A Vision of Jesus

In 1990, I met a retired diplomat in an Asian country. I will call him Alif. We were fellow aficionados in a rare hobby. He also discovered that I lived by faith. I told him the story of how God had just given my family a fully paid house. I also shared the life of faith that Jesus (Isa) taught in Matthew 6. He said, “We don’t have anything like this in Islam. Can you share this with my family?” So, my wife and I were invited to his home during a Muslim festival. Thus began my friendship with Alif that lasted until his passing 17 years later.

A year into our friendship, Alif asked if I could read the Bible with him. We began reading the story of Jesus. A year later, as he was reading the Quran before prayer, he was struck by the references to Isa as someone greatly honored by Allah. That night Isa appeared to him in a dream.
He summoned me and told me about it. I was stunned and shared John 14:21, “Whoever has my commands and keeps them, is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them." I explained the transactional nature of the verse and the connection between “love” and “show”. He expressed his desire to love Jesus and obey him. He kept repeating, “Jesus showed himself to me!”

He asked me why Jesus would appear to him. I suggested that the great obstacles between Christianity and Islam, mostly historical and political, led to many stubborn inter-faith prejudices. Many Christians believed in Jesus by faith, but God seemed to cut through all these systems of logic and reveal himself to Muslims in dreams and visions. He concluded, “I have no choice; I need to be baptized!”

How Much Water?

My immediate concern was if Alif wanted to become a member of the Christian religion. Many Muslims believe that water baptism and an identity change are necessary for joining the Christian religion. In some countries, Muslims who convert are declared murtad (apostate) and killed, or excommunicated (cut off socially). But in John 3, Jesus explains to Nicodemus that the way to God’s kingdom was spiritual rather than religious or physical conversion.

Did Alif want the spiritual or the religious/physical experience? Were both mixed up in his mind?
I suggested we read the Bible to understand baptism, so he could get his motives right. We started in Matthew, working our way through the gospels and Acts, discussing every passage on baptism. We discovered over 10 types of baptism. Choosing your verses in the Bible meant choosing a denominational view. This was confusing. But in the epistles, the dust seemed to settle, and we could see the forest rather than the trees.

“For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body-whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free-and were all given the one Spirit to drink” (1 Cor 12:13).

“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called: one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:4-6).

The spiritual baptism that came with Jesus was the real thing. “In that case,” he exclaimed, “I am already baptized spiritually.” I emphasized that nothing could change his status with God because it hung on something that God did and that he responded to. “But I would like to be baptized with water!” “That’s fine,” I said.

When we baptized him (with water), he explained to my friends that he believed in Jesus, but that he had not left Islam. Rather, he now felt a completed Muslim. Even though I had known him for over two years, the whole incident was surreal to me. When we tried to fill the bathtub he asked if sprinkling was okay since he was an old man, and “the water doesn’t really matter, does it?” He had read the Bible and realized that water wasn’t the big thing that Christianity made it out to be. Jesus was the real thing!

Is Jesus God?

A few years later, Alif moved away from the capital city. I would travel to see him a few times a year. On one trip, I asked him if Jesus was God. He was stunned and told me I was a guest in his house, and if I asked that question again, I should leave his house. It was like a slap in his face! And in mine, too! But if the Bible said that Jesus was God, would he accept that? His response: “If God tells me that Jesus is God, I will accept it from God, but not from you!”

I returned home discouraged and shared with my family at dinner. My second son, 10 years old, said, “Oh! He has the same problem I had.” He is the family theologian. Five years ago, after expressing faith in Jesus, he asked “If Jesus is God, and God is God, why are there two gods?” We didn’t tell him about the third one. That would have really freaked him out. My wife’s explanations fell short, and he cried in mental frustration. My wife finally explained that this was a spiritual mystery that was difficult to explain, and we would pray that God’s spirit would explain the truth to him (John 14:26; 16:13-14).

Now, five years later, at the dining table, I asked him if he still had the problem. He said “No, but don’t ask me to explain it.” I tried explaining it. I reminded him that Mum had said we would pray for God’s spirit to clarify. “So, it looks like God has answered our prayers.” Also, I noted that in the last five years we prayed to God daily, usually in Jesus’ name, sometimes mentioning God’s Spirit. We couldn’t just put on a show for five years. And since we hoped he trusted us, his parents, our faith in God and in Jesus seems to have passed by osmosis to him. So, perhaps we could all pray for Alif that he would experience the same revelation and assurance that our son had.

The Diplomatic Network

Some months later, Alif moved back to the capital and invited me to a tea party at a private club. The tea was attended by seven people, all retired diplomats including the country’s former attorney general.

This was Alif’s professional network, almost all Muslims. He introduced me as someone who had taught him the Bible. When his friends remarked on his reading of the Bible, he said, “Yes, and I believe in Jesus, too!”

Romans 10:9–10 talks about confessing Christ as evidence of conversion. The problem is that we use confession to prove conversion before the fact. It becomes a Christian hoop to jump through, something to measure through some physical demonstration rather than something spontaneous from within.

At another social event, I was introduced to another retired ambassador, whom I shall call Baa'. Besides the introducer, Baa' said that we had another friend in common—Alif! Some years ago, he said, three retired ambassadors met for lunch. When the third person visited the toilet, the second ambassador (Alif) asked Baa' to pray for him. Baa' was shocked because a Muslim had asked him, a non-Muslim, to pray for him. After that he told Baa' about me, about reading the Bible, and his vision of Jesus.

The Alongsider’s Perspective

Because I placed myself in the position of a learner with Alif, I was learning alongside him, while helping him, with God’s Spirit as our teacher. Every new experience he went through was also a new experience for me. I had known Jesus much longer than he had, but Jesus at work in a Muslim was an experience that was as new for me as it was for him. My only resources were the same ones he had: the people of God (me), the word of God, and the Spirit of God. In Paul’s speech to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, these are the only resources he leaves with them to face the future.

Because I saw myself as a learner, I didn’t use doctrine to measure experience, but rather used his, and my, experience to authenticate truth from the Bible. His unprovoked sharing of his faith was something refreshingly spontaneous and affirmed in my mind his conversion and connection with the living God through Jesus.