Amad was driving to work on his usual route. He had driven through a particular intersection ‘a thousand times’ before with no problems. Today there was very little traffic and the weather was fine. He says,
“I put on a recitation of Surah Yasin to listen to in the car, listening to the beautiful arabic words as I drove. The traffic was light that morning and I remember feeling peaceful, content. I had a good job, a loving wife, healthy children, and my faith. What more could a man ask for?”
The traffic lights were green and he drove ahead as usual. But as he went through the intersection he became aware of a large truck that had ‘run the red light’ and was approaching very fast. He saw everything unfolding, but was unable to stop a horrific accident. Amad slammed his foot on the brake, but it was too late. The impact was instant. The airbag opened with a bang, metal tore with an ear-piercing screeching. Shattered glass rained down upon him. Something was crushing his chest and Amad was struggling to breathe. He tried to say ‘the Shahada’ — a prayer every Muslim is supposed to say before their death — but no words would come out. He remembers being lifted into the ambulance and heard the siren as he was rushed to hospital. Everything sounded distant and hollow. Amad felt his body shutting down and the pain began to fade as the medical staff tried to shock his heart back to life. He heard a doctor say “he’s gone” and then everything fell silent.
Ahmad says,
“I was still aware. I was still me. I felt myself lifting up effortlessly. It was natural, no hands pulling me. I looked down and saw my body on the table… that broken, blood body was mine, but it didn’t feel like me anymore.”
The hospital room and all around started to fade. He drifted through time and space and felt himself being taken from one realm to another. He wasn’t frightened by this experience, but was aware that this was not what the Imams had described would happen at death. For the first time in his life he began to doubt what he had been taught. Time had no meaning in this realm and he didn’t know whether he drifted for seconds, minutes or hours, but he eventually became aware that he was moving towards a presence, a person. He says,
“I could feel it the way you can feel someone watching you even when you can’t see them.”
Meeting Jesus
For his whole 42 years of life Amad had prepared for this moment. He had fasted, prayed, totally trusted in the teaching of Islam and was ready for this moment. He believed that his ‘good deeds’ would be placed on divine weighing scales and would be enough for Allah to grant him a place in heaven, but it didn’t happen that way. He says,
“What I was about to encounter would shatter every belief I had ever held.”
A devout Muslim, Amad prayed five times a day, fasted during ramadan, and believed that Allah was the one true god. He grew up in a strict Muslim household where prayer rugs were laid out ready, and there was no negotiation. His family and community expected strict devotions, and Amad wanted to oblige. Islam was everything for him.
Expecting to meet Allah, Amad was surprised that the person coming towards him was Jesus Christ. He says,
“The moment I saw him I knew exactly who he was. I didn’t need anyone to tell me… every part of my being recognised him instantly. It was Jesus! But this was impossible. Being a Muslim, I didn’t believe in Jesus as God. In Islam Jesus is just the prophet Isa… he definitely didn’t die on a cross and rise again. The Koran specifically denies this.”
But something deeper was happening to Amad. He says,
“My spirit recognised him, not my mind, not my religious training, but my soul knew him!”
This was not what he was expecting. Many years of teaching, prayer and instruction in the Muslim faith could not have prepared him for this moment of enlightenment. It was a shocking revelation. He adds that it was like meeting someone you have known your entire life but never met face to face.
“Like coming home after being lost for years… he had kind eyes, gentle but powerful. His face showed no anger, only love. Pure, overwhelming love… every sin I had ever committed, he saw all of it, but he loved me anyway.
Everyman
Ahmed describes Jesus’ appearance,
“He didn’t look exactly like the paintings I had seen of him. He wasn’t pale with blue eyes, but He wasn’t exactly middle eastern either. His appearance was somehow universal, like he could belong to any people, any nation, any race. He was everyone’s Saviour — not just one culture’s. Light radiated from him… He was the source. The Bible says ‘God is Light’ and in that moment I understood what it meant. This wasn’t just a being surrounded by light, He was light itself.”
Amad was amazed that Jesus knew him and knew everything about him. He had spent his whole life trying to do good to earn Allah’s approval, trying to do enough good deeds to outweigh the bad ones, never knowing if he had done enough.
“The fear of hell was always there lurking in the background, but standing before Jesus there was no fear, only love. Not because I had earned it, not because I deserved it, but because it was in His nature to love… Ask yourself this question right now. What would you do if everything you believed, everything you built your life on was suddenly confronted by a truth so powerful you couldn’t deny it? Would you cling to what you had been taught, or would you surrender to what you know in your deepest soul is real?
