Emily Parker spoke with author Craig Borlase about his new book Fleeing ISIS And Finding Jesus, about his quest to discover the answer to the question, 'Is this the end of Christianity in the Middle East?' and his experience meeting refugees in Iraq and Jordan.

It is profoundly humbling and puts so much of our petty desires and frustrations in perspective.

Emily: In the book you tell Naser's story and say that this is meant to be the golden age for Muslims as far as the Gospel of Christ is concerned. What does that mean?

Craig: There's a bit of jargon in there, but it's easy to unpack really. Naser is a preacher who is in his seventies. He's spent his life going around Middle Eastern countries. He's been arrested more times than I've had falafel and he told me that since 2001, pretty much since 9/11, more Muslims have become Christians than in the whole 1400 years before that. So the curve has been flat and it's just suddenly, over the last few years, gone sharply up. There are estimates that between two and seven million Muslims have become Christians. This is not through a really great bit of recruitment, or a great strategy; this is not even through people like Naser going out and telling people about God. This seems to be something inexplicable. It seems to be something that you can't control and seems to be what God's doing.

What's fascinating about that, is that it's completely at odds with the story we get in the news, which is terrifying; that Islam is becoming this violent and fearful religion from which we must retreat. It seems to be, according to Naser, that we have to roll our sleeves up and get involved.

Emily: Not just Naser, but there are loads of others, despite the circumstances, that are hanging on to their faith. Is that correct?

Craig: Yes, that was fascinating. We see it over here when people have a terminal illness, or they go through a bereavement, or redundancy, that suddenly things get put into perspective. You get the sense that some of those people find that when they have very few choices to make, it's sometimes a little easier to make the choices to be brave and to trust. If you magnify that, and increase those extremes; if you add in genocide and the loss of all your family wealth, and the loss of your place and identity, then the choices are fairly stark. Some people will choose just to trust God, and will choose to stay courageous and hold on to their faith because it's pretty much the only thing they have.

Emily: Some of the Christians that you met in the Middle East have also been introduced to Jesus through various dreams and visions.

Craig: Yes, it's bizarre, but it's common, that of these millions of Muslims who are becoming Christians, or who have become Christians in the last decade and a half or so, a high proportion of them have had a dream, or a vision. I've met loads that it's happened to.

In trying to find an explanation for it, it's kind of hard, because it's supernatural and resists explanation. But this guy Naser, when I asked him about it, he said, "You're going out to Mosul aren't you?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Well, what's the other name for Mosul?" And I remembered it was Nineveh. He said, "What happened in Nineveh?"

If you know your Sunday school stories, Nineveh is the place where Jonah was told to go to preach to the Assyrians. The Assyrians were this evil race. They were the guys who were terrifying and in a sense, a little bit like ISIS.

Jonah really didn't want to go to see them, so he did what most selfishly inclined people would do, he went the other way to Spain. When he ended up in Nineveh and walked into the city and gave his preach, it was a pretty pathetic preach, seven words long, "40 more days or God's gonna destroy you." It wasn't eloquent, or good evangelism, but it seems that that was enough for God, because we read in that story, that pretty much the whole city then devoted themselves to following God. They turned around and turned their back on their wicked ways.

I think that perhaps there's a parable there for us, or a parallel. God seems to want Muslims to come back to Him and He'll do whatever it takes to do that. We might be fearful, or grumpy and we might go the other way, but we have a part to play, and perhaps part of our job is to welcome Muslims to become Christians and to offer community and hope as well.

Emily: So is this the end of Christianity in the Middle East?

Craig: I think it depends what you see as success. If we see success as numbers and full churches, with lots of good religious stuff, then it's not looking too good. If we see persecution and death, and getting blown up for your faith, as a sign of failure, then it's really not looking good at all. But if we look at things in a different way, if we see it as people choosing to be sacrificial and taking risks, and people choosing to give all that they have, after they've lost so much, in order to help others; to live in refugee camps, to work alongside people who've been trafficked by ISIS, and were rescued, and are trying to work through all this trauma, then, this is the golden age. It's amazing that this stuff is going on.