Fighting Terrorism to Faith with Hedieh Miramonte

And it in my in my own daughter's life it was it was a really long struggle and she went she passed through every stage and it was so hard to get her to see that the the solution the answer to the depression the trauma the you know all the pulls of the youth today is Jesus and having a personal relationship with him and so I'm super grateful for the transformation I've seen in her life welcome tonight with very good boy our podcast how would you like to have the time of your life for the rest of your life how would you like to defeat fear effortlessly knowing for sure God is hearing and answering your prayers and directing your steps and making everything work for good this is exciting here's the question how would you like to ignite your life stay tuned hi everybody welcome back to ignite special guest every guest is special we only have people on our podcast and special but this one is special in a different way you're going to hear a message that all of us need to hear how often do we talk with Muslims and um and try to reach Muslims but don't exactly have the training to do that uh the right way and we're going to fix that a little bit today hey you Falco welcome hey thank you so much thank you so much for having you very it's an honor any Falco isn't she i've been hearing about here i've been watching her she's a firestorm man she is everywhere um for good reason because she has great background and insight into what's going on today projected with the Iranian crisis as all yes uh your ministry name that's i should jump to the end and say that then let's go ahead and start with it your ministry name is resurrect ministry and that's with a y dot com okay um you have such an interesting background you weren't raised a Christian uh let's take a five way i we could spend two hours hours on this can you give us a 60 second version of of your background then let's go into your your um nation security status at FBI and i mean we're the our government has used you has been amazing and rightfully so but but uh it's it's it's how this all started for you because it wasn't as a person of faith it was uh looking at uh at the at the problem and trying to figure it all out yes so i grew up in uh i was born in the United States my parents came over from Iran we were raised a secular no religion in our in our household i actually came to faith in Islam in college and the first uh Islamic community i came across was pretty radical and i was disturbed by that and i went around looking for other communities and i ended up in a kind of a mystical version of Islam which is known as sufism and i realized that that community was in this knockout dragout fight with the more extreme interpretations of Islam in those communities not only in the United States but around the world it peaked my interest to understand what was at the root of this conflict and it was a struggle for the soul of Islam and i came across a couple of FBI agents early in my career who were interested in the terror or they came across you they came across me it was like he was an accident who is this lady and what does she have to and so you find yourself in a dark room and question what's going on here yeah eventually but it started off much more casual yeah yeah i'm joking of course but yeah and it was it it led to a career i have to say i was so happy to help my father raised me very patriotic he was really proud to become an American citizen and so i moved to dc and began um basically talking about extremism and radicalization and what was happening in the Muslim community as it must go back for a minute because you went to u.s.c i went to UCLA undergrad u.s.c law school yeah u.s.c law school so those two schools you saw a lot of this stuff going on you got you got to see it of course in personal school um but it was beginning to happen and not to the extent we see now it is way more controversial and radical now than it was when i was in school the in that in that short period of time yeah it was especially this is you know early 90s 1990s yeah so the problem really has not and actually the problem has gotten much worse in the past 10 years and that's part of the radical left and islamist alliance i think that's really catapulted their visibility and their outspokenness so anyway so i ended up moving to dc and i just began and spent 25 22 years as a federal contractor working for various branches of the u.s. government basically trying to identify moderate Muslim networks and uh defeat terrorism fight radicalization and that's yeah and then i when i left dc i ended up getting really disillusioned i had a um experience when i tried to take my head cover off in islam and i got a tremendous amount of criticism telling me i was going to burn in eternity and hellfire and i just got really tired of it and i got tired of not being able to solve the problem of terrorism and radicalization and i moved back to california and in that i was lost once again finding no relationship with what i thought was god and i followed a tweet of a girl i don't even know saw pastor on youtube preach the simple gospel and that was it here i am you know it's amazing i hear so many stories like this and and you can go through all those same experiences and not have a heart for god and and god is not moving supernaturally right right we affect god but he knew your heart through all of that yes he he knew you had a heart for him you didn't know him right but you had a heart for right what's what is right and ethical and loving if i can put words you about for a moment and he saw that and he knew you're hungry for him and he needed to get to you and and then he does it in a more simple way profound way it speaks to your heart and that's something yeah and i and i tell people this all the time when it comes to you even devout Muslims people are afraid of approaching and i said that you know if they're devout worshipers they are chasing after what they think is god and one of the most powerful things you could say to them is to pray and open their hearts for the real god to reveal himself because our god is on the move there are millions of