Church growing in Saudi Arabia faster than global average

By Daniel Corado –

In Mecca – the crown jewel of Islam — immediately after he read the Koran and prayed to Allah during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ahmed Joktan, the son of a grand mufti, was visited by Jesus in a dream.

“In my dream, the balcony opened up, there was this light, and I heard a voice saying, ‘Come to me,’” Ahmed says on a Gateways Christian Fellowship video.

Ahmed converted to Christ in New Zealand where he was studying English. He now lives in the West. Hundreds of thousands of other Saudis who converted remain in Saudi Arabia, boldly serving the Lord at the risk of being hanged.

Saudi Arabia is iron-clad closed to the gospel. Evangelizing is illegal. Bibles are outlawed. Apostasy is punishable by death. Non-Muslims are not even allowed in Mecca, where Muslims believe Mohammad received his visions and Abraham once lived.1

Despite the risks, Christianity is burgeoning, even approaching 10%2 of the population, says Oswaldo Magdangal, who pastored an underground church for 11 years as a Filipino worker. He was caught and almost hanged in 1992.

“Saudi Arabia has the largest secret congregation in the world, and it’s mainly Saudi citizens,” Oswaldo told God Reports. The younger generation is especially open to the Gospel. “Christianity is all over, in Mecca, Riyadh, but the biggest growth is in Jeddah.”

Is revival happening in the underground church?

“Saudi Arabia’s rate of Christian growth is about 65% greater than the global average,” says Bruce Allen, with Forgotten Missionaries International, using statistics from Joshua Project. “Just because we hear that a government is closed to the gospel doesn’t mean the hearts of the people are.”

Until the new Crown Prince took over in 2017, Saudi Arabia was the home of one of the most extremist brands of Islam, Wahhabism. Of the 19 hijackers involved in 9/11, 15 were Saudi nationals and most of them followed the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Osama bin Ladin was Saudi and influenced by several extremist ideologies, including Wahhabism. School children have been taught in Saudi schools to fight the West.

But when Mohammad bin Salman took over, he liberalized the kingdom significantly. Fanatical clerics were jailed, preachers were told to tone down their messages, women were allowed to drive, schoolbooks were re-written to encourage moderate faith.

Most importantly, the religious police were stripped of their authority.

Negotiations are ongoing to build churches on the peninsula; if neighboring United Arab Emirates has allowed compounds to open for churches, why not Saudi Arabia? There are now Bible printing houses (printing in Tagalog and in English), Oswaldo says.

But on the downside, congregations still can’t rent hotel conference rooms or public buildings, he adds.

“There is a major increase in church attendance, particularly among the younger generation,” Oswaldo says. “There are now Saudi pastors.”

From the Philippines, Oswaldo worked as a guest worker in charge of civilian employees for the Armed Forces of Saudi Arabia. His wife worked in the Armed Forces Hospital. They had good connections.

But their connections were not good enough to save him from the religious police. When he was holding services in the desert (to avoid being discovered by the religious police), an AWAC plane during the Gulf War detected his meeting. The religious police caught him in Riyadh, the capital, he says.

He was imprisoned, interrogated and flogged on every part of his body, even the bottom of his feet. He wasn’t told the charges against him until his trial: blasphemy.

Oswaldo despaired. Interrogators demanded the names of his converts and associates in spreading the Gospel.

“Eventually I was so weak, they placed the pad of paper in my lap, and they forced the pencil into my hand,” Oswaldo said in Christianity Today. “I was weeping, and I said, ‘Lord, you’ve got to help me here,’ and I began to write the names of Billy Graham, Charles Spurgeon, and others. After a few days, they were so mad, because they’d been all over Saudi Arabia looking for those people.”

He was to be hung on Christmas Day, a date selected to mock his faith. Not only the Philippines appealed to King Fahd, but also the US, the UN, Amnesty International, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana, and the Pope.

The church was praying, both outside and inside Saudi Arabia. His Saudi converts did a biblical Jericho-like march around the Kaaba.

Muslims march around the Kaaba as part of their religion. It is the most holy site in Islam. But when the Christian Saudis did it, under cover, they were signifying that Islam could not withstand the God of the Bible.

It worked. With only hours before the execution, King Fahd ordered Oswaldo’s release at midnight. Military personnel came to rescue him and escort him out. He and his wife had to leave the country within 24 hours.

Oswaldo – who goes by Wally – has not been back since. He tried to visit in 2022, but was denied an entry visa. Oswaldo and his wife hope to get into the country eventually and start telephoning their old contacts. Oswaldo believes he can get a meeting with MBS, at which he wants to present the gospel.

Ever since it discovered oil and became flush with cash, Saudi Arabia has used foreign labor for a full range of menial jobs. Some of those workers are Christian tent makers, like Paul, using their worldly skills to advance the Gospel where traditional missionaries are shut out.

Recently the tent makers have been joined by tourists. In an attempt to pivot away from an all-oil economy, Saudi Arabia is now wooing tourists. Who would have guessed that Christians would be among the first to come?

They visit the site where some believe Moses received the 10 commandments, Jebel al-Lawz, in northwestern Saudi Arabia, near the Gulf of Aqaba — and they pray.

1 According to the Quran and Islamic historical sources, Abraham (Ibrahim) and his son Ishmael (Ismail) traveled to the site where Mecca now stands, built the Kaaba, and established monotheistic worship there. However, this narrative does not appear in the Hebrew Bible or other Jewish or Christian sources.

2 According to Joshua Project, the percentage of Christian adherents in Saudi Arabia is 4.02% and the percentage of Evangelicals is 0.53%. The Evangelical annual growth rate is 4.3%, higher than the global growth rate of 2.6%.

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• Is Islam inherently violent? Look at the history.
• Why are Europeans converting to Islam?
• Sharia law in London is practiced locally and internally.

About this writer: Daniel Corado studies at the Lighthouse Christian Academy near in Santa Monica.