You begin to hate the sin that cost me so much.

You begin to love righteousness because you love me.

Yes, you still struggle with sin because you still live in a fallen world, in a fallen body.

But the trajectory of your life changes.

You are being transformed day by day into my likeness.

This is sanctification.

This is the work of grace.

It doesn’t lead to lentiousness.

It leads to freedom.

Freedom from the slavery of sin.

Freedom from the burden of trying to earn your salvation.

Freedom to become who you were always meant to be.

I felt tears running down my face again.

His words were penetrating deep into my heart into places I had kept locked away even from myself.

Places where doubt lived, where fear lived, where secret sins lived, places where I had hidden my uncertainties about whether I was good enough, whether I had done enough, whether God truly loved me or merely tolerated me as long as I performed the right rituals.

I’m afraid, I whispered.

I’m afraid of what accepting this would mean.

I’m afraid of losing everything.

My family, my career, my community, my identity.

I’m afraid of being alone.

I’m afraid of being hated.

I’m afraid of dying for this.

I know, he said softly.

And he stepped closer to me again, close enough that I could see the compassion in his eyes, deep as an ocean.

I was afraid too, in the garden of Gethsemane the night before they arrested me.

I prayed so intensely that my sweat became like drops of blood.

I asked the father if there was any other way if this cup could pass from me.

I knew what was coming.

The betrayal, the arrest, the mockery, the beatings, the crown of thorns, the nails, the cross, the separation from the father as he poured out his wrath on me for the sins of the world.

I was afraid, but I also said, “Not my will, but yours be done.

I went to the cross because I loved you.

I endured the shame and the pain and the death because you were worth it to me.

And I am asking you to take up your cross and follow me.

It won’t be easy.

It will cost you everything.

But I promise you, Abdul Raman, I promise you on my life, on my death, on my resurrection, that I will be with you.

I will never leave you.

I will never forsake you.

And whatever you lose for my sake, you will gain a hundfold in this life and eternal life in the age to come.

I fell to my knees then, my body shaking with sobs.

63 years of certainty, of conviction, of religious dedication.

All of it crumbling like a house built on sand when the waves come.

And yet underneath the fear and the grief and the loss, I felt something else.

Something I had not felt in a very long time, maybe ever.

Peace.

A deep, profound peace that made no rational sense given what I was facing, given what I was about to lose.

But it was there, solid and real, like a rock beneath my feet, even as everything else washed away.

I don’t know if I can do this, I said through my tears.

I don’t know if I’m strong enough.

You’re not, he said, and he knelt down beside me, his hand on my shoulder, warm and solid and real.

But I am.

My strength is made perfect in weakness.

When you are weak, then you are strong, because then you rely not on yourself, but on me.

I will give you the words to speak when the time comes.

I will give you the courage to stand when everything in you wants to run.

I will give you the peace that surpasses understanding when the world is in chaos around you.

Trust me, Abdul Raman, take the leap of faith.

I will catch you.

And then he was gone.

He did not fade away dramatically like in a movie.

He did not disappear in a flash of light or a puff of smoke.

He simply was not there anymore as if he had never been.

except that the room felt cold and empty in his absence, like all the warmth and life and reality had left with him.

The books on my shelves seemed less real.

The furniture seemed like stage props.

My own body seemed insubstantial.

For a moment after he left, everything seemed fake, like I was living in a shadow world, and he had been the only real thing.

I have been sitting here for the last hour now trying to process what happened, trying to convince myself that it was a dream or a hallucination or some kind of neurological event.

A stroke, maybe a brain tumor, something, anything that would allow me to dismiss what I experienced.

But I know it was not.

It was more real than anything else in my life has ever been.

The memory is not fading like a dream would.

It is sharp, clear, detailed, more vivid than my memories of yesterday or last week.

I can still smell the scent that filled the room, like incense and rain and flowers and something else I cannot name, something that does not exist in this world.

I can still feel the sensation of touching his hand, the warmth of his skin, the texture of the scar under my fingers, the surge of knowledge and truth and love that flowed through that contact.

I have started doing what he asked.

I went to my bookshelf and found my copy of the Bible, a book I have owned for years, but have only ever read critically, as a source to be refuted in debates with Christians.

I opened it to the Gospel of John, and I began to read, not as a Muslim scholar looking for errors and contradictions, but as a seeker looking for truth.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made.

Without him nothing was made that has been made.

In him was life and that life was the light of all mankind.

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

I have read these words before many times always dismissing them as Christian innovation as corruption of the original message of Jesus who was only a prophet and a messenger.

But reading them now after what I experienced tonight they resonated differently.

They rang true in a way they never had before.

I kept reading.

I read about John the Baptist preparing the way for the Lord.

I read about Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Kaa.

I read about Jesus clearing the temple, overturning the tables of the money changers, declaring that his father’s house should not be a marketplace.

I read about Nicodemus coming to Jesus by night and Jesus telling him, “You must be born again.

” I read the most famous verse in the Christian Bible.

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.

And as I read, I felt that same peace I had felt when Jesus was here.

That deep profound peace that makes no rational sense.

I felt like I was reading truth.

