Jihad Cell Commander Comes to Jesus Christ
Inside
the Revolution
(Edited)
The testimony here of a Iraqi Jihadist being given by chance
a New Testament Bible to find fault with it and to be able to refute it, and how alone he read the words of Jesus
Christ and was so touched and affected by this alone that this man’s world of
Islam and his terrorist training all came tumbling down.
So that night after night this man secretly cried out to God
to appear to him and to show him, which was God’s word; the Koran or the
Bible. And without the hands of a
single preacher or teacher God sovereignty answered this man in a dream
culminating with Jesus Christ appearing to Him and without speaking a word Christ
transformed this man with no more than a nod and a piercing look from His eyes –
filling this man with love, joy, and forgiveness, and flushing out murder and
hatred.
As we have maintained in a number of articles God does not
need or want any of our high powered evangelists paid for by tens of millions
of dollars of filthy lucre to go to some third world nation and preach their
corrupt messages on salvation, healing, deliverance.
God’s arm has not been shortened, nor is He bound to use the church and its
corrupt preachers. God has moved sovereignly
throughout the church age just as it is recorded in the book of Acts having the
unsaved having dreams and visions and then seeking out the Apostles to speak to
them of this salvation, or to show them something beyond the baptism of John.
I rejoice in this powerful and sovereign act of God in
reaching out to one who was a Saul of
Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, “I
will build My Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.”
Our
journey to a humanitarian relief project we were doing together was long and
dusty and required our little team, traveling in an old Chevy Impala, to pass
through numerous military checkpoints, each manned by heavily armed Iraqi
soldiers and policemen checking passports and asking questions, all on high
alert for members of al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army.
Along the way, I found myself staring out at a landscape that was often as
barren as the surface of the moon, covered with rocks,
nearly devoid of vegetation, and only scarcely populated. During a lull in the
conversation with an Iraqi in the car whom I had known for several years, I
asked the meek-looking and mild-mannered Pastor Shakir
how he had become a Christ follower and a pastor.
“Were you
raised in a Christian home?” I asked
through our translator.
“No,” he replied quietly. “I was raised a Muslim.”
“Really!” I said, a bit startled. “What did you do
before becoming a pastor?”
“I was a
jihad cell commander.”
I gulped. You don’t say, I thought. He certainly had my full attention now. “Please,
tell me your story,” I said eagerly, pulling out my notebook. Shakir graciously agreed.
He explained that he was born in 1975 to a devout Sunni Muslim family and that
as he grew up he became deeply religious. Even at an early age, he loved going
to the mosque regularly, and by the age of seventeen, he had joined a secret
Radical Islamic movement. He studied hard and learned quickly, and before long
he was teaching the Qur’an in various mosques.
“My leaders then sent me to a military training camp where I was trained to use
light weapons—pistols, machine guns, and RPGs [rocket
propelled grenades]—against the infidels,” he told me. “I was so excited
because I wanted to do jihad for God. I was fully
convinced that the Shias and the Christians were blasphemers
and that if I killed them I would be blessed.”
After successfully completing “Terrorism 101,” Shakir
was made a jihad cell commander and was ordered to quietly recruit other jihadists. “I soon had a group of my own followers,” he
explained.
“I would put them through this military training and then help them get jobs in
different government offices and other shops and businesses so they could spy
for me and be in position to do great damage when we launched the overthrow of
Saddam and his regime.”
One day, one of Shakir’s
Radical Muslim disciples came to him and said that someone was
distributing Bibles to everyone in the machine
shop where he worked. The disciple was very angry and told Shakir
that he had cursed out everyone in the shop, collected all the Bibles, and
promptly destroyed them. All
but one.
“He
brought one Bible—a New Testament—to me and said I should read it and see how
to react to it and counter it,” Shakir explained. He said he praised his disciple for
acting quickly and decisively. Then he sent the disciple away and took the
Bible home, and that night he began to read the Gospel according to
Matthew.
