What, then, I asked, is the role of sharing the gospel, preaching the gospel, showing people the JESUS film, using radio and satellite broadcasting, and so forth if God is drawing these people to Himself supernaturally?
“That’s a great question,” one dear Iraqi Christian brother replied. “It’s true that every single Shia MBB I know or have ever heard of has come to faith in Christ directly, without apparent human persuasion. It’s not always a dream or vision, although it often is. Sometimes it is simply that the Lord speaks to them directly in their heart, sometimes audibly, sometimes not. The key is that one day they don’t believe in Jesus, and the next day they do. But it’s not because someone sat down and persuaded them. It’s that God just did a supernatural work in their heart.”
“Okay,” I said, “but again, why are so many Revivalists risking their lives to communicate the gospel to Muslims if the Muslims who are coming to Christ are not being persuaded by the Revivalists?”
“Because, Joel, the Bible tells us to teach the Word of God and to preach the gospel, and so we obey,” he replied gently. “And actually, when you look closer at the stories of these MBBs, you will find that each of them has had some exposure to the name of Jesus and the story of Jesus in his or her past. Think of what the apostle Paul said: ‘Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!” . . . So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.’617
“Likewise, in Matthew 13, Jesus teaches the parable of the seed and the sower. He insisted that His followers sow seeds—that is, preach the gospel and teach the Word of God—everywhere. We don’t know whose hearts will be like good soil and receive God’s Word and bear the fruit of changed lives. Only God knows that. We are simply supposed to obey. Just like the farmer—he just plants the seeds; it is God who makes them grow and bear fruit. Arguing with Muslims about Christ will not lead people to Christ. But we are supposed to teach them about Jesus whenever possible, and encourage them to read the Bible, and love them, and pray for them; and somehow God uses this as part of His mysterious plan to adopt Muslims into His Kingdom.”
I had my answer, and it wasn’t complicated. If you love Me, Jesus said, you will obey Me. It was not an easy answer, but it was simple.
Chapter Thirty
The Theology of the Revivalists
What they believe, verse by verse
I met Shakir during my first trip to Iraq in February of 2008.618
Another fearless and effective evangelist, church planter, and pastor in his war-torn country, Shakir (pronounced “Shah-keer”) has a tremendous passion to care for the poor and needy, preach the gospel—especially in villages and rural areas—and help young converts from Islam study the Bible and become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.
But this was not always the case. Indeed, how Shakir became a Christian and entered full-time ministry is one of the most fascinating testimonies I have personally had the privilege of hearing firsthand. What’s more, spending time with him helped me understand more fully the theology of the Revivalists.
Heading to Nineveh
As it happened, Shakir and I and several others took a road trip together in northern Iraq to meet some Muslim Background Believers not far from the city of Mosul.
I had been advised not to take this trip.
Yes, friends said, Mosul is the site of the ancient biblical city of Nineveh, the very city to which God sent the prophets Jonah and Nahum. Certainly both the city and the province by the same name are exceedingly rich in history, they conceded. But the city is also exceedingly violent—one of the most dangerous cities in modern-day Iraq and a key hub for terrorists allied with “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” and other Radical Sunni insurgent groups.
My friends were right, of course. Innocent civilians die in Mosul every day—Arabs, Kurds, and occasionally foreigners, if they are foolish enough to enter the city limits. Some are stabbed to death. Some have their heads cut off. Others are riddled with bullets from AK-47s or other automatic weapons. Still others are murdered by suicide bombers. Some have their houses burned to the ground. Some see their wives raped before they are murdered. And some see their young children kidnapped and killed. It is a vicious, cruel, unforgiving place, as it has been from time immemorial.
The prophet Nahum once wrote of Nineveh, “Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims! . . . Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over the corpses” (Nahum 3:1-3, NIV). That was 2,600 years ago. But Nahum could have written it yesterday.
A few days before we headed to Nineveh, the media reported that a series of suicide bombings launched there by al Qaeda had destroyed a hundred houses, killed at least sixty people, and wounded more than 280 others. Said the Iraqi defense minister after touring the city following the attacks: “The situation in Mosul is worse than imagined by far.”619
Still, after much prayer, I had a sense of peace that it was God’s will for me to go with Shakir and several other Iraqi Christian leaders to a village just minutes away from Mosul. Our destination was not actually within the “city of blood,” and it was a village where—to their knowledge—not a single American had ever been. More importantly, it was a village where some three hundred of the seven hundred or so residents had come to faith in Christ over the last several years, mostly through dreams and visions of Jesus.
