Was it possible? Could Aaliyah be coming to faith? Could my prayers for her salvation be answered? I wanted to reach out to her immediately to help her, to guide her.

But Yousef advised caution.

She needed to come to faith on her own.

Any pressure from me might drive her away or put her in danger.

So I waited and I prayed more fervently than ever.

I begged Jesus to reveal himself to her just as he had revealed himself to me.

I pleaded for her soul, for my children’s souls.

Months passed.

Then Yousef sent another message.

She has accepted Jesus.

She prayed the prayer of salvation with one of our sisters.

She wants to be baptized and she wants to talk to you.

Are you ready? I could not believe it.

After 4 years of separation, after all the pain and misunderstanding, Aliyah had found Jesus.

I wrote back immediately, “Yes, yes, I am ready.

Arrange it, please.

” The call was set up through multiple security layers, voice disguisers, encrypted connections, no story, only audio.

Yousef was on the call, too, just in case there were problems.

When I heard her voice, even distorted by the security measures, I nearly broke down.

It had been so long, so very long.

She spoke first.

Her voice was shaking.

She said, “Abd, is it really you?” I said, “Yes, my love.

It is really me.

” She started crying then, deep sobbing cries that tore at my heart.

When she could speak again, she said, “I understand now.

I understand why you left.

I thought you were crazy.

I thought you had abandoned us.

But you were trying to save us.

You are trying to tell me the truth, and I would not listen.

” I said, “You were not ready then, but you are ready now.

That is all that matters.

” She said, “I saw him Abdel Jesus.

I had a dream.

He came to me and showed me his hands with the scars.

He told me he loved me, that he died for me.

I woke up knowing it was true.

Knowing everything you tried to tell me was true.

And I have been searching ever since, learning, reading, and now I believe, I really believe.

We talked for an hour.

We cried together.

We prayed together.

We praised Jesus together for his mercy and patience with us both.

Before we ended the call, I asked about the children.

She said they were well, growing so much.

Tariq was 12 now.

Leila was 10.

Omar was seven and they still asked about me, still missed me.

I said, “Will you tell them about Jesus?” She said, “I want to, but I am afraid.

They are in school.

They have friends.

They could say something without realizing it is dangerous.

What do I do?” I said, “Pray.

Ask God to show you the right time.

He will guide you.

He brought you to the truth.

he will bring them too.

We agreed to stay in contact carefully infrequently but to encourage each other.

When the call ended, I sat in my small room and wept with joy.

My wife was saved.

My prayers had been answered.

There was hope now that my children would be saved, too.

That my whole family might be together in eternity, even if we could not be together on earth.

Now 5 years after the explosion that changed everything, I continue this work.

I am still in hiding, still moving from place to place, still living under a false identity, still unable to see my family or hold my children.

But I am not alone.

I have brothers and sisters in Christ scattered throughout the world.

I have a purpose that gives meaning to every day.

I have hope that transcends my circumstances.

My blog continues to reach millions.

My storys continue to spread.

My testimony continues to lead people to Jesus.

Not because I am anyone special, but because the message is special.

Because Jesus is special.

Because truth has power that no lie can overcome.

I receive messages every single day from people who have accepted Christ, from people who have had their own encounters with Jesus, from people who have left Islam and found freedom in the gospel.

And I think about hell.

I think about it every day.

I think about the souls still going there, still being deceived, still following the wrong path.

That memory drives me.

It will not let me rest.

It will not let me stay silent.

It will not let me give up no matter how tired I am or how dangerous things become.

Because I have seen what awaits those who die without Jesus.

I have seen the torment, the suffering, the hopelessness.

And I cannot let people go there without warning them.

I cannot.

The room where I sit now is similar to all the other rooms I have lived in over the past five years.

Small, basic, temporary.

The walls are white and bare except for a small wooden cross hanging above my bed.

The furniture consists of a narrow bed, a desk with my laptop, and a single chair.

