I Was Taught to Hate Jews Every Morning — Until Yeshua Changed Everything: An Iranian’s Incredible Journey

He grew up chanting death every single morning.

In the schools of Iran, young children were forced to shout “Death to America! Death to Israel!” before classes even began. Textbooks showed cartoon Israeli soldiers with evil faces, stabbing crying Palestinian babies. The message was drilled into every child: Jews are monsters. Israel is the enemy. America is the Great Satan.

This was the world of a young Shiite Muslim boy named Lamin Palsa.

He watched public executions. He saw people beaten and tortured in the streets. He himself was beaten. The Islamic regime told the world that Israel was committing atrocities against Palestinians. Yet inside Iran, the regime was doing the exact same things — and worse — to its own people.

Lamin began to question everything. He lost faith in Islam. He knew there had to be a real God, so he started crying out in desperation.

“God, if You are real, who are You? If You are not real, then what am I doing here?”

At nineteen years old, he first heard the name Yeshua. In Iran, owning a Bible is illegal. Leaving Islam for Christianity carries the death penalty. At first he rejected it completely. He thought it was just another Western religion.

But God did not give up on him.

Three times he heard the message that Yeshua died on the cross for him and rose from the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ. The third time, something inside him broke. He opened his heart and whispered:

“Yeshua, if this is true, if You really died for me and rose again, then come into my life. Show me. I don’t want to be deceived again.”

In that exact moment, a wave of heat rushed through his hand. It spread through his entire body. He began to shake uncontrollably. Tears poured down his face. He felt a love so pure and powerful that he had never experienced anything like it before. A heavy weight — like 300 pounds — was lifted off his shoulders. Joy and peace flooded his soul.

His life was never the same.

As he read the Gospel of Matthew for the first time, he cried again. He discovered that Jesus was a Jew from Israel. He read the words “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” The contrast with everything he had been taught in Islam was shocking. In Islam he had been taught to curse and kill Jews and Christians. Here was a Jewish man commanding love, forgiveness, and blessing even for enemies.

The hatred that had been planted in his heart since childhood simply dissolved.

God placed a supernatural love for Israel and the Jewish people inside him. He felt compᴀssion for the very people he had once been taught to despise.

Eventually Lamin married an Israeli woman and moved to Israel. He wanted to bless the Jewish people who had once been his supposed enemies.

When the October 7th war broke out, Lamin did something remarkable. He went to army outposts on the hills of Judea with a group of friends. They brought H๏τ meals to exhausted Israeli soldiers. Then he stood up in front of them and began preaching — in Hebrew mixed with English — about his journey from hating Jews to loving the Jewish Messiah.

The soldiers were transfixed. An Iranian Muslim who now believed in Yeshua and had moved to Israel to serve them? It was almost too much to process.

Lamin looked at the battle-weary faces and spoke from the heart. He told them how the regime in Iran had lied to him his entire life. He told them how discovering Jesus had set him free from hatred. He told them he now stood with Israel because he had found the true God.

Many soldiers listened in stunned silence. Some had tears in their eyes.

Today Lamin travels across Israel, volunteering wherever he is needed. He cooks for displaced families. He encourages soldiers on the front lines. He shares his testimony boldly, even though he knows the risks.

His story is not isolated.

Across Iran, something extraordinary is happening underground. Iran now has the fastest-growing church in the world. Estimates suggest that in the past 25 years, as many as eight million Iranians have quietly become followers of Jesus. Thousands of mosques have closed due to lack of attendance. Young people use VPNs to access the internet and see the truth for themselves.

Many Iranians now openly say on the streets: “Our enemy is not America or Israel. Our enemy is right here — this regime.”

They look at Israel and see a thriving, democratic nation where people dance in the streets, where Arabs and Jews live side by side with freedom. They compare that to their own suffering — economic collapse, brutal oppression, mandatory hijabs, public executions, and a government that sends billions to Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terror groups while their own people cannot afford basic food like potatoes and onions.

The contrast is impossible to ignore.

Iranians are shifting their idenтιтy. They no longer want to be defined by radical Islam. They are returning to their ancient Persian roots — the proud heritage of Cyrus the Great, who helped the Jewish people return to Israel and rebuild the Temple. They are rediscovering that Persia once had a positive relationship with the Jewish people.

Lamin believes a quiet revolution is building. He says the Iranian people have suffered for 46 years under this regime — war, economic ruin, social oppression, and spiritual darkness. But now they have nothing left to lose. Protests are growing bolder. Even some within the regime’s own forces are refusing to beat their own countrymen.

He points to a powerful prophecy in Jeremiah 49 that speaks of Iran in the last days — that God will destroy the evil rulers and establish His throne there, bringing prosperity again.

Lamin carries both pain and hope when he thinks about his homeland. He prays constantly for his family and his people still trapped inside Iran. He knows the suffering is immense, but he also sees the supernatural move of God breaking through the darkness.

His message is simple yet profound: No nation is beyond redemption. Even from the heart of one of the darkest regimes on earth, God can raise up voices that love Israel and bless the Jewish people.

The man who once shouted “Death to Israel” every morning now stands on Israeli soil, serving Jewish soldiers and declaring the love of the Jewish Messiah.

If God can do that in one man’s life, what else is possible in the nation of Iran?

The underground church continues to explode. Millions are quietly turning away from Islam. A new generation is awakening to their true Persian idenтιтy and to the God who loves them.

The story of Lamin Palsa is not just one man’s testimony.

It is a sign of hope rising from the unlikeliest place on earth.

And it reminds us all that even in the deepest darkness, light can break through — and hatred can be replaced by love.