Thank you for responding to our YouTube appeal to pray for Jim’s healing and to contribute, especially for our beloved Ukrainian Christian family. We’re looking forward to blessing some very effective front-line ministries, even while Jim’s being treated. Here are six ways you can contribute to our and their joint relief efforts to wounded, war-weary Ukrainian citizens:

• Secure credit card donation here. INSTANT AUTO-RECEIPT FOR TAX DEDUCTION! Please consider covering the credit card processing fee.
• Via Zelle to our Zelle ID: “office@jamesgilbert.org” at Bank of America. (Learn more about Zelle here.)
• Venmo (@JGM-32)
• Apple Pay (352-316-1212)
• PayPal (Click HERE)
• Check payable to Jim Gilbert Ministries to PO Box 141928, Gainesville FL 32614. Write the word UKRAINE on the memo line.

Remember to include your email or physical address in order to receive a receipt for tax-deductible giving. This is important for anyone wanting to keep Uncle Sam from wasting more money. We won’t add you to yet another list!

Thank you for your interest, trust, and prayers, as together we help relieve the suffering of these Ukrainian people.

Deepest thanks,

I’m headed to Poland and Ukraine for 3 weeks, my 3rd mission in 13 months. Our targets: 1) continue helping Ukrainian widows and orphans; 2) aid Kherson flood victims of Putin’s dam bombing; 3) deliver relief where supply lines are cut off; 4) supply funds for life-saving bandages that our close contacts are delivering to wounded Ukrainian civilians, especially husbands and fathers trying to save their homes. Casualties can drop by 70% with proper bandages and tourniquets; 5) minister in 5 Polish cities, conducting worship symposiums and aiding more refugees.

We American Christians must remain tenderhearted. I’m still awed by what happened a year ago in Poland when our daughter Lexi and I met smiling, hopeful 5-year-old Ukrainian kids who didn’t know that their daddies, who had stayed home to fight, were dead. We had brought them food and blankets, so they made beautiful, personalized cards to thank us, and gave us big hugs because our help changed their lives. But Lexi’s life was changed too, by a hug from one innocent, utterly vulnerable little girl. She still often tells people about it if they ask her about Ukraine.

Lexi and I will never unsee those little ones’ innocent faces. Never. So I’m asking you: On October 5th, please send me back to Poland and UKRAINE. Join us here to change lives there. Here’s how:

• Donate via Zelle, a no–fee, instant, 100% secure money transfer from any participating bank to our ministry account. Our Bank of America Zelle ID is also our email: office@jamesgilbert.org. (More on Zelle here.) NOTE: To receive a tax receipt, you MUST send an email address to us. We won’t add you to more lists.
• Donate securely on this page via credit card. Just click here. You’ll receive an automated receipt for tax-deductible giving. Please consider covering the credit card processing fee.
• Give via Apple Pay (352-316-1212); Venmo (james@jamesgilbert.org); or PayPal (@jimgilbertministries).
• Mail your check payable to Jim Gilbert Ministries to PO Box 141928, Gainesville FL 32614. Write the word UKRAINE on the memo line.

You know Dolly and me. We’ll do as much as you make possible. My heart is full. Let’s make it my pockets too. I promise to empty them wisely.

(Wanna see Poland & Ukraine for yourself? Click the video below.)

Deepest thanks,

Welcome to the Ukraine Rapid Relief Fund and jamesgilbert.org. We asked you to give in 2022! You gave $130,397 towards Ukraine relief, and we actually SENT $133,000, directly into Ukraine and to refugee efforts in Poland. But Putin’s monstrous war isn’t over, as he bombs not just military targets, but homes, schools—anywhere he can kill innocents. Just yesterday, as I write, air raid sirens sounded over the entire nation. So, WE MUST KEEP FIGHTING BACK, not with bombs, but with life-saving aid sent in Jesus’ name. Look, the worst thing now would be to let compassion fatigue overtake us.

I leave for both Ukraine and Poland in October, and as I said in my most recent Facebook video, this year we’re targeting three relief ministries in particular. All three get relief to areas hardly reached by others. Find out more by clicking the photo below. Then come back here.

For now, let me be bold one more time: No tipping. No “latte” money. Please give AGAIN! Look, when I was in Poland last September, I met smiling 5-year old kids who don’t know that their daddies, who stayed behind to fight, are dead. No more hugs and nightly tuck-ins. They’re gone. Forever. So you can see why I’m saying once again that You and I need to act now!

There are four secure ways you can give, listed in order of efficiency. NOTE: If giving via Zelle, you MUST send your email address to office@jamesgilbert.org in order to receive a receipt for tax-deductible contribution.

