From Gateway News.
Reza Pahlavi, the activist exiled crown prince of Iran told thousands of young American Christians something the Islamic Republic desperately does not want the world to know: the faith it has spent 46 years trying to eradicate is not dying in Iran. It is multiplying.
The nation that once sheltered the Jewish people under Cyrus and helped the Jews return from exile and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem is today sheltering the Christian faith in its own basements and living rooms, at mortal risk, and Pahlavi came to its crown prince came to Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia, to bear witness.
Pahlavi is the son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, whose monarchy was toppled by the Islamist revolution of 1979. He has lived in exile ever since, training as the youngest fighter pilot in Iranian history at Reese Air Force Base in Texas before studying political science at the University of Southern California. For more than four decades, he has been the most prominent voice of Iran’s opposition, uniting his people from exile. This week, Liberty University President Dondi Costin introduced him as “a freedom fighter”.
“Good morning and thank you for having me at convocation today on the beginning of Passover and on the cusp of Easter,” Pahlavi began. “I stand before you not only as an Iranian, but as a witness on behalf of millions of my compatriots whose voices have been silenced, whose names you may never hear, but whose courage is reshaping the future of my country. I come to you as the voice of a nation that has been silenced.”
Pahlavi’s cause has become a light in the darkness of despair that has swallowed his country. Between January 8 and 9 alone, more than 30 000 protesters were killed by the regime. Women were beaten to death in the streets. Students were dragged from classrooms and executed. Families were forced to pay for the bullets that killed their own children. The youngest victim whose name the crown prince read aloud was three years old.