Stories of Faith - Episode 11

NABEEL QURESHI (1983-2017) originally published on blogs.thegospelcoalition.org

ISLAM WAS ALL

Nabeel was born in California as a U.S. citizen to Pakistani immigrants who fled religious persecution at the hands of fellow Muslims. His parents were devout members of the peaceful Ahmadi sect of Islam, which differs from orthodox Islam on some minor doctrines but shares with it a belief in the six articles of the faith and holds to the five pillars of the faith Nabeel’s family was the most loving and tightly knit family that he knew. And it was entirely centered on Islam, which formed the framework and blueprint of his life.

His mother taught him Urdu and Arabic before he learned English at the age of 4. By the age of 5, he had read the entire Qur’an in Arabic and had memorized many chapters.

His parents also trained him in apologetics so that he would not only believe in Islam, but could defend it and refute other religions like Christianity.

ENCOUNTERING THE CLAIMS OF CHRIST

In August 2001, while a student at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, Nabeel observed fellow student David Wood reading the Bible in his free time. Nabeel regularly read the Qur’an, but it struck him as odd to see a Christian reading the Bible on his own.

Nabeel challenged David’s belief in Christianity, beginning with the charge that the Bible had been corrupted over time. Wood aspired to be a Christian apologist, and the two young men formed a friendship and engaged in debate that lasted for several years.

In working through David’s arguments and examining the evidence for himself, Nabeel eventually became convinced of the general reliability of the New Testament.

He next raised the objection that Jesus never claimed to be God. After being shown this was untrue, Nabeel challenged David that Jesus had never died on the cross. Again, by being willing to investigate the evidence, Nabeel changed his mind.

It was now two and a half years later, and Nabeel raised the greatest stumbling block for accepting Christianity: how could one man die for another man’s sins? And how could the one true God be a Trinity? He was now reading the Bible and considering Christ’s claims for himself.

In return, David began to challenge Nabeel’s confidence in the claims of Islam. Intellectually, Nabeel held to Islam for several subjective reasons (like the kind of life it produced), but objectively, the central claim was that Islam was true because Muhammad was a true prophet of God. But after studying primary sources and biographies, Nabeel eventually concluded that he could not reasonably hold to the idea that Muhammad is the greatest of prophets and history’s most perfect man.

From December 2004 to April 2005, Nabeel experienced three vivid dreams that strongly suggested to him that Christianity is true and that Christ should be followed.

Later that year, he traveled to Washington, D.C., Canada, and England to search out knowledgeable Muslims who could answer the arguments against Islam that he had encountered. “I heard various replies running the gamut from terribly unconvincing to fairly innovative, and I encountered people that ranged from sincere to condescendingly caustic. At the end of my research, the arguments for and against Islam still hung in the balance, but one thing was abundantly clear: they were far from approaching the strength of the case for Christianity.”

CHRIST IS ALL

Nabeel described for Christianity Today his final conversion to Christ, while a medical student, and the effect it had on his world:

I began mourning the impact of the decision I knew I had to make. On the first day of my second year of medical school, it became too much to bear. Yearning for comfort, I decided to skip school. Returning to my apartment, I placed the Qur’an and the Bible in front of me. I turned to the Qur’an, but there was no comfort there. For the first time, the book seemed utterly irrelevant to my suffering. Irrelevant to my life. It felt like a dead book.

With nowhere left to go, I opened up the New Testament and started reading. Very quickly, I came to the passage that said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

Electric, the words leapt off the page and jump-started my heart. I could not put the Bible down. I began reading fervently, reaching Matthew 10:37, which taught me that I must love God more than my mother and father.

“But Jesus,” I said, “accepting you would be like dying. I will have to give up everything.”

The next verses spoke to me, saying, “He who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for my sake will find it” (NASB). Jesus was being very blunt: For Muslims, following the gospel is more than a call to prayer. It is a call to die.

I knelt at the foot of my bed and gave up my life.