• Donate via Zelle, a no–fee, immediate, 100% secure money transfer from your participating bank to our ministry’s Bank of America account. Check your online banking page to see if yours is one of the rapidly growing number of banks using Zelle. (You may need to type the word Zelle in your bank’s search box.) Our Bank of America Zelle ID is 352-316-1212. Click here for more Zelle info: https://www.zellepay.com/how-it-works
• Donate securely via credit card by clicking the blue Contribute button on the upper right of this page. (On a smartphone, it’s in the upper-right drop-down menu.) You will receive an immediate receipt for your tax-deductible donation via email. Please consider covering the credit card processing fee.
• Mail a check payable to Jim Gilbert Ministries to our office at PO Box 141928, Gainesville FL 32614. Write the word UKRAINE on the memo line.
• Give via an app like Apple Pay, Venmo or PayPal. (NOTE: The Cash app has changed their non-profit rules, so we request that you avoid that app.)

Ukrainian lives hang in the balance and YOU AND I need to act now. Thank you.

Grace and peace,

Jim Gilbert Ministries

Last month when Terry Law invited me to join his delegation to Kurdistan, northern Iraq, (Read Part I here.) I leapt at the opportunity. The carrot? The Kurds are preparing to declare their independence from Iraq—now Iran’s puppet—and asked for our help in guaranteeing true religious freedom for Christians and other religious minorities in their prospective new constitution. What Muslim government has ever asked Christians for help in writing a constitution? What majority Islamic nation has ever wanted to establish a true safe haven for Christians and other religious minorities? The answer, until now: Zero.

The Kurds are generally Sunni Muslims, but unlike most Sunnis they are not Arabs. “Kurd first, Sunni second,” they say. A remarkable people, they are descended from the ancient Medes, and like their famed king Cyrus (see Isaiah 45), they have historically looked kindly on Israel. Over the past hundred years, they have also been unfailingly pro-America, despite our nation’s betrayals of their trust, both after World War I and the first Gulf War.

A century ago, when the Ottoman Empire was carved up by oil-thirsty France and England and arbitrarily turned into new nations called Iraq, Saudi Arabia, et al, millions of Kurds were denied nationhood, and instead left strewn across Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Why? Because the (in)famous T.E. “Lawrence of Arabia” told his superiors that keeping the region internally fractured would prevent the reconstitution of the Ottoman Empire and hence, keep those new nations from attacking the rest of the world. Lawrence’s plan succeeded, of course, but caused justifiable Muslim rage to build for a century until Al Qaeda and ISIS erupted onto the scene, and also resulted in untold suffering for the Kurdish people. Today, 101 years after the secret, dastardly Sykes/Picot pact that denied them a homeland, 40 million Kurds remain the world’s largest people group without their own nation.

But no more, say the Kurds.

For a full century, this historic people have been told time and time again to “wait a little longer, and you’ll have your freedom.” Now, knowing that tomorrow never comes, they’re making their move, and hoping like crazy that President Trump will support them. “America’s One-Iraq Policy,” one diplomat told me, “could be shafted by a single tweet.” He’s right. One short sentence from President Trump would cause both Iran and Turkey to think twice about actively opposing a sovereign Kurdistan.

On Sunday, August 20th (the day before our near-death adventure detailed in Part I of this report) our team began interviewing the leaders of the various Christian denominations who represent Iraq’s remaining 200,000+ Christians (down from 1.6 million only a few years ago). Most of these leaders are from the Nineveh Plain, a region that adjoins Kurdistan, from Qaraqosh and Mosul to the west to the border of Turkey up north, but is not part of the Kurdish province. “Do you want your towns to be part of a new Kurdistan, or to remain part of Iraq?” we asked them, amongst several other questions.

From Syriac Orthodox to Assyrian Catholic to Presbyterian and non-denominational evangelicals, every leader said essentially the same thing: “We want to live free and as first-class citizens,” they pled, often adding in subdued tones that they know the Kurds have been their protectors and liberators and would welcome any result necessary to keep that relationship.

After four days, the interviews were finished.

“Jim, I need you to gather everyone’s notes and write the document,” said Dr. Law. “Then we’ll go over it together and also run it by [constitutional scholar] Stephen Mansfield.”

I went to work, skipping a day trip up to Dohuk in the north to write. First article:

“This Constitution shall be the supreme law of the nation of Kurdistan, not superseded or nullified by any other law.”

The constitutions of Muslim countries typically acknowledge the authority of Islamic “Sharia” law. But that provision renders any document that contains it utterly worthless, because of Sharia’s, uh, elasticity.

I kept writing, and somewhere around the fourth of what became seven articles, the curtains of my tenth-floor hotel room began to sway gently back and forth. Then, after a few seconds, I realized my iPad and mattress had joined the ballet. An earthquake? Couldn’t be, I thought. This area isn’t that active. But the swaying continued for a good 30-45 seconds. (Turned out to be a 5.6 about 35 miles away, but very deep in the earth. It was the only quake for hundreds of miles around that day.)

Dear Lord, I prayed—or laughed or both—is this document that important? Then I felt embarrassed and arrogant to have engaged in such puffery and started back to writing. But…what if?…nah.

