“In the last days, God says, I will pour
out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your
young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams” (Acts
2:17).
The amazing story of an ISIS leader who
converted to Christianity after meeting Jesus in a dream is proving this
passage in Acts to be true.
Last week, this story made headlines when
Gina Fadely, director of Youth With A Mission Frontier Missions, Inc.
(YWAM) sat down with Todd Nettleton, host of The Voice of the Martyrs Radio Network.
“One of our YWAM workers in the Middle
East was contacted by a friend earlier this year and they met up and he
was introduced to an ISIS fighter who had killed many Christians
already,” Fadely recalls.
Fadely added that the jihadi admitted to
not only brutally killing Christians, but “enjoying the act.” And, as we
all know, this fighter wasn’t alone in his zeal for persecuting those
who are deemed “enemies” of Allah. Christians and other Muslims who
refuse to comply with ISIS extremism have both become targets of
violence. ISIS has become synonymous with cruelty as footage of gruesome
beheadings have circulated around the internet.
But we all know that no one— not even a bloodthirsty jihadi— is beyond the reach of God.
“[The fighter] told this YWAM leader that
he had begun having dreams of a man in white who came to him and said,
‘You are killing my people.’ And he started to feel really sick and
uneasy about what he was doing. The fighter said just before he killed
one Christian, the man said, ‘I know you will kill me, but I give to you
my Bible.’”
Sadly, the Christian was killed. But the
ISIS fighter took the Bible and began to read it. That’s when he was
visited by Jesus in another dream, according to Fadely.
“In another dream, Jesus asked him to
follow him and [the fighter] was now asking to become a follower of
Christ and to be discipled.”
Stories like this are becoming
increasingly common as people all over the world report meeting Jesus
face-to-face in dreams. It shouldn’t come as any surprise to those of us
who have been radically transformed by Christ.
God is still doing the impossible right
before our very eyes. Todd Nettleton added his own perspective on the
story, saying that whenever we hear about the atrocities being committed
against Christians at the hands of ISIS militants, we should be careful
not to, “write them off as being out of reach of God’s grace and out of
the reach of God’s Spirit.”
“So who knows? Perhaps this man will be
like Saul in the Bible who persecuted Christians and he turned from that
persecution of the early church to become the Apostle Paul,” Fadely
said. “God can turn it around.”