I felt like I was finally hearing the voice of God clearly without the filter of400 years of Islamic tradition.

I am terrified of what comes next.

I know that if I follow through with this, if I publicly acknowledge that Jesus is Lord, that he died for my sins and rose again, that he is the way and the truth and the life, I will lose everything.

My position at Alazar will be revoked.

My books will be banned, my colleagues will disown me.

My family may disown me.

I will be declared an apostate, a merr, someone who has left Islam.

And the penalty for apostasy in Islamic law is death.

I think about my wife sleeping peacefully in the next room, unaware that her husband’s entire world view has been shattered tonight.

What will I tell her? How will I explain this? Amina has been a devout Muslim her entire life.

Her faith is simple, unquestioning, pure.

She prays her five daily prayers.

She fasts during Ramadan.

She gives to charity.

She has memorized large portions of the Quran.

She has been a good wife, a good mother, a good Muslim.

What will she say when I tell her that I no longer believe Islam is true? Will she stand with me or will she choose Islam over our marriage? I think about my children.

Khaled, my eldest son, who came to visit tonight with his children.

He is proud of his father, the shake, the respected scholar, the man who has devoted his life to Islamic learning.

What will he feel when his father becomes a public apostate? Shame, anger, betrayal.

Will he allow me to see my grandchildren anymore? Will he tell them that their grandfather has been led astray by Shayan? That they should pray for him but not listen to him.

I think about my daughter Fatima who is a lawyer working on human rights issues in the Muslim world using Islamic principles to argue for justice and equality.

She has always been proud that her father is a progressive scholar, one who argues for reform and fresh thinking.

But this will be too much even for her.

Arguing for women’s rights within Islam is one thing.

Leaving Islam altogether is another.

I think about my son Ahmad who is studying to become an Islamic scholar himself, following in his father’s footsteps, currently in his fifth year at Alazar.

His entire career path is based on Islamic scholarship.

What will happen to him when his father publicly apostasizes? Will he be allowed to continue his studies or will the sins of the father be visited upon the son? I think about my youngest daughter Mariam who is married to an imam in Saudi Arabia.

Her husband is a conservative scholar, much more traditional than I am.

He has always been polite to me, but I know he thinks I am too liberal, too willing to question established interpretations.

What will he do when his father-in-law becomes an apostate? Will he divorce Marryiam for being related to an apostate? Will he cut off all contact? And yet, even thinking about all of this, even contemplating the loss of everything I hold dear, I still feel that peace, that deep unexplainable peace.

Like underneath all the chaos and fear and uncertainty, there is a solid foundation, and his name is Jesus.

I have been a scholar my entire adult life.

I’ve been trained to examine evidence, to weigh arguments, to follow logic wherever it leads.

And the logic of what happened tonight is inescapable.

Either Jesus Christ appeared to me in this room and showed me his scars and told me the truth about his crucifixion and resurrection, or I have gone completely insane.

Those are the only two options.

And if I have gone insane, then this insanity has produced a profound sense of peace and clarity that my supposed sanity never did.

If I have gone insane, then this insanity has answered questions that have troubled me for years, has resolved doubts that I have pushed down and ignored.

If I have gone insane, then I choose this insanity over the sanity that came before.

But I do not think I am insane.

I think I encountered the living God tonight.

I think the veil was pulled back for a moment and I saw reality as it truly is.

I think I met the truth that I have been seeking my entire life.

And that truth has a name and a face and scars in his hands.

I know what the next three months will be like.

I will study.

I will read the Gospels, the book of Acts, the letters of Paul and Peter and John and James.

I will read the early church fathers, the testimonies of those who learned from the apostles.

I will research the historical evidence for the crucifixion and resurrection.

I will prepare myself for the moment when the archaeological discovery is announced.

And I know that when that moment comes, I will have to make a choice.

I can stay silent, can simply not comment on the discovery, can let other scholars do the talking while I retreat into private doubt.

I can try to have it both ways, accepting the evidence privately while maintaining my position publicly.

I can be a coward or I can tell the truth.

I can stand up and say what I know, what I have seen, what I have experienced.

I can acknowledge that the evidence is real, that Jesus was crucified, that he rose again, that the Quran got this fundamental fact wrong.

I can testify to my own encounter with the risen Christ.

I can risk everything for the truth.

I know which choice he is calling me to make.

I know what he wants from me.

The question is whether I will have the courage to do it.

I am recording this testimony now as a witness to what happened tonight.

I do not know when I will release it.

Maybe I will release it in 3 months when the archaeological discovery is announced as my public testimony of what led me to accept the evidence.

Maybe I will release it sooner if I feel led to do so.

Maybe I will never release it and it will be found after my death.

A secret testimony of a secret conversion.

But I need to record it now while the memory is fresh, while I can still feel his presence in this room, while the scent of heaven still lingers in my nostrils.

To my Muslim brothers and sisters who may one day watch this, I want you to know that I understand what you will feel.

Betrayal, anger, confusion, grief.

I was one of you.

I am one of you.

I have believed everything you believe.

I have defended our faith against its critics.

I have devoted my life to Islamic scholarship and teaching.

I have loved Islam with all my heart, but I love truth more.

