Fleeing ISIS, Finding Jesus

The Real Story of God at Work

Charles Morris, Craig Borlase

• Publisher: David C Cook
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781434710710
• eBook ISBN:
  9781434711076
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

"Is this the end of Christianity in the Middle East?" When a respected Christian communicator read the question posed by the New York Times, he chose to travel to Jordan and Iraq in search of answers. What he discovered left him amazed and inspired. While the news coverage of ISIS focuses on the horrors wrought by this group, there is another side to the story that rarely gets told. While terror is on the rise, Muslims are coming to faith in Jesus like never before. Charles Morris regularly reminds the 500, 000 listeners of his Haven Today radio show that "it's all about Jesus, " and through his new book-- Fleeing Isis, Finding Jesus --he offers a unique, compelling account of the miraculous ways in which Jesus is transforming lives in the Middle East today. As Charles narrates his travels around the region, he shares with readers not just the good news of how Jesus is at work, but he also invites us to wonder how our own lives might be transformed as a result.

Part I

Amman and Madaba, Jordan

Chapter 1

Two Inches of Bacon (and Other Signs of Revival)

After a red-eye from Los Angeles and a layover in the chaos and crowds of Istanbul, Jordan made sense. Standing outside the airport on a warm winter’s night, it all felt familiar. The way the oversized terminal commands the skyline like a storm cloud. The sight of giant concrete shells somehow suspended up above, draped like the roof of a Bedouin tent. The man who strode purposefully toward a luxury SUV, his pure white dishdasha flowing out behind him. It was 2:00 a.m. and the terminal was thriving; the whole place was alive and free. Wealth was everywhere on display; size equated status. Coming from Los Angeles, it all just made sense.

It took fifteen minutes for me and my two traveling companions to get out of the parking lot. Our youthful Uber driver spoke little in his impeccable English, but mostly I just looked out the window and stared. I heard the usual horns as we bunched up and edged our way toward the barrier, but a clear car width of space separated us from the next vehicle. If this were India or the Philippines, at least one other car and a tuktuk would have plugged the gap. But Jordan was not like those places; Jordan was more westernized. Jordan played by the rules.

By the time the barrier fell down behind us and the car accelerated onto the empty highway, I was happy that Jordan continued to fit the box I had prepared for it in my mind. Showroom-bright Land Cruisers and Mercedes with Saudi plates owned the highway while us little guys in family sedans kept out of their way. Pulling into Amman, we passed a colossal Starbucks. “The biggest in the world,” claimed our driver. Before I had a chance to question this, we were slicing down a road where immaculate hedges poked out above high, pure white security walls. What I could see of the houses behind reminded me of …

“Is like Beverly Hills, don’t you think?”

Military-grade armored vehicles with machine guns poking from metal turrets. Medical centers made of glass and steel. Upscale hotels where guards with guns stood before doormen with immaculate suits.

The trouble was, I knew the image of Jordan as a slightly poorer cousin to Saudi Arabia was all wrong. Jordan has so much less than its oil-rich neighbor. But it also has so much more.

The truth about the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is that it has little in the way of natural resources. It has none of the oil possessed by Iraq and Saudi Arabia, its neighbors to the east and southeast, respectively. Though it is home to many important biblical sites—from Mount Nebo where Moses glimpsed the Promised Land, to the most likely location of Jesus’s baptism—most Holy Land tours prefer Israel to the west. An Arabic country ruled by members of the same royal family since the 1940s, it has avoided the turmoil and tribulations of Syria to the north.

Poorer than Saudi Arabia, safer than Iraq, humbler than Israel, and less brutal than Syria, Jordan is unique in the Middle East.

But that is not the half of it.

The most important thing about my trip to Jordan was observing the country’s reaction to the civil war in Syria and the brutal advance of ISIS.

More than any other country, Jordan has opened its arms to refugees. Though closing its borders would doubtless have protected its precious tourism industry, Jordan chose otherwise. Almost a quarter of those living in the country are recent refugees. One in four. If that were the United States, it would be like half of Mexico and all of Canada moving in.

In the bright sunlight that flooded the Intercontinental the next morning, Nabil, one of the four local Christians who agreed to meet me, looked up from his plate that bore a two-inch stack of bacon and grinned. “This,” he said, a trace of grease sparkling on his chin, “is one of the few places in Amman where I can get my pork fix.” Another slab got sliced, stabbed, and swallowed. His eyes half closed in pleasure. “Man, I miss America.”

My search for signs of life among Christians in the Middle East began in the comfort of a hotel that politely asked me to load my bag into the X-ray machine and then step through the body scanner. Yet no amount of security or plates piled with bacon could fully remove the sense that our conversation was best played quietly in a discreet corner of the hotel restaurant.

Nabil was not the only one of my four breakfast companions to have spent time in the US. Between him, Soraya, and Cherien, they boasted a couple of degrees from American schools, some postgraduate study, and a whole load of vacations and business trips. They’re educated, privileged, and, I’m guessing, about as free as any middle-class Jordanian to choose almost any career path they wish.

Which makes what Soraya told me all the more remarkable.

“Eight years ago I was studying for my masters in management in the US. I heard a report stating that 80 percent of children in Jordanian orphanages were being sexually abused—either by staff or by other orphans. So I decided to do something.”