Amad suddenly saw himself as he really was, not how he wanted others to see him. He saw all of his faults and failings. He saw his pride, his self-righteousness, all of the times he had judged other people for not being as religious as he was, all of the times he felt superior, but despite all of this the face of Jesus did not change. Even though He could see all of Amad’s faults, He loved him anyway.
From childhood, he had been taught that Christians worshipped three gods and were misguided, but he now knew that the God of the Christians was the real God. Jesus told him the same words he said to his disciples, recorded in the Bible in John 14:6,
“I am the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me.”
Jesus reminded Amad that he had been searching for God his whole life and now he had found the truth. He showed Amad his life story, not as a judgement but as a story, starting from his childhood, right up until the present time. Jesus had heard every prayer and saw how he had been searching for God, and He also showed him the times he had looked down upon others, but He loved him anyway. Jesus told him that He did not come to start a religion, but to restore relationship between God and humanity.
‘Good works’ are not enough
Amad says that Jesus then told him something that would completely shatter his worldview. He had been trying to reach God through good works, never knowing if he had done enough and always fearful that his bad deeds might outweigh his good ones. But Jesus told him that nobody can earn God’s love. He was loved because Jesus chose to love him. No amount of good works could ever be enough to earn God’s love.
Amad said, “This shattered my Islamic world view completely!.. This lifted the weight of trying to be good enough off me. For the first time in my life I felt free, truly free.”
Jesus told Amad that he must go back. This was not what he wanted to hear after finally finding what he had been searching for the past 40 years, but Jesus promised Amad that many would come to faith [in Christ] because of his testimony. He said that many other Muslims were feeling empty, searching for Jesus but not knowing who He is. Amad would win many Muslims to Christ. Jesus showed him glimpses of what was coming, rejection, isolation, hatred. His family would turn their backs on him, there would be death threats. Even his children would be taught to hate him. Jesus told him that even his beloved wife would leave him and his mother would disown him. When Jesus asked if he were willing to face all of this, Amad says,
“Everything within me wanted to say, “No,” wanted to beg Him to let me stay, but… remembering what He had done for me on that cross, I couldn’t refuse.”
Amad felt a strong pulling sensation. He was falling through space at full speed and he ‘slammed’ back into his body. He was suddenly in his body, filled with excruciating pain, in the hospital with alarms blaring. The medical team all looked shocked. The same doctor who had pronounced him dead twenty minuted earlier now pronounced him alive! The doctor asked Amad if he could say his own name, but Amad shocked the medical team as he screamed,
“Jesus! Jesus Christ saved me!”
Family rejection
After twenty minutes without oxygen the doctors could not explain why he did not have brain damage, but every test showed that there was no damage at all to his brain. They would not be able to explain that his screaming about seeing Jesus was due to brain damage!
Sadly, Amad’s wife did divorce him. When he told her how he had met Jesus and how Jesus had given his life to save all who would come to him, she replied,
“I cannot be married to a Kafir, I cannot raise my children with an apostate. You are dead to me.”
Amad says her words hit him harder than the truck that had crushed their car, but he cannot deny what happened. He cannot deny that Jesus died for him and saved him.
His mother refused to talk to him and his children were taken away from him because he was deemed ‘unfit to parent them’ as an ‘apostate’. His brother also turned away from him and he was receiving so many death threats that he had to move to a different area. But he had been to heaven and met Jesus Christ. He was a different person now and he could not, and would not, deny the supernatural, divine transformation that had brought him back from the dead. He says,
“I died a Muslim, but I was raised to life again as a Christian.”
Three days later he was visited in the hospital by a Christian chaplain. They prayed and wept together and the chaplain left him a Bible. The chaplain also helped him to find a new home, a house where he lived with other Christians, a place where they pray together and encourage one another in their newfound faith. Amad was rejected by his blood relatives, but found a new family who loved him and accepted him.
Brotherly love
Six months after his miraculous healing, Amad’s mother agreed to meet him in a coffee shop. She told him that she missed him and pleaded with him to return to Islam and to the family. Amad replied,
“Mama I love you, but I can’t deny what is true. Jesus is real. He is the only way to God. I want you to know Him too.”
Amad says that she left angry, but he knew that he had planted a seed. People started to become Christians when they heard his miraculous testimony. A Muslim who was a long-term friend contacted him and when he heard Amad’s story. He too became a Christian. One after another, people who heard about his miracle also turned to Christ. They had felt the same emptiness, and they also wanted answers.
Ahmad continues to pray every day for his wife, his mother, his children and for Muslim fiends who have not yet found Jesus.
See Amad’s full story on YouTube
Story by Ralph Burden