A few days later, the two people I loved most in this world were shattered by my betrayal. To this day my family is broken by the decision I made, and it is excruciating every time I see the cost I had to pay.

But Jesus is the God of reversal and redemption. He redeemed sinners to life by his death, and he redeemed a symbol of execution by repurposing it for salvation. He redeemed my suffering by making me rely upon him for my every moment, bending my heart toward him. It was there in my pain that I knew him intimately. He reached me through investigations, dreams, and visions, and called me to prayer in my suffering. It was there that I found Jesus. To follow him is worth giving up everything.

In another place, he recounts the incredible pain this created in his family:

After my family learned of my conversion, they have not been the same.

My mother has tears in her eyes whenever I see her, a quiver in her voice whenever I hear her, and absolute despair on her face in sleep and while awake. Never have I met a mother more devoted to her children than my mother, and how did I repay her? In her mind, decades’ worth of emotional and physical investment ended up with her son espousing views that are completely antithetical to everything she stands for.

My father, a loving, gentle, and big-hearted man with every ounce of the emotional strength expected of a 24-year veteran of the U.S. military, broke down for the first time that I had ever seen. To be the cause of the only tears I ever saw fall from his eyes is not easy to live with. To hear him . . . the man who stood tallest in my life from the day I was born, my archetype of strength, my father . . . to hear him say that because of me he felt his backbone has been ripped out from behind him, feels like patricide.

It was then that I wondered why God had let me live; why had God not just lifted me to himself when I had found the truth? Why did I have to hurt my family so much, and practically eschew the ones who loved me more than anyone else?

The answer was sought and found in God’s Word. After accepting him, it is my duty to work for him and walk his path. For now, my loss was to be comforted by his words found in Mark 10:29-30:“I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.”

AMBASSADOR AND APOLOGIST

Nabeel went on to study Christian apologetics at Biola University, graduating with an MA in 2008, while also completing his medical degree at Eastern Virginia Medical School, graduating in 2009. In 2012, he completed an MA in religion at Duke University, and then entered an MPhil and PhD program at Oxford University in New Testament studies. In 2013, he became an itinerant speaker with Ravi Zacharias International Ministry.

In February 2014, Nabeel published his first book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity (Zondervan), which landed on The New York Times bestseller list, and was awarded the Christian Book Award for both “Best New Author” and “Best Non-Fiction Book” of 2015. It has sold more than a quarter of a million copies.

In 2015, Nabeel’s wife, Michelle, gave birth to their daughter, Ayah Fatima Qureshi, named after a Christian martyr.

In March 2016, Zondervan published Nabeel’s book Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward.

Five months later, in August 2016, Zondervan released No God But One: Allah or Jesus? A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity.

CANCER

On the day of the book release for No God But One, Nabeel wrote on Facebook, announcing that he had been diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer: In October 2016, his wife, Michelle, suffered a miscarriage, and in May 2017, Nabeel announced that the radiation had not worked and that the cancer had spread to his chest. During this time, Nabeel’s parents came to Houston, where he lives, and helped to care for him: 

In September 2017, his doctors decided to place him on palliative care, as there were no further medical options to pursue.

As a Christian apologist with a special focus on Islam, Nabeel was often introduced as a “former Muslim.” He felt ambivalence about the label, wondering if he would be forever bound by the life he left. When asked about this by Boundless, he responded:

We don’t identify other Christians as “former adulterers,” “former narcissists,” etc. I have been made a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17), I strive every day to cast off the old self and to put on the new (Ephesians 4:22-24), reflecting the fact that I have been born again from above (John 3:3).

I would be thrilled if I never had to talk about Islam again, focusing instead on the awe-inspiring power of God’s incarnation and resurrection!

But, he added:

. . . as long as there are Muslims, there will be Christians who need to be equipped to share the Gospel with them in compelling compassion.

Until that is no longer the case, I am honored to discuss my former way of life to build up the body of Christ.

GLORY AND JOY

Today, Nabeel Qureshi, beholding his Savior face to face, is able to declare what is true:

I have fought the good fight.

