Hamas Leader’s Son Goes Viral With His Testimony “Jesus is Appearing in Gaza to Hamas Fighters!” What could cause someone raised inside one of the most powerful militant families in Gaza Strip to suddenly share a testimony about Jesus Christ? A viral story spreading across social media claims that the son of a leader connected to Hamas spoke publicly about mysterious dreams and visions in which he believes Jesus is appearing to people in Gaza—including fighters who never expected such experiences.

The claim has sparked intense curiosity online, with thousands debating whether these stories reflect a growing spiritual movement in the region or simply dramatic personal testimonies circulating during a time of conflict.

Why would someone from such a background risk sharing a message like this publicly? Could these reported visions represent private experiences spreading quietly among individuals, or are they symbolic stories gaining attention on the internet? As the testimony continues to circulate, people across the world are asking the same dramatic question: what exactly did he claim to witness—and why is his message spreading so quickly? Discover the mysterious details behind the viral testimony and the story that has captured global curiosity.

Read the full account through the article link in the comments.

My name is Khalil Mazri.

I’m 26 years old and I was born in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern part of the Gaza Strip on a hot summer day in August 1997.

They trained me to kill Israelis from the age of 14.

My father is a senior Hamas commander.

I fired rockets, worked in the tunnels, and participated in October 7th.

I was the perfect jihadist until I met an elderly Jewish hostage who prayed for me in a dark tunnel beneath Gaza City.

3 days later, buried alive under 18 hours of rubble, I cried out to her, God in desperation, he answered, “Now my own family has sentenced me to death.

I’ve escaped to the land of my enemies, and I’m telling a story that will shock both Israelis and Palestinians.

Jesus Christ is appearing in Gaza right now, transforming Hamas fighters and building a church that bombs cannot destroy.

This is my testimony.

From the tunnels of terror to the arms of the Prince of Peace.

My father, Ismael Masri, is a senior commander in the Isadin Al-Kasam brigades, the military wing of Hamas.

My mother Fatima is the daughter of a man who died fighting Israeli soldiers in the first inifatada in 1989.

I have three brothers.

My older brother Ahmed who is 30 also serves in the Kasam brigades as a rocket specialist.

My younger brothers Yousef who is 22 and Omar who is 19.

Both work in the tunnel networks beneath Gaza.

I have two sisters, Mariam who is 24 and married to another Hamas fighter and Leila who is 16 and still in school.

We are not a normal family by Western standards.

We are a resistance family, a family shaped by war, defined by martyrdom, and dedicated to the liberation of Palestine at any cost.

I grew up in Jabalia, one of the most densely populated places on Earth.

Our house is a small concrete structure with three rooms built on top of the ruins of my grandfather’s house that was destroyed by Israeli bulldozers in 2002.

We share a courtyard with two other families, all relatives, all connected to Hamas in some way.

The streets of Jabalia are narrow, dirty, crowded with children playing among piles of rubble and uncollected garbage.

The smell of sewage is constant because the water system has been broken for years.

Electricity comes and goes, mostly goes.

We have running water a few hours a day if we are lucky.

The Israeli blockade has choked Gaza for as long as I can remember.

And life here is not about living well.

It is about surviving and resisting.

That is what my father taught me from the time I could understand words.

Survive and resist.

Never forget.

Never forgive.

My childhood was not like the childhood of children in other parts of the world.

I did not play video games or watch cartoons.

I played war.

I grew up listening to stories of my grandfather’s martyrdom.

How he threw stones at Israeli tanks and was shot in the chest.

How he died a shahid, a martyr, and went straight to paradise.

I listened to my father’s stories of fighting in the second inifat, of ambushing Israeli patrols, of building bombs that killed soldiers.

These stories were told with pride around our dinner table.

Martyrdom was not something to fear.

It was something to aspire to.

My father would say, “The greatest honor for a Muslim is to die fighting the enemies of Allah.

” And the enemies were clear.

Israel, the Jews, the occupiers, we were taught to hate them from birth.

Hate was not a sin.

It was a duty.

When I was 6 years old, I started attending a school run by Hamas.

The teachers were not just educators.

They were ideologues.

We learned to read and write using textbooks that praised martyrs and glorified jihad.

We memorized the Quran, but the interpretation was always the same.

Fight those who fight you.

Do not befriend the Jews and Christians.

Paradise is under the shadow of swords.

By the time I was 10, I could recite entire suras from memory.

And I believed with all my heart that Allah had chosen the Palestinian people to be his warriors, that our suffering was a test and that victory would come through blood and sacrifice.

I watched videos of martyrdom operations, suicide bombers blowing themselves up in Israeli markets and buses, and I was told these men were heroes.

I wanted to be a hero, too.

When I turned 14, my father enrolled me in a Hamas youth training program.

It was not optional.

Every son of a fighter was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps.

We trained in abandoned buildings and empty fields on the outskirts of Jabalia.

We learned to handle weapons, to disassemble and reassemble Kalashnika rifles, to throw grenades, to move through rubble without being seen.

We were taught urban warfare tactics, how to ambush, how to set improvised explosive devices, how to survive Israeli air strikes.

The instructors were hardened fighters.

Men with scars and missing fingers.

Men who had spent years in Israeli prisons.

Men who spoke about killing Jews the way other men talk about farming or fishing.

It was normal.

It was expected.

And I was good at it.

My father was proud of me.

He told his commanders that I had the instincts of a fighter, that I would one day lead men into battle.

But even then, even as I learned to strip an AK-47 blindfolded and recite the shahada before mock raids, there was something inside me that felt wrong.

I could not name it.

I could not speak it out loud because to question their resistance was to betray everything.

But I felt it.

A small voice, quiet and persistent, asking questions I was not supposed to ask.

Why do we celebrate when our rockets kill Israeli children if we cry? When Israeli bombs kill ours? Why do we call it martyrdom when we die and terrorism when they kill us? Why does Allah command us to love him but also to hate so many of his creation? I buried those questions deep.

I told myself I was weak, that I was being tempted by Western propaganda, that I needed to be stronger, more committed, more willing to sacrifice.

So, I trained harder.

I prayed louder.

I hated deeper.

By the time I was 18, I was officially recruited into the Kasam Brigades.

My role was not frontline combat yet.

I was assigned to logistics and tunnel operations.

The tunnels are the lifeblood of Hamas.

They run beneath the entire Gaza Strip.

Hundreds of kilometers of underground passages connecting smuggling routes, weapon storage, command centers, and attack positions along the Israeli border.

I spent months working in those tunnels, moving supplies, reinforcing walls, learning the layout of the network.

It was dark, suffocating, dangerous work.

The tunnels collapsed sometimes, burying men alive.

Israeli intelligence targeted them with air strikes and ground penetrating bombs.

But we kept digging.

The tunnels were our advantage, our secret weapon.

the way we moved unseen and struck without warning.

I also participated in rocket operations.

My brother Ahmed was in charge of a team that launched rockets toward Israeli towns like Sterat and Ashkalan.

My job was to transport the rockets from storage to launch sites, usually in the middle of the night, moving through back alleys and bombed out buildings to avoid Israeli drones.

We would set up the launcher, aim it toward Israel, say a quick prayer, and fire.

Then we would run before the Israeli response came because it always came.

Within minutes, drones or F-16s would hit the launch site, leveling whatever building we had used.

Sometimes we got away clean.

Sometimes men died.

I lost friends, cousins, brothers in arms.

We buried them, called them martyrs, and kept fighting.

That was the cycle.

Attack, retaliate, bury the dead, repeat.

I got married when I was 21 to a girl named Hanan from Khan Ununice.

It was an arranged marriage organized by our families.

I barely knew her before the wedding.

She was quiet, obedient, raised in a similar Hamas family, taught the same ideology.

We had a small wedding, no music because Hamas considered it haram, just Quran recitation and a simple meal.

We moved into a tiny apartment near my father’s house in Jabalia.

Hanan got pregnant quickly.

We had a son, named him after my grandfather.

I love my son, but I also knew what his future would be.

He would grow up like I did.

Learning to hate, learning to fight, maybe dying young like so many before him.

That thought haunted me more than I wanted to admit.

Then came October 7th, 2023.

I will not go into all the details of that day because the world already knows.

What I will say is that I was part of it.

I was assigned to a unit that breached the border fence near Arez Crossing and entered Israeli territory.

Our mission was to take hostages and bring them back to Gaza.

We moved fast, hitting several small communities, overwhelming the Israeli defenses that were completely unprepared.

I saw things that day that I cannot unsee.

I saw my brothers in arms killing civilians, shooting families in their homes, dragging women and children into trucks.

I participated.

I will not lie and say I was innocent.

I carried my weapon.

I followed orders.

I helped capture hostages.

At the time, I believed we were striking a blow against the occupation.

That this was justified revenge for decades of suffering.

But even in the chaos, even in the adrenaline and rage, that small voice inside me was screaming.

We brought the hostages back through the tunnels into Gaza.

I was assigned to guard a group of them in an underground complex beneath Gaza City near the Rimmel neighborhood.

There were about 12 hostages in total, men, women, elderly people, even two teenagers.

They were terrified, crying, begging.

We kept them in a small chamber with no windows, just a few batterypowered lights, minimal food, and water.

My job was to watch them in shifts, make sure they did not try to escape or communicate with the outside.

I hated that job.

I hated looking at their faces because when I looked at them, I did not see monsters.

I saw people, frightened, broken people who reminded me of my own family.

One of the hostages was an elderly woman, maybe in her 70s, named Ruth.

She had gray hair, wrinkled hands, and eyes that were tired but not hateful.

Most of the hostages cursed us, spat at us, called us animals, but Ruth did not.

She sat quietly in the corner, and I noticed she would close her eyes, and move her lips silently.

I realized she was praying.

One day, I asked her in broken Hebrew what she was praying for.

