’s like the phones and the desperate. Like hundreds of desperate families around that they’re fleeing to the next city to the next city in the next ft. And trying to figure that way out. There is nothing there is no way that you can live

Sarah Zylstra
look at busy arranging safe houses calling to see who could host how many and for how long when someone panicked that their daughters were at work and not dressed to the Taliban dress code. Luke sent his uncle over with burkas. He texted all the church leaders, get rid of your Bibles, hide your books, delete your materials. As the provincial capitals fell, the first on August 6, the second on August 7, the third, fourth, fifth and sixth on August 8, everybody was heading for Cabo. The US troops were there, the seat of the government was there. It couldn’t fall, at least not right away.

Luke
Then the leaders understood that this is not something that’s coming probably three months maximum to get to Cabo. At that point, there was only way to get a visa option was to apply for a visa for Pakistan. And that would take about a month to get a visa because they have to wait that long on the embassy to get that. And it’s because there was no flight options. So we booked a flight for them for August 24

Sarah Zylstra
August 24 would be too late.

Sarah Zylstra
Rama lives in Kabul on August 15. He was sitting in his home office around 10 o’clock in the morning when a church members showed up. Let’s go the visitor said the Taliban have arrived. Are you kidding me? Rama asked. I’m not the church members said let’s move Rama called Luke. The Taliban are here in Cabo. He said that can’t be Luke told him. I can hear them shooting Rama said they are here right now. Luke told him run.

Sarah Zylstra
Ramadan was also in Kabul, leaders from his church came to his house to they helped him destroy his documents. They erased his flash drives. They deleted even his wedding photos. He married a beautiful Christian convert named Cimzia. He said he couldn’t bring himself to burn the books. So they put them out on the street where people were looting. Who knows. Maybe somebody would take them home and read them a few hours later. A Muslim relative came to Ramadan’s place searching for him. We don’t know why, but we can’t assume it was to be helpful. Maybe it was to warn him, but it might have been to turn him in or to lose his things, or to take away his wife and children. But by that time, nobody was home with passports, a laptop and a change of clothes, Ramazan his wife Shamsa and their children work on. Joe Biden wanted the American withdrawal to be done responsibly, deliberately and safely. Instead, the world watched panic Afghans swarming the tarmac of the Kabul airport and hanging off the fuselages of departing jets miscue after miscue us exit plan unravels. The New York Times reported chaotic Afghanistan pull out caps two decades of missteps. The Wall Street Journal agreed. The Atlantic called it Joe Biden’s Saigon. There were undeniable parallels. As the Taliban rolled in American commandos were breaking hard drives and burning papers. The US knew it had to evacuate Afghans, especially those who had endangered themselves by working for the Americans. But the average wait time for an Afghan to get a special immigrant visa to America was four years. On August two, the Biden administration announced a priority refugee program, but it didn’t actually have staff or a process. And anyway, all of the embassies in Kabul were shutting down there staff heading for the airport, there was no way out. In the end, the American government would leave close to 100 Americans and at least 62,000 endangered Afghan interpreters and others behind.

Sarah Zylstra
America America’s military disaster wasn’t a secret. As it became clear that the government was unprepared to handle evacuations, private rescue operations kicked into gear, Army veterans, nonprofit employees, defense contractors, regular people, anybody who knew anybody in Afghanistan, it seemed was trying to help. The problem was very few people actually know how to evacuate refugees from an unstable Islamic fundamentalist state. In the UAE, Josh and Jenny were praying and watching the attempts to help. But they were seeing gaps basic paperwork that hadn’t been filled out boxes that hadn’t been checked. With their backgrounds, it seemed like they should be able to do something. So they made some phone calls. One of those calls was to their friend Jess, who worked in DC. As it happened. The next week, she was heading their way, spending some vacation time with them in the UAE. One night when she was there, Jess and Jenny drove over to Luke and Sarah’s place down

Sarah
to Ashman and we were like, we’re going to all sit in a room together. We’re going to call the people that we know you’re going to call Viet. Let’s just see what can happen. And we stayed up 24 hours and called people in DC called people that worked for the US government who were at the airport. I mean, everybody we could and Luke was calling we were trying to connect all these people

