From Religiosity to the Reality of a Triune God
“Christians worship the triune God: a Father Who loves unconditionally, a Son Who incarnates and is willing to die for us so that we may be forgiven, and an imminent Holy Spirit Who lives in us.”
Nabeel Qureshi
My family was devout; growing up in the 1980s I eagerly participated in religious practices, and was encouraged at home to believe and obey Islamic principles. Although there was no requirement for boys to fast during Ramadan until the age of fifteen, I was keen to join in from a very young age. I remember from just four or five years old getting excited as the month approached because I would be able to fast during daylight hours and take part in the feasting after sunset.
I earned a reputation in my local community for being moral and pious. At school, I was one of just three boys entrusted with the task of leading the rest of the school in prayer and recitation of the Quran every morning before lessons began. I believed that I was doing my best to please Allah and to gain favour with him and a chance to enter heaven when I died. I believed in the reality of judgment, heaven, and hell – and understood that avoiding sin and doing good deeds were the requirements to get me where I wanted to go.
In my heart of hearts, though, I was afraid of who I really was. Secretly, with a few close friends, I would get up to all sorts of mischief, and I knew very well that I was merely presenting a false front to the world. Specific sins that I had committed, and continued to commit, played on my conscience. I also seemed somehow to understand that these sins that were acted out in practice came from a sinful nature. I felt I could not make the right choices in every circumstance because something bad inside me led me to do what I knew was wrong. From the age of only eleven or twelve, my sin began to feel like a heavy weight, tarnishing any enjoyment I might otherwise have in life. It drove me even further into religious practice in my desperate attempts to please my God and to outweigh my sinful deeds with good ones. I wanted forgiveness for the sins I had already committed, and peace to know that I would not displease Allah in the future.
Despite the turmoil on the inside, I maintained an outward appearance of piety and cheerfulness. Only I knew that my heart was dirty, rotten and desperate. I yearned for some clear assurance that I would be forgiven. I prayed and prayed and read the Quran as much as I could, calling out to Allah for pardon. This went on for three or four years until, receiving no clear answer to my helpless cry, I became totally disillusioned with Islam and its power to heal my soul. No one in Islam can be sure in this life that they will go to heaven. They can only pray, follow the rules, and try to be good. I wanted comfort. I wanted to know that my prayers were heard. All I knew was uncertainty and doubt. Above all, my sin was before me every day, accusing me and threatening me with punishment and destruction when my life on earth was over. By the age of sixteen, I was sure of one thing: I was going to hell when I died and there was nothing I could do about it.
Ultimately, I left Iran as an asylum seeker in September 2000, originally hoping to find my way to Germany. Contrary to my plans, I ended up in London and I had to begin an application for asylum there. Within a month of my arrival, I was given a Farsi Bible which had been sent by an Iranian in the Netherlands. A letter from the sender was included with the Bible, and it told his story. Until that time, I had never heard of a religious book called the Bible. I read the sender’s letter first. I can’t remember much about it, or even the name of the man. What I do recall is that it said that God can speak to us personally, that Jesus is God-made-man, and that He is able and willing to forgive sin. These ideas were strange and new to me, and my mind could not accept them.
Islam accepts the Torah (believed to be the books of Moses) and the Gospel, or Injil, of Jesus as God’s revealed word to his former prophets. The Torah is associated with the Jews, and the Injil with Christians, and the Quran speaks with respect of the “People of the book”. We have also heard of the Psalms, or Zabur, and Noah is believed to have received a book. Islam also teaches, however, that these books have been changed from their original forms, so they are not reliable, and not to be read. I had no idea that the Torah and the Gospels were both contained in a book called the Bible, along with the Psalms, the histories, the books of many other prophets I had never heard of, and Paul’s letters. It was all completely new for me.
With the convert’s story there were also instructions for how to read the Bible, advising one to start with the New Testament. I had little else to do with my time, so I started to read. When I got to the Old Testament, I found that it was full of laws that I knew would be impossible for me to keep. There were more laws even than in Islam. I felt that this book was also condemning me, so I threw it into a corner of my room and gave up reading it.
I was surprised a couple of weeks later to be invited to attend an Iranian church, which happened to meet close to where I was living. I went along reluctantly, but with some curiosity. When the meeting began, something happened inside me that I can’t really explain. Some presence or power came over me so that I was unable to stand. I began to think that there was some kind of spiritual reality in this place and among these people that I had not been able to experience in Islam, and I resolved to question the pastor at the end of the service.