She looked at me with those tired eyes and said in slow, clear Arabic, “I am praying for you.

” I laughed.

I mocked her.

I said, “Your God cannot save you here, old woman.

You are in our hands now.

Pray to Allah if you want mercy.

” But she shook her head gently and said, “I do not pray to Allah.

I pray to Yeshua.

He is the one who saves.

He loves you, Khalil.

He sees you.

I froze.

How did she know my name? I had never told her.

None of the other guards used names around the hostages.

I demanded to know how she knew, but she just smiled softly and said, “He told me.

” I did not understand.

I walked away, disturbed, angry, confused.

But her words stayed with me.

Over the next few days, I found myself watching her.

She shared her small portions of food with the younger hostages.

She comforted a woman who was having panic attacks.

She never complained.

She never cursed us.

And every time I walked past her, she would look at me with those eyes and whisper, “Yhua loves you, Khalil.

” It made me furious.

It made me uncomfortable because somewhere deep down beneath all the hatred and ideology, I wanted to know who this Yeshua was that could make an old Jewish woman pray for her captor.

Then on November 8th, 2023, everything changed.

Israeli intelligence must have located the tunnel complex.

At around 11:00 p.

m.

, we heard the sound of jets overhead.

And seconds later, the entire world exploded.

The bombs hit directly above us.

The tunnel collapsed.

The lights went out instantly.

I was thrown against the wall by the force of the blast, my ears ringing, dust and debris choking my lungs.

I could hear screaming, people crying out in Hebrew and Arabic, the sound of concrete grinding and settling.

I tried to move but I was pinned under a massive chunk of ceiling.

My legs were trapped.

I could not see anything.

The darkness was absolute.

I called out for my fellow guards but got no response.

I realized with horror that I might be the only one still alive in this section.

I do not know how long I was trapped there.

It felt like days, but was probably closer to 18 hours.

I drifted in and out of consciousness.

I could hear faint sounds of digging far above.

Rescue teams maybe, but I had no way to signal them.

I was in agony.

My legs were crushed.

I was bleeding.

I was certain I was going to die buried alive in this black hole beneath Gaza.

And for the first time in my life, I was terrified.

not of death itself, but of what came after.

What if everything I had been taught was wrong? What if martyrdom was not paradise? What if Allah was not pleased with what I had done? The doubt I had buried for years came flooding back and I had no strength left to fight it.

At some point, I realized Ruth was near me.

I could hear her breathing shallow and labored.

I called out to her in the darkness.

Ruth, are you alive? She coughed and whispered, “Yes, Khalil, I am here.

” I asked her if she was hurt.

She said, “I think I’m dying, but I’m not afraid.

” I started to cry.

I do not know why.

Maybe because I was afraid and she was not.

Maybe because I had taken her captive and she was still kind to me.

I said, “Ruth, I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for everything.

” She was quiet for a moment.

Then she said, “I forgive you, Khalil, and Yeshua forgives you, too.

You just have to ask him.

” I did not know what to say.

My whole body was shaking.

She continued, “Call on him.

He is listening.

He has always been listening.

” Then her breathing stopped.

Ruth died there in the darkness beside me and I was alone.

I do not know what possessed me to do it.

Maybe it was desperation.

Maybe it was the fact that I had nothing left to lose.

But I cried out into that black tomb, not to Allah, but to the God Ruth had prayed to.

I said, “God of Ruth, if you are real, if you can hear me, get me out of here.

I do not know who you are.

I do not know if you care about someone like me.

But if you are there, help me, please.

And then I passed out.

When I woke up, I could hear voices shouting in Arabic.

Rescue teams had broken through.

They pulled me out of the rubble hours later.

My legs broken, my body battered, but alive.

Ruth’s body was recovered beside me.

I was taken to Alshifa hospital, treated for my injuries, and eventually sent home to recover.

But I could not stop thinking about what had happened in that darkness.

I had prayed to a God I did not know, and I had been rescued.

Ruth had died praying for me.

And her last words echoed in my mind.

Yeshua forgives you.

You just have to ask him.

I did not know what that meant, but I knew I needed to find out.

I spent 3 weeks recovering at home in Jabalia.

My legs were in casts, my ribs were wrapped, and I could barely move without pain.

My family treated me like a hero.

My father came to my bedside every day and told me I had survived because Allah was not finished with me yet.

that I still had work to do for the resistance.

My brothers brought me reports from the front, updates on the fighting, news of martyrs and victories.

My wife Hanan took care of me, brought me food, helped me to the bathroom, never asking questions about what I had seen or felt.

But inside, I was drowning.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Ruth’s face.

I heard her voice.

Yeshua loves you, Khalil.

Yeshua forgives you.

I did not know who Yeshua was.

Not really.

In Islam, we were taught that Issa was a prophet, a messenger of Allah, born of a virgin, performed miracles, but nothing more than a man.

We were taught that Christians had corrupted his message, turned him into a god, committed sherik, the unforgivable sin of associating partners with Allah.

But Ruth did not seem corrupted.

She seemed more at peace than anyone I had ever known.

I could not talk to anyone about what I was feeling.

To question Islam in my family, in my community was to invite suspicion, anger, possibly violence.

So I stayed silent and suffered alone.

But the questions would not leave me.

Why did Ruth have peace while facing death and I had only terror? Why did she forgive me when I had participated in her kidnapping? Why did she pray for me, her enemy, her captor? I had been taught that Jews were our eternal enemies, that they were cursed by Allah, that they had no truth.

But Ruth had something I did not have.

She had something that all my prayers, all my Quran memorization, all my jihad had never given me.

She had hope and I wanted it.

I needed it.

I just did not know how to find it.

One night, about 2 weeks into my recovery, I could not sleep.

The pain in my legs was bad, but the pain in my soul was worse.

I waited until everyone in the house was asleep.

Then I pulled out my phone.

I had to be careful.

Hamas monitors internet activity.

They track searches, block certain websites, and punish anyone caught looking at content they consider dangerous.

But I was desperate.

I opened my browser, turned on a VPN app that some of my friends used to access blocked sites, and I searched for one word, Yeshua.

The results that came up were mostly Islamic sites explaining that Issa was a prophet and warning against Christian distortions.

But I kept scrolling until I found something different.

A website in Arabic that had testimonies from Arabs, from Palestinians even, who said they had encountered Yeshua in dreams and visions.

I clicked on it, my heart pounding, knowing I was crossing a line I could never uncross.

The first testimony I read was from a man in the West Bank.

He said he had been a fighter for fata, had spent years in Israeli prison, hated Jews with every fiber of his being.

But one night while he was in solitary confinement, he had a dream.

He saw a man dressed in white standing in his cell.

The man had Middle Eastern features, dark hair, a beard, and eyes full of compassion.

The man spoke to him in Arabic and said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.

I died for you.

I rose for you.

Follow me.

” The man woke up weeping and did not understand what had happened.

But over the following weeks, the dream repeated.

Eventually, he told another prisoner about it, and that prisoner happened to be a secret Christian.

The prisoner explained who Yeshua was, gave him pages from a Bible, and the man gave his life to Christ.

He was later released from prison and now lived in hiding, part of a tiny underground church in Ramla.

I sat there staring at my phone screen, my hands shaking.

This was exactly what Ruth had talked about.

Yeshua appearing, Yeshua forgiving, Yeshua calling people to follow him.

I read another testimony.

This one from a woman in Egypt.

She had been a devout Muslim, wore nikab, prayed five times a day, fasted, gave charity, but she felt empty.

One night she cried out to Allah asking why she felt so distant from him despite all her efforts.

That night she dreamed of a man in brilliant light who told her, “You are trying to reach God through your works, but I have already reached down to you through my grace.

Come to me and find rest.

” She woke up and knew somehow that the man was Issa Al-Masi, Jesus, the Messiah.

She started searching, found a Bible, read the New Testament, and her entire understanding of God changed.

She realized that Christianity was not about earning salvation, but receiving it as a gift.

She converted, lost her family, and now lived as a refugee in Europe.

I read testimony after testimony, maybe a dozen that night, and the pattern was the same.

Muslims across the Middle East, people who had never read a Bible, people who had been taught to reject Christianity were having dreams and visions of Yeshua.

He appeared to them in moments of crisis, in moments of desperation, in moments of searching.

And he always said the same kinds of things.

I love you.

I died for you.

Come to me.

Follow me.

I forgive you.

These people described a God who pursued them, who reached out to them, who offered them peace and forgiveness freely.

It was the opposite of everything I had been taught.

In Islam, we pursued God through our works, through our obedience, through our submission.

And we hoped that maybe if we did enough, if we were good enough, Allah might accept us.

But there was no certainty, no assurance, no peace, just endless striving and fear of judgment.

I thought about my own life.

I had prayed thousands of prayers.

I had memorized chapters of the Quran.

I had fasted every Ramadan since I was 12.

I had fought in jihad.

I had risked my life for the cause.

And yet, I had never felt close to Allah.

I had never felt loved by him.

I had never felt forgiven.

I had only felt duty, obligation, fear, and guilt.

But these testimonies described something completely different.

They described a relationship with God based on love, not fear.

They described forgiveness that was certain, not hope for.

They described peace that came from knowing you were accepted, not from trying to prove you were worthy.

I wanted that.

I wanted it so badly it hurt.

But I was terrified.

Terrified of what it would mean.

Terrified of the consequences.

Terrified that everything I had built my life on was wrong.

Over the next few days, I kept searching in secret.

I found a website that had the New Testament in Arabic available to read online.

I had never read the Bible before.

We were taught it was corrupted, that it was not reliable, that only the Quran was the pure word of God.

But I started reading anyway, beginning with the Gospel of Matthew.

I read about the birth of Yeshua, born of a virgin named Mariam, which Islam also taught.

So, that part was familiar.

But then I kept reading and found things that Islam never told me.

I read about Yeshua teaching on a mountain side, saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are the meek.

Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness.

” He said to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

He said, “Do not worry about tomorrow because God cares for you like he cares for the birds and the flowers.

” He said you cannot serve both God and money.

He said the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.

I read those words over and over.

Love your enemies.

Pray for those who persecute you.

I thought about Ruth.

She had loved me, her enemy.

She had prayed for me, her persecutor.

She had lived exactly what Yeshua taught.

And I had hated her, captured her, held her in a dark hole until she died.

The guilt crushed me.

But I kept reading.

I read about Yeshua healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, making the lame walk, raising the dead.

I read about him forgiving a woman caught in adultery when everyone else wanted to stone her.

I read about him eating with tax collectors and sinners.

the people religious leaders rejected.

I read about him welcoming children, touching lepers, caring for the broken and outcast.

Every page showed me a God who was not distant and demanding, but close and compassionate.

A God who did not wait for people to clean themselves up before coming to him, but who met them in their mess and loved them anyway.

Then I reached the part of the story I was not prepared for.

The crucifixion.

In Islam, we were taught that Yeshua was not actually crucified, that Allah made it appear that way, but took him up to heaven before he could be killed.

The Quran said it was not fitting for a prophet to be humiliated and murdered like a criminal.

But here in the gospel, the crucifixion was described in painful detailed truth.

Yeshua was betrayed by one of his own followers.

He was arrested, beaten, mocked, whipped until his back was shredded.

He was forced to carry a wooden cross through the streets while people spat on him and shouted insults.

He was nailed to that cross, hands and feet pierced and left to hang there for hours in agony.

He died slowly, suffocating, bleeding, suffering more than I could imagine.

And the worst part, the part that broke me was that he did it willingly.

He did not call down armies of angels to save him.

He did not curse his killers.

He forgave them.

He said, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.

” I sat there in the dark of my room, reading on my phone, tears streaming down my face.

Why? Why would God allow his prophet or his son, as Christians believed, to suffer like that? It made no sense.

It was offensive to everything I had been taught about the power and honor of God.

But then I kept reading and found the answer.

Yeshua died as a sacrifice.

He took the punishment for sin, the punishment that we deserved.

And he bore it in his own body.

He became the lamb, the final sacrifice, so that everyone who believed in him could be forgiven.

Not because they earned it, not because they deserved it, but because he paid the price.

The verse that shattered me completely was in the Gospel of John 3:1 16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

God so loved the world, not just Jews, not just Christians, the world.

That included me, a Palestinian, a Hamas fighter, a man who had hated, who had killed, who had sinned in ways I could not even count.

And God loved me so much that he sent his son to die for me, to take my punishment, to offer me forgiveness, to give me eternal life, not as a reward for my works, but as a gift for my faith.

I did not have to earn it.

I could not earn it.

I just had to receive it, believe it, accept it.

I put my phone down and I wept.

I wept for all the years I had spent trying to prove myself to a God who felt unreachable.

I wept for Ruth, who had shown me this love and died before I could thank her.

I wept for my own sin, for the blood on my hands, for the hatred in my heart.

And I wept because for the first time in my life, I felt hope.

But I was not ready to surrender yet.

I was still afraid.

I still had questions.

The biggest question was this.

If Yeshua was truly the Messiah, truly the son of God, truly the only way to the father as he claimed, then that meant Islam was wrong.

It meant Muhammad was wrong.

It meant the Quran was wrong.

It meant everything my family believed.

Everything my people had died for, everything I had built my identity on was wrong.

That was too much.

That was too dangerous.

So I kept searching, kept reading, kept wrestling.

I read the rest of the gospels.

I read about Yeshua rising from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion.

I read about him appearing to his disciples, showing them his wounds, eating with them, proving he was alive.

I read about him ascending to heaven and sending the Holy Spirit to his followers.

I read the book of Acts about the early church, how they faced persecution, how they were beaten and imprisoned and killed, but they kept proclaiming that Yeshua was Lord.

They did not do it for power or money or land.

They did it because they had seen him because they knew he was alive.

Because their lives had been transformed.

I also started comparing what the Quran said about Issa with what the angel the the gospel said about Yeshua.

The differences were huge.

The Quran said Issa was just a prophet.

The gospel said Yeshua was the son of God.

The Quran said Issa did not die on the cross.

The Gospel said Yeshua died and rose again.

The Quran said Issa would return at the end of days to break the cross and kill the pigs and establish Islam.

The Gospel said Yeshua would return to judge the living and the dead and establish his kingdom.

These were not small differences.

These were completely opposite claims.

Both could not be true.

Either the Quran was right and the gospel was corrupted or the gospel was right and the Quran was wrong.

I had to decide.

And the more I read, the more I realized the gospel made sense of things the Quran could not explain.

It explained why I felt guilty and broken.

It explained why all my works never brought peace.

It explained why I needed a savior, not just a law.

It explained Ruth’s love and forgiveness.

It explained the testimonies of all those people who encountered Yeshua in dreams.

It explained the hope I was beginning to feel.

One night about 4 weeks after I had been pulled from the rubble, I was lying in bed unable to sleep again.

My legs were healing.

I could walk with crutches now, but my soul was in turmoil.

I knew what I needed to do.

I knew the truth was staring me in the face.

But I was terrified to take the final step.

I thought about my father, my brothers, my wife, my son.

I thought about my reputation, my role in Hamas, my place in the community.

If I became a follower of Yeshua, I would lose everything.

I would be called a traitor, an apostate, a collaborator with the enemy.

I could be killed.

My family could kill me.

It was not a theoretical danger.

It was real.

Honor killings happened.

Apostates were executed.

I knew men who had been killed for less.

But I also knew I could not keep living the lie.

I could not keep pretending I believed in Islam when my heart had found the truth somewhere else.

So I made a choice.

I decided that knowing Yeshua, even if it cost me everything, was worth more than keeping a life built on a foundation of lies.

I got out of bed, hobbled on my crutches to the small bathroom in our apartment, locked the door, and knelt on the cold tile floor.

I did not know how to pray to Yeshua.

I had only ever prayed the formal Islamic prayers, but I remembered what the testimony said.

Just talk to him.

Be honest.

So, I did.

I whispered into the darkness.

Yeshua, I do not fully understand who you are, but I believe you are more than a prophet.

I believe you died for me.

I believe you rose again.

I believe Ruth knew you and you gave her peace.

I want that peace.

I am tired of hate.

I’m tired of fear.

I am tired of trying to earn God’s love and never feeling good enough.

Forgive me for everything I have done.

Forgive me for the blood on my hands.

Forgive me for rejecting you all these years.

I give you my life.

All of it.

I am yours.

Save me.

I stayed there on my knees waiting, not knowing what to expect.

And then I felt it.

The same presence I had felt in the tunnel when I cried out to the God of Ruth.

a warmth, a weight, a peace that started in my chest and spread through my whole body.

I was not seeing visions or hearing voices, but I knew, I absolutely knew that I was not alone.

Yeshua was there.

He had heard me.

He had accepted me and I was forgiven.

I wept on that bathroom floor for a long time, but they were not tears of despair anymore.

There were tears of relief, tears of gratitude, tears of joy.

I had found what I had been searching for my entire life.

I had found him.

The morning after I prayed in that bathroom, I woke up feeling different.

The heaviness that had sat on my chest for as long as I could remember was gone.

I still had pain in my legs.

I still lived in the same crowded apartment in Jabalia.

I still heard the sounds of drones overhead and distant explosions.

Nothing in my physical world had changed, but inside everything was new.

I felt clean.

I felt light.

I felt like I had been holding my breath for 26 years.

And finally, I could breathe.

My wife noticed something.

She asked me at breakfast why I looked so calm, if the pain medication was working better.

I just smiled and said I slept well.

I could not tell her the truth.

Not yet.

I did not know how.

I did not even fully understand what had happened to me.

All I knew was that I had given my life to Yeshua.

And somehow in a way I could not explain, he had given me a new life in return.

But I quickly realized I had a serious problem.

I was a follower of Yeshua now, but I had no idea what that meant practically.

I had no Bible.

I had no teacher.

I had no community.

I could not go to a church because there were no churches in Gaza.

At least none that were open or safe.

The tiny Christian population that existed before the wars had mostly fled or gone into hiding years ago.

I could not tell my family.

I could not tell my friends.

I was completely alone with this new faith and I had no guidance except for the fragments of the New Testament I had read on my phone in secret.

I knew I needed help.

I needed to find other believers.

But how? In Gaza, admitting you were a Christian, especially a convert from Islam was signing your own death warrant.

Hamas did not tolerate apostasy.

The community did not tolerate it.

Even my own family would not tolerate it.

I had to be extremely careful.

I remembered the website where I had read the testimonies.

I went back to it one night and found a contact page.

There was an email address for people who wanted to know more about Yeshua.

I hesitated for a long time before writing.

What if it was a trap? What if Hamas monitored these emails? What if I was walking into an intelligence operation designed to catch people like me? But I had no other options.

So, I created a new email account using a fake name, connected through my VPN, and sent a short message.

I wrote, “I am from Gaza.

I have given my life to Yeshua.

I need help.

I do not know what to do next.

I need to find other believers.

Please help me.

” I sent it and then immediately panicked, wondering if I had just made a huge mistake.

But 2 days later, I got a response.

The email was short and careful.

It said, “Brother, we are glad you reached out.

We praise God for your faith.

There are others like you in Gaza.

You are not alone.

We will connect you with someone who can help you grow and stay safe.

” Delete this email after you read it.

Wait for a phone call in the next few days.

The person will identify themselves with a phrase.

They will say, “Peace of Christ be with you.

” Respond by saying, “And also with you.

” Then you will know it is safe.

I deleted the email as instructed, my heart pounding.

There were other believers in Gaza.

I was not the only one.

The thought gave me hope, but also fear.