My clothes hang on hooks on the back of the door.

I own almost nothing.

But I am rich.

Rich in ways I never was when I had a home and family and community because I have Jesus and I have purpose and I have the joy of knowing that every day I am helping to rescue souls from hell.

It is early morning now.

The call to prayer echoes from a nearby mosque.

A sound that once called me to devotion, but now reminds me of the deception I escaped.

I do not resent the Muslims who pray.

I was one of them.

I understand them.

I love them.

That is why I do what I do.

I open my laptop and check my messages.

Overnight, while I slept, my blog and storys reach thousands more people.

The numbers are staggering.

Over 15 million views total now.

Messages from over 100 countries.

Lives changed in ways I will never fully know until I reach heaven.

Today’s messages include the usual mix.

Death threats from angry Muslims who consider me a traitor and apostate.

I have gotten used to these.

I barely read them anymore.

They all say similar things.

They all promise similar ends for me.

I pray for the people who send them, then delete them and move on.

But there are other messages too.

These are the ones I read carefully, the ones I treasure.

A teenager in Bangladesh writes, “I am 15 years old.

I have been having dreams about Jesus for 6 months.

My parents are very strict Muslims.

They would kill me if they knew I was questioning Islam.

But your storys have helped me understand what Jesus is trying to to tell me.

I prayed the prayer you shared.

I accepted Jesus last night.

I am so scared but also so happy.

Please pray for me.

I write back immediately.

Brother, I am praying for you right now as I read your message.

Jesus sees you.

He loves you.

He will protect you and guide you.

Be very careful.

Tell no one until you are in a safe situation.

Connect with the secret believers in Bangladesh.

I will send you encrypted contact information.

You are not alone.

An older man in Indonesia writes, “I was an Islamic scholar for 40 years.

I taught thousands of his students about Islam.

I thought I knew the truth.

But last month, I had a heart attack.

While I was clinically dead, I saw a place of fire and darkness.

I saw people I knew who had died as faithful Muslims.

They were in torment.

They were screaming about Jesus.

I did not understand.

But then I was revived and I started searching.

I found your testimony.

It matches exactly what I saw.

Everything I thought was wrong.

Everything I believed was wrong.

I am 72 years old and I am just now learning the truth.

I want to accept Jesus but I am afraid.

What will happen to me? What is What about the students I misled? My hands shake as I type a response.

Dear brother, I understand your fear and your grief.

I too carry guilt for the harm I caused when I was deceived.

But Jesus’s blood is powerful enough to cover everything.

Every sin, every false teaching, every person misled.

When you accept his sacrifice, all of it is washed clean.

The students you taught are responsible for their own choices.

But now you can teach the truth to others.

Now you can undo some of the damage by pointing people to Jesus.

You are not too old.

Your life is not over.

This is your new beginning.

Pray with me now.

I walk him through the prayer of salvation via messages.

When he confirms that he has prayed and accepted Jesus, I weep.

Another soul saved.

Another scholar brought out of darkness.

Another voice that will now speak truth instead of lies.

This is my life now.

This is my daily routine.

Messages and prayers and encouragement, connecting converts with believers in their regions, sharing resources, answering questions about the Bible and salvation, pointing people to Jesus again and again and again.

I have learned so much in these five years of hiding.

I have learned that the underground church is much larger than most people realize.

There are believers in every Muslim majority nation.

Secret churches meeting in homes and basements and hidden rooms.

Christians worshiping in whispers because loud praise could mean death.

In Saudi Arabia, there are thousands of believers.

They cannot build churches or meet publicly, but they gather in small groups in private homes.

They share the Bible through encrypted apps.

They baptize new believers in bathtubs and swimming pools in the middle of the night.

In Iran, the underground church is growing so fast that the government cannot keep up.

They arrest pastors and raid house churches.

But three new believers spring up for every one day in prison.

Women are leading churches.

Young people are evangelizing through social media.

The gospel is spreading like fire despite intense persecution.

