Sudan (MNN) — If you’ve ever tried to share the hope of Christ with a Muslim friend or coworker, they may have told you, “We already know about Jesus. He’s in the Quran.”
Don’t let their deflection deter you. “There are many, many Muslims who have not heard the truth about who Jesus is,” John, a Gospel worker focused on Sudan, says.
“In the Quran, Jesus has no divinity. He is a prophet. They deny the crucifixion. The fact that Jesus will come back again someday is in the Quran, but it is totally stripped of divinity.”
In the Muslim mind, Jesus offers no assurance of salvation. “Men and women in Islam [are] desperate for any kind of security,” John says.
“In the Quran, God is capricious; he can be one way, one day. He can be different the next day. And there’s no way of knowing if you’re accepted,” he continues.
“You do the five pillars of Islam, you say your prayers every day, you do those things to earn God’s approval, and yet the heart still longs to know God and to know His acceptance.”
Thankfully, Jesus is revealing His truth to Muslims through dreams and visions.
(Photo courtesy Lyyfe Williams/Unsplash)
Dreams…
One man told John he had the same dream for a week: “He was drowning, and he says, ‘I looked up through the water, desperate for a breath, desperate for hope, and I saw a man in white. He said to me, ‘I am the way’.”
The man then told John, “I couldn’t get that out of my mind. I concluded that maybe it was Jesus.”
When the man woke up, he prayed for someone who could tell him more about Jesus. “One day, in a market, they had a book fair. He saw a Bible, and he said, ‘I have some questions,’” John continues.
Believers working at the book fair read John 14:6 to the man, and he accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior.
“God is drawing people,” John says. “He’s directing his work, just like He did with Paul and the Macedonian man and his vision telling him where to go.”
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…and visions
In a region near Darfur, Sudan, “a group of friends of mine was praying,” John says. As the believers fasted to know God’s will, “one of them had a dream about an island in the Nile known to be very radically Islamic.”
After the believer told his colleagues about his dream, “They spent half a day praying and talking. The next morning, they got up and said, ‘We all agree this is from God,’” John says.
“‘He wants us to go there. We don’t know how we’re going to get on the island, but we’re going to go.’”
As believers stepped out in faith, God provided a boat owner who agreed to transport them to the island. “They came to this island on the Nile. Standing on the shore, the whole community comes out, and they’re interrogating them,” John shares.
“One person in the crowd says to one of the guys, ‘You look like a Christian!’ and they were deciding to kill him,” he continues. “From the community, another person said, ‘Give them covering, and they can come to my house.’”
(Photo courtesy Bhong Bahala/Unsplash)
Grateful for his intervention, believers followed the community member to his home. Surrounded by his family, the man asked team members about Jesus.
“I was in the city, and there was a small book fair. Someone at the booth asked me, ‘Would you like to see a film?’” John recounts. With the man’s permission, believers at the booth showed him The JESUS Film.
“He said, ‘I came back, and I can’t get Jesus out of my mind!’”
John concludes, “They spent a day with this family, left him with a Bible, and then they had to leave the island.”
Pray Jesus will meet this island truth-seeker as only He can. Pray that the man and his family will surrender their hearts and lives to Christ.
Header photo is an AI-generated image created by ChatGPT.