I asked him about the Bible. I still had the impression up to that point that it was just some minor and little-known religious text, but we had been reading from it in the church, so I asked whether it was read only by this small cult, or whether other religious groups also used it. The pastor kindly explained to me that the Bible had been read by all Christians in all ages. The Old Testament had been read by the Jews up to the time of Jesus, and the New Testament was written later by the early Christian believers in Jesus as the promised Messiah and Saviour of mankind. He said that it was really just one book because the message was the same throughout, even though there had been many different human writers. Much of the Old Testament contained prophecies about Jesus, even including specific details about places and events that would be fulfilled in His life. Above all, both Old and New Testaments contained the message that salvation for mankind was through the suffering and death of the Messiah, Jesus.
The pastor spoke so clearly and persuasively, with such evident personal conviction, that I started to think that maybe we Muslims had been lied to all along about the Bible and that perhaps only Christians had the truth about God and about how to know Him and have a relationship with Him. As these thoughts and suspicions entered my mind, I had a strong defensive reaction: I could not accept this and change my belief! I resolved then and there to make a close study of the Bible and to prove that what Islam taught about it was true: I would prove that the Bible was untrustworthy.
I began to gather different translations of the Bible in English and in other languages and to carefully study and compare them. I had almost nothing else to occupy me as I waited for my asylum case to be dealt with, but I had no interest in anything else either. It had quickly become an overwhelming obsession for me to find out the truth about the Bible. I would sometimes study for fifteen hours a day, not even stopping to eat and going without food for long periods. I was given accommodation in a different city at this time, several hours away, but I continued to travel to the church in London almost every weekend, keen to learn more about the Bible there also in the services each Sunday. Within six or seven months, contrary to my original intentions, I was convinced that the Bible was true and trustworthy. It was God’s word, in fact, His message to humankind. After nine months I started to call myself a Christian and to do all the things that I saw Christians doing: reading the Bible, praying in the name of Jesus and going to church. I thought that changing my religion was just a matter of making a decision with my mind and my will. I truly accepted and believed that the Christian message was the truth, and my Christian friends at the church accepted me as a genuine Christian believer, but there was still something missing. In fact, I held myself back from partaking in the Lord’s supper and refused baptism. The two sacraments were a step too far for me. When the bread and wine were brought around to the congregation on communion Sundays, I would sit and hold my arms tightly across my chest to show that I was not willing to take them. A part of me wanted to be baptised, but as with the Lord’s supper, I just could not take that step. I felt that I had somehow not yet arrived or achieved what was necessary.
It was clear to me that most of my Christian friends had something that I did not have. They spoke about Christ as though He were a close friend, as though they had an intimate relationship with Him. I had zeal, commitment and even a passion for reaching others with the truth of the gospel. Yet I did not have that nearness to Jesus. I knew deep in my heart that I was still trying by my own efforts to please God, just as I had done as a Muslim. I saw that the gospel message was the truth, and that the assurance of salvation I had always craved was possible for a follower of Jesus Christ, but I still did not have that assurance. Even though I was convinced of the truth of the Bible, I continued to struggle with plaguing doubts about the teaching, unique to Christianity, of the Deity of Christ. How was it possible that God could become man? Muslims teach that the deification or worship of anyone besides God is shirk: the unforgiveable sin; I still had some fear in my heart about this. Behind these doubts was the fact that the Christian teaching of a triune God, a God in Three Persons, is wholly antithetical to the Muslim mindset, which still had so much influence on my thinking.
Around this time I met some Jehovah’s Witnesses. I had never been told anything about them, or been warned that they have their own translation of the Bible. I got deeply involved with them. I discovered significant differences in the way certain verses of their Bible were translated compared to the other English translations I had, and differences in their beliefs and teachings left me utterly confused.
Finally, on the 27th May 2002, I got to the end of my resources: I could carry on no longer. I knew very well the teaching of the Bible about Jesus Christ, about His death and resurrection, about salvation through faith in Him alone, yet I also knew that I was not saved. Jesus Himself said,
“unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
John 3:3 NKJV
I knew that I hadn’t yet really been converted, or come to a close personal relationship with God. As had become my habit, I got up that day at seven o’clock in the morning and began immediately to try to study the Bible, but for the first time, I found that I couldn’t do it. I threw the Bible into the bin and fell on my knees, praying and crying out to Jesus to save me. I knew that I needed Him, and I was not prepared to let Him go.