If there were believers, that meant there was also danger.

It meant people had been discovered before.

It meant the risk was real.

3 days later, my phone rang.

It was a local Gaza number I did not recognize.

I answered nervously.

A man’s voice spoke in Arabic, calm and measured.

He said, “Peace of Christ be with you.

” I felt a rush of relief and whispered back, “And also with you.

” The man said, “My name is Tariq.

I am a brother in Yeshua.

I heard you are searching.

I want to meet you, but we must be very careful.

Can you move around yet, or are you still recovering from your injuries? I told him I could walk with crutches, that I could leave my house without raising suspicion.

He said, “Good.

Meet me tomorrow at 3:00 p.

m.

at the ruins of the old Greek Orthodox Church in the Rimmel neighborhood.

Do you know it? I said yes.

It had been bombed years ago and never rebuilt.

He said, “Come alone.

Tell no one.

If you see anything suspicious, do not approach.

Just walk away.

I will be wearing a blue shirt and carrying a bag.

” I agreed and he hung up.

The next day, I told my wife I was going to visit a friend from my unit who lived in Gaza City.

She did not question it.

I took a taxi to Rimal, a neighborhood that had been heavily damaged in previous wars.

Many of the buildings were still destroyed, just piles of concrete and twisted metal.

The old church was nothing but a shell, its walls crumbling, its roof gone, weeds growing through the floor.

I arrived early and waited, watching from a distance to make sure no one was following me.

No one was watching.

At exactly 300 p.

m.

, a man appeared.

He was in his 40s, wearing a blue shirt, carrying a small bag, walking slowly through the ruins.

I approached him carefully, still on crutches, and he looked at me and smiled.

He said quietly, “Khal.

” I nodded.

He said, “Follow me.

We need to talk somewhere safer.

” He led me through a series of back alleys to a small house that looked abandoned from the outside.

But when he unlocked the door and we went inside, I saw it was being used.

There were a few chairs, a table, some blankets, and most importantly, a stack of books in the corner.

Tariq locked the door behind us, gestured for me to sit, and then he looked at me with kind eyes and said, “Welcome, brother.

Tell me your story.

” So I did.

I told him everything about my family, about October 7th, about the hostages, about Ruth, about the tunnel collapse, about my desperate prayer to the God of Ruth, about being rescued, about reading the testimonies online, about reading the injil, about giving my life to Yeshua in my bathroom.

I told him about the peace I felt, but also the fear and confusion because I did not know what to do next.

Tariq listened without interrupting, nodding.

And when I finished, he reached over and put his hand on my shoulder.

He said, “Khal, what you experienced is exactly what hundreds of others in Gaza and across the Arab world have experienced.

Yeshua is calling Muslims to himself.

He is appearing in dreams and visions.

He is revealing himself in ways that no human missionary could because we have no missionaries here, no open churches, no freedom to preach.

So God himself is doing the work.

You are part of a move of the Holy Spirit that is happening right now in the darkest places on earth.

You are not crazy.

You are not deceived.

You have encountered the living God and he has made you his son.

Hearing those words from another person, another believer who understood made me break down and cry.

I was not alone.

I was not insane.

I was part of something bigger than myself.

Tariq let me cry and then he opened his bag and pulled out a book.

It was a Bible, a full Bible in Arabic, both Old and New Testaments, with a plain cover to disguise it.

He handed it to me and said, “This is yours.

Read it every day.

Hide it carefully.

Let the word of God teach you who Yeshua is and who you are in him.

” He also told me about the underground church in Gaza.

He said there were small groups of believers scattered across the strip, maybe two or 300 people total, all former Muslims, all meeting in secret.

The groups were intentionally kept small, no more than eight or 10 people in each to minimize the risk if someone was discovered.

They met in homes, in basement, in destroyed buildings, always changing locations, always watching for informants or Hamas intelligence.

Tariq himself had been a Muslim cleric and imam teaching in a mosque in Kunis for 15 years.

But 3 years ago, he started having dreams of Yeshua.

In the dreams, Yeshua would stand in the mosque and say, “Tariq, why do you teach my words but do not know me? Come to me and I will give you rest.

” The dreams repeated for months.

Tariq fought them, tried to ignore them, consulted other imams who told him it was the devil trying to deceive him.

But the dreams would not stop.

Finally, he started secretly reading the New Testament and everything changed.

He realized that Isa, the prophet he had taught about was actually Yeshua, the Messiah, the son of God, the Savior.

He left his position, lost his family, and now lived in hiding, leading this small network of believers and helping new converts like me.

Tariq explained what it meant to follow Yeshua.

He said it was not about religious rituals or rules.

It was about a relationship with God based on grace.

not performance.

He explained that when I gave my life to Yeshua, I was forgiven completely.

My sins, all of them, past, present, and future, were washed away by his blood shed on the cross.

I was declared righteous, not because I was good, but because Yeshua was good, and his righteousness was given to me as a gift.

He said, “I was now a child of God, adopted into his family with the Holy Spirit living inside me to guide me, teach me, and transform me.

” He said, “My job now was not to try to earn God’s love because I already had it, but to learn to live in that love, to grow in faith, and to share the good news with others when the time was right.

” I asked Tariq about baptism.

I had read in the New Testament that Yeshua commanded his followers to be baptized as a public declaration of their faith.

Tariq said baptism in Gaza was dangerous because it required water, witnesses, and a level of exposure that could lead to discovery.

But he said it was also important, a step of obedience that symbolized dying to the old life and rising to new life in Yeshua.

He asked me if I wanted to be baptized.

I said yes, absolutely.

He said, “Then we will do it, but we must be very careful.

” He told me to come back in one week.

He would arrange for me to meet the other believers in his group and we would perform the baptism in secret.

He gave me instructions on how to get to the location, told me to memorize them and not write anything down and reminded me again to tell no one, not even my wife, not even my closest friends.

This had to stay secret or we would all die.

That week was the longest week of my life.

I read the Bible Tariq had given me every night after everyone was asleep.

I hid it inside a bag of rice in our kitchen where no one would think to look.

I read the Gospels again, this time more slowly, understanding more.

I read the book of Romans where Paul explained the gospel in detail.

I read about how all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

How the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Yeshua.

I read about justification by faith, not by works, so that no one can boast.

I read about how nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Yeshua.

Every verse felt like it was written for me.

Every chapter answered questions I had carried for years.

I also started praying differently.

Not the ritual prayers I had done five times a day for most of my life, but real conversations with God.

I would talk to Yeshua in my heart throughout the day, thanking him, asking him for help, confessing my struggles, telling him my fears.

And I felt him with me.

Not always in dramatic ways, but in a quiet, steady presence that brought peace.

Finally, the day came.

It was a Thursday evening.

I told my wife I was going to a meeting with some of my unit brothers.

She was used to me leaving for Hamas business, so she did not question it.

I took a taxi to the address Tariq had given me, a house in the Shuja neighborhood, an area that had been heavily bombed and was still mostly ruins.

I knocked on the door in the pattern Tariq had told me.

Three quick knocks, pause, two more.

The door opened and a young man let me in quickly.

Inside there were seven other people.

Tariq was there and he introduced me to the group.

There was a woman named Ila who had been a nurse at Alshifa hospital.

A man named Rashid who had been a teacher.

A younger man named Bilal who had been in Islamic jihad.

An older woman named Salma whose husband had been killed by an Israeli air strike and who found Yeshua in her grief and three others whose names I have forgotten but whose faces I remember.

All of them were former Muslims.

All of them had stories of encountering Yeshua in supernatural ways.

All of them had lost family, jobs, safety to follow him.

And all of them welcomed me like I was family.

We sat in a circle on the floor and tak led us in worship.

We could not sing loudly because neighbors might hear.

So we sang quietly almost in whispers songs in Arabic praising Yeshua.

Then Tariq taught from the Bible.

He opened to the book of Acts chapter 2 where Peter preached on the day of Pentecost.

He read the verse where Peter said,”Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Yeshua for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

” Tariq explained that baptism was not what saved us, but it was an outward sign of the inward change that had already happened.

It was a way of publicly identifying with Yeshua’s death, burial, and resurrection.

He said, “Khal, tonight you will be baptized and you will be declaring before God and before these witnesses that you have died to your old life and have been raised to new life in Yeshua.

” After the teaching, we prayed together.

Each person prayed out loud, not in formal Arabic or memorized phrases, but in their own words, talking to God like he was right there in the room with us.

They prayed for me, for protection, for strength, for my family to come to know Yeshua.

They prayed for the church in Gaza, for believers who were suffering, for those who were still searching.

And then it was time.

Tariq led us out the back of the house into a small courtyard.

In the corner, there was an old stone sistern, a water storage tank that had been used before the house was destroyed.

It was filled with rainwater, cold and dark.

Tariq climbed down into the sistern, the water coming up to his waist.

He motioned for me to join him.

I handed my crutches to Bilal and lowered myself carefully into the water.

The cold shocked me, but I did not care.

Tariq placed one hand on my back and raised the other hand toward heaven.

He said, “Chalil Masri, do you believe that Yeshua is the son of God? That he died for your sins and rose again on the third day?” I said, “Yes, I believe.

” He said, “Do you renounce your old life, your old beliefs, and commit yourself to follow Yeshua, no matter the cost?” I said, “Yes, I renounce and I commit.

” He said, “Then I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

” He gently lowered me backward into the water until I was completely submerged.

For a moment I was under the surface surrounded by cold and darkness and I thought about the tunnel about being buried alive about the old Khalil who had lived for hate and revenge and death.

Then Tariq lifted me up out of the water and I gasped for air and I heard the others quietly clapping and whispering praise to God.

I stood there dripping, shivering, but feeling more alive than I had ever felt.

I was baptized.

I was a follower of Yeshua.

I belong to him now.

And nothing could change that.

After my baptism, I became part of the underground church in Gaza.