At the appointed time, on Thursday, August 24th, our delegation walked into the gilded office of Kurdistan’s Interior Minister (aka assistant Prime Minister in most countries) and took our seats, the Minister and Dr. Terry Law front and center, the rest of us on fancy couches flanking both sides.

Pleasantries were exchanged, and then Terry presented our document—the one I had written, which listed seven articles, and which Mansfield had given a hearty thumbs up—to the Minister, while holding his own copy aloft to read.

I think I was fine until the moment Terry began reading the seven articles that I had worded to sound more like Thomas Jefferson than James Gilbert.

Dear Lord, that sounds so stark and demanding, I thought suddenly. If this referendum goes south and Iran winds up in charge, I could be a marked man. My heart was pounding as hard as it had three days earlier when that militia outside Qaraqosh were firing their guns into the air. Maybe I can pin it on Terry, I joked to myself, but it didn’t help. My heart galloped on.

Terry Law finished reading and for a moment the room fell silent.

“What is your response to these specific points, sir?” Terry asked our host. I knew they had become good friends, and I was surprised at such a blunt query. Then again, this had to be official…and quotable. Definitely, publicly quotable. Both men knew that.

The Interior Minister held the paper in front of himself and peered intently at it for a moment, before lowering it to his lap. “We will do all of this and more,” he said, breaking into a smile. Terry nodded and grinned, while the rest of us breathed out in unison, so deeply, I thought, we could have launched a small sailboat.

It was only after I’d been home for three days that a long-buried memory came flooding back to me with such force that I leaned against the shower door to keep my balance. (Yes, that’s where God often gets through to yours truly).

It was August, 1987, 30 years and a week removed from this mission, that I had received the most unusual—no, absurd—prophetic word of my life.

“I see a day coming when you’re going to be advising Muslim governments,” said a pastor named Ernest Gentile. “They’re going to need your help.”

I had never met Pastor Gentile, although all my friends spoke highly of him. And for the record, I’ve never spoken to him since. The sum total of our interaction consisted of that one minute when he stood behind me, his hands on my shoulders, and uttered those outlandish words.

Besides, I’m sort of, uh, skeptical when it comes to “words” from people I don’t really, really know and trust. There are just too many weirdos around who think that being in the Spirit means acting like you’re out of your mind. Of course, I have to admit that Pastor Gentile didn’t strike me that way. In fact, he was quiet and dignified the whole time, and today I’m grateful to him beyond words. But at that moment—it was just, just bizarre.

What Muslim government would ever ask Christians for advice? And even if they did, how would my “internationally unknown” self make the cut? Besides, this was 1987, and all any of us knew about the Islamic world was that Iran had held a group of Americans hostages for 444 days, and that there was some convoluted scandal called Iran-Contra. Why would that world ever ask for advice from the Great Satan?

Yet…here we are. The Kurds of Iraq, denied a homeland of their own for the past century, now stand on the brink of nationhood. And standing with them: the freedom and safety of not only 200,000 Christians (and perhaps as many Yazidis), but also multitudes more across the Middle East who all their lives have suffered persecution for their faith, and who would likely run to a true safe haven if one existed.

Let me turn activist for a moment. You, YOU, can do something to help establish a safe haven for Christians in the Middle East. You can write to President Donald Trump and ask him to ignore the bureaucratic path of least resistance that his advisors and State Department bureaucrats are likely to advocate, the path of betrayal that our nation has taken time and again ever since Woodrow Wilson turned a blind eye to the suffering of the Kurds a century ago.

You can write or call the White House here, and you can pass this blog along to everyone you know on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and church.

You can join me and help a see a nation born. You, YOU, can make history.

P.S. We can only volunteer for missions like this one because someone supports our efforts. If you believe in our efforts and wish to contribute to James Gilbert Ministries, please click this link. Thank you!

I was in Iraq for eight remarkable days last month, and in Part II of this report I’ll tell you how I was privileged to help make Middle-East history. But there was one day, August 21, 2017, our second day on the job, that has since taken on a life of its own. In fact, it was a drama that nearly took several of our lives. And for that reason, it forms a fiery preamble to our historic mission.

We were in Kurdistan, Iraq’s largely autonomous northern province, at the invitation of the regional government. Their Interior Minister/Defense Minister had invited us to interview Christian leaders in Kurdistan and the adjoining Nineveh Plain, and based upon those leaders’ desires, to help the Kurdish government compose clear constitutional guarantees and protections for Christians and other religious minorities, should Kurdistan declare independence from Iraq.

Although our assignment to interview the Christian leaders began on Sunday, August 20th (see Part II), all 13 of our delegation were eager for our Monday day trip to Qaraqosh, a predominantly Christian town on the Nineveh Plain, just across the provincial border from Kurdistan, and thus under Baghdad’s military control. We had originally planned to go to Mosul, recently liberated from ISIS and just 15 miles further on, but due to a recent rash of kidnappings, were advised to stop at Qaraqosh, once a city of 70,000 Christians, but now home to only about 10,000 souls brave enough to return and start rebuilding.

