Iranian Islamic government has b
egun a new round of crackdown on Iranian Christians, forcing a great number of them to leave the country.
Mohabat News – According to a Fox News report, the new round of arrests in Iran is targeted at Christians involved in the House-Church movement, especially their leaders. This has forced a large number of Iranian Christians to leave their homeland for places including Bulgaria's capital, Sofia, a former Soviet Union bloc country that now holds European Union status.
Nikolai Chirpanliev, president of Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees, told Fox News, "the Iranian Christian community is growing in Sofia."
"Now there are 100 to 200 people from Iran here," he added. "They are running because of the existing regime in Iran, where they are being persecuted because of their religion."
The House-Church movement in Iran started in response to pressures by the Islamic regime on official churches, more specifically pressures on Christian converts attending so called "official churches". The Islamic regime of Iran prosecutes anyone who converts from Islam.
The latest UN statistics suggest that at least 49 Christians are imprisoned in Iran on the basis of their religious belief.
The Islamic regime of Iran has become increasingly concerned with the spread of Christianity among Iranians, to the extent that many senior Islamic officials have raised their voice against the phenomena. Iranian Islamic leaders have repeatedly warned their comrades against the growing number of young Christian converts in religious cities of the country.
Despite efforts by the Islamic regime to defame Christianity and Christians and libel Iranian Christian leaders, Christianity is growing rapidly, and some even believe a spiritual revival is taking place in Iran.
Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the Iranian Supreme Leader has also shown concerns over the growth of House-Churches across the country. In remarks made in a recent trip to Qom, Ayatollah Khamenei said the Islamic regime is strongly determined to suppress false mysticisms and House-Churches.
Suppression of Iranian official churches has been rampant since 2011. In order to keep Iranian Christian converts out of official churches, the Iranian government has closed down several Farsi-speaking churchesacross the country. The most prominent of all was the government's order to the Central Assemblies of God (AoG) church in Tehran to ban all Farsi-speakers from attending their services. The Central AoG church was the largest Farsi-speaking church in Iran.
Regardless of all government endeavors to suppress Christianity in the country, Iranians, especially those in religious cities, continue to show interest in knowing about Christ through their calls to Iranian evangelical media and visiting their websites.