I started meeting with Tariq’s group every Thursday evening.

Always in different locations, always taking different routes to get there.

Always watching to make sure I was not being followed.

The meetings became the center of my week.

The only place where I could be fully honest, the only place where I did not have to pretend.

We would gather in bombed out buildings, in basement, in rooms with windows covered so no light could be seen from outside.

We would worship quietly, read the Bible together, pray for each other, and share testimonies of how Yeshua was working in our lives.

It was nothing like the mosques I had grown up in, where everything was formal and ritualistic and focused on duty and fear.

This was family.

This was freedom.

This was what I had been searching for my entire life without knowing it.

The more I learned, the more I realized how different the gospel was from everything Islam had taught me.

In Islam, salvation was uncertain.

You could pray five times a day, fast during Ramadan, give charity, go on Hajj, memorize the entire Quran, and still have no assurance that Allah would accept you on judgment day.

Everything depended on whether your good deeds outweighed your bad deeds, and you would not know the result until you died.

It created a life of constant anxiety, constant striving, constant fear.

But in Christianity through Yeshua, salvation was certain.

The moment I believed the moment I trusted in his death and resurrection, I was saved.

Not because of what I did, but because of what he did.

My sins were forgiven completely, not partially.

I was declared righteous, not because I earned it, but because Yeshua’s righteousness was credited to me.

I had peace with God, not because I was good enough, but because Yeshua was good enough on my behalf.

This was grace, undeserved favor, and it changed everything.

Tariq taught us that grace did not mean we could live however we wanted.

It meant we were free from the burden of trying to earn God’s love which we already had and free to live in gratitude and obedience out of love not fear.

He said the Christian life was not about following a list of rules to avoid punishment.

It was about being transformed by the Holy Spirit from the inside out.

Becoming more like Yeshua day by day.

He told us about the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

He said these qualities would grow in us naturally as we stayed connected to Yeshua, like branches connected to a vine.

He also taught us about spiritual warfare.

That we were now in a battle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces of darkness that hated Yeshua and hated his followers.

He said we needed to put on the armor of God, to pray constantly, to stay in the word, and to stand firm in our faith no matter what came against us.

One of the most powerful things I learned in those meetings was about forgiveness.

Tariq taught from the book of Matthew where Yeshua said, “If you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins.

” He said, “Forgiveness was not optional for Christians.

It was a command and it was one of the hardest commands, especially for people like us who had been taught to hate our enemies, to seek revenge, to never forget a wrong.

I struggled with this deeply.

How could I forgive the Israelis who had killed members of my family, who had bombed my neighborhood, who had blockaded Gaza and made life unbearable? How could I forgive the soldiers who had shot at me, who had destroyed our homes, who had treated us like animals? But Tariq said, “Khalil, Yeshua forgave the people who nailed him to the cross while he was still hanging there.

” He said, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.

If he could forgive that, we can forgive anything.

And remember, you were forgiven for everything you did.

You participated in violence.

You captured hostages.

You hated Jews.

And Yeshua forgave you completely.

How can you receive that forgiveness and then refuse to give it to others? His words cut me deeply.

He was right.

I had been forgiven for terrible things.

I had no right to withhold forgiveness from anyone else.

So, I started praying, asking Yeshua to help me forgive.

It did not happen overnight.

It was a process.

But slowly, I felt the hatred that had defined my entire life beginning to loosen its grip.

I started praying for Israelis, not curses, but blessings.

I started praying for soldiers that they would encounter Yeshua just like I had.

I started praying for peace.

Real peace.

Not the political peace that everyone talked about but never achieved, but the peace that only Yeshua could bring.

The peace that changed hearts.

And as I prayed, something inside me shifted.

The anger that had fueled me for so long began to fade.

And in its place came something I never expected.

Compassion.

I started seeing Israelis not as monsters, but as people, broken people, afraid people.

People who needed Yeshua just as much as I did.

During one of our meetings, a man named Rasheed shared a testimony that shook all of us.

He said that two weeks earlier he had been walking near the Aras crossing, the border checkpoint between Gaza and Israel when he saw a group of Israeli soldiers on the other side of the fence.

Normally he would have felt rage, would have wished he had a weapon to attack them, but instead he felt the Holy Spirit prompting him to pray for them.

So he stopped, stood there on the Gaza side of the fence, and quietly prayed in Arabic, “Yeshua, open their eyes.

Let them see you.

Save them like you saved me.

” He said as he prayed, one of the soldiers, a young man, looked directly at him.

Their eyes met across the fence, across the divide of decades of hatred and war.

And Rashid said he felt Yeshua telling him, “I love him just as much as I love you.

Both of you are my sons.

I died for both of you.

” That moment broke Rashid completely.

He realized that the gospel was not Palestinian or Israeli.

It was universal.

Yeshua came to save everyone and his love did not recognize borders or nationalities or politics.

Another powerful testimony came from Ila, the nurse.

She shared that she had been working at Alshifa Hospital during one of the recent Israeli military operations.

Wounded people were flooding in, many of them civilians, children, women, elderly.

The hospital was overwhelmed.

Supplies were running out.

And Ila was exhausted and traumatized by the suffering she was seeing every day.

One night, she was treating a young girl who had lost both her legs in an air strike.

The girl was maybe 7 years old in shock, crying for her mother who had been killed.

Ila did not know what to say to comfort her.

So she just held the girl’s hand and prayed silently.

Yeshua, please help her.

Please give her your peace.

And as she prayed, the girl suddenly stopped crying.

Looked at Ila and said, I see him.

I see the man in white.

He is standing right there.

He says, “My mother is with him, and I will see her again.

” Then the girl closed her eyes and fell into a peaceful sleep.

Ila was stunned.

The girl had seen Yeshua.

A Muslim child in a Gaza hospital had seen him.

Ila said that moment confirmed to her that Yeshua was moving in Gaza.

that he was appearing not just to adults but to children, not just in dreams, but in waking visions right in the middle of war and death and suffering.

As I listened to these testimonies week after week, I realized that what was happening in Gaza was part of something much bigger.

Tariq told us that across the Middle East, across North Africa, across Muslim majority countries around the world, Yeshua was appearing to people in dreams and visions.

He said there were reports from Iran, from Iraq, from Syria, from Egypt, from Saudi Arabia, from Afghanistan of Muslims encountering Yeshua supernaturally and coming to faith.

He said researchers and ministries that tracked these things estimated that millions of Muslims had converted to Christianity in the last few decades and the majority of them cited dreams or visions as the primary reason.

He said this was not coincidence.

This was the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

He opened his Bible to the book of Joel 2 verse 28 and read.

I will pour out my spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy.

Your old men will dream dreams.

Your young men will see visions.

He said this is happening right now.

God is pouring out his spirit in the last days.

and no government, no religious system, no military power can stop it.

Tariq also explained why Yeshua was using dreams and visions so much in the Muslim world.

He said there were two main reasons.

First, dreams were culturally significant.

In Middle Eastern and Islamic culture, people believed dreams could be messages from God.

The Quran itself contained stories of prophetic dreams.

So when Muslims had a dream about Yeshua, they took it seriously.

They did not dismiss it as random brain activity.

They searched for meaning.

And when they found Christians or read the Bible and discovered that the words Yeshua spoke in their dreams were exact quotes from the New Testament, they realized it was real.

Second, Yeshua was using dreams because human methods of evangelism had been shut down.

There were no foreign missionaries allowed in most Muslim countries.

Preaching the gospel publicly could get you arrested or killed.

Owning a Bible was illegal in some places.

Churches were monitored, raided, or destroyed.

So God himself was bypassing all the human barriers.

He was going directly into people’s homes, into their bedrooms, into their minds while they slept and revealing himself.

No government could stop dreams.

No religious police could arrest visions.

No border could keep out the spirit of God.

Hearing all of this gave me hope, but it also made the danger feel more real.

If Yeshua was moving this powerfully, then the enemy was also fighting back.

Satan did not want Muslims coming to faith.

He did not want the church growing in Gaza or anywhere else in the Islamic world.

So, persecution was increasing.

Tariq told us that in the last few years, dozens of Palestinian believers had been discovered and killed.

Some were killed by Hamas.

Some were killed by their own families in honor killings.

Some simply disappeared, taken in the night, never seen again.

He said we needed to be constantly vigilant, constantly prayerful, constantly wise.

He reminded us of Yeshua’s words in Matthew chapter 10.

I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.

Therefore, be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves.

We were living in a war zone.

Not just a physical war between Israel and Hamas, but a spiritual war between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness.

And we were on the front lines.

Despite the danger, the church in Gaza was growing.

Tariq said when he first started the underground network 3 years ago, there were maybe 50 believers total that he knew of.

Now there were close to 300 scattered across the strip in small groups like ours.

Most of them were young people, teenagers and people in their 20s and 30s who had grown up with nothing but war and hatred and hopelessness and who had encountered Yeshua and found something worth living for.

Tariq said he believed the number was actually higher, that there were probably believers he did not know about, people who had converted but were too afraid to reach out, too isolated to find community.

He said every week he received messages through encrypted apps from people in Gaza saying, “I had a dream about Yeshua.

I read the Bible.

I believe.

What do I do now?” He did his best to connect them with groups to provide Bibles to offer teaching and support.

But it was difficult and dangerous work.

One night, Tariq brought someone new to our meeting.

A young man, maybe 20 years old, thin, nervous, with eyes that looked haunted.

Tariq introduced him as Bilal.

He said Bal had been a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, even more extreme than Hamas, and had been training to be a suicide bomber.

But 3 weeks ago, the night before he was supposed to carry out his mission, he had a dream.

In the dream, he was standing in a field wearing an explosive vest.

He was about to push the detonation button when a man appeared in front of him dressed in white with wounds on his hands and feet.

The man said, “Bilal, you’re about to kill yourself and others in my name, but I never commanded this.