I have finished the race.

I have kept the faith.

Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Tim. 4:7-8)

Entering into the joy of his Master, he undoubtedly heard the words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

Stories of Faith - Episode 10

Apostle to Islam: Samuel Zwemer’s Story (Source: www.urbana.org)

Some missionaries are known for their great fruit, their many converts, churches they started, or hospitals they helped build. Samuel Zwemer is not known for these things. After 38 years of missions work throughout Arabia, the Persian Gulf, Egypt and Asia Minor, Samuel had seen his efforts produce fewer than 12 conversions to Christianity.

Yet producing converts was not the ultimate goal for Samuel. The man who would become known as the Apostle to Islam wrote “The chief end of missions is not the salvation of men but the glory of God.” We are faithful to God’s call on our lives for no other ultimate goal than that of bringing glory to God.

SET APART

As an infant, Samuel’s mother prayed that he would become a missionary. During his senior year at Hope College, Samuel dedicated himself foreign missionary service and later found a companion in this mission during his first year at New Brunswick Theological Seminary. James Cantine and Samuel covenanted with each other to “go to some needy field and possibly start a new work.”

The pair selected Arabia as their destination because, as the homeland of Islam, it was the most difficult mission field they could find. They submitted their plans to different societies, including the American Missionary Society, but found no one willing the sponsor them. They were told it was foolish “to want to go to such a fanatical people.”

In reply, Samuel said, “If God calls you and no board will send you, bore a hole through the board and go anyway.” And that’s what they did. James solicited support from churches for Samuel, and Samuel visited congregations to secure funds for James and together they started the Arabian Mission.

Trial and hardship were present companions to Samuel on the mission field. A partner in the early days of the mission died suddenly after a short illness and was believed to have been poisoned. Samuel’s younger brother, Peter, became ill and died in 1898, just six years after joining the mission.

In another six years, Samuel's two young daughters were to die of dysentery. In the midst of this suffering, Samuel and his wife, Amy, marked their daughters’ graves with an affirmation of God’s sovereignty: “Worthy is the Lamb to receive riches.”

ADVOCATE AND MOBILIZER

When Samuel returned to the United States for a furlough in 1905, he accepted a call to the Student Volunteer Movement as a traveling representative for recruitment. For the next five years, Samuel spent the greater part of his time speaking at conventions around the world influencing many to go into missionary service before returning himself to the mission field in Arabia.

Samuel would continue speaking at missions conferences for the rest of his life and was the keynote speaker at the first Inter-Varsity Student Foreign Missions Fellowship Convention, which became Urbana.

Throughout his life, Samuel would remain an advocate for missions work in the Muslim world. The year before he died, he was scheduled to attend Urbana ‘51 as a Special Guest, but was unable to due to illness. Instead, he sent a telegram in which he said:

"I am with you in spirit. The world of Islam is a challenge to faith and hope and love. Doors once closed are nailed open…Now is the time for…advance. The cloud of witnesses and the old guard are calling you. Come over and help us."

Samuel Zwemer died quietly while recovering from a heart attack in New York in 1952.

NO WORLD-BOUND MEASURE

Zwemer was the first long-term American missionary to the Middle East. He wrote almost a book a year for most of his life. He founded and edited the quarterly publication The Moslem World for 37 years. He was a professor at Princeton. He directly motivated hundreds to go to the mission field.

But above all his attributes, Samuel Zwemer was faithful. Samuel is a hero of the faith, not unlike those heroes listed in the book of Hebrews who were “commended in their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.” (chapter 11, verse 39).

As you go about your part in God’s global mission, aspire not to some world-bound measure of success. Instead, aspire to glorify God through faithfulness no matter the outcome.

Stories of Faith - Episode 9

Culled from Workplace Grace: Becoming a Spiritual Influence at Work

“Dave and I hit it off during a business negotiation. Over time, Barb (my wife) and I became close friends with Dave and his wife, Ann. We spent time together carpooling kids and watching soccer games. Barb and Ann led our daughters’ scout troop.