We left the Kurdish capital of Erbil on Monday morning in a diplomatic convoy of four black Land Cruisers, flanked front and back by camouflaged trucks carrying a total of 20 Peshmerga soldiers, members of Kurdistan’s famed army who, outside of Israel, constitute perhaps the finest military force in the Middle East. In fact, although Iran is trying to claim credit, it was the courageous Peshmerga who this summer liberated Mosul and routed ISIS from the area.

An hour after leaving our hotel, and having passed through a couple of checkpoints, we pulled up to the Nineveh Plain border and stopped at the last guard booth to show our papers. Everything seemed routine and I pulled out my oversized iPhone to capture the moment from my backseat perch in the convoy’s lead SUV.

We hadn’t been stopped more than a minute when the Iraqi police, in their blue-tinted fatigues, failed to notice a young man in civilian clothing slipping past them and heading for the lead Peshmerga truck. Only after he ripped open a tan door and grabbed at a soldier did they move into action. And suddenly the whole world seemed to shift into high gear. Within 30 seconds the troublemaker was surrounded by armed Peshmerga and Iraqi police who shoved him away from the truck and began subduing him. But the scuffle had not gone unnoticed. In fact, it apparently had followed someone’s plan.

“They are a militia armed by Iraq,” our government host in the passenger seat in front of me would tell us a few minutes later. “But they are loyal to the Ayatollah of Iran. They hate our soldiers and someone has tipped them off that we were coming.”

I stopped videoing and lowered my phone as another man in civilian clothing—then another and another—ran past us toting automatic rifles. All at once, armed civilians were everywhere, screaming and waving weapons they didn’t look qualified to carry. Then, not more than 40 feet in front of us, someone raised a rifle skyward and—bapbap bapbapbap—fired off a volley of what sounded like a dozen rapid shots straight into the air. Another rifle—bap bap—more shots.

Now armed men were running from everywhere and surrounding our convoy. I started counting. There were easily a hundred of them, and although some wore no shoes, they all bore guns. A small Toyota pickup pulled near the booth and stopped about 30 feet in front of us and to our right. Within half a minute, a 50-caliber machine gun sat, perched and ready, on the roof of its cab. Punches were thrown at the Peshmerga, but in accordance with their orders from our hosts, none fought back. More shouting. More shots fired into the air.

“Keep them calm, Father. Keep them calm,” I prayed as I crouched down in the seat and our driver began following the troops’ lead to inch into a super-slow U-turn. My backseat partner, Pastor Mark Borrows from western Canada, and I would repeat that prayer for the next 45 minutes. “Keep them calm.”

You always wondered if you’d be brave, I told myself, as I looked through dark tinted glass at a militiaman standing no more than three feet from me with his gun at the ready. Ever since you were a kid, you’ve wondered if you’d have the courage to die for the name of Jesus. Well…what’s it going to be?

The U-turn complete, I looked up from praying and saw another pickup truck with a mounted machine gun, then just past him a huge black vehicle sporting a rocket launcher with a barrel that looked to be the size of a hurricane’s eye.

“Keep them calm.”

More volleys. More screaming. A rifle butt to the eye socket of one of our soldiers, but he sat, stoic. He and his Peshmerga brothers were under orders to hold both fists and fire unless one of our SUVs became a target.

In the passenger seat in front of me, our government guide was on the phone with the Defense Minister. “Help is on the way,” he assured us. Then I noticed the stubby Uzi submachine gun he had pulled out of his satchel. It was resting on the drink holder between the front seats, its barrel pointed back at me.

“Uh, would you point that forward, please?” I whispered, and then resumed my one-line petition. “Keep them calm, Father. Keep them calm.”

More shots, probably a hundred or more, and more screaming and shoving and rifle-butting.

40 minutes that felt like 40 days in this wilderness had passed now, and suddenly we were creeping forward and being waved past the rocket launcher by a man who, for the moment at least, appeared to have some authority. A few seconds later, we were picking up speed and barreling back towards Erbil.

“I feel so stupid,” said Mark, my Canadian comrade. “All I could think the whole time we were praying was, how is my wife going to get my body bag all the way back to Alberta?“.

“If they’d started firing, about 500 letter-sized envelopes would’ve sufficed,” I tried to joke, but we were both too amped up to laugh.

An hour later, we were back in Erbil and headed for the hotel cafe. My closest brush with death in 49 years of ministry was over, but my pulse hadn’t gotten the memo. I looked at my Apple Watch, which had registered a range from 100-133 beats per minute for the past hour, and still showed no sign of slowing.

“The normal reaction would be to try and forget the trauma of this, right?” I asked Mark, who nodded in agreement as we took a table. “But let’s not do that. Let’s make ourselves remember, because this is what our brothers in Christ here have to live with every day of their lives. We can’t forget. We mustn’t forget”

It was about then that I realized the answer to my earlier self-examination. Would I really, after all these decades of professing Christ, have the courage to face a bullet for the name of Jesus?