I came to give life, not take it.

Put down the bomb and follow me.

” Bilal woke up sweating, terrified, confused.

He could not go through with the mission.

He told his commanders he was sick and they postponed it.

But the dream kept repeating every night.

Finally, he searched online, found testimonies, realized the man in white was Yeshua and reached out to Tariq.

Bilal sat in our circle that night and wept as he told his story.

He said, “I was ready to die.

I was ready to kill.

I thought I was going to paradise.

But Yeshua showed me I was going to hell and he offered me a way out.

He saved my life.

Now I do not know what to do.

I cannot go back to Islamic jihad.

They will ask questions.

If they find out I am a Christian, they will execute me.

But I cannot deny Yeshua.

He is real.

I saw him.

I know him.

We all gathered around Bilal and prayed for him, for protection, for wisdom, for a way forward.

Tariq said he would help Bilal disappear, find him a safe place to stay, connect him with believers who could help him leave Gaza if necessary.

But hearing Bilal’s story reminded all of us how fragile our situation was.

Any one of us could be discovered at any time.

any one of us could be betrayed, arrested, killed.

We were living on borrowed time, trusting Yeshua to protect us, knowing that he might also call us to suffer or even die for our faith.

But we also knew that he was worth it, worth everything, worth our lives.

For the next 3 months, I lived the most dangerous double life imaginable.

During the day, I was Khalil Masri, son of a Hamas commander, loyal fighter, devoted Muslim.

I attended family gatherings where my father and brothers discussed military operations and praised martyrs.

I went to the mosque on Fridays and stood in line with other men for prayers, going through the motions, reciting the words I had memorized since childhood.

But my heart was somewhere else entirely.

My heart was with Yeshua.

At night, after my wife and son were asleep, I would pull out the Bible Tariq had given me, hidden in a false bottom I had built into a wooden box in our bedroom, and I would read by the light of my phone.

I read the Psalms and found comfort.

I read the letters of Paul and learned about grace.

I read the book of Revelation and saw the promise that Yeshua would return and make all things new.

And I prayed constantly, not the ritual prayers of Islam, but real conversations with God, talking to him about my fears, my struggles, my longing to live openly as his follower.

The strain of living two lives was crushing.

Every time I bowed toward Mecca, I felt like I was betraying Yeshua.

Every time I said the shahada, there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.

I felt sick inside because I knew it was a lie.

I no longer believed Muhammad was a prophet.

I no longer believed the Quran was the word of God.

I believed Yeshua was the only way to the father and everything else was deception.

But I could not say that out loud.

I could not stop pretending because the moment I did, my life would be over.

I thought about the believers in the book of Acts who face persecution who were beaten and imprisoned and killed for refusing to deny Yeshua.

I asked God to give me that kind of courage, but I also asked him to protect me, to let me survive long enough to see my family come to faith, to give me more time to grow and learn before the storm came.

I did not know if that prayer was cowardice or wisdom.

I just knew I was not ready to die yet.

Then one night, everything I had feared began to unfold.

It was a Thursday, the night of our weekly meeting.

I had told my wife I was going to meet with some brothers from my unit to discuss security matters.

She did not question it.

I left the house and took my usual route, walking through back streets, cutting through alleys, always watching to see if anyone was following me.

I arrived at the meeting location, a basement in a half-destroyed building in the Shuja neighborhood.

The group was already there, seven of us, including Tariq.

We worshiped quietly, sang a few songs in whispers, and then Tariq began teaching from the book of James about faith and trials.

He said, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

” He said, “Suffering was not a sign that God had abandoned us.

It was an opportunity to grow stronger, to trust him more deeply, to prove that our faith was real.

” After the teaching, we prayed together.

Each person shared their burdens and we lifted them to Yeshua.

Ila asked for prayer because her brother had started asking her questions about why she seemed different lately, why she was not as interested in family religious gatherings.

She was afraid he suspected something.

Rashid asked for prayer because he had lost his job at a school after refusing to teach certain things about jihad that he no longer believed.

Bilal, the former Islamic Jihad member, asked for prayer because he was still in hiding and his old commanders were looking for him.

And I asked for prayer for my family, especially for my younger brother Yousef, who I thought might be open to hearing about Yeshua if the opportunity ever came.

We prayed for each other, held each other up, encouraged each other to stay strong.

Then we prepared to leave one by one at different times, going in different directions so we would not be seen together.

I was the third person to leave.

I said goodbye to Tariq, him for his teaching, and walked out into the dark street.

It was past 10:30 p.

m.

, and the neighborhood was quiet, except for the distant sound of generators and the occasional bark of a dog.

I walked quickly, my head down, staying in the shadows.

I had gone maybe two blocks when I heard footsteps behind me.

I glanced back and saw a figure following me, keeping pace about 20 m behind.

My heart started pounding.

I turned a corner, walked faster.

The footsteps stayed with me.

I turned another corner, almost running now despite my still healing legs.

The footsteps got closer.

Then I heard a voice call out my name.

Khalil.

I froze.

The voice was familiar.

I turned around slowly and saw my younger brother, Yousef, standing there in the street, staring at me.

My mind raced.

What was Yousef doing here? Had he followed me? How long had he been watching? Yousef walked closer, his face hard to read in the darkness.

He said, “What are you doing in this neighborhood, brother? I thought you were meeting with your unit.

I tried to stay calm.

I said I was.

We met nearby.

I’m walking home now.

He said that is strange because I called Ahmed earlier and he said there was no meeting tonight.

So I will ask you again.

What are you doing here? I felt panic rising.

I could not think of a good lie fast enough.

Yousef stepped closer and said, “I have been watching you, Khalil, for weeks.

You leave the house every Thursday night.

You take strange routes.

You act like you were hiding something.

So tonight, I followed you.

I saw you go into that building.

I waited and watched.

I saw other people come out before you.

What is going on? Are you involved in something against Hamas? Are you a spy?” I looked at my brother, my 22-year-old brother who I had grown up with, who I had trained with, who looked up to me, and I realized I had a choice.

I could lie, make up some story, try to cover my tracks, or I could tell him the truth and trust Yeshua with the consequences.

I thought about all the teaching I had received over the past months.

I thought about the verses I had memorized.

I thought about Yeshua’s words.

Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my father in heaven.

But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my father in heaven.

I took a deep breath and said, “Yesef, I am not a spy.

I am not working against Hamas, but I cannot lie to you anymore.

I need to tell you something, and I need you to listen without interrupting.

Can you do that? Yousef looked confused and suspicious, but he nodded.

So, right there in that dark street in Shuja, I told him everything.

I told him about Ruth, the Israeli hostage who prayed for me.

I told him about the tunnel collapse, about being buried alive, about my desperate prayer to her God.

I told him about being rescued, about reading testimonies online, about discovering the New Testament, about giving my life to Yeshua.

I told him about the peace I had found, about the forgiveness I had received, about the transformation that had happened inside me.

I told him about Tariq and the underground church, about the meetings, about the other believers.

I told him that Yeshua was not just a prophet like we had been taught, but the son of God, the savior, the only way to the father.

I told him that I could not follow Islam anymore because I had found the truth and the truth had set me free.

Yousef stood there listening, his face going through a range of emotions.

shock, confusion, anger, disbelief.

When I finished, he was silent for a long moment.

Then he exploded.

He started yelling, his voice echoing off the ruined buildings around us.

He said, “Have you lost your mind, Khalil? Do you know what you are saying? You have become a Christian.

You are following the religion of our enemies.

You are worshiping a Jew.

This is insanity.

This is betrayal.

You have betrayed Allah, betrayed the prophet, betrayed our family, betrayed Palestine.

I tried to calm him down, tried to explain, but he would not listen.

He said, “Does father know? Do Ahmed and Omar know? Does anyone know?” I said, “No, only the believers in the church.

” He said, “Believers? You mean other traitors like you? Other apostates? I shook my head and said, Yousef, please just listen.

I know this is hard to understand, but Yeshua is real.

He appeared to me.

He saved me.

He loves you, too.

He wants you to know him.

Yousef stepped back like I had struck him.

He said, “Do not speak to me about your false god.

I do not want to hear it.

You have two choices, Khalil.

You renounce this madness right now.

Come back to Islam and I will forget this ever happened.

Or you refuse and I will go to father tonight and tell him everything.

You know what he will do.

You know what the family will do? Apostasy is punishable by death.

You will be executed.

Khalil, is your Jewish god worth dying for? I looked at my brother, my heart breaking, and I said quietly, “Yes, he is worth dying for because he already died for me.

I will not deny him, Yousef.

I cannot, even if it costs me everything.

” Yousef stared at me like he did not recognize me.

Then he shook his head and said, “You are a fool.

I gave you a chance and you chose death.

Fine, I will give you two hours.

Two hours to say goodbye to your wife and son, to get your affairs in order.

Then I am telling father and may Allah have mercy on your soul because father will not.

He turned and walked away disappearing into the darkness.

I stood there alone in the street trembling knowing that my life as I had known it was over.

I had two hours.

Two hours before my family would know.

Two hours before my father, a senior Hamas commander, would be faced with the unbearable shame of having a son who converted to Christianity.

2 hours before I would be declared an apostate and sentenced to death.

I pulled out my phone and called Tariq.

I told him what had happened.

He said, “Khalil, you need to leave Gaza tonight, right now.

We have an emergency protocol for situations like this.

I will activate it.

Go home.

Grab nothing except your identification papers and any money you have.

Do not try to explain anything to your wife.

Just leave.

Meet me at the old cemetery near the arrays crossing in 1 hour.

I will have people there who can help you escape.

I said, “Escape where?” He said, “Israel.

It is the only option.

You cannot stay in Gaza, Hamas will hunt you.

Your family will hunt you.

But if you cross into Israel and ask for asylum, they will take you.

It is dangerous, but it is your only chance.

” I hung up and stood there trying to process what he had just said.