“I read
the book very fervently to find all the blasphemies and corruption,” Shakir said. “But I discovered
the words started affecting my mind, and my heart started changing. These were
powerful words, not human words. They seemed to me like God’s words. But I
thought, ‘How could this be?’”
Shakir became deeply troubled. He kept reading through Matthew but
was ashamed of himself because rather than finding fault with these Christian
Scriptures, he found himself completely intrigued. He had so many
questions. But whom could he ask? He couldn’t very well start discussing the
life and teachings of Jesus with the members of the terrorist cell group he was
leading. He couldn’t very well ask questions of the terrorist leaders above
him. He didn’t dare seek out any Christians. So night after night he kept reading the
Gospels, searching for answers. The more he did, the
more troubled and anxious he became.
“After
reading the Bible in a deep way, I began comparing it with the Qur’an,” he told
me. “I was so confused, and in my confusion, I began pleading with God, ‘Please
show me Yourself.’
I begged God, ‘Please, show me the right way—is it the Qur’an or the
Bible?’”
This went on for several nights.
“One night,” he said, “I was really pleading with God fervently to
show me the true, straight path. And that night I had a dream. I found myself
standing on the side of a road. There was a large crowd gathered on both sides
of the road, and they were cheering and very excited. And I realized that they
were awaiting a parade to go by. So I looked down the road to see who was
coming, and I saw many prophets riding on horses coming towards us. Suddenly
Jonah was riding by. And then David. And Abraham. And Moses—riding on high,
strong horses. Everyone was cheering and I was cheering. It was so
exciting to see these prophets.”
Shakir kept waiting for Muhammad to
come riding by as well, but Muhammad never came. He was not in the parade of
prophets. Instead, Shakir said that “at the end of
the procession, I saw another person riding, but He was riding on a donkey
instead of a horse. He was wearing a white robe, and His face was covered by a
white shroud. When this person approached, for some reason I heard myself
calling out to Him and asking, ‘Are you Jesus?’ Like I said, His face was
covered by a white cloth. So I couldn’t really see His face at that moment. But
when He heard my question, the man pulled the cloth away from His face and
smiled at me and nodded yes.
“Something came from His face that filled me with a joy I had
never felt in my whole life. I started shouting, ‘I saw Jesus! I saw Jesus!’ I
was so happy and so joyful and I was laughing. But
as soon as I woke up, I realized that my pillowcase and my sheets were all wet
around my head. I realized that at some point during my dream I had been crying—sobbing—in shame for all of my sins, for
all of my hatred.”
Shakir said he found himself overcome with the
realization that he had been so wrong about God, about Islam, about terrorism.
He also
found himself incredibly grateful and humbled that Jesus would come and rescue
him and forgive him of all of his sins and set him on the true path to heaven.
“I felt a
strong joy, and I wanted to find my Muslim disciples and tell them that I loved
them and that Jesus loved them,” Shakir explained. “After that dream, my life was completely
changed. I was eager to evangelize—to tell people about the love of Jesus
Christ. I couldn’t hide that joy. The more I read of the Gospels, the more I
felt I had to tell people about this love of God, even people that I had hated.
This was not easy. I was mocked and persecuted by many. Once I was beaten by
eight people. I was nearly assassinated three times. But it is okay. Since I
came to know the Lord Jesus as my Savior, I am ready to put my life—and my
family—as a sacrifice for Jesus.”
What a remarkable transformation, I thought as Shakir
finished his story. He seemed to be thinking the same thing, for when our time
was up and the interview was over, Shakir stood up,
looked me straight in the eye, and without any expression on his face said,
“Joel, you are very lucky.”“Yes, I think that’s
true,” I said. “But why do you say it?”
He took a deep breath. “Because if I had met you in 1993, I
would have killed you immediately.”
My pulse quickened, and then he added, “But now you are my brother in Jesus,
and I love you!”
A huge smile flashed across his face. He threw his arms around me and gave me a
bear hug. I breathed a big sigh of relief, and—laughing—gave him a hug as well.