“I know now, Mark,” I said. “I was ready to do it. If that guy with the rifle had ripped open my door and shoved me against the side of our SUV, I knew Jesus’ name would be the last word I spoke on this earth.”

My heart still pounds when I remember, but I don’t mind. Because now I know. I know.

You’ve probably seen the news that Mosul, Iraq (aka Nineveh) has finally been liberated from ISIS. Well, here’s more news: I’ll be on the ground in Mosul in just a few days!

Here’s what’s happening:

Last week, Dr. Terry Law, my Unmasking ISIS co-author, asked me to return to Iraq’s Kurdistan Region with him from August 18-26. The Kurds are set to hold a September referendum on independence, and passage is a sure thing. As the only Muslim people in the entire Middle East who don’t persecute Christians, the Kurds want their new nation to guarantee religious freedom for Christians and other religious minorities in their pending new constitution.

Recently, their Defense Minister called to ask Terry to gather the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant leaders of Kurdistan, Mosul and the Nineveh Plains, to specify what protections they would want written into a new Kurdish Constitution. An independent Kurdistan would become a safe haven for non-Muslims (who include 10 million Orthodox Christians).

This would be an historic first in 1,400 years of Islam!

True Freedom

Two years ago, our friends and some very enthusiastic students of The Rock School here in Gainesville, jointly gave $25,000 in three short weeks, enabling us to pay shipping for two full cargo containers of excellent food and clothing worth many times more to Christian refugees who had fled Mosul and the Nineveh Plains when ISIS invaded.

This trip is immeasurably MORE important!

From 2000 until the 2014 rise of ISIS, Kurdistan boomed economically and welcomed both Christians and Jews. No other place in the Muslim world can make that boast. Now, rather than temporarily feeding thousands, we can go to the very cities ISIS invaded and help secure lasting freedom from persecution (and reliance on humanitarian aid) for the hundreds of thousands of Christians who remain, and no doubt also for an influx of émigrés from all across the Middle East.

In addition to meeting with bishops, pastors and government officials in the Kurdish capital, we’ll make day trips (under heavy guard) to Mosul and nearby liberated Christian towns in the Nineveh Plains. This is our golden opportunity to contribute significantly to both Middle East history and church history.

We’re All In

My longtime friend, Don Moen, often says, “You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead!” Don’s talking about laying up treasures in heaven, of course, and he’s right.

You can lay up treasures in heaven by sending guys like me, who go to hard places like Iraq and Cuba. Just click the Contribute button at the top of this page, and you can give once, or easily initiate “set it and forget it” monthly giving. (Soon, you’ll be able to give via text message and directly from bank to bank.)

This is us. We go where we’re sent. I’m turning 67 today, and what an honor to still be on the front lines, literally, at such a critical time in history. It would also be an honor to represent you regularly, in Iraq and beyond, in this, my 50^th year in missions.

On the first Saturday in June, 2007, one of my heroes, Jon Karner, was laid to rest in a verdant cemetery outside tiny Milaca, Minnesota. I met Jon in 1980, on a street corner in the USSR. He was Jaanus Karner back then, a leader in the underground church in the Soviet republic of Estonia. We were there to deliver some sorely needed supplies from supporters in the West.

Jaanus was a semi-anonymous legend in the West, and I had seen his black and white photograph hundreds of times. Now, standing there in the flesh, tall and strong with a coal black beard Samson might have envied, I somehow saw him still in black and white. Mind you, contrast was good in the USSR, a lifeless land whose grayness of spirit seemed to drain even the natural world of every shade in the spectrum.

In a nation where many men preferred the blurry haze of drunkenness to the stark clarity of belief, Jaanus’ faith framed him in a sharp black and white. He not only engaged in the dangerous practice of youth ministry at Tallinn Methodist Church, but enthusiastically embraced the highly illegal vocation of evangelism. If, as was often said, Estonia was the Soviet Union’s “window on the West,” this man was a rope dangling from it. More goods got in and news got out because of him than virtually anyone else in the Christian underground. Want to meet with Christian leaders in Kiev? Jaanus knew them. Need contacts in Moscow, Leningrad, or way down in Armenia? He could put you in touch.

Living in black and white was challenging but good in the Kingdom of Gray. From Tallinn to Tashkent, Kiev to Kamchatka, the Evil Empire’s vast steppes wore a trench coat of gloom. Charcoal clouds dotted gray skies that loomed over gray buildings on gray streets. The pallor of the people was equally sunless, especially their eyes—fogged over windows into hopeless souls. Strobe Talbott had once described Leonid Brezhnev and his Kremlin cohorts as “old men with faces the color of sidewalks.” He was right. Even the elite, incapable of either passion nor embarrassment, could not muster a pink blush. Yes, black and white was good, even necessary, because it kept one from drowning in the murk.