In Afghanistan, where the Taliban has returned to power, believers meet in secret at great risk.

They have memorized large portions of scripture because owning a Bible could mean execution.

They pray silently with their eyes open.

They share Jesus encoded language.

Yet the church survives and even grows.

I have contacts in all these places now.

other converts other people with testimonies of Jesus revealing himself through dreams and visions and supernatural encounters.

We form a network of light in dark places.

We encourage each other.

We pray for each other.

We mourn when one of us is martyed and rejoice when new believers join us.

The work has expanded beyond what I imagined in those early days.

I no longer just share my testimony.

I have become a teacher and encourager for other converts who are trying to navigate their new faith while living in hostile environments.

I created a series of storys teaching basic Christian doctrines in simple Arabic.

What is the trinity? What does it mean to be saved by grace? How do you pray? How do you read the Bible? What is the church? These storys have been viewed millions of times by new believers who have no access to churches or pastors or Bible studies.

I started a weekly live chat session where converts can ask questions anonymously.

Hundreds of people join each week.

The questions range from theological to practical.

How do I explain the Trinity to my Muslim friends without getting into an argument? Is it okay to pretend to pray the Islamic prayers to protect my safety? What do I do about my family’s expectation that I will marry a Muslim? How do I celebrate Christmas secretly when my family is all around me? Can I be saved if I die before I have a chance to be baptized? I answer as best I can, drawing on my own experience and the wisdom of more mature believers who help me prepare.

Sometimes I do not know the answer and I admit it.

But I always point people back to Jesus and to scripture.

Everything must be rooted there or it means nothing.

The personal cost of this work remains high.

I I have not seen my family in 5 years.

I have only spoken to aliyah a handful of times through carefully arranged calls.

I have never spoken to my children.

They know I am alive now, but I am still just an absence in their lives.

A father who left and never came back.

Aliyah is raising them alone.

She works cleaning houses to support them.

She cannot tell anyone she’s a Christian.

So she carries that burden secretly.

She teaches the children about Jesus quietly when they are alone at home.

She prays over them while they sleep.

Last year Tariq asked to be baptized.

He was 13.

He said he believed in Jesus and wanted to follow him.

Aliyah contacted me in tears, not knowing what to do.

baptizing him would put him at risk.

What if he told someone at school? What if someone saw? But how could we deny him? How could we tell him to wait when we do not know what tomorrow holds? So, it was arranged in a secret in the middle of the night in a believer’s home.

My 13-year-old son was baptized.

I was not there.

I could not be there.

But I watched her through a story call with my camera off.

I saw him go under the water and come up with joy on his face.

I saw him declare his faith in Jesus.

And I wept.

I wept because I was proud.

I wept because I was missing his life.

I wept because I knew the danger he now faced as a young Christian in Gaza.

I wept because I could not protect him.

I wept because only Jesus could protect him.

Now Leila is still young, still learning.

But Aliyah says she asks good questions.

She wants to understand why Jesus is different from Muhammad, why the Bible is different from the Quran.

She is thinking deeply about these things.

I pray every day that she will come to faith soon.

Omar is only 10.

He mostly just misses his father.

He does not understand the religious complexity of everything.

He just knows that daddy left and did not come back.

Aliyah says he cries sometimes that he asks when I will come home that he thinks he did something wrong to make me leave.

That knowledge breaks my heart over and over.

But I cannot go back.

If I go back, I will be killed.

and my death would not help my children.

My life and my testimony and my continued work reaching thousands of others is worth more than returning to be a present father who can say nothing about the truth.

I tell myself this, I believe it, but it does not make the pain any less.

There have been close calls, so many close calls.

Three times Hamas operatives have come within meters of finding me.

Once they actually knocked on the door of the apartment where I was staying.

I hid in a crawl space in the ceiling while they searched below me.

I could hear their voices, hear them describing me, hear them promising rewards to anyone who gave information about my location.