Muslims coming to faith in Christ across the Middle East through dreams and visions and audibly hearing the voice of Christ which is an experience that i had it's it's happening everywhere even when there's no access to churches or bibles yeah let's talk about revival in Iran right quick because i keep getting videos i shared one with you the other day but i've gotten a lot of others it's fervent it's on fire give us some insight of what's happening in the christian community in Iran well the really interesting thing is unfortunately there is a massive decline in the christian populations in other parts of the Middle East and that's the result of the rise of Islamic extremism so as those communities multiply and expand the christian community gets persecuted and pushed out well in Iran the the population is so fed up with the Islamic regime that they a lot of them left faith altogether they became atheists and then on the other hand a lot of them ended up turning to christ and that's the result of either access through the internet through underground churches through missionaries and some people put the number at somewhere between one and two million Christians in Iran that are born again it's just extraordinary and it's really and there's really a deep a deep sense of commitment because it's very dangerous you it's apostasy first of all when you leave islam and the and the penalty is death in in Iran and they are particularly aggressive against pastors and followers of christ i mean one girl i knew moved 12 times in two weeks just to continue to preach the gospel and baptize people in her bathtubs and her and her husband were just running from house to house because they were just on fire for the lord and wanted to save family members and friends and people that they would just meet in a restaurant incredible so i've seen these videos the last couple weeks of massive crowds worshipping god and thinking how do they find a place they can do that i mean they can't do it with complete freedom because they know at any moment but but there are these gatherings of of christians coming together how's that how's that happening oh most of those videos are not any wrong those are expat communities really they're persons in Canada on earth as i want to rainians and they're they're praising god in a rainy and on but they're not they're not in Iran they're not in Iran i mean that was the question i had i said that it looks real i think they are but how can that possibly do it right under in the midst of all the the murdering and killing and pillaging no absolutely not the home churches as far as you know the missionaries there that i've spoken use they never exceed more than three or four people yeah okay well that that answers that question and it is amazing though that where we're seeing revival is mostly where there's persecution right now where we have plenty where it's there's there's no penalty we're seeing deadness i think if i was god lucky i'd say i had the persecution model and i had the prosperity model uh the persecution model works better so sad so sad i actually one of my prayers with the lord is i'm constantly in praise and worship and think gratitude because i was like please lord don't use difficulty to draw me near to you yeah but he does but he does because in my life right about every joyful christian i know when i talked to him i find out they've been through great pain right right and and you learn you learn through the pain you can shake your fist a god or you can depend on god and he he refreshes you in the midst of the pain and uses you to to touch other lives you know it is amazing absolutely and i think that's actually what can explain a lot of the revival we're seeing in the united states there's you know reports about uh Gen Z coming to faith in christ whether it's through you know the Protestant domination or turning to the Catholic church you know both of us are huge fans of the research that George Barnard does at Arizona christian and the just the reports of how much of their learning and coming towards faith in christ in this generation in college students is is extraordinary it's such a great accomplishment and i think that is the result of the trans movement the you know the LGBT movement and the just this feeling of emptiness that's being pushed by the radical left that the kids are just rejecting and wanting a relationship with god which has meaning and gives their life's meaning i think satan's overplayed his hand yes with the Gen Z's yes they they've seen so much about it and are fed up with it and are really searching for truth down the the Gen Z audiences that we come to they want to know they want they don't know what they want truth they don't know what it is necessarily but they want truth when you explain to them that god's the author of truth he is truth he exudes truth you can know him personally guess what you can represent him personally it changed everybody around you by introducing them to the holy god they they respond i think the the hope for america is the Gen Z years absolutely i've seen it in my in my own daughter's life it was it was a really long struggle and she went she passed through every stage i i wrote it in my i have a book out called Living Fearless in Christ and i talk about that journey and it was so hard to get her to see that the the solution the answer to the depression the trauma the you know all the polls of the youth today is Jesus and having a personal relationship with him and so i'm super grateful for the transformation i've seen in her life fighting for the souls of our kids and our grandkids it's it's it's it's it's fun spiritual warfare absolutely even when our kids are going to church yes it's it's it's just i see it all over the place it's just and of course you know this terrible statistic that reports from several sources that like eighty percent of our young people who grow up in church reject god even if they go to christian college reject god by the time they graduate yes college and i go back of course to wait about train your way your child and the ways of the Lord were they're young and i'm not depart from it so there's what's going on god