This article provides historical context to the Taliban takeover, including Christian history, and is the first in a series of such by FAI Mission.

Early Christian sources disagree regarding the apostolic journeys of Thomas. Some claim that, when the Twelve divided up the known world among themselves, the lot of Thomas fell to Parthia, which was centered in modern Iran. Others record that the Lord commissioned him for India. It’s possible that he labored in both regions…Interestingly, both civilizations overlapped at the western foot of the Hindu-Kush mountains…Today, it is the modern nation-state of Afghanistan…

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…[A]rcheologists have unearthed evidence that the king whom the Acts of Thomas claims was served by the apostle was in fact a historical figure, and that he reigned in what is today Afghanistan, during the…time that Thomas would have been in the region…[T]he disciple nicknamed The Twin is considered the patron saint of Afghanistan, although there are hardly any traditional Afghan Christians remaining today to venerate him…

As for Thomas, several traditions hold that he continued southeast on his missionary journey…until he was finally laid on the altar of martyrdom near the coast of the Indian Ocean in what is now Chennai in modern India. Whether or not his miraculous escape from an Afghan prison was the impetus for the saving faith of an Afghan king, we may not know until it is revealed by the Last Day. We do know that the church had taken root in parts of Afghanistan by the fifth century, as the Apostolic Church of the East appointed bishops in places like Kandahar, Herat, Zaranj and Farah, all major cities in Afghanistan today…

During the reign of the Muslim caliphs Omar and Uthman…the Islamic Caliphate expanded into modern Iran and Afghanistan. At first, Islam made little headway…But…Muslim preachers would gradually convert many…to Islam, so that most of the tribes were Muslim-majority by the middle of the ninth century…

Over the next millennium, Afghanistan lay at the crossroads of empires…falling under the sway of the Mongols, the Turko-Mongol Timurids, the Muslim Indian Mughals, and the the Sikhs. During the nineteenth century, Afghanistan became the centerpiece…in the…competition between the…Russian and British empires…This pattern of conquest, persistent unrest, and eventual withdrawal would be repeated over and over…

Despite Afghanistan’s reputation as the graveyard of empires, it…nonetheless…prosper[ed] throughout tumultuous times until the end of the twentieth century…In 1973, a member of Afghanistan’s royal family named Mohammed Daoud Khan overthrew…the emirate monarchy that had existed in Afghanistan…Khan’s government was overthrown in 1978…and the…People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan…took control…and became a satellite of the Soviet Union…

…[T]he American CIA, British MI-6 and Gulf Arab kingdoms began…training Afghan resistance fighters in Pakistan. Known as the Mujahedeen…the anti-Soviet Afghan militia began a long, brutal war of attrition against the Soviet Union…The Russians responded with repeated offensives into rebel territory, decimating rural Afghan communities…However,…victory remained elusive for the Soviet Union…and by the late 1980’s, the Russians had begun to withdraw…

…[T]he United States began to disengage from Afghanistan. However,…Afghanistan was devastated by a decade of war, having suffered a pattern of atrocities at the hands of their Soviet occupiers…[T]he following decades would see a movement arise within Afghanistan which would draw the world into a War on Terror. It would also awaken another movement among desperate people for the hope of Good News, and a spark of light which had not been seen since the days of the Apostle Thomas and the Eastern Church would begin to blaze across Afghanistan again.

Are you able to see God’s heart for Afghanistan through this history? Share your thoughts and prayers in the comments below!

(Excerpt from FAI Mission. Photo Credit: Joel Heard/Unsplash).