Sarah Zylstra
it worked. Luke, Jess and Jenny were able to connect 18 believers, some of them in Luke’s family to US troops. On August 28. The Afghans boarded an American military plane in Kabul, Luke, Jess and Jenny tracked their flight radar the entire three hours to Doha, where they were taken to an American military base. Okay, the UAE Team thought we can do this next up Ramazan and rahmat who along with 20 other Christians were waiting outside the airport walls. Cobble only has one airport built by the Soviets back in 1960. Over the past 20 years, it served as a military base for NATO, the Americans and the Afghan national forces as well as a place to catch a commercial flight to say India or turkey. When the Taliban entered Kabul on August 15. The Afghan national forces immediately fled, handing the airport over to NATO. Maybe you’ve seen the pictures or the videos, the place was a frantic mess. People were swarming all over the jet bridges, the planes the runways, the perimeter was lined with troops facing hundreds of people desperate to escape. Two of those people were Ramadan and Ramadan.

Josh Manley
The group had gone to the airport. They went twice and the first time that they went they stayed there for days and nights just living outside trying to get in. There was terrible conditions.

Sarah Zylstra
Rama and Ramadan were sending their GPS coordinates to Luke every hour. Josh, Jenny, Jess and Luke are working every angle they could think of the situation the airport was hellish, crowded and confusing. With no water, no food, no bathrooms, sporadic gunfire and a suicide bomber. The kids that were Five under five, got dehydrated,

Josh Manley
you know, obviously that that kind of I think stress and tension went on for the entire time that the US was still in the country until the last plane left, there was always a hope that they could get on another flight.

Sarah Zylstra
It was Josh’s job to call Rama and Ramadan. And to tell them that the last flight had left

Josh Manley
her the night that we pulled out of Afghanistan completely when the ambassador left and calling them and honestly just in tears, tell him that we love them. And honestly, just saying how much we respect them and their faith. And when amazing fathers and husbands and wives, they lead their children and their wives through this debacle, and then say, we’re not going to quit, you know, we’re gonna we’re gonna try our best now we’ll figure it out.

Sarah Zylstra
Christians couldn’t go home, especially the leaders who had changed their identification. And so they went into hiding. They stayed with friends in hotels or an empty apartments. They moved often, the men grew beards and wrapped turbans in their heads, the women covered up, everyone was grateful for COVID masks that hit their faces. It was terrifying. In one hotel, the Christians noticed Taliban fighters in the lobby.

Sarah
And that was alarming. And then later, they said, There’s Taliban on their floor. And then and then they had said there, they’re really all over this floor. The This hotel is like a Taliban Hotel. Basically, they’re everywhere. And I remember them saying we know him, we might not make it. And feeling the weight of that moment of I mean, is there really a possibility there friends might not live through the night? And this is the last time we’ll speak to them. And is this the last call they’ll have and feeling the weight of that moment of what do you say to someone who thinks they might be martyred?

Sarah Zylstra
Jenny remembers her prayer for them. Lord, if the Taliban come and start shooting, please let them kill everyone. Please don’t let them kill the men and take the women for their brides. Over the following days, Jess in the US, Josh, Jenny and Luke in the UAE and the guys in Afghanistan traded ideas over text is the border to Pakistan open How about Uzbekistan? Is there any way to get a helicopter in? They encouraged each other with song lyrics. He will hold me fast A Mighty Fortress in Christ alone, and Bible verses. We rejoice in our sufferings. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. Some trust in horses and chariots, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

Sarah Zylstra
From the Christians in hiding, continually scared and bored and increasingly hopeless. The message is sometimes sounded discouraged. We are all afraid my daughter especially is afraid. All the doors are closed, All the ways are blocked. How long can we survive through escaping and hiding? Let’s give up on text. Josh and Jess and Jenny said the same things over and over. No matter what you are safely in the hands of our good and sovereign God. So many people around the world have prayed for you today. We love you. Everybody’s nerves started fraying. Nobody was sleeping. The Afghans were terrified of a raid in the night. They were getting messages from those who knew they were Christians. Some along the lines of we are hunting you and others more like watch out the Taliban. We’re here looking for you. Josh, Jenny and Luke spent their daytime hours coordinating with Afghanistan and their nights coordinating with Washington DC. At this point, they were tracking about 60 Christian Afghan families and safe houses, all of them needed food, clothing and to be moved every few days. The whole thing was costing about $10,000 a day. The only hope is Jesus Ramazan texted, otherwise we lose our hope and our minds.