And the truth is that Jesus Christ is Lord.

The truth is that he died for our sins and rose again on the third day.

The truth is that salvation comes not through following the five pillars or through trying to earn God’s favor through good deeds, but through faith in what Jesus accomplished on the cross.

This does not mean that everything about Islam is wrong.

The testimony that there is one God, that he is merciful and just, that he will judge the world, that we should pray and fast and give to charity and care for the poor and the widow and the orphan.

All of this is true and good.

Muhammad was right about many things, but he was wrong about Jesus.

And because Jesus is central to the story of salvation, because he is the only way to the father, this error is not a minor one that can be overlooked.

It is fundamental.

I know that many of you will refuse to even consider the evidence when it is announced.

You will immediately declare it to be a forgery, a western conspiracy, a Zionist plot.

You will cite scholars who have never examined the documents but who declare them false because they must be false if Islam is to remain true.

You will choose certainty over truth.

You will choose comfort over investigation.

I am asking you not to do that.

I am asking you to look at the evidence honestly when it’s presented.

I am asking you to read the gospels with an open mind.

I’m asking you to consider the possibility, just the possibility that what you have been taught about Jesus might be wrong.

I am asking you to value truth more than tradition, more than community, more than certainty, more than safety.

This is the hardest thing I have ever had to say.

Harder than any fatwa I have ever issued.

Harder than any lecture I have ever given.

Harder than any book I have ever written.

Because I know the cost.

I know what this will do to my life, to my family, to my reputation.

I know that I am signing my own death warrant by recording these words.

But Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

” I am taking up my cross.

I am losing my life.

And I trust that in losing it, I will find it in him forever.

May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with all who seek the truth wherever it may lead.

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Pay attention to the woman in the white pharmacist coat walking through the staff entrance of Hammad Medical Corporation at 10:55 p.

m.

Her name is Haraya Ezekiel.

She is 29 years old.

A licensed pharmacist from Cebu, Philippines, newlywed, married 11 months ago in a ceremony her mother still talks about.

Her husband Marco dropped her off at the metro station 3 hours ago.

He kissed her on the cheek.

She didn’t look back.

Now watch the man entering through the side corridor at 11:10 p.

m.

Dr.

Khaled Mansor, senior cardiotheric surgeon, 44 years old.

They do not acknowledge each other in the corridor.

They don’t need to.

They’ve done this before.

Three blocks away, a white Toyota Camry idols beneath a broken street lamp.

Inside it, Marco Ezekiel has been watching the staff entrance for 15 minutes.

He is an engineer.

He is systematic.

He is recording everything in his mind the way a man records things when he already knows the answer, but cannot yet say it out loud.

His phone last pings a cell tower at 11:47 p.

m.

300 m from the hospital’s east parking structure.

He is never seen again.

Not that night.

Not the following morning.

not for the 38 hours it takes his wife to report him missing after finishing her shift after taking the metro home after showering after sleeping after eating breakfast.

This is not a story about infidelity.

It is a story about what happened after someone decided that a husband who knew too much was a problem that required a solution and about the single maintenance worker who saw something in a parking structure at 12:15 a.

m.

and said nothing for 14 days and what those 14 days cost.

Pay attention to the woman in the white pharmacist coat walking through the staff entrance of Hammad Medical Corporation at 10:55 p.

m.

Her name is Haraya Ezekiel.

She is 29 years old, a licensed pharmacist from Cebu, Philippines, newlywed, married 11 months ago in a ceremony her mother still talks about.

Her husband Marco dropped her off at the metro station 3 hours ago.

He kissed her on the cheek.

She didn’t look back.

Now watch the man entering through the side corridor at 11:10 p.

m.

Dr.

Khaled Mansor, senior cardiotheric surgeon, 44 years old.

They do not acknowledge each other in the corridor.

They don’t need to.

They’ve done this before.

Three blocks away, a white Toyota Camry idles beneath a broken street lamp.

Inside it, Marco Ezekiel has been watching the staff in trance for 15 minutes.

He is an engineer.

He is systematic.

He is recording everything in his mind the way a man records things when he already knows the answer but cannot yet say it out loud.

His phone last pings a cell tower at 11:47 p.

m.

300 m from the hospital’s east parking structure.

He is never seen again.

Not that night.

Not the following morning.

Not for the 38 hours it takes his wife to report him missing.

After finishing her shift, after taking the metro home, after showering.

After sleeping.

after eating breakfast.

This is not a story about infidelity.

It is a story about what happened after someone decided that a husband who knew too much was a problem that required a solution.

And about the single maintenance worker who saw something in a parking structure at 12:15 a.

m.

and said nothing for 14 days and what those 14 days cost.

Pay attention to the wedding photograph on Marco Ezekiel’s desk.

Mahogany frame, the kind you buy to last.

In it, Marco wears a Barang Tagalog, hand embroidered, commissioned by his mother months before the ceremony.

Heriah stands beside him in an ivory gown, her smile wide enough to compress her eyes into half moons.

The photo was taken at 6:47 p.

m.

on a Saturday in April at the Manila Diamond Hotel at a reception attended by 210 guests.

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