Escape to Israel, to the enemy, to the people I had been taught to hate my entire life, to the people I had fought against.

The irony was almost unbearable.

But I had no other choice.

I could not go back to my family.

I could not stay in Gaza.

If I stayed, I would be dead by morning.

So I started walking toward my apartment, my mind racing.

I thought about my wife Hanan, about my son, about never seeing them again.

I thought about my mother, about my sister Mariam, about the life I was leaving behind.

I thought about the fact that I would be branded a traitor, a collaborator, a coward.

My name would be cursed.

My memory would be spit on.

Everything I had been, everything I had built would be destroyed.

But I also thought about Yeshua, about the peace he had given me, about the promise that he would never leave me or forsake me.

And I knew that even if I lost everything else, I had him and he was enough.

I reached my apartment and quietly opened the door.

Hanan was asleep on the couch, the television still on.

My son was asleep in his crib in the bedroom.

I stood there looking at them, memorizing their faces, my heart shattering.

I wanted to wake Hanan to explain, to tell her I loved her, to beg her to come with me.

But I knew she would not understand.

She would try to stop me.

She would call my father.

So, I did the hardest thing I have ever done.

I walked into the bedroom, kissed my son’s forehead while he slept, whispered a prayer over him, and then I turned and walked out.

I grabbed my ID card and a small amount of cash I had hidden, and I left.

I did not look back.

I walked out of that apartment, out of my old life, and into the unknown.

I met Tariq at the cemetery as planned.

There were two other men with him, believers who worked at checkpoints and had connections that could help.

They explained the plan.

They would get me close to the Arez crossing, the main checkpoint between Gaza and Israel.

I would approach the Israeli side alone, unarmed, hands raised, and I would shout in Hebrew that I wanted to surrender, that I had information, that I was seeking asylum.

It was incredibly risky.

Israeli soldiers might shoot first and ask questions later, but it was my only option.

We drove in silence through the dark streets of Gaza, avoiding main roads, moving through bombed out neighborhoods where there were no cameras, no patrols.

We reached a point about half a kilometer from the crossing.

Tariq stopped the car and turned to me.

He said, “Khal, you’re about to walk into the territory of people who have been your enemies your whole life.

But remember, Yeshua has no enemies.

He died for Israelis just like he died for Palestinians.

He loves them just like he loves you.

You are not betraying your people by seeking safety.

You are following the one who is above all peoples and nations.

Trust him.

He will be with you.

We prayed together one last time.

Then I got out of the car and started walking toward the border, toward the lights, toward the soldiers, toward the unknown.

My legs were shaking.

My heart was pounding.

But I kept walking.

And I prayed with every step.

Yeshua, I trust you.

Lead me.

Protect me.

Do not let me die before I can tell the world what you have done for me.

I walked toward the lights of the arrays crossing with my hands raised above my head, my heart hammering in my chest.

The distance between where TK had dropped me off and the Israeli checkpoint felt like the longest walk of my life.

Every step took me farther from everything I had ever known and closer to people I had been trained to see as enemies.

The night was cold and dark and I could hear the hum of Israeli surveillance drones overhead.

Their cameras watching every movement in the buffer zone.

I knew snipers were positioned in the towers, their rifles trained on me, ready to shoot if I made any sudden movement.

So I walked slowly, deliberately, my hands high, shouting in broken Hebrew that I had learned from listening to Israeli radio broadcasts.

I shouted, “Ani lehikan, I want to surrender.

Ani lushak, I am not armed.

Aniakhzra, I’m asking for help.

” My voice cracked with fear and desperation.

Bright lights suddenly flooded the area, blinding me.

I stopped walking and dropped to my knees, keeping my hands raised, squinting against the glare.

A voice came over a loudspeaker in Arabic, commanding me to lie flat on the ground with my arms and legs spread.

I obeyed immediately, pressing my face into the cold dirt, my body shaking.

I could hear shouting, the sound of boots running toward me, orders being barked in Hebrew.

Within seconds, soldiers were on me.

Rough hands grabbed my arms, pulled them behind my back, and zip tied my wrists.

They searched me thoroughly, checking for weapons, for explosives, for any threat.

They shouted questions at me in Hebrew and Arabic.

Who are you? Where did you come from? Are you alone? Is this a trap? I answered as clearly as I could through my panic.

My name is Khalil Mazri.

I came from Gaza.

I am alone.

I am not a threat.

I am seeking asylum.

I need protection.

Please do not send me back.

They blindfolded me, lifted me to my feet, and led me into a vehicle.

I could not see where they were taking me.

But I could hear radio chatter, tense voices coordinating, trying to determine if I was a legitimate asylum seeker or a terrorist using a new tactic.

The vehicle drove for maybe 20 minutes before stopping.

I was pulled out, led down several corridors, and finally pushed into a chair.

The blindfold was removed, and I found myself in a small windowless interrogation room.

Three men sat across from me, intelligence officers from Shinbet, Israel’s internal security service.

They did not introduce themselves.

They just stared at me with cold, calculating eyes.

One of them, a man in his 40s with gray hair and a scar on his cheek, spoke to me in Arabic.

He said, “You claim you want asylum.

You claim you are not a threat, but you are the son of Ismile Masri, a Hamas commander.

You participated in the October 7th attack.

You are a terrorist.

Why should we believe anything you say? Why should we not throw you in a cell and forget about you? I looked him in the eyes and said, “Because I am telling you the truth.

Yes, I am Ismile Masri’s son.

Yes, I was part of October 7th.

Yes, I have done terrible things, but I am not that person anymore.

Something happened to me.

I met someone who changed everything.

I am here because if I stay in Gaza, my own family will kill me.

I became a follower of Yeshua, Jesus, and in Gaza that is a death sentence.

The three men exchanged glances.

Eh, one of them smirked.

He said, “A follower of Jesus.

You expect us to believe that a Hamas fighter suddenly became a Christian and now you want us to save you? This is ridiculous.

You are lying.

” I shook my head and said, “I am not lying.

I know it sounds impossible, but it is the truth.

I can prove it.

Ask me anything about what I know.

I will tell you everything.

locations of tunnels, names of commanders, weapons, caches, operational plans.

I have nothing to hide anymore.

I just want safety.

I want a chance to live.

For the next 6 hours, they interrogated me.

They asked me detailed questions about Hamas operations, about my father’s role, about the command structure, about the tunnels, about the October 7th attack.

I answered everything.

I gave them information that I knew would be valuable, intelligence that could help them, details that only someone on the inside would know.

I told them about the tunnel complex where I had been buried, about the routes we used to move weapons, about safe houses where commanders hid.

I drew maps.

I named names.

I gave them everything.

Not because I wanted to betray my people, but because I had no other way to prove I was telling the truth.

And because I knew that Yeshua was bigger than politics, bigger than nationalism, bigger than the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

He had called me out of darkness, and I was walking into the light, no matter the cost.

The interrogators left the room several times to verify the information.

I was giving them.

Each time they came back, they seemed slightly less suspicious.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the man with the scar leaned back in his chair and said, “Your information checks out.

Either you’re telling the truth or you are the most sophisticated operative Hamas has ever sent.

We are going to hold you here while we investigate further.

If your story is verified, we will consider your asylum request.

If it is not, you will be charged as a terrorist and imprisoned.

Understand? I nodded.

They took me to a detention cell, a small concrete room with a metal bed, a toilet, and a single light bulb.

They locked the door and left me alone.

I sat on that cold metal bed, exhausted, terrified, but also strangely at peace.

I had crossed the border.

I was out of Gaza.

I was alive.

I prayed, thanking Yeshua for protecting me, asking him to continue to guide me through whatever came next.

I spent 3 weeks in that detention facility.

During that time, Israeli intelligence continued to interrogate me, verify my claims, and assess whether I was a genuine asylum seeker or a security threat.

They brought in experts who questioned me about Islam and Christianity, testing to see if my conversion was real or fabricated.

I told them about Ruth, about the tunnel collapse, about my prayer, about finding the testimonies online, about Tariq and the underground church, about my baptism.

I recited Bible verses I had memorized.

I explained the gospel to them.

Some of them listened with genuine curiosity.

Others remained skeptical.

But slowly the attitude toward me began to shift.

They realized I was not lying.

They realized I was truly a convert, truly fleeing persecution, truly in danger if I was sent back.

Finally, after 3 weeks, I was told that my asylum request had been approved.

I would be allowed to stay in Israel temporarily while my case was processed and eventually I would be relocated to a third country.

They moved me to a different facility, a transition center for refugees and asylum seekers run by a humanitarian organization.

It was not a prison.

It was a dormatory style building with shared rooms, a cafeteria, and a recreation area.

There were people from all over, from Syria, from Sudan, from Eritraa.

All of them fleeing war or persecution.

And there were a few others like me.

Palestinians who had converted to Christianity and escaped Gaza or the West Bank.

Meeting them was overwhelming.

I was not alone.

There were others who had walked the same impossible path.

One of them was a man named Samir, about my age, who had been a fighter for Palestinian Islamic Jihad before Yeshua appeared to him in a dream.

Another was a woman named Ree, who had been disowned by her family in Hbron after they discovered she was reading the Bible.

We became friends, a small community of exiles, people who had lost everything but found the one thing that mattered.

During my time in that facility, I was connected with a Messianic Jewish ministry that worked with Arab Christian converts.

They provided me with counseling, with disciplehip, with practical help.

A pastor named David, a Jewish believer in Yeshua, began meeting with me once a week to teach me more about the Bible and help me process the trauma I had experienced.

He was kind, patient, and wise.

He told me that what I had gone through, losing my family, my country, my identity, was a kind of death.

But he also said it was the death that Yeshua promised, the death that leads to resurrection.

He said, “Chalil, you are like the Apostle Paul.

You were Saul, a persecutor, a fighter, a man defined by hatred and zeal for a cause.