Sarah Zylstra
Realistic avenues for leaving gradually emerged. Army veterans, nonprofits, defense contractors and interested donors were pooling their resources, making deals with airlines and governments to operate chartered flight into Afghanistan. Those flights were hard to get on to, but they were the best option. If you were on a flight that meant you had a ticket, a passport and somewhere to go. You were moving legally. A quicker, more certain path out was buy land for $600. You could buy a fake visa and a gate pass and make your way over the border to a country like Iran, Pakistan or Uzbekistan, that meant you’d be out of Afghanistan. However, without official documentation, you’d also be a refugee with very limited options for your future, many of them dangerous. The Afghan Christians were constantly weighing their choices, waiting for a legal route was better. But only if you didn’t get killed.

Sarah
First, you had a solid option here and a solid option here and we’d have 90% of the way within there was something holding you back. So you know, at one point, we had a big whiteboard up that we were like, alright, option, here’s our first year options and our second year, you know, and it was all go into different countries in different ways. And some are crazy and all because Dear brothers and sisters in DC that jumped in and just volunteered countless hours and trying to help in every way they could.

Sarah Zylstra
It took three weeks for Luke, just Josh and Jenny to find Rama and Ramadan and their friends of flight out. The whole time the Christians were moving to new safe houses, changing phone numbers and smiling at the Taliban, in hopes that they looked happy to see them. There was never enough information, nutrition or good rest. New developments were rarely good. Someone was taking their picture or asking their name. There was gunfire outside there were rumors that the Taliban was after anyone who spoke English. The Afghans worried more for their kids than for themselves. If they didn’t get out, what kind of future would they have? Already the kids were starting to get sick, and sometimes they had to spend a night in the hospital. After a while they heard rumors of flights taking off from SR Al Sharif. Figuring it was worth a shot. The group traveled by bus for 10 hours over broken roads, passing through 16 Taliban checkpoints. Once they arrived, there was good news and bad news. There. 22 names were on the flight manifests thanks to the folks in DC. But each takeoff had to be negotiated with the Taliban. The cycle went like this. We think the flights will go soon get ready. Nope, no flights today. Standby. Finally, finally, it was time the Christian scooted past the Taliban checkpoints, perhaps because they were given handwritten tickets instead of having to scan into the biometric system. They were boarding the plane when Ramadan sent a voice text

Unknown Speaker
there is chop saw here and his family. They said it’s copy his his paper it’s copy his name is no more than the list. I don’t know what should we do that? No, they’re going to check somehow. Yeah, please do pray about that. I don’t know what’s going on.

Sarah Zylstra
Messages started flying back and forth who didn’t get on the plane that here? He had a boarding pass. Right. Did he make it through security was his name on the flight manifest. There was nothing to do but pray that here was from them as our area and known for his fate. Perhaps he looked familiar to the Taliban. In any case, during some confusion over the spelling of his name, an airline worker told him to run onto the plane. He did is the here on the plane. Josh texted Yes. texted Rama. Hallelujah. Josh sent back he used seven exclamation points. Praise God. We love you so much. Just added the plane was taking off now rahmat roads, and then a few hours later, we just got to Doha.

Ramazan
All those moments, every seconds he was with us.

Sarah Zylstra
That’s Ramazan talking to me. A few weeks later, from an army base in New Mexico.

Unknown Speaker
I was thinking about Matthew 14, when Jesus asked his disciples to go to the other side of of the sea, in the middle of the sea, there was a storm, there was darkness, there was fear. And they thought we’re gonna die. But Jesus was walking right in that time, right in that moment, in the middle of the darkness in the middle of the difficulties I was during this two months, I was thinking the same thing. Where’s God, but immediately I was I was thinking in that part of about that part of the gospel of the of Materia goddess here that focus on on Jesus not in difficulties.

Sarah Zylstra
Josh and Jenny were elated at the happy ending. They invited Luke and Sara over for a celebration. But the whole time, Luke’s phone was going off.

Sarah
He’s taken all these calls from these desperate believers in Afghanistan, and he’s taking calls from people from the west who have money that want to help fund it and everybody’s coming to him saying, Help me, connect me.

