Jesus reveals His glory

Gordon Nickel

In addition to reports of dreams and visions, one long-time evangelist suggested that in some cultures dreams and visions may actually take the place of a volitional decision for conversion. The names of some of the interviewees have been changed in order to allow them to continue to serve the Lord where they live.

An American worker under the Southern Baptists named Samuel said that dreams and visions have a role in most conversions from Islam with which he and his colleagues are familiar.

George is a Pakistani Christian and producer of the tribal radio program in which Mennonite Brethren Missions/Services participates. George said he didn't think that dreams or visions of Jesus would help non-Christians unless they knew enough about Jesus to "recognize" Him. He told the story of a Muslim girl who first confessed Christ, and then soon afterwards saw a vision of Jesus the Shepherd.

Peter, a faithful convert from Islam, told the story of how several years ago he had been riding in a bus which was passing a Muslim shrine beside the road in Karachi. (In Pakistan, Muslim shrines possess strong and tangible occult power.) Peter said that regularly the bus driver would slow down and turn off the cassette player when he drove past the shrine out of respect (fear?) for the spirit present there. But this time the driver was daydreaming and entered the force zone of the shrine carelessly.

When the bus came near to the shrine, it began to swerve wildly from one side of the road to the other. The driver could do nothing to control it, and the passengers started screaming as if they were all going to die. Peter saw a hand reach down from heaven, grab the bus and steady it on the road. The bus then continued on its way and everything went back to normal. Later, when Peter told a New Zealand missionary named Jonathan Carson about the hand from heaven, Jonathan told him, "That was Jesus." Peter thinks of that vision experience as the moment of his conversion. He's been faithful to Christ ever since.

A grassroots Pakistani pastor in a town in Sindh told of a Muslim woman teacher in the town who repeatedly saw visions of Jesus, and recognized the Lord. But when she began telling others about it, reported the pastor, her family became afraid that she would convert from Islam, and they "snuffed it out".

Arne Rudvin is a Norwegian Lutheran evangelist who took up Pakistani citizenship and served the Church of Pakistan as bishop of Karachi for many years. Rudvin said that during the last 100 years, most of the Muslims who have come to the Lord have been convinced through dreams and visions. He told an anecdote from the early part of this century: A Muslim woman working as a nurse at a mission hospital in northern Pakistan said she couldn't become a Christian because she hadn't yet seen a vision of Jesus!

Rudvin has thought long about dreams and visions from the perspective of a scholar of both the Bible and Islam, a fearless witness to Christ and a spiritual warrior. He suggested that in some cultures, "Dreams and visions take the place of a decision for conversion." He said that the concept of becoming saved through a decision for Christ reflects a Western cultural approach--a stress on the human and on human intellect.

Rudvin told the story of a Muslim being instructed in a dream to go to a certain city and a certain street to see a particular man who could help him. "Most Muslims who come to Christ can tell such a story," Rudvin said. "It's not a fad," he said. "It's an old, old thing. It goes back to the Bible, where Joel prophesied that 'your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions' [2:28]." Rudvin concluded that in the Central Asian context he had more trust in dreams and visions solidifying conversions than in "conversion decisions".

There are also published accounts of dreams and visions in the conversion stories of two Pakistani women, The Torn Veil by Sister Gulshan Esther (Marshall Pickering, 1984) and I Dared to Call Him Father by Bilquis Sheikh (Kingsway, 1979). From an academic perspective, Seppo Syrjanen has documented the role of dreams and visions in conversion stories in his In Search of Meaning and Identity: Conversion to Christianity in Pakistani