Dave and Ann were not believers, and they had encountered more than a few aggressive, hypocritical Christians, which made Dave wary. But the more we got to know each other, the more my faith seemed to intrigue him.

After a year, over lunch I told Dave how I came to believe in Christ. He listened with interest and asked questions. Eventually, he and Ann accepted an invitation to attend a Bible study at our home. Ann told Barb that she was interested in a personal relationship with Jesus, but she didn’t want to take this step without Dave.

For months, I communicated the gospel to Dave in every way I knew. Yet in spite of all my efforts, Dave’s heart seemed impenetrable, and I became discouraged.

I met with my spiritual mentor and recounted my frustration. In response, he asked me two tough questions.

“Wait, do you really care about these people, or are they just a project?”

Embarrassed, I had to admit that persuading them to make a decision to trust Jesus had become more important than being a friend.

“How often do you and Barb pray for Dave and Ann?”

I hung my head. “I really don’t pray for them very much at all.”

He reminded me that Dave and Ann faced the toughest, most important decision of their lives – and that praying for them would do more than all our efforts. So Barb and I began to pray every day for Dave and Ann as we continued to cultivate, plant, and love them.

Almost seven years after our friendship began, God answered our prayers. Dave and Ann both decided to become followers of Jesus.” – Walt Larimore

Stories of Faith - Episode 8

An excerpt from Messenger: Sydney Elton and the making of Pentecostalism in Nigeria

After serving as a missionary for 16 years in Ilesa with The Apostolic Church mission to Nigeria, Pa S.G Elton was led by God to leave. In his words, “I left them because God said, ‘I have got a bigger ministry for you.’ The prophetic word as I left was: ‘Don’t you deter or delay my servant Elton; I have got a bigger job for him and it will cover the whole country and beyond.”

The decision to leave the Apostolic Church mission while remaining in Nigeria was a major step of faith for the Eltons. Telling the story many years later, no doubt with some nostalgia, Elton did not in any way attempt to downplay the precariousness of the situation - God had to come through for them or they were going to become the laughingstock of many who thought they had made a foolish decision by leaving the mission: “I remember the day, more than thirty years ago, when my wife and I submitted our resignation from any salaried job,” he began. “We told our leaders who were visiting us from England that we would now no longer require any salary. We had finished. We had no income in this country. We had no farm. We had no food in our stock room. But we knew God was leading us.”

In a very rare display of emotion, which further reveals how deeply he felt about the situation, he talked about how two leaders from England (Rosser and Wellings) “who had just left me, who had accepted my resignation and walked away, drove away after being my guests and eating my food in my house; they drove away, leaving me, knowing that I had no source of income, and they hoped that I would soon after pack up and leave Nigeria.” “For months no money came in,” recalled Elton, “We came down to our last five pounds. I had no farm, I had no business. My wife prayed, ‘Lord if we have done the right thing, today in the post there will be a letter from someone in England who is sending us money who has never sent us money before.’ One can therefore imagine their excitement when they went to the post office “and in the post box was a letter from a person we had never heard of before.” Enclosed in the letter was a cheque and a part of the letter read, “We feel that you are possibly facing a crisis and are in need, so we are enclosing a cheque which we hope will meet your need whatever it is.” Elton remarked, “Now, they didn’t know what I was facing, and they didn’t know what I was going to go through.” The money was substantial enough to buy him “a car for transport as an independent person.” As he a later said, “I moved out in faith, believing God would provide and He did so.” And indeed, leaving the Apostolic Church released Elton into his most fruitful years of ministry in Nigeria.

Stories of Faith - Episode 7

Source: www.opendoorsusa.org

Brother Andrew started with bold beginnings by smuggling Bibles into Eastern Europe in 1955, started Open Doors to serve the persecuted church and wrote God's Smuggler, one of the best-selling Christian books of all time.

God led Andrew into a lifetime of adventures, like the one he describes below.