But Yeshua appeared to you, knocked you down, and transformed you.

Now you are Paul, a witness, a testimony, a living example of the power of the gospel to change anyone.

Your story is not over.

God has a purpose for you.

Those words gave me hope.

But I also struggled deeply with guilt and grief.

I thought about my wife Hanan and my son every single day.

I wondered if they were okay, if they hated me, if they understood why I had left.

I thought about my mother, about my sister Mariam, about my brothers.

I thought about my father and imagined his rage and shame when Yousef told him the truth.

I knew my name was being cursed in Gaza.

I knew I was considered a traitor, a collaborator, a disgrace.

The weight of that was crushing.

But David reminded me that Yeshua himself was rejected by his own people.

That he was called a blasphemer and a traitor.

That he was handed over to be crucified by the very people he came to save.

He said, “You are sharing in the sufferings of Christ, and that is an honor, not a shame.

” After 2 months in Israel, I was told that my relocation had been arranged.

I would be sent to a country in Europe, a place where I could live safely, where I could rebuild my life, where I could openly practice my faith without fear.

I was given a plane ticket, new identity documents, and contact information for a church and a Christian refugee organization that would help me resettle.

The day I left Israel, I stood at the airport in Tel Aviv, looking out at the land that had been my enemy for so long, the land I had fired rockets at, the land I had hated.

And I felt an overwhelming sadness and gratitude at the same time.

Sadness for all the years of hatred and violence and death.

Gratitude that Yeshua had broken through all of that and shown me a better way.

I prayed for Israel.

I prayed for Palestine.

I prayed for peace.

Real peace.

The peace that only Yeshua could bring.

I arrived in Europe and was taken to a small city where there was a community of Arab Christians, many of them refugees like me.

I was given a small apartment, help with language classes, and support from a local church.

For the first time in my life, I could worship Yeshua openly.

I could go to church on Sunday without hiding.

I could own a Bible without fear.

I could pray out loud without looking over my shoulder.

The freedom was overwhelming.

I cried the first time I walked into a church service and heard people singing praise to Yeshua without whispering, without fear, with hands raised and voices loud.

I had never experienced anything like it.

This was what it meant to be free.

Not political freedom, not national freedom, but spiritual freedom.

the freedom to be who Yeshua had made me, a son of God, forgiven, redeemed, loved.

But I could not stay silent about what had happened to me.

I knew that my story was not just for me.

It was for others.

For Muslims who were searching, for secret believers who felt alone, for people who thought that someone like me, a Hamas fighter, could never be saved.

Six months after arriving in Europe, I was approached by a Christian media ministry that recorded video testimonies of former Muslims.

They asked if I would be willing to share my story.

I hesitated.

I knew that going public would mean I could never return to Gaza, never reconcile with my family, never have any hope of seeing my son again.

It would mean permanently burning every bridge, making myself a permanent target.

But I also knew that Yeshua had not saved me just for myself.

He had saved me to be a witness, to be a voice, to tell the world what he was doing in the darkest places on earth.

So I agreed.

I sat in front of a camera in a small studio and I told my story.

I told them who I was, whose son I was, what I had done.

I told them about Ruth, about the tunnel, about my prayer, about Yeshua saving me.

I told them about the underground church in Gaza, about TK, about my baptism, about my escape.

I told them about the 300 believers hidden in the strip, meeting in secret, risking everything, encountering Yeshua in dreams and visions.

And I ended with a declaration that I knew would shock people.

I said, “Yhua is not just appearing in Iran or in other Muslim countries.

He’s appearing in Gaza right now in the middle of war, in the middle of hatred, in the middle of the darkest spiritual oppression.

He is breaking through.

He is calling Palestinians.

He is calling Hamas members.

He is calling people who have been taught to hate in his name.

And he is building his church, a church that bombs cannot destroy, that governments cannot shut down, that hatred cannot overcome.

The video was posted online and I waited nervously to see what would happen.

I did not know if anyone would care, if anyone would believe me, if it would make any difference.

But within days, I started receiving messages.

Messages from people all over the world.

Some were angry, calling me a traitor, a Zionist agent, a false convert.

Some were from Israelis who did not trust me, who thought it was a trick.

But many, so many were from people saying, “I am Palestinian and I had the same dream.

I am in Gaza and I believe in Yeshua, too.

” I thought I was the only one.

Thank you for speaking.

Now I know I am not alone.

I answered every message I could.

I prayed for each person.

I connected people with underground networks.

I watched as Yeshua used my story to encourage others to give hope to show that no one was beyond his reach.

One message broke me completely.

It came 4 months after the video was posted.

It was from a number I did not recognize.

Sent through an encrypted messaging app.

The message said, “Chal, this is Yousef.

I saw your video.

I could not believe it was you.

I was so angry.

I told father everything that night just like I said I would.

He was furious.

He said you were dead to the family, that your name should never be spoken again.

But I could not stop thinking about what you said to me in the street, about Yeshua loving me, about him dying for me.

I started having dreams.

Khalil, the same man you described, the man in white.

He keeps appearing to me.

He keeps calling my name.

I fought it for months, but I cannot fight anymore.

I believe.

I gave my life to Yeshua 3 weeks ago.

I found Tariq.

I am part of the church now.

I am baptized.

I know what this means.

I know the danger.

But I had to tell you, you were right.

He is worth everything.

I sat there staring at my phone, tears streaming down my face, unable to speak, barely able to breathe.

My brother, my younger brother, Yousef, the one who had threatened to turn me in, the one who had given me 2 hours to run, had encountered Yeshua.

He was saved.

He was my brother now, not just by blood, but by the blood of Yeshua.

I wrote back immediately, “Yesef, I am so proud of you.

I am praying for you every day.

Stay strong, stay hidden, trust Yeshua.

He will protect you.

One day, we will see each other again.

If not in this world, then in the next.

And until then, we have the same father, the same savior, the same spirit.

We are brothers in the truest sense.

” Now, I love you.

He wrote back, “I love you too, Khalil.

Pray for our family.

Pray that they will see what we have seen.

Today, I live in Europe.

I work with ministries that serve Arab Christians and help refugees.

I continue to share my testimony whenever I am asked in churches, in conferences, in videos, in interviews.

I tell people that Yeshua is not a Western religion.

He’s not a political weapon.

He’s not the enemy of Arabs or Palestinians.

He is the savior of the world.

And he is calling everyone from every nation, every tribe, every language, every background.

I tell them what is happening in Gaza, in the West Bank, across the Middle East.

That Yeshua is appearing in dreams and visions to Muslims who have never read the Bible, who have been taught to reject him, who have no human way of knowing about him.

That the church is growing in the most impossible places, in war zones, in refugee camps, in prisons, in tunnels beneath the earth.

that no government can stop it, no military can destroy it, no hatred can overcome it.

I tell them about the testimonies I continue to hear about the Hamas fighter who saw Yeshua the night before a suicide mission and laid down his explosives.

About the woman in Janine who was healed of cancer after dreaming of Yeshua touching her.

about the Imam in Nablus who preached against Christianity for 20 years until Yeshua appeared to him and said, “You teach about me, but you do not know me.

” About the teenage girl in Ramallah who was being forced into marriage until Yeshua gave her supernatural courage to run away and find believers who helped her escape.

These are not stories from aundred years ago.

These are happening now today.

As you read these words, Yeshua is moving in the Middle East in a way that has never been seen before in history.

And it is only the beginning.

I also pray I pray for Gaza every single day.

I pray for the war to end, for the suffering to stop, for peace to come.

But I do not pray for political peace because I know that will never last.

I pray for the peace of Yeshua.

The peace that changes hearts.

The peace that makes Israelis and Palestinians into brothers and sisters.

The peace that transcends borders and nationalism and ancient hatreds.

I pray for my family.

I pray that my father will encounter Yeshua before he dies.

I pray that my mother will have dreams.

I pray that my wife Hanan and my son will somehow someday come to know the truth.

I pray for Tariq and the underground church in Gaza for their protection, for their boldness, for their perseverance.

And I pray for Muslims everywhere who are searching, who feel empty, who are tired of hatred and violence and fear.

I pray that Yeshua will appear to them just like he appeared to me.

If you’re watching this, if you’re reading this and you are Muslim, I want you to know something.

Yeshua sees you.

He knows your name.

He knows the pain you carry, the questions you’re afraid to ask, the emptiness you feel inside.

He’s not your enemy.

He’s not a western god or a Jewish god or a Christian god.

He’s the god of all creation.

And he loves you with a love you cannot imagine.

He proved that love by dying for you.

By taking the punishment for your sins, by rising from the dead to offer you eternal life.

You do not have to earn it.

You cannot earn it.

You just have to receive it.

Believe in him.

Trust in him.

Call out to him.

Say, “Yeshua, if you are real, reveal yourself to me.

I want to know you.

” And then wait because I promise you, he will answer.

He answered me in a tunnel beneath Gaza.

He will answer you wherever you are.

I want to invite you to do something.

If this testimony has touched your heart, if you believe that Yeshua is moving, if you want to stand with believers in Gaza and across the Middle East, write in the comments, “Prince of peace, come to Gaza and Israel.

” Let that be a prayer, a declaration, a cry for the only one who can truly bring peace to this broken land.

And if you are a believer, pray for the underground church.

Pray for Tariq, for Yousef, for Leila, for Rasheed, for Bilal, for all the secret followers of Yeshua in Gaza who are risking their lives every day just to worship him.

Pray that they will stand firm.

Pray that the gospel will spread.

Pray that Yeshua will be glorified even in the midst of war and death and suffering.

because he is being glorified.

His light is shining in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

May God bless you.

May Yeshua reveal himself to you and may the Holy Spirit give you courage to follow him no matter the cost.

Your light cannot be chained.

Not by Hamas, not by war, not by hatred.

Yeshua is moving in Gaza right now and nothing can stop