Saeed Abedini is an Iranian-born pastor, evangelist, and religious freedom advocate whose life story spans Hezbollah recruitment at age 14, conversion to Christianity at age 20, the founding of dozens of underground house churches across Iran, and three and a half years of imprisonment inside the Islamic Republic's prison system. Sentenced in January 2013 to eight years by the Iranian regime for building a network of Christian house churches and, as the court charged, attempting to draw Iranian youth away from Islam, Abedini endured physical torture, beatings, and continuous death threats before his release on January 16, 2016, as part of a prisoner exchange negotiated during the Obama administration. A naturalized US citizen, he has since dedicated his ministry to serving persecuted believers, speaking to both Christian and secular audiences across multiple countries, and working with the US government's religious freedom offices and the United Nations as an ambassador of peace to help Christians whose lives are in immediate danger reach safe countries.
Saeed Abedini started this blog because the story he lived is wider than any single headline ever captured. His voice is shaped by 26 years of full-time ministry begun the day the Assemblies of God Church of Iran asked him to confirm his calling in writing, a commitment he made without ever drawing a church salary. He writes about faith under pressure, the reality of Christian persecution that international media consistently underreports, and the biblical significance of Israel and the Middle East. A recurring question he returns to is one he has spent years studying firsthand: what does it actually mean to be a watchman on the walls of Jerusalem, and why do so few Western believers treat that calling as urgent? He founded what he describes as the first Christian Zionist church in Persian history, and that perspective runs through everything he writes.
Readers of this blog can expect content rooted in hard-won, on-the-ground experience. That means field-level insight into the persecution of Christians in closed countries, reflections on resilience and forgiveness drawn from prison and its aftermath, and forward-looking commentary on the biblical prophecies Abedini has studied through four visits to the Holy Land. His book, The Truth, threads through many of these posts as the longer form of what the blog explores week by week. If you want to understand more about Saeed Abedini and the ministry driving this work, the full story is here.