During the height of the Cold War, Communist countries were keeping a tight control on their borders, but God had called Brother Andrew to help the Christians behind that Iron Curtain. “When I pulled up to the checkpoint on the other side of the Danube, I said to myself, “Well, I’m in luck. Only half a dozen cars. This Romanian border crossing should go swiftly.”

“But when it took forty minutes to inspect the first car, I began to worry…literally everything that family was carrying had to be taken out and spread on the ground.

“Every car in line was put through the same routine. The fourth inspection lasted well over an hour. The guards took the driver inside and kept him there while they removed hub caps, took his engine apart, removed seats.

“Dear Lord,” I said, as at last there was just one car ahead of me, “what am I going to do? Any serious inspection will show up these Romanian Bibles right away.

“Lord,” I went on, “I know that no amount of cleverness on my part can get me through this border search. Dare I ask for a miracle? Let me take some of the Bibles out and leave them in the open where they will be seen. Then, Lord I cannot possibly be depending on my own stratagems, can I? I will be depending utterly upon You.”

“While the last car was going through its chilling inspection, I managed to take several Bibles from their hiding places and pile them on the seat beside me.

“It was my turn. I put the little VW in low gear, inched up to the officer standing at the left side of the road, handed him my papers, and started to get out. But his knee was against the door, holding it closed. He looked at my photograph in the passport, scribbled something down, shoved the papers back under my nose, and abruptly waved me on.

“Surely thirty seconds had not passed. I started the engine and inched forward. Was I supposed to pull over, out of the way where the car could be taken apart? Was I … surely I wasn’t…I coasted forward, my foot poised above the brake. Nothing happened. I looked out the rear mirror. The guard was waving the next car to a stop, indicating to the driver that he had to get out. On I drove a few more yards. The guard was having the driver behind me open the hood of his car. And then I was too far away to doubt that indeed I had made it through that incredible checkpoint in the space of thirty seconds.

“My heart was racing. Not with the excitement of the crossing, but with the excitement of having caught such a spectacular glimpse of God at work!”

Stories of Faith - Episode 6

Culled from The God Chasers by Tommy Tenney

A man named Edward Miller wrote a book entitled, Cry for Me Argentina, in which he describes one of the origins of the great revival in Argentina that was destined to impact South America and ultimately the entire world. Dr. Miller is now in his eighties, but more than four decades earlier he was one of but a few Pentecostal or Full Gospel missionaries working in Argentina. He tells the story of how 50 students in his Argentine Bible Institute began to pray and had an angelic visitation. They had to suspend classes because of the heavy prayer burden they had for the nation of Argentina. Day after day for 49 days in a row, these students prayed and interceded for Argentina in this Bible school. Argentina was a spiritual wasteland at the time, as far as Dr. Miller knew. He said he only knew of 600 Spirit-filled believers in the entire nation during those years under the government of Juan Peron in the 1950’s.

Dr. Miller told me that he had never seen people weep so hard and so long in prayer. It had to be supernatural in origin and purpose. We don’t know much about interceding today. Much of us think it consists of screaming against evil spirits, but that’s not what needs to happen. We simply need for “Father” to show up.

Dr. Miller told me that those students wept and cried day after day. He mentioned that one young man leaned his head against a concrete brick wall and wept until, after four hours, a trail of tears had run down the porous wall. After six hours had passed, he was standing in a puddle of his own tears! These young intercessors wept day after day, and he said it could only be described as unearthly weeping. These students weren’t simply repenting for something they had done. They had been moved by the Spirit into something called “vicarious repentance,” in which they began to repent for what happened through others in their city, their region, and in the country of Argentina.

Dr. Miller said that on the fiftieth day of continuous intercession and weeping before the Lord, a prophetic word came forth that declared, “Weep no more, for the Lion of the tribe of Judah hath prevailed over the prince of Argentina.” Eighteen months later, Argentines were flocking to evangelistic healing services in soccer stadiums that seated 180,000 people, and even the largest stadiums in the nation weren’t big enough to contain the crowds.