When she returned to Jordan, Soraya set up a nonprofit with the aim of providing care to some of those orphans. Later, when Jordan started to see an influx of Iraqi refugees, Soraya expanded her work to help as many as she could. “We started working with a hundred of them, and I decided to forego my salary for six months to get the thing started.”

It wasn’t easy to try to be part of the solution to a problem that many wished to ignore. The task was made even harder, however, by the fact that she was a woman in an Arabic land. Harder still because she was a Christian in a country that was overwhelmingly Muslim.

“You know that you are being watched. Even on Facebook people will track what you’re doing and then quiz you about it after.” She paused and described the day she went to file the paperwork for the nonprofit and found herself alone in a room with a group of men whose lingering stares up and down her body left no doubt what they were thinking about.

“Another time I had a church leader say to me, ‘Why do you want to get involved in this? Go home and raise your kids.’”

Cherien looked away and smiled at this—a pained smile that came from being overlooked because of her particular faith and gender. She described how she had asked her church leaders if she could lead worship, quoting Exodus 15 and the moment when Miriam whirled around with a tambourine and a long trail of fellow worshippers behind her. They refused.

Maybe it was because of the jet lag, but a few things really struck me about the conversation. What we were talking about—the desire to help, the desire to serve in church, the desire to put yourself in the line of fire and spend half a year working for no financial reward—were not the typical kinds of desires that most people pursued back home. Before I could chase the thought down, Cherien carried on.

“When I saw Syrian refugees, I heard many of them say that living in the camp was better than living at home. So many of them came from poverty. But when I met Iraqis, it was different. Many of them were bank managers and university professors. When I saw what they had lost, my compassion spiked.”

That compassion led to this small band of Christians helping six hundred people with a medical drive. It took the form of donated heaters, blankets, and mattresses. It materialized in the midst of long, slow, repeated conversations with refugees, as one tiny corner of the church in Jordan took the time and trouble to get to know by name those they helped—to learn their stories, to understand their needs.

“There is a very high suicide rate among them,” said Soraya. “They come from wealthy backgrounds, and many of them were driving their Mercedes one day, then sold it the next and began walking to the border in designer clothes. Now in Jordan they feel like they have lost everything. They say, ‘My kids look at me and see that I’ve failed.’”

There was a pause. Then, for the first time, Albert joined in. When he spoke, his voice was soft. Our already-quiet table fell even quieter to catch his every word. “It’s common for these refugees to have returned home from work one day to find ISIS in their house saying, ‘You’ve got ten minutes to get everything that you want and then leave.’ What would you grab? What would you have to leave behind?”

The words of the Uber driver the night before came back to me. As I had looked out the window and wondered at the politeness of the Jordanian drivers, he had told me about the real cost of his country’s generosity. He had said that with refugees split equally between camps and cities like Amman, the influx of people looking for cheap accommodations had caused both rents and the prices of staple goods to rise sharply, making life even harder for Jordan’s population. And yet still they open their doors and invite refugees in.

“What else can we do?” said the driver. “Wouldn’t you do the same?”

Later that morning I found myself sitting in another car, looking at the streets of Amman through slightly different eyes. Instead of being struck by the wealth, this time I wondered at the knots of men standing around on the sidewalk, wearing faded suits and blank expressions. Were these the kind of Iraqi refugees I’d just heard about?

My guide was in a position to offer some answers. Daoud was another Jordanian Christian who worked to help refugees, and he had worked to encourage the growth of the church in Iraq for years. In a voice rich and measured like Walter Cronkite’s, with hands wide and weatherworn, Daoud sketched the world as he knew it decades ago.

“I started going to Iraq in 1981. We took in a few Bibles and Scripture portions.”

“How many?” I asked.

“About seven million.”

Daoud grinned at my gaping jaw. “Things were different then. You used to be able to walk the streets at 2:00 a.m. in Baghdad without any fear. And Christians were safe at the time of Saddam. They were wealthy and influential and he protected them. He even once said, ‘Iraq is a garden and Christians are its flowers.’ Every Christmas and Easter, each of the hundreds of churches in the country received a bouquet with his compliments. I’ve even played at a church with an organ that had a plaque that read ‘A personal gift from the President.’ But that was all before the dirty politics changed him into a criminal.

“Even so,” continued Daoud, “I’m not alone in thinking that Iraq can only be controlled by someone strong. Why do you think we have so many different g...

Table of contents

• Prologue: Because the Gospel Teaches That Endings Are Often Beginnings
• Part I: Amman and Madaba, Jordan
• 1. Two Inches of Bacon (and Other Signs of Revival)
• 2. Dust, Mold, and Death
• 3. The Lunch That Woke Me Up
• Part II. Erbil, Iraq
• 4. Special Ops, Lost Passports, and ISIS Up Close
• 5. When Life Falls Apart
• 6. A God-Given Reality Check
• Part III: Dohuk and Alqosh, IRAQ
• 7. That Moment When He Was About to Be Executed
• 8. Seeds Grow in Dark Places
• 9. The Mountain and the Miracle
• 10. What Next?
• Epilogue: It Starts Here
• Notes