Greetings to all of you in the name of our Lord and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all of you for praying and supporting us through these hard years to fulfill our God’s call in my life to reach our people for Christ, especially those who live in state of conflict between fear of the religious heritage they inherited through birth and the religious authority that controls and dominates people, and their questions that arise through their search for the truth and God.
One of these people, a 33-year-old man from a devout Muslim family, learned from a young age to obey the Quran, the Islamic Hadiths, religious leaders, and the Islamic tradition of worship without any doubts or questions. The older he grew and the more he studied the Quran and the Hadith, the more questions accumulated in his mind about his religion. Whenever he tried to ask those questions to the religious men who taught him, he would be intimidated by the accusation that he was disbelieving in their religion’s authority and would receive Allah’s punishment. He was living in a state of confusion between his intense desire to obey Allah and his prophet Muhammad and the teachings, and intense fear that was planted within him of Allah’s severe punishments, especially after death.
When he finished high school and entered university to complete his education, he realized that their cultural, social, political, and religious beliefs and lives were built on the same principles of religion, which is fear and punishment even from questioning. Then, he realized why the authorities ruled them with an iron fist.
This realization only created more questions about the credibility of his denomination. After that, he began to compare the religious contradictions between his denomination and other Islamic denominations and noticed that all Islamic countries that claim Islam is the only source of laws in their countries rule their people with an iron fist. His question was, “What’s wrong with our religion?” He tried to discover the correct measure of religion and Allah.
One day, he went to the Mosque, and after the prayer, he sat with the Imam and discussed some religious matters with him. (In Islam, Allah has 99 attributes such as Most Holy, Most Merciful, etc.) so the Imam advised him to repeat one of these attributes 500 times. He said, “Allah will send an angel to you to help you remove all your confusion and questions.” So, this young man decided to do it. Still, no angel visited him, and nothing happened to him. Then, he tried to obey all the teachings to get answers to his questions, but still, nothing happened to him. He concluded that the mistake was his fault or that Allah didn’t want to answer his questions!
Years have passed as he has been trying to understand who God is and that he wants to be worshipped. Meanwhile, our God has been working through all of us with your support to get the Word of God out so we can make it possible to give to those people who are seeking Him. We believe that “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”
Indeed, Christianity was not the path he could think of taking to find God because of what he learned in his upbringing about Christianity. Still, when he met one of our church members, everything changed. We teach our members how to build a bridge between the people and us to present the Gospel to them and be protected.
When friendship began to develop between them, questions about God and who He is were the main subjects. Our church member laid down the foundation by talking about God in the Bible, and he started by asking him, “Where does a person learn to love, and how do we know we love God?” That person answered that he did not know if he loved God. Still, he was terrified of him.
So, our church member started explaining to him how we can love God. Our church member noticed that the person was listening attentively and asked if he would like to meet with me to hear more about the love of God. The young man immediately replied, “Yes, without a doubt.”
When we started to meet, he was ready to listen about God’s love and how we could have a personal relationship with Him. When I offered him a Bible, he accepted it without hesitation, started to read it, and consistently had questions about it. The more he read the word of God, the more he would say, “You don’t need anything more than this Book to understand why we need the Love of God.” Shortly thereafter, he came to the knowledge of Salvation by accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior.