“This is a village where God is moving very powerfully,” Shakir told me. “All this violence by Muslims against Muslims is causing many people to reconsider whether Islam is true. And now Jesus is appearing to people, and they are becoming His followers. I will take you to meet the first family to whom Jesus appeared. They were the first Christians in the whole village, and now everything is changing there. It is very exciting. I think, by God’s grace, you will be very safe. It should be no problem.”
It did sound exciting. It was exactly what I had come to see for myself. So I agreed to go.
Shakir’s Remarkable Spiritual Journey
Our journey was long and dusty and required our little team, traveling in an old Chevy Impala, to pass through numerous military checkpoints, each manned by heavily armed Iraqi soldiers and policemen checking passports and asking questions, all on high alert for members of al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army.
Along the way, I found myself staring out at a landscape that was often as barren as the surface of the moon, covered with rocks, nearly devoid of vegetation, and only scarcely populated. During a lull in the conversation with an Iraqi in the car whom I had known for several years, I asked the meek-looking and mild-mannered Pastor Shakir how he had become a Christ-follower and a pastor.
“Were you raised in a Christian home?” I asked through our translator.
“No,” he replied quietly. “I was raised a Muslim.”
“Really?” I said. “What did you do before becoming a pastor?”
“I was a jihad cell commander.”
I gulped. You don’t say, I thought. He certainly had my full attention now. “Please, tell me your story,” I said eagerly, pulling out my notebook.
Shakir graciously agreed.
He explained that he was born in 1975 to a devout Sunni Muslim family and that as he grew up he became deeply religious. Even at an early age, he loved going to the mosque regularly, and by the age of seventeen, he had joined a secret Radical Islamic movement. He studied hard and learned quickly, and before long he was teaching the Qur’an in various mosques.
“My leaders then sent me to a military training camp where I was trained to use light weapons—pistols, machine guns, and RPGs [rocket propelled grenades]—against the infidels,” he told me. “I was so excited because I wanted to do jihad for God. I was fully convinced tha
t the Shias and the Christians were blasphemers and that if I killed them I would be blessed.”
After successfully completing “Terrorism 101,” Shakir was made a jihad cell commander and was ordered to quietly recruit other jihadists. “I soon had a group of my own followers,” he explained. “I would put them through this military training and then help them get jobs in different government offices and other shops and businesses so they could spy for me and be in position to do great damage when we launched the overthrow of Saddam and his regime.”
One day, one of Shakir’s Radical Muslim disciples came to him and said that someone was distributing Bibles to everyone in the machine shop where he worked. The disciple was very angry and told Shakir that he had cursed out everyone in the shop, collected all the Bibles, and promptly destroyed them. All but one.
“He brought one Bible—a New Testament—to me and said I should read it and see how to react to it and counter it,” Shakir explained. He said he praised his disciple for acting quickly and decisively. Then he sent the disciple away and took the Bible home, and that night he began to read the Gospel according to Matthew.
The Parade of Prophets
“I read the book very fervently to find all the blasphemies and corruption,” Shakir said. “But I discovered the words started affecting my mind, and my heart started changing. These were powerful words, not human words. They seemed to me like God’s words. But I thought, ‘How could this be?’”
Shakir became deeply troubled. He kept reading through Matthew but was ashamed of himself because rather than finding fault with these Christian Scriptures, he found himself completely intrigued. He had so many questions. But whom could he ask? He couldn’t very well start discussing the life and teachings of Jesus with the members of the terrorist cell group he was leading. He couldn’t very well ask questions of the terrorist leaders above him. He didn’t dare seek out any Christians. So night after night he kept reading the Gospels, searching for answers. The more he did, the more troubled and anxious he became.
“After reading the Bible in a deep way, I began comparing it with the Qur’an,” he told me. “I was so confused, and in my confusion, I began pleading with God, ‘Please show me Yourself.’ I begged God, ‘Please, show me the right way—are you the God of the Qur’an or the God of the Bible?’”
This went on for several nights.
“One night,” he said, “I was pleading with God fervently to show me the true, straight path. And that night I had a dream. I found myself standing on the side of a road. There was a large crowd gathered on both sides of the road, and they were cheering and very excited. And I realized that they were awaiting a parade to go by. So I looked down the road to see who was coming, and I saw many prophets riding on horses coming towards us. Suddenly Jonah was riding by. And then David. And Abraham. And Moses—riding on high, strong horses. Everyone was cheering and I was cheering. It was so exciting to see these prophets.”
