Still blindfolded, Hussein was taken inside a building; he couldn’t tell if it was a house or a business. He was led down four steps just inside the door, and then after 15 feet there were more stairs. He was going to a basement. He heard men speaking Kurdish, a language he didn’t know. Looking down past the edge of his blindfold, he could see that the floor was made of tiles. Hussein was taken to the manager of solitary confinement; he was placed in a cell and the blindfold and handcuffs were finally removed. They gave him a gray jumpsuit to put on and took his clothes. The cell was a 10’ by 6’ room, with no bed or toilet or sink. On one wall were two floodlights, and one of them was always on.
“It wasn’t just the light that was bothering me,” Hussein recalls. “My thoughts were bothering me; a lot of things came into my mind.” He worried what the Christian girls he’d been arrested with were telling police. He worried that other church leaders would be compromised. He wished he could warn them. He put on the blindfold to block the light and try to sleep, but his thoughts were in turmoil.
“Then a big event happened. I had been a believer, but I had never felt Christ in this way ever in my walk. To hear God, like you hear water or anything else; I heard God! I felt like Jesus put everything aside, the whole world aside, to come to me and whisper in my ear. I heard God say to me, ‘Let’s pray together.’ I don’t remember exactly what He said, but He told me how to pray and what to pray for.
“I started to pray, and I got the peace that is beyond understanding. I felt so close to God at that moment. Jesus said to me, ‘There is no need for you to say anything because I am going to tell you what to say. Why are you afraid? At the end you are going to die, right? So why don’t you just serve? Don’t you have faith that when you close your eyes in this world you will open them up to me? And when you open your eyes you will be in my arms. Didn’t you get the teaching that whoever has more persecution gets a bigger crown? So why are you saying any of this?’
“I think that if this situation never happened to me I would probably never of heard the voice of God as clear as I did at that moment. I could feel the presence of God. The fear was gone. I was worried about nothing. Because Jesus said, ‘Don’t worry. Let Me do everything; give Me the responsibilities. Just think when you come out how much glory you are going to give Me and how many people might come to Me because of this.”
The next several days Hussein was interrogated. Each time, he was taken to a small room where gray carpet covered both the floor and walls. The carpet on the walls was stained with ink from hundreds of fingerprinted prisoners wiping their fingers on the wall. He was left in the interrogation room for long periods. He could hear interrogations in the neighboring rooms. Yet even in the interrogation room, the peace that Christ had given him remained.
Different officers interrogated him. One had a baby face and curly hair. Another seemed very angry. Hussein was handed paper and a red pen and was told to write down personal information about himself. They brought some of the literature from the apartment and asked Hussein about it. Hussein answered honestly that the literature was not his, and that he had been visiting the city and meeting with friends.
After three days, he was taken to court. “Why do you have a problem with mosques and Imams?” the judge asked. “Why do you want to destroy Islam?” Hussein told the judge that the books he held—taken from the apartment—were not his. The judge never asked Hussein whether he believed in Jesus or whether he was a Christian.
Hussein was taken back to the main prison, fingerprinted and checked in. But instead of being taken to a cell, he was again taken back to the solitary confinement prison run by the secret police. If any questions were asked, the paperwork would show that he’d been in the main prison the whole time. They took Hussein back to a cell, and the interrogations continued. At night they poured water onto the floor of his cell to make it wet and cold and hard to sleep. But Hussein wasn’t uncomfortable: “This solitary confinement I was starting to like because I was really praying and being alone with God,” he said.
He was there for 10 days, interrogated every morning and repeatedly asked the same questions. When they asked about Bibles, Hussein thought they had found the 500 in the apartment. But he was very careful of his answers, and he later discovered that the Bibles had not been found. The Bibles they asked about were the two from his backpack.
Hussein’s story was featured in a past issue of VOM’s free monthly newsletter. You can sign up to receive VOM’s newsletter here. Visit PersecutionBlog tomorrow to read how God had His hand on Hussein even when he was sent to death row. Click here to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
Star777 ~ Prayer is allowing your heart, soul and mind to speak to God. We can use our mouths of course, but God hears what is on our hearts, the depth of our being. God is Spirit and His Spirit will speak to those who have asked Jesus Christ into their hearts to take way their sins and to be their LORD. When a person does that God puts His Holy Spirit in the Believer. Then when we want to talk to God, we can speak out loud if we want or if we just want to talk to Him with our heart, mind, and soul He will hear us. If you have not asked Jesus Christ into your life to take away your sins you should. When we die we will see God and if we still have our sins we will be throw out of heaven into Hell. BUT if we have asked Jesus Christ into our hearts to take away our sins and to be our LORD and we follow after Him (His Spirit will guide you in life), then when we die God will welcome us in. Jesus Christ is God who came to earth, took on flesh and became a man and then was crucified for our sin, died and then rose up from the dead and ascended into heaven. Praying is communicating with God.
Posted by: Grace | March 13, 2013 at 11:21 AM
what is pray ?
why need pray ?
what purpose pray ?
how to pray ?
what to pray ?
Posted by: STAR777 | March 12, 2013 at 11:25 PM