I am not aware of how long I was praying and crying out to Jesus in that way, but somehow, I picked up my Farsi Bible again and the pages fell open at Isaiah 55. This chapter begins with the wonderful words,
“Ho! Everyone who thirsts,
Isaiah 55:1-3 NKJV
Come to the waters;
And you who have no money,
Come, buy and eat!
Yes, come, buy wine and milk
Without money and without price.
Why spend money for what is not bread,
And your wages for what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,
And let your soul delight itself in abundance.
Incline your ear and come to Me.
Hear, and your soul shall live;
And I will make an everlasting covenant with you –
The sure mercies of David.
These verses speak clearly about how our salvation is a free gift; it does not depend on our own efforts to please God; it is not bought. I had read them many times before. I continued to read:
Seek the Lord while He may be found,
Isaiah 55:6-7 NKJV
Call upon Him while He is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
Let him return to the Lord,
And He will have mercy on him;
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.
This spoke to me very personally as I thought about my own sin, and about this time in my life when God seemed to be near and calling me to Himself.
It was verses 8 and 9 that struck me more than anything, however:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
Isaiah 55:8-9 NKJV
Nor are your ways My ways,”
says the LORD.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts…”
As I read it felt suddenly as though someone had switched on a light in a dark room. I could see everything clearly for the first time. The truth of the gospel seemed to move from being an intellectual idea in my mind to a living reality in my heart. The reality of the cross and the truth that Christ had died for my sins personally was so clear that I felt like a heavy physical burden was lifted from my shoulders and hung upon that cross. I was utterly astonished that the God of heaven and earth had spoken directly to me; more than this, He had dealt personally and directly with the problem of my sin so that I could come near to Him, stand before Him, and enter into a relationship with Him. I took a blue highlighter pen and plunged anew into my Bible study, looking for Jesus and His work of salvation all over the New and Old Testaments. By four o’clock in the afternoon, most of the pages in my Bible were covered in blue ink.
A few hours later, in the midst of my state of heavenly joy, I suddenly heard the sound of the reciting of the Quran, a sound so familiar from my past life in Iran. I think that a man in the flat above me was playing a recording, though this had never happened before, and it never happened again after that day. I was immediately seized by an immense fear, the like of which I have never experienced before or since. I had this thought: you are trying to leave Islam but Allah is calling you back. Simultaneously, another thought came to my mind: perhaps this was Satan trying to keep me from true salvation in Jesus Christ. I remembered something I had read in that letter from the Netherlands that came with the first Bible I was ever given: it warned that Satan is a real being who comes to kill and to steal and to destroy, as Jesus said. I felt utterly powerless, without the wisdom to know which way to turn. I cried out directly to Jesus for help and He spoke to me very clearly from Isaiah 54, just one chapter before the one I had begun reading that morning:
“Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed; neither be disgraced, for you will not be put to shame; for you will forget the shame of your youth…”
Isaiah 54:4 NKJV
This message was so apt and powerful in that situation that the fear vanished in a moment and was replaced with joy and peace.
I called my pastor that very day to tell him what had happened to me, and the first question I asked him was when the pool would be ready for me to be baptised. The very first Sunday I attended church again after my conversion we celebrated communion, and I joyfully partook. I was baptised a few months later in December 2002.
From that day alone in my room with my Bible, my walk with Christ began and I have never looked back. I have failed and sinned many times, and I have experienced disappointments with family, friends and others. Consistently I have come back to the same place: the cross of Christ and the empty tomb. Jesus is my Saviour and will continue to be to the end.
Early in 2003 I began attending a church in the city where I was now living, and gradually stopped travelling back and forth to London. Before I was saved, I had only wanted to attend the Iranian church because I had been determined that I would not allow myself to be brainwashed by white western Christians. The only time I had attended a local Sunday service, it had been at a Korean church with a Korean friend. But I met someone from a local English language church one day in the city centre and began to attend his church regularly. A few other Iranians were attending, and I sometimes found myself interpreting the service for them each week. Within a short time, the church invested in translation equipment, and it became my regular routine to help my fellow Iranians understand the preaching in their own language. I have moved church a couple of times, got married and had children and settled into this ministry. I take a minibus from my current church on Sunday mornings and go to pick up Iranian asylum seekers and refugees from various places around the city and bring them to the services. I have helped to lead Farsi Bible studies and I thank God for giving me this opportunity to see many Iranians finding both their physical and spiritual home in the UK, and coming to faith in Christ.
Persian Voices 