i know your word is true with these two don't get together and it came to me we're not teaching on the ways of the Lord in most of our churches that teaching salvation we're we got smoking mirrors that were jumping around like maniacs and praise and praising praise and we're going on mission trips and we're having to do everything but leading people to jesus i mean it's it's a formal godliness but not denying it's not the real thing so they're not really saved so it's a surface experiential type Christianity and then they get into the real world with the big challenge for their thoughts and particularly with with left-leaning pastors even in christian universities and and they get they get easily bumped off the truck and they're on the wrong side of the tracks and that's one of the great tragedies in america today it really is it really is and i i do a sunday school class at my local church teaching them about islam and i i ask them all all the time i was like do you have a personal relationship with jesus have you given your life to the Lord i know you all you know most of you come from christian homes that this is just you think this is your identity from birth it's not god has no grandchildren he only has children so make sure you have a personal relationship with the lord and it's it's really and i ask them off and i was like raise your hands if you know where you go when you die and the entire room does not raise their hand and i and i tell them i said wait why why do you not know the kids in the city school class right i don't think we need to fix that sad it is it is it is true and folks know that when you're talking to a court of court christian that doesn't mean they're christian you know seventy five something like seventy five seventy percent of americans saved their christian it's a cultural belief it's a belief in jesus they would swear to stack of bibles jesus son of god they know that and we can take that as salvation it's not salvation satan satan knows who jesus is he believes in jesus trust on the lord yeah it's being in in my past year and he's over here look by neton satan he said are you a believer or are you a follower there's lots of believers but most of them are not followers yes yeah take up the cross and follow me you know and and and be by and be by a possible to the nations and by voice to the nations and we're not we're not doing that so it's it's a crazy that said well i think before we go to the the break here um i got to tell you i love muslims on a secular basis and a christian basis i work with a lot of muslims oh we we were a huge brand throughout the Arab world with our car wax fantastic and we have partners there and they would die for me and i would die for them i mean we talk about god and and i talk to regular muslims i think oh that i would have enough faith that i would lay down and put myself prone in front of whoever to worship who i thought was god their obedience their worship their pray it's good hearts they may be blinded but they have the right they want god yes when i get into homes and i interact in business with muslims i i just fall in love with them their hospitality their food but the you know i love the whole experience so i find myself apologizing for muslims often saying don't don't confuse the lunatics you know right the jihadists whatever with the common people they're just trying to follow god in in Jerusalem i met the most amazing people when they call them they could tell you they're Palestinians i almost recoil in the first time i went there you know you're so kind and loving and also i got a by american view of this whole thing is mixed up i can imagine so i i find myself drawn to muslims in spite of all the chaos and the hate and the wanting to you know to kill us and all that but most of them were just they're that's not their heart they're just trying to do the right and they're caught between this there's two forces and and we can't sit quiet we we got a peer to them on on their level thinking of saying that's what i want to do it we can do another half an hour right yeah i think we don't have is i want to get into that folks and talk about how can we reach the heart of a muslim whose heart really it's not pure but it's it's worthy god loves them is every one of them to the worst one of them he loves them as much he loves us he does he loves them and we have no choice we have to love the vagna matter what they do they're doing evil things because they're lost we have to get them unlost and so that's the great privilege we have i want to talk about that in our next break uh before we close off this half hour any give me a kind of a thought you might have about on the subject of how do we reach the bustle world without getting into two debuts i want to go into the depth of that the hard part is that we have to separate Islam as a religion as an ideology as a global expansionist movement from muslims who are created in the image of god so there is no one past the reach of a living it's just being able to separate our feelings and even our approach to dealing with sharia and islamization and these more militant or political factions of the islamic community but really being able to separate muslims as people because even the son of a hamas leader became a Christian you know what i mean i i know people who are just hot these two so we just have to be able to maintain that heart for the individual while we deal separately with it as a movement yeah okay we're going to break off now and we'll just skip one of the next one we'll get into that in depth thank you thank you thank you thank you for being with us i know you are your schedule is amazing i'm glad you've carved out an hour and a half i'm definitely not more busy than you that's all well we're talking about that anyway well cordial throughout thank you thank you thank you and for all of you watching thank you for joining us and we'll see you on the on the next episode okay take care wasn't it if you enjoyed today's podcast please let us know subscribe now to continue receiving my podcast and add your comments that was attract more viewers see you next time on the ignite with very before our podcast