A Modern Day Supernatural Vision

Afrooz had just experienced a vision, but she was not happy. Instead, she was angry, quite angry! It wasn’t the vision from Allah that she had been praying for! Afrooz was a college student in Iran, away from her parents (who were out of the country), studying hard and also working a highly stressful job. The pressure was more than she could stand, so for days, she had been earnestly praying for a vision or message from Allah, something to relieve the excessive stress.

Instead, she had a vision from the “Messiah.” To her, the Messiah was just a Jewish teacher and leader. Afrooz had wanted Allah to come to her, so one night she had complained to Allah, in her prayers. She said, “How much pressure can I stand? I am working and I’m studying. Why aren’t you helping me? Why aren’t you giving me relief?”

The she threatened Allah. She said, “If you are going to help me, tonight you should show yourself to me. If you don’t show me a sign tonight, then I will turn to the material life and I will be a sinner. I will be staying up all night and waiting for a sign from you so I can see and believe that you are here with me.” Afrooz says she complained for an hour, but got very tired and put her head on her prayer mat. The following, in her own words, is what happened next:

“It was midnight. I saw a light coming into the room and spreading. I was frightened and I ran out of the room. Then I told myself, ‘Didn’t I ask for something?’ Afrooz said, “So I convinced myself that I should go back and sit in the prayer place and see what would happen. I went back. The room was full of light. I thought it was morning, but later I realized it was midnight. I lifted my head and was seeing Jesus the Messiah. He was wearing white. While I had never seen a picture of the Messiah, I recognized that this could only be the Messiah . . . Immediately, I started to take notes. I wrote what I heard, ‘Come to me, all you who work hard and are heavily loaded down, and I will give you rest.’

“I actually got a bit angry at this. I was looking for Muhammed’s god, and Jesus the Messiah comes to me?! I closed up the prayer mat and said, ‘I am done with this! I’m going to sleep!’

“The next night, I dreamed and saw the Messiah again. He said, ‘Didn’t I tell you to come under my shadow and come with me and be safe?’ So I was telling myself, ‘This is the Messiah coming to me. Is this the real God? I should be seeing Allah or Muhammed.’”

The next day, Afrooz’s colleague noticed that she seemed upset and asked her what the matter was. She just said that her mother was in America and that she didn’t know when or; if ever she would see her mother again. This colleague tried to encourage her, telling her that God is always with her and told her to take her complaints to him. A few weeks later, this colleague came to her and told her he was a Christian, something people just didn’t do there. Afrooz started to complain, “What kind of God would allow me to feel this way, to have this kind of pressure?”

Then Afrooz pulled out her notebook and showed her colleague, what she had written down, what the “Messiah” had said to her. “Come to me all you who work hard and are heavily loaded down and I will give you rest.” Her colleague pulled out a book, searched through the pages and then showed her a quote from that book. The words were the same as she had just heard from the Messiah, “Come to me all you who work hard and are heavily loaded down and I will give you rest.” The same words she had written down.

Afrooz demanded,” What kind of book is this?” It was the first Bible she had ever seen. He told her it was a Bible and that he could get her one. She accepted the offer.

Afrooz later said, “That was the beginning of my faith.” Afrooz relates that through the Bible, she found spiritual rest in Jesus, the Messiah, but when people found out that she had left Islam for following Jesus, life became hard in other ways.

It became very difficult to get a good job. Then Afrooz married a Christian Iranian man in a church. That upset local authorities who tried to arrest both of them on their wedding night, while in their hotel room. Since they did not have documentation from a local mosque (which would not have given approval for a Christian wedding), they were arrested for committing adultery and taken to jail.

They were finally cleared, but life for them was difficult enough in many ways that they moved to a different part of Iran. Several years later, they realized that the daughter they had would likely not be allowed to attend school because of their Christian faith, and might even get taken away, so they finally decided it was time to leave Iran altogether.

She and her husband are now happy and active in their faith, living in Turkey. Afrooz was sad to have to leave her country, but she could not deny the vision she had, which totally changed her life. *

I shared this as one example of the supernatural that still influences people, even in this day and age. Jesus has shown himself in visions to many people of different faiths. Other people have experienced the supernatural, through miracles of healing that often amaze the doctors. This happens more often than most people realize. People also relate experiencing angels who appear as regular people, sometimes as a professional who saves someone’s life.

People will say, “Then, why don’t we read about these miracles in the newspapers?” Can you imagine finding a journalist who would take someone’s report of a miracle seriously? Even if the journalist thought it might be for real, would newspapers take it seriously? Many people reading this won’t take it seriously!

For open minded people interested in reading more about the miraculous, contrary to possible expectations, a good magazine to read is “Guideposts” and/or it’s sister publication, “Angels.” These two magazines are mostly personal stories of general inspiration. However, sometimes the stories relate amazing reports of supernatural deliverance from danger or instances of divine guidance. The magazine is produced by educated professionals. Background checks on the people submitting the articles are performed and details in the articles are checked out as much as possible.

I plan to write some more about some of the fascinating stories of the miraculous, happening to ordinary people. The supernatural world is real, because God is real!

• ”When Faith is Forbidden, 40 Days on the Frontlines with Persecuted Christians” by Todd Nettleton, published by The Voice of the Martyrs, vom.org