Sarah Zylstra
So Jenny, who had always wondered why she’d spent that long season in DC before moving overseas for ministry went back to her whiteboard and Excel spreadsheet and phone calls. So far, she and Luke have helped to coordinate the escape of at least 40 Afghans to the US 50 to Tajikistan, 80, so far to Brazil, 122 the UAE, and 200 to Iran. But there are still hundreds trapped in Afghanistan, including some who have changed their ID to Christian. They are her highest priority. Every year open doors, which is a group that keeps an eye on Christian persecution around the globe, puts out a list of the hardest places to be a Christian. For the last 20 years, it has been North Korea. And honestly, I thought it always would be. But this January, Afghanistan knocked North Korea out of first place. Because now in Afghanistan, Christians are enemies of the state. Not only can they be banned from shopping or medical care, but they can be killed without due process. To those of us outside the country, it can seem as if God abandoned Afghanistan altogether. The Islamic fighters moved in with imprisonments, beatings and killings, women were shrouded and sent back home. Today, most girls can only attend school through sixth grade, and only a handful of women have been able to go to work. Women can’t take a long journey without a male relative, or appear in public without being covered. Those who protest sometimes disappear. The economy is also collapsing after the removal of the foreign aid that was propping it up. The educated continue to flee the country, there are few jobs, and those who work for the government haven’t been paid. At the same time, there was a drought and wheat and flour prices have skyrocketed 50% Over the last six months. That means that on the heels of the economic crisis is a humanitarian one. Already children are dying of malnutrition. There are stories of families trading children for food, Afghans who have protested the Taliban, even just suggesting on Facebook that the government should pay teachers and other civil servants have been beaten, arrested or killed. And remember that Taliban spokesperson who claimed responsibility for the murder of the South African family, he’s now the Deputy Minister of Information and culture. The little flame of Christianity seems to be nearly extinguished. Luke estimates there were between 8000 to 10,000 Christians in Afghanistan before August, it’s impossible to know how many are left or how many will be left in a few years, certainly fewer. And we’ll certainly have to be quieter than they were. But don’t think for a minute that God isn’t at work.

Rahmat
Honestly, from the very beginning till now I could see his his hand, his presence, his miracle with us. I really believe I really see before I was born, God made this day for us to be here. That’s why we are here.

Sarah Zylstra
That’s rahmat, he and the other Afghan house church leaders are now scattered across a handful of countries. But they’re still connected and they’re still busy writing and podcasting good theology. Now with much more freedom. Luke built a nine marks page and Dari Shamsi did a Simeon trust workshop in Nashville with Nancy Guthrie. Others are plugging in at local churches. Already. Rama is teaching a class at his church in Dari for other Afghan refugees. Some are even eyeing seminary. And suddenly what seemed impossible a year ago that any of these Afghan church leaders would ever be able to get more than a few months of training with Josh and John in the UAE is not only possible, but probable. These days. Rama and his family live in Louisville, where he’s part of a manual Baptist Church. Ramazan lives around the corner. He goes to Third Avenue Baptist where his pastor is Greg Gilbert. Ramazan has all of his books. And there’s more.

Luke
It’s toward January, we start seeing a lot of Afghans inside Afghanistan that are interested in the Gospel, including many of my family members who call contact this is how we find out we just send them the link to read the Bible.

Sarah Zylstra
Luke, social media platforms are lighting up with messages, hundreds of them from people in Afghanistan with spiritual questions. Where is God? Does God exist? Is he good? Or not?

Luke
Looking back to three months from January or four months from January that I was very discouraged, very disappointed to what the church has gotten is Have no it’s not gone. God is there. God’s presence is there. His Spirit is at work there. We don’t know how God will use this story for His kingdom for His glory. But definitely our work is not done in Afghanistan.

Sarah Zylstra
It’s not done in Louisville, either or in Brazil or in the UAE. In one sense, the Afghan church has just sent out hundreds of missionaries, all of whom came to faith in the most unlikely of circumstances, endured tremendous persecution, and watched God perform an amazing rescue.

Josh Manley
That’s it’s a, it’s a glorious story because these brothers and sisters held to their faith. They were faithful, they were going to be faithful until the end, they were willing to pay the highest cost, and the Lord rescued them. And it’s absolutely glorious. The Lord did what he has done many times over for his people. And this story. I mean, obviously, we’ll know the full ramifications of it in eternity, but it’s been such a privilege to serve the Lord Stein.

Sarah Zylstra
Thank you for listening to escape from Kabul on recorded we are honored that the Afghan house church network asked us to share their story. So they could glorify God for drawing them to himself, building the house church in Afghanistan and rescuing them along with them. We are grateful to those around the world who helped and who are still helping believers in Afghanistan, recorded as part of the gospel coalition’s Podcast Network. It’s written by Sarah Zylstra and produced by Josh Diaz. Our media director is Brandon McAllister, and our editor in chief is Colin Hanson. You can find more podcasts from the gospel coalition at tgc.org/podcasts