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ISIS Crisis Creates Unprecedented Opportunity To Share Christ In Iraq

October 28, 2014 | Ruth Odia

The cruelty of the Islamic State (ISIS) has led to unprecedented receptivity to the message of Christ in Iraq. A curious colonel from the Kurdish forces battling ISIS in Iraq approached members of an indigenous Iraqi ministry team to ask them questions about the aid they were offering to the people in crisis there. 

He was curious about the reasons that motivated the actions of the ministry team that, with the assistance of Christian Aid Mission was supplying displaced people with food, clothing, beds, medicine and Bibles. The colonel had observed these workers demonstrate Christ’s love in a tangible way, and how these followers of Christ were bringing love and peace and goodness to people everyday. What was the reason for offering all this aid? What was the motivation, what was the source of it?

The colonel was serving as a division commander of the Peshmerga, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s armed forces, which have helped to slow the incursion of ISIS in its brutal push to establish a caliphate imposing a strict version of Sunni Islam. With the aid of U.S. airstrikes, the Peshmerga have also slowly retaken some territory and are helping to secure the Kurdish capital.

The ministry team director reported on the moving conversion of the colonel after the team was able to have a long talk with him about Christ. As a result of this encounter the colonel bowed and prayed, asking Christ into his life, and received a copy of the Holy Bible. 

The colonel said, ‘Today I am the happiest person – I’ve had the privilege of making this decision.’ 

The colonel’s experience was just one of many taking place in Iraq. In cities of refuge like Erbil for people displaced from their homes in other parts of Iraq, people are turning to Christ at a stunning pace. Tent churches are springing up in the makeshift camps. The team director said that under normal circumstances, mission strategies focus on how to proclaim Christ effectively, but the challenge now is keeping pace with the numbers who would receive Him. 

He continued to say that the greatest challenge in the ministry right now is not whether these people will accept Christ or not, and that in all their travel to deliver the aid and preach God’s Word, they did not find anyone opposed to or rejecting their message. Another challenge is how and when they would reach all those people with the message of salvation in the squares, sidewalks, roads, inside the tents and out, and everywhere.

The harvest indeed is great here, and the need for workers and support is just as great as the teams working here strive to reach the spiritually hungry multitudes for Christ as well as provide them with critical daily necessities. 

Christian Aid Mission’s Middle East director said that as a result of this trend, some church leaders and workers for ministry organizations are remaining in Iraq even as the cruel practices of ISIS – beheading Iraqi children who refuse to deny Christ in Qaroqosh and Western journalists elsewhere – gain greater notoriety. 

The director reported that workers who stayed behind in Mosul and the surrounding areas to evangelize, as there are so many there who are receptive to the gospel. These workers are willing to risk being in an area under the rule of ISIS for the privilege of bringing more fruit for Christ.

The persecution has forced the new Christians to trust God more than they ever have before, and the director continued by saying that these Christians were growing in their relationship with God in ways they had never imagined. There is also a great need to intercede for the workers there whose lives are always in danger as they live day by day at great risk.

Luke 10:22 Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest.