By Jasu Diaz –
When the Christians came to town for a crusade in northern Nigeria, Abdul* and his Muslim buddies beat them up.
“We thought we did the right thing for humanity and for God,” Abdul says on a Mohamad Faridi video.
Today, the same people he beat up are his partners and brothers in Christ.
Abdul was born to a polygamous father. Islam encourages up to four wives to husbands with means.
He took great pains, not to actually be a good Muslim, but to show outwardly he was a good Muslim, he says.
A good Muslim has a prayer bump on his forehead from multiple contacts with the prayer mat from bowing down, the five times of prayer a day. Abdul rubbed his forehead in the dirt to achieve the desired effect. When his imam father saw him, he was pleased and promised to send him to Saudi Arabia to study Islam and become an imam.
“I would rub my forehead to the ground, showing my dedication to the faith,” he says.
When as an adult he moved to Lagos with his brother, Abdul began to encounter Jesus. His sister-in-law was a Christian. To marry a Muslim, she was forced to “convert” to Islam. But she kept a Bible hidden from her husband, and Abdul found it.
His first touch with Christ came in a dream. He didn’t understand what happened. He didn’t have the words to describe it. He just knew it was Jesus.
Later, he attended a crusade, much like the one that came to his village, when he had beaten up the organizers. He didn’t accept Jesus yet. In fact, he walked out because all the old thoughts about Islam flooded back in his mind.
“There was this war within me, the battle for my soul,” he says. “Christ was trying to rescue me, but my personal attachment to where I was coming from was resisting that love.”
He liked to play soccer and got invited to a church activity. After the soccer match, he asked to speak in private with the youth pastor. What was this encounter he had as a young man in the dream? he asked.
His cousin had said some unusual things. He said that Abdul would become a Christian messenger to Nigeria. The bizarre things is that his cousin was a Muslim. Now, Abdul thinks God spoke prophetically through his cousin, overriding his own intellect and speech, just like the High Priest who prophesied that it was in the best interest of the Jewish nation that one man, Jesus, should die for all.
Today, Abdul is just that, a minister to the outlying regions of Nigeria. Once he beat up Christians staging crusades, now he’s involved with crusades himself.
God was pursuing Abdul, the pastor realized, and began to talk about salvation through Jesus. Honestly, Abdul didn’t understand much of what he said. The pastor asked, “Are you ready to go on this journey with God?”
“Yes,” he responded.
Still, he had doubts because Islam teaches that it is the final update of the Abrahamic religions to supersede and replace all earlier “corrupted” iterations.
So, when he went home, he placed the Koran on top of the Bible in his room and left. It was a challenge to see which religion is true. When he came back, mysteriously the Bible was on top of the Koran.
“I don’t know if someone went into the room,” he admits. Still, it filled him with wonder.
He visited the youth pastor, who stayed mostly at the church. He pastor invited him to join him for prayer, and he accepted. The Holy Spirit fell on him, and he began speaking in tongues.
He flashed back to a time when he was a kid. He was making fun of Christians, pretending to speak in tongues.
He flashed back to a time when he was a kid. He was making fun of Christians, pretending to speak in tongues.
His cousin had said some eerie things. He had said that Abdul would become a Christian messenger to Nigeria. The bizarre things is that his cousin was a Muslim. Now, Abdul thinks God spoke prophetically through his cousin, overriding his own intellect and speech, just like the High Priest who prophesied that it was in the best interest of the Jewish nation tha one man, Jesus, should die for all.
Today, Abdul is just that, a minister to the outlying regions of Nigeria. Where once he beat up Christians who staged a crusade, he now does crusades.
*Not his real name. His identity is hidden to protect him and his efforts for evangelism.
If you want to know more about a personal relationship with God, go here
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About this writer: Jasu Diaz studies at the Lighthouse Christian School in Santa Monica.