I held my breath for what felt like hours.

I prayed silently, desperately, and somehow they left without finding me.

Believers moved me that same night to a new location two cities away.

Another time, someone recognized my voice from a story.

They traced the general region where the story’s IP address originated from before my VPN fully kicked in.

Hamas sent people to sweep the area.

I had to flee with only my laptop and the clothes on my back.

Everything else was left behind.

They ransacked the apartment looking for clues.

They questioned neighbors.

They showed my picture around, but I was already gone.

Hidden in a safe house 300 kilometers away, protected by believers who risked their own lives to shelter me.

I have moved 17 times in five years.

17 different rooms in 17 different cities.

I own nothing anymore except my laptop, a change of clothes, my Bible, and the cross on my wall.

Everything else is temporary.

Everything else can be abandoned in seconds if I need to run.

This is the cost.

This is what it means to follow Jesus.

When you come from a place where following him is illegal, where it is punishable by death, where your own family might be the ones to kill you, but I do not regret it.

Not for one second because I know the alternative.

I have been to hell.

I have seen what awaits those who reject Jesus.

And compared to that, every earthly suffering is nothing.

Every sacrifice is worth it.

Every cost is acceptable.

My message has remained consistent over these five years.

I share my testimony.

I warn about hell.

I point to Jesus as the only way of salvation.

I explain the gospel simply, clearly, repeatedly.

But I have learned to speak to different audiences in different ways.

When I speak to Muslims, I am gentle but firm.

I tell them I understand their devotion.

I respect their sincerity.

I was just like them.

But sincerity in the wrong direction does not save anyone.

Truth matters.

Reality matters.

And the reality is that Muhammad cannot save anyone from hell.

The Quran cannot open the gates of heaven.

Good works cannot pay for sins.

Only Jesus’s blood can do that.

I tell them about the dreams and visions that are happening all over the Muslim world.

About the millions who are encountering Jesus supernaturally.

About the growth of the underground church in places where Christianity was supposed to be dead.

These are signs.

I tell them signs that we are in the last days.

signs that Jesus is is calling his people home before time runs out.

When I speak to Christians, I challenge them.

I ask them if they really believe hell is real.

If they really believe people are going there because if they believe it, how can they stay silent? How can they not share the gospel with urgency and boldness? I tell them about the secret believers in Muslim lands, about the risks we take, about the prices we pay.

And I ask, if we are willing to give up everything to share Jesus in the most dangerous places, what excuse do Christians in free countries have for staying silent? I tell them to pray, to give, to support ministries, reaching Muslims, to not be afraid of Muslims, but to love them enough to tell them the truth.

To see Muslims not as enemies, but as souls that Jesus died for, souls who are deceived, souls who are heading to hell unless someone tells them about Jesus.

When I speak to atheists and secularists, I simply tell them what I saw.

I do not argue philosophy or debate evolution or discuss the problem of evil.

I just tell them I died.

I saw hell.

It is real.

You can choose to believe me or not.

But one day you will find out for yourself.

And in that day it will be too late to change your choice.

I tell them that Jesus offers a relationship not a religion.

That he is not asking them to follow rules or do rituals.

He is asking them to trust him to accept his sacrifice to believe that he is who he says he is.

That is all.

And in return he offers forgiveness, purpose and eternal life.

The work continues.

Every single day I wake up and I do this work.

I write.

I record.

I message.

I pray.

I encourage.

I teach.

I warn.

I point to Jesus.

Some days are harder than others.

Some days the loneliness is crushing.

The fear is overwhelming.

The weariness makes me want to quit.

On those days, I remember hell.

I close my eyes and I see it again.

the fire, the darkness, the faces, the suffering, the hopelessness, the screaming that never stops, the torment that has no end.

And I remember the souls there begging me to warn others, the fighters who thought they were serving God.

The clerics who thought they knew the truth.

All of them deceived.

All of them suffering.

All of them desperate for others to not make the same mistake they made.

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