But it was also dangerous. Jaanus had already been kicked out of university and consigned to a series of menial jobs. The KGB had ransacked his home more than once in the middle of the night, searching for Bibles and incriminating documents, yet never finding them because, he said, God warned him every time that they were coming.

“Those agents always drive Volgas,” he once told me. “And the click of that particular car door outside my house will awaken me from a dead sleep.”

No wonder his older son, thirty-six year old David, told me the day of his father’s interment that he had clear memories of those episodes from the age of three. Having the front door smashed in at 2 a.m. by thugs in dark suits would do that to a toddler.

I still remember Labor Day weekend of 1983. It was David’s 12th birthday, and Jaanus wanted me to attend his party in Tallinn, before I flew back to America on September 2nd.

“You can’t walk straight to the pick-up point,” he said. “When you leave the hotel, walk around Old Town for a few minutes like you’re sightseeing. Then wait by the bus stop near Maripooiste Church. Use your peripheral vision to watch for Tani’s red Lada. He’ll stop about 50 feet down the sidewalk from you. When the back door opens, get in and lie down.”

I followed Jaanus’ instructions and eventually arrived at Tani’s rickety front gate, whereupon I was whisked furtively into the house with my head down. David and his little brother, Stefan, were playing with Tani’s kids in the living room, oblivious to the ridiculous intrigues that somehow cast a little boy’s birthday party as a threat to the State.

We hadn’t been there for fifteen minutes when Jaanus pulled me into the hallway and cranked up a big, tube radio his friends kept handy to defeat electronic eavesdroppers. Then, cupping his hands over my ears, he said in his staccato accent, “This is probably the last time I’ll ever see you.”

I jerked away to look my friend in the eye and rebuke him, but he pulled me close again to explain.

“The KGB took me in a few weeks ago and told me that it’s already been decided in Moscow. I will be taken to trial, found guilty, and sentenced to ten years hard labor in Siberia. They said they would give me a little time to prepare my family to live without me.”

I was stunned. Nobody tried under Soviet law was ever found innocent, because that would reveal an imperfection in their prosecutorial system. The noble State only ever arrested the guilty. I also knew that ten years in the gulag was a virtual death sentence.

I flew home the next day with Jaanus’ words a death knell in my ears. I hated the Soviet system. It was 100 percent evil and 100 percent stupid. And the KGB—how utterly cruel they were. “We’ll give you a few weeks before we come for you,” the arrogant Colonel Timusk had said, toying with this good man’s life like a cat bats around a wounded mouse.

But somewhere over the Atlantic everything changed. I had been at a worship conference in California the week prior to making this trip to Estonia, and on the last night of that event some fifty senior pastors had surrounded me onstage to pray for my ministry and safe return.

It was during that prayer, in the auditorium at Pasadena City College, that I had seen a—a vision, on the white facade that fronted that venue’s massive balcony. I wasn’t feeling particularly spiritual, mind you, and although I believed in visions, I had never considered myself a worthy candidate for one.

I saw Red Square. Right there, in living color, on the wall was Moscow’s Red Square, the gigantic brick plaza where soldiers goose-stepped and ballistic missiles rolled by in May Day parades, while the old men of the Kremlin stood atop Lenin’s tomb and waved to the throngs below who so despised them.

But now I saw dancers instead of soldiers, and banners instead of rockets, and tens of thousands of people worshiping the God that Marx had hated. “That’s ridiculous,” I thought at once. “If that ever happened there would be no Soviet Union. It’s just my stupid imagination.”

Suddenly, ten days later at 37,000 feet above the ocean, it wasn’t so crazy anymore. “Read Numbers 13,” a voice inside me said. I grabbed my Bible and quickly turned to a section of the Scriptures I usually avoided, because of all those boring “so-and-so begat so-and-so” passages. I usually turned to Numbers only when sleeping pills failed to work.

It was the story of Moses, sending 12 spies into the Promised Land. Ten of the men had returned, utterly horrified by the giants they had seen. But two, Joshua and Caleb, had come home full of faith. “We can take the land!” they reported, waxing eloquent about the bounty they had seen. It was as though God’s promise to them had turned Canaan’s giants into grasshoppers. And, of course, later on these two faithful men did indeed lead their nation to possess the Promised Land.

“What are you going to believe?” the Voice asked me. “Are you going to believe the big Soviet giant, or the picture I showed you on the wall in California?”

Then and there I knew that the mighty Soviet Union was going to fall as surely and resoundingly as the walls of Jericho. For the next eight years I blabbed that good news in churches all over America, and whispered it in living rooms and hallways in the USSR. And for eight years Christians on both sides of the Iron Curtain looked as me as though I were crazy. Then it happened.

“I suppose this makes you a prophet,” they said after 1991. “Nope,” I always replied. “I’m just an informed tourist.”