Stories of Faith - Episode 5

An extract from The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson

I think God saw to it, during those first long months of our work at the center, that we never found a cook. We tried every system under the sun to keep ourselves feed, but the one that never worked out was to have a full-time cook usurp the pantry. A kitchen is always the heart of the home anyhow, and a real cook has a way of chasing you out so that she can get her work done. Thus you are chased from the heart of the home. 

Not so with the center, because we could never come up with a cook. The result was a wonderful chaotic, happy mess. And to understand it you must first understand where the food itself comes from. Like everything else at the center, we get our food by praying for it. This is one of the projects in which our living-in gang members take a most active role. Each day we pray for food, and the way it comes in is a vivid lesson to boys just learning about faith. People send in a ham, potato chips, fruit, vegetables. Or they send in money not earmarked for a special purpose. 

One day, however, the kids awoke and washed and went down to breakfast and there wasn’t anything on the table. By the time I arrived in the office from home, the center was buzzing with problem of no food. “Your prayers didn’t work I guess this time, did they, Dave?” said one of the gang boys. “Lord,” I said to myself, “teach us a lesson in faith that will live with us forever.” And aloud, I said, “Let’s make an experiment. Here we are without food for the day, right?” the boy nodded his head. “And the bible says, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ right?” “If you say so.”

I laughed and glanced at Reverend Culver, who shrugged and nodded his head as if to say he’d teach the boy the Lord’s Prayer. “So why don’t we all go into the chapel right now and pray that we either get the food for this day or money to buy the food.” “Before lunch, Dave?” said the boy. “I am getting hungry.” “Before launch. How many people do we have here?” I glanced around. The number in the Center was constantly shifting. On that day we could count twenty-five people who would need to be fed. I figured it would cost between thirty and thirty-five dollars to feed that number of people dinner and supper. Others agreed. So we went into the chapel, closed the door, and we all began to pray. 

“While you are it, Lord,” said the little gang boy, “would You please see to it that we don’t go hungry for the rest of the summer?” I looked over, mildly annoyed. It seemed to me that this was stretching things a bit. But I had to admit that it would leave us freer to work at other kind of prayer if didn’t have to pay so much attention to such basic needs as food. 

One of the things about our prayer at the center is that it needs to be a bit loud. We do pray aloud often, and there is a wonderful freedom in the Spirit that sometimes frightens people who hear if for the first time. They may think it is uncouth, without realizing that we are just expressing our true feelings before God. If we feel concerned, we say so not only with our lips but with the tone of our prayer. And this morning we were quite concerned. While we were saying so in tones that left no doubt how we felt, a stranger walked in. we didn’t even hear when she knocked on the door of the chapel. When finally she opened the door and saw all the twenty-five of us on our knees, thanking God for the food He has given us in the past and thanking Him too for the food He would be giving us, somehow, in this emergency, I’m sure she was sorry she had come. 

“Excuse me,” she said, softly. “Excuse me! She said, louder. I was near her and Immediately got up. The rest of the workers and gang members kept right on with their prayer. This lady was a little hesitant about coming to the point of her visit. She kept asking questions, but I noticed that the more she found out about what we were doing, the more enthusiastic she became. Finally, she asked about the prayer session. I told her about walking in that morning to discover that we had no food in the house and about the purpose of the prayer. “When did you begin this prayer?” the lady asked. I figured up. “About an hour ago.” “Well,” she said, “that is truly extraordinary. I knew very little about your work. But an hour ago I received a sudden impulse to do something that is completely out of character for me. I felt that I was supposed to empty my piggy bank and bring the contents to you. Now I know the reason.” She reached into her purse. 

She placed a white envelope on my desk and with an expression of hope that it would be of some help, she thanked me for showing her our Center, and left. The envelope contained just over thirty-two dollars, exactly the amount we needed to feed ourselves for the rest of the day. 

And do you know, that teen-ager’s prayer was answered too! For the rest of the summer, we never again wanted for food.