Shakir kept waiting for Muhammad to come riding by as well, but Muhammad never came. He was not in the parade of prophets. Instead, Shakir said that “at the end of the procession, I saw another person riding, but He was riding on a donkey instead of a horse. He was wearing a white robe, and His face was covered by a white shroud. When this person approached, for some reason I heard myself calling out to Him and asking, ‘Are you Jesus?’ Like I said, His face was covered by a white cloth. So I couldn’t really see His face at that moment. But when He heard my question, the man pulled the cloth away from His face and smiled at me and nodded yes.
“Something came from His face that filled me with a joy I had never felt in my whole life. I started shouting, ‘I saw Jesus! I saw Jesus!’ I was so happy and so joyful and I was laughing. But as soon as I woke up, I realized that my pillowcase and my sheets were all wet around my head. I realized that at some point during my dream I had been crying—sobbing—in shame for all of my sins, for all of my hatred.”
Shakir found himself overcome with the realization that he had been so wrong about God, about Islam, about terrorism. He also found himself incredibly grateful and humbled that Jesus would come and rescue him and forgive him of all of his sins and set him on the true path to heaven.
A Complete Transformation
“I felt a strong joy, and I wanted to find my Muslim disciples and tell them that I loved them and that Jesus loved them,” Shakir explained. “After that dream, my life was completely changed. I was eager to evangelize—to tell people about the love of Jesus Christ. I couldn’t hide that joy. The more I read of the Gospels, the more I felt I had to tell people about this love of God, even people that I had hated. This was not easy. I was mocked and persecuted by many. Once I was beaten by eight people. I was nearly assassinated three times. But it is okay. Since I came to know the Lord Jesus as my Savior, I am ready to put my life—and my family—as a sacrifice for Jesus.”
What a remarkable transformation, I thought as Shakir finished his story. A few days later, I asked him to repeat the story before a video camera for a future documentary film we were working on. He graciously agreed, and when the interview was over, Shakir stood up, looked me straight in the eye, and without any expression on his face said, “Joel, you are very lucky.”
“I think that’s true,” I said. “But why do you say it?”
He took a deep breath. “Because if I had met you in 1993, I would have killed you immediately.”
My pulse quickened. There was a silence. And then he added, “But now you are my brother in Jesus, and I love you!”
A huge smile flashed across his face. He threw his arms around me and gave me a bear hug. I breathed a big sigh of relief, and—laughing—gave him a hug as well.
Five Core Convictions
After spending time with Pastor Shakir and dozens of other ministry leaders like him throughout the region, I have concluded that while Revivalists hold many important theological beliefs, they have at least five common core theological convictions based on their steadfast belief that the Bible is the holy Word of God.
These are not unique convictions. Indeed, they are shared by fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ all over the world. Nevertheless it is both important and remarkable that former Muslims—not a few of whom are former Radicals—hold such convictions.
Allow me to explain.
Core Conviction No. 1: God Loves All of Mankind
Each and every one of the Revivalists I interviewed—including Shakir—noted with deep conviction that according to the Bible, God’s defining character trait is love. The Bible teaches that God loves every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth—regardless of race, nationality, tribe, or language.
God loves all of us with an everlasting love. He loved all of us before we loved Him. He loves us so much that He wants to adopt us into His family as His children and let us live with Him in heaven forever. He loves us so much that if we let Him, He will be a Shepherd to us, guiding us, providing for us, protecting us, giving us rest, and taking care of us in every possible way. He loves us so much that if we follow and obey Him, we can actually become friends with Him and develop a personal, intimate relationship with Him.
Here are some of the verses the Revivalists point to in describing the love of this incredible God:
“God is love.” —1 John 4:16
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” —John 3:16
“I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.” —Jeremiah 31:3
“Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, for His lovingkindness is everlasting. Give thanks to the God of gods, for His lovingkindness is everlasting. Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for His lovingkindness is everlasting.” —Psalm 136:1-3
“We love, because He first loved us.” —1 John 4:19
“See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God.” —1 John
3:1
“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” —Psalm 23:1-6
[Jesus said,] “You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” —John 15:14-15
“Do not envy a man of violence and do not choose any of his ways. For the devious are an abomination to the LORD; but He is intimate with the upright.” —Proverbs 3:31-32
The Revivalists note with equal conviction that the Bible also teaches that because God loves all mankind, He also has a wonderful plan and purpose for every man, woman, and child. Consider these verses:
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.” —Jeremiah 29:11-13, NLT
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