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.
Source link
