Hossein Soodmand – Iranian martyr for Christ
Hossein Soodmand was born in Iran to a devout Muslim family and, while growing up, was taught to hate Christians. When he was seven years old, he was taunting and throwing stones trying to break the water pitcher of a Christian woman in his village. When the pitcher broke, he turned to run but tripped and fell, cutting open his knee. When he saw the woman coming toward him, he feared a beating but was shocked when she cleaned and bandaged his wound and gave him a sweet treat. His daughter later recalled that he never forgot her “unusual display of mercy and grace.”
As a young man, he was drafted into military service. He took very ill and was transported to a hospital where an Armenian Christian cared for him, giving him a small cross and praying for him. Hossein fell asleep and had an intense dream in which he remembered Jesus giving him something to eat. When Hossein woke up, he was completely healed.
After leaving army service, he moved to the town of Ahvaz, where he sought out a group of Christians and came to faith – determined to serve the Savior who had healed him. Christianity was not yet illegal, though certainly frowned upon, as this was before the 1979 Islamic Revolution when the Shah was deposed and the Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power. He was, as with many Muslim converts, ostracized by his family for his newfound faith. He spent some time doing Christian work in a school for the blind, and met his wife Mahtab there, one of the students of the school. They had four children together and he pastored his children as lovingly as he pastored his flock.
By the time of the Islamic Revolution, Hossein had become a pastor under the Assembly of God denomination and had moved back to his hometown of Mashhad where he had established a growing church in the basement of his house.
Hossein’s daughter, Rashin, later remembered that, when she was eleven years old, her father was arrested for the first time. He spent a month in prison and was released with the threat of execution if he didn’t renounce his faith. The authorities in his church offered him the opportunity to escape the country and he replied, “I am a follower of the great Shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus Christ, and I am ready to sacrifice my soul for my sheep. For me to escape from this persecution would cause the hearts of my flock to become cold and weak. And I never want to be a bad example for them. So, I am ready to go to prison again and, if necessary, to give my life.”
His house church continued until his re-arrest in 1990. He was placed into solitary confinement and later hanged for the crime of apostasy on December 3rd of that year – the trial and execution were something his family didn’t find out about until after the fact. Hossein was buried in an unmarked grave in the area of the cemetery reserved for the accursed. Having the opportunity to visit his grave 29 years later in 2019, the family found the area had been bulldozed as part of a planned expansion of the cemetery. Nobody would tell them if his body had been exhumed.
Hossein’s son Ramtin became a pastor and Iranian Evangelical leader in his father’s stead before he was arrested in 2008 for the crime of apostasy. A huge international outcry and the intervention of Amnesty International secured his release and safety for his family.
His daughter Rashin currently lives in London, England, and continues the evangelistic work of her father and speaks publicly about the persecution of Christians in Iran. She has a fantastic interview on YouTube on the Voice of the Martyrs page.
Pastor Hossein Soodmand remains the last person formally executed under Iran’s anti-apostasy laws. A number of people remain under a death sentence in Iran, including a few directly tied to Pastor Soodmand, but Iran has become very sensitive to international pressure following Hossein’s death. His martyrdom in one of the most hostile areas in the world to the Gospel remains a source of inspiration and comfort to Iranian Christians worldwide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJfu5BJJe5U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_zjbwbmhE4
https://www.christiantoday.com/article/iranian.authorities.release.son.of.hanged.pastor/21739.htm
https://www.executedtoday.com/tag/ramtin-soodmand/
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