As for Jaanus, he never went to prison. Instead, just three a half months after we had parted so sadly in Tallinn, he and his family took up residence in Redondo Beach, California. A serendipitous contact with U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz had secured their release, which included a complete bypass of the KGB, who normally had to sign all exit visas. When agents broke in the door yet again in mid-December, the house on Looga Street was as empty as their legal case. As for the KGB Colonel who had taunted my friend so mercilessly, he was “retired” in 1991 when that spy agency was dismantled, and spent the rest of his life as a low-wage bouncer at a local bar.

Meanwhile, Annie, Jaanus’ sweet wife, passed away in 1992. David grew up to become a race car driver, and Steven went to work for the City of Los Angeles. Jaanus became an American citizen named Jon, and helped establish a broad presence for Christian television in the former Soviet Union.

In 1994 he married the lovely Elizabeth and “immigrated” once more, this time to central Minnesota, where he spent the last thirteen years of his life on a quiet honeymoon, he and his bride frequently returning to his beloved Tallinn.

The cemetery just west of Milaca was bright green on that day in June nearly ten years ago. And it was made greener still by a peaceful rain that cleansed the earth in preparation for Jon Karner’s saintly body. We read the Scriptures, prayed a prayer, sang Amazing Grace, and said some words. Then we all just stood in the shade of a stately oak and silently listened to the birds singing.

They sang in color.

In “Unmasking ISIS,” Terry law and I recommend nine steps the U.S. Government can take right now. (In a separate post, I’ll list nine steps that YOU can take).

1. Admit that America is at war with radical Islamist jihadists.
2. Destroy ISIS militarily in Iraq and Syria, and take away their caliphate.
3. Secure America’s borders (including enhanced security screening with extra layers of interviews for anyone visiting or emigrating from a Muslim nation).
4. Bolster friendly Middle East alliances and punish hypocrites.
5. Break with Iran and push for a truly independent Federated Iraq.
6. Wage all-out cyber-warfare against ISIS.
7. Wage a massive counter-propaganda campaign against ISIS.
8. Encourage Muslim reformers.
9. Educate and assist Muslim communities in combatting ISIS’ recruiting efforts.

Each of these steps is explained in detail, and thank goodness, some key folks on Capitol Hill are reading it and taking notice. To order your copy, or one for your congressman or senator, click on the book’s photo.

Names changed for safety’s sake..

In 2006, the year after Iraq had adopted a new Constitution guaranteeing greater freedoms, an Arabic friend of mine, “Ali,” traveled to Baghdad, taking with him several Children’s Bibles that present the story of creation, the Old Testament fathers, and the Gospel in Arabic. Commissioned by my writing colleague, Dr. Terry Law, thousands of them had been distributed throughout Baghdad with the permission of—no kidding—The Ayatollah of Baghdad.

When Ali entered the Customs department at the Baghdad airport, the agent inspecting his bags held up one of the Bibles and asked what it was. “A children’s Bible in Arabic,” Ali replied forthrightly.

“Come with me,” said the agent, leading him down a hallway to a nearby room.

After checking the hallway for other personnel, the agent closed the door and spoke freely. He said he had lost his previous job, and had taken the very dangerous position of working at the airport—considered collusion by Al Qaeda because it involved working with Americans—in order to support his family.

“We live in a poor neighborhood,” the man told Ali. One day my son came home with some food, and when I asked him where he got it, he told me the Catholic church down the street.” Ali remembered the church because he and Dr. Law had left a supply of Bibles there.

“I thought I should go and thank them for giving us food, and when I got there they gave me one of these children’s Bibles,” the agent explained. “As a result I gave my life to Jesus, as did my wife and son. He has changed everything! My name is Ahmed, and you must remember from now on that you have a brother working at the airport.”

Before Ali left, Ahmed asked him for a complete Bible, which Ali quickly agreed to supply. “I want to share Jesus with my family,” Ahmed told him a little later by phone.

Ali warned Ahmed to be careful, because conversion to Christianity can be very dangerous. Sharia law requires a convert’s family to execute him if he doesn’t recant right away.

“I can’t be silent,” Ahmed replied. “I have to share Jesus. Jesus changed my life. Jesus changed my wife’s life. I send my son to Sunday school. I’m a Christian. I want to share Jesus with people.”

In the weeks that followed, Ahmed and Ali began exchanging frequent emails, and Ali was enjoying the prospect of seeing his new brother in Christ as often as possible. But in December, when he went for a period of more than a week without replies from Ahmed, Ali began to worry.

“After a couple of weeks, my telephone rang in the middle of the night. On the other end I heard a woman sobbing.”

“Ahmed is dead,” she cried. It was Ahmed’s wife, Sana. “His family killed him because He lived for Jesus.”

Some months later, Ali received a letter from Sana. Here’s is his translation, word for word:

Hi Ali. Good morning. It is me, Sana, Ahmed’s wife. Thank you very much for taking care of us.

