A MOROCCAN MAN’S JOURNEY TO CHRIST
“For more than seven years, I searched the Bible,” says Moroccan-born Michael. Living in a country with no authorised indigenous church, he didn’t meet any Christians until he was in his 20s, Michael’s journey to Christ was difficult and slow. Today he is helping others on that same quest.
“As a boy I had no idea about Christianity,” Michael says. “From first grade we attended Quranic school and learned basic teachings of the Quran.
“When I was a teenager a classmate had a New Testament. He offered to sell it to me. At this time I was searching the Quran and the Hadiths. I was reading about the end of the world and what would happen.”
A LOOK INTO THE NEW TESTAMENT
When Michael opened the New Testament and dipped into the Gospels of Luke and John, he “felt something”. In Revelations he read about the Antichrist and these teachings confirmed what he had read in the Hadiths. So, he went ahead and bought the New Testament.
People told Michael that the Bible was corrupted, but he thought, “Why can’t I read it myself and find the mistakes, and then I can tell the Christians?”
A year into his quest he began listening to a Christian radio broadcast and started a Bible correspondence course. However, this alerted the police who interviewed him, confiscated a lot of the materials and told him to discontinue the course. His parents also urged him to stop and his neighbour grew suspicious, asking “Are you a Christian?” But, Michael says, “They could not stop the radio.”
“I FELT GOD CLOSE TO ME”
After seven years of searching the New Testament, Michael met a Christian for the first time, a missionary “who tried to talk to me about Christianity”. Fearful, Michael refused but agreed to reflect on Jesus’ promise in Matthew 11:28: “Come to me and I will give you rest.”
“I told God I don’t want to become a Christian,” Michael says. From all he had been previously taught he thought God could not possibly want this. Yet he knew he had reached a decision point. I said, “God, if Christianity is the right way, show me and show me how to pray.”
Immediately, Michael says, “I felt God was close to me. I was surprised after that and told God I want to follow Him.”
BECOMING A MESSENGER OF GOD’S LOVE
Michael’s Christian journey had just begun. Since then he has led a small house church of Moroccan believers and is now supporting Christians from outside his homeland in a variety of ways. One of those is through making programs for SAT-7 ARABIC.
Twenty years ago, media played a vital part in overcoming the barriers that would otherwise have prevented him from learning about Christ. Now he is committed to using satellite television so that his fellow countrymen have the same access to that Good News.