On the day that ISIS entered the Syrian city in which Saif* and his wife lived, they knew their lives were changed forever. Violence and barbaric killings became commonplace under a brutal form of Islamic law, and the married Muslim couple did their best to hide from the soldiers who haunted the streets. But they were living on borrowed time, and one day, a knock sounded on their door. When Saif opened it, he came face to face with an armed group that demanded he either donate to their cause or volunteer to fight. He refused to do either, and they threw him into prison.
“I started every night praying in my heart and saying if there is a God in those heavens, take me out of here and show me yourself.”
By some miracle, Saif’s wife escaped to Lebanon during his detention, but Saif was not so lucky. He was tortured and, in the midst of this nightmare, he began to believe that his religion—the Islam he’d faithfully followed and to which ISIS also claimed to be faithful—could not be from God. “I started every night praying in my heart and saying if there is a God in those heavens, take me out of here and show me yourself,” he said later.
One night, coalition forces shelled the city, and the prisoners, including Saif, were liberated. But many were killed in the fighting, and Saif was wounded and fell unconscious. When he awoke, he found himself surrounded by American soldiers giving him first aid. “Jesus saved you on this day,” one of the soldiers said to him. Saif did not fully understand what the soldier meant, but he did not forget the words he spoke. Later, when Saif reunited with his wife in Lebanon and told her his story, they pledged to search for this Jesus who the American soldier claimed had saved his life.
Searching for Jesus, Finding Christ
Their search eventually led them to a Christian man in Lebanon, and through their conversations with him, they discovered the truth about the Jesus Saif had learned of from the American soldier. The Christian man gave Saif and his wife a Bible and soon, they surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ. Now, they have immigrated to another Middle Eastern country, where they lead a house church in a community filled with people from their same culture and preach the good news of the gospel, telling others of Jesus the Christ, Son of God, who saved Saif’s earthly life and welcomed him into eternal salvation.
Christ Revealed in a Dream
The testimony of Saif and his wife is just one of many in which Christ has made Himself known to those desperate to find Him. In a Middle Eastern city, Mahdi* strode through the annual spring festival, searching among the many booths for one he’d been directed to find in a dream the previous night. “In my dream, someone woke me up from sleep and told me to go to this festival and there I will get a book containing important answers to my questions,” he said.
“I found the sign of the cross on his hand and asked him if he was a Christian, and he said to me ‘I am Christ.’”
But what captured Mahdi’s attention in his dream more than anything else was the symbol he saw on the dream-man’s arm. “I found the sign of the cross on his hand and asked him if he was a Christian,” Mahdi said. “And he said to me, ‘I am Christ.’”
In Mahdi’s dream, the man—Christ—instructed him to walk in a specific direction once he arrived at the festival. As Mahdi now followed those instructions, he stumbled straight into a small table of books watched over by Christian workers from a native ministry.
“Do you believe this is the place Christ sent me?” Mahdi asked the workers after he’d told them of his dream. “The words were clear and the message was clear.”
“God loves you and calls you to salvation.”
“God loves you and calls you to salvation,” the workers told him in response. They shared the gospel with him and presented him with a Bible, which Mahdi immediately knew as the book he’d been instructed to find in his dream.
Mahdi surrendered his life to Christ that day without hesitation because when his soul had been filled with questions, Jesus provided a way to find the answers. He knew that in his dream, he had been in the presence of the Lord God Almighty.
It is through the support and encouragement of Christian workers like those who shared the gospel with Saif and Mahdi that Muslims choose to leave their traditional Islamic beliefs in obedience to Christ. Please consider a donation today to support these native missionaries who are always ready and eager to share the gospel in all circumstances.
*Name changed for security reasons