I don’t know what to say, for only God Himself knows about us since Ahmed left. I miss him a lot, and believe me, my eyes are not drying of tears. I have no one left but you. Ahmed left me the two most important things for him: Our son and his Bible.

I miss him a lot, as we used to read that Bible together and pray in secret. I need your prayers, and I am sure that Jesus will not let us down.

Your sister,

Sana

Ahmed will receive a martyr’s crown when he stands before Christ in the resurrection. But he did not have to strap bombs to himself and blow up innocent women and children in order to earn his reward. Instead, he gave life to one woman and one child. For that he died. And for that he lives.

As he scoured the sea of sand four miles beneath him, Terry was acutely aware that planes like this one were clay pigeons for snipers. This really is dangerous, he told himself, as if for the first time. Of course he already knew it was a hazardous mission, so the thought wasn’t new. But the feeling was. For a good twenty years it had been easier to bury his emotions, to lose them in the whirlwind of preaching engagements, plane flights, and frequent missions into various danger zones around the globe. But as perilous as his previous ministry had been, he realized now that he was just minutes from beginning the most dangerous assignment of his life, and Lyle’s words reminded him that this time it was entirely possible that he might never see his family again.

Where are they? he wondered about the snipers he had heard so much about. With only one commercial flight per day flying into Baghdad International, a private flight like his could draw attention. Then again, maybe they were lying in wait along the highway into town. Surely the General has planned for that, he reassured himself, and fast-forwarded his thoughts to the single purpose of his journey.

How in the world does an American preacher get a Muslim nation to rewrite its constitution? he asked himself for the umpteenth time. In two days he would come face to face with Iraq’s prime minister, to intercede for the people’s right to religious freedom, which, along with the lives of thousands of Christians, hung precariously in the balance. Centuries of hatred and prejudice against “Christ-followers” lay blanketed as thick and widespread as the sands below, and the slightest ill wind could stir up a storm of persecution and wholesale slaughter. Someone had to stop it from happening, to speak up now, while there was still time.

But why me? he thought. Why not some diplomat, or at least some neutral party? Why does it come down to somebody so unqualified, a guy with all the wrong credentials? Terry felt his blood drain a little; he was being scolded by his own common sense. Too late to worry about that now, Law. You’re the one who chased this storm and now you’re caught in the teeth of it, just like you were in Afghanistan. And China before that, and Russia, and….

Suddenly the old saying was true: Terry’s life really was flashing before him. Mental images of himself as a boy, splashing around in the driving rain, chasing the thunder and lightning – he had always loved the stuff that made other kids run for cover. And setting off dynamite to find water back on Ed’s ranch when he was in his early twenties; that beat Bible school any day. Then again, almost anything beat Bible school when it came to excitement. Sure, he could have taken one of the churches up on their offer and probably be safe and comfortable in a parsonage somewhere in western Canada right now. Safe, comfortable, but also completely bored and wondering: Is this all there is to my life? Is this what I was made for?

Terry smiled, then refocused, as the azure waters of Lake Habbaniya came into view, and beyond them the city of Fallujah. Ten minutes later the veteran preacher and his assistant of 30 years, Joel Vesanen, would pass over Abu Ghraib and then quickly dive – literally, he had been warned – into the firestorm that was greater Baghdad, Iraq. If there were such a thing as hell on earth in this August of 2005, Iraq’s largest city would be its furnace. In the four months since the Battle of Abu Ghraib, suicide bombers had attacked the capital with increasing frequency. Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda cohorts clearly did not want the country’s parliament to ratify the new constitution that had been drafted back in January. Yet it was that very document that had brought Terry here, into the mother of all storms.

He looked over at Joel, who had stood beside him so often when a more sensible man would have run. Only three years earlier the two had been nearly stoned to death by an Afghan mob, and in times past they had been known to smuggle dissidents out of some countries and Bibles into others. Once they had even sneaked bags of rice across a frozen river from China into North Korea, a crime that would have landed them in one of dictator Kim Jong Il’s labor camps.

“You might want to tighten your seatbelts gentlemen,” said the captain. The South African had been the only pilot in Amman, Jordan, willing to fly Terry and Joel to Baghdad. “We’re going into a 2G spin.”

They were almost four miles directly above the runway at Baghdad International Airport when the plane entered its intentional spiral. The pilot was performing something called a corkscrew landing, a tactic he employed for the same reasons a football player returning a kickoff weaves right and left to dodge opposition tackles. In this case, however, the shoulders of the opposing players bore missile launchers instead of padding.

Less than ten minutes later, the Beechcraft had plummeted from 20,000 feet above sea level to exactly 114, the altitude of Baghdad International’s runway. As soon as her props and wheels ceased turning, the plane’s doors flung open and Terry and Joel strode rapidly towards the terminal. The morning temperature had already reached 110 degrees, but out on the tarmac it was nearing 130, and they were as eager to escape the heat as to avoid snipers.

Storm Chaser: The Terry Law Story, but James Gilbert, Copyright © 2014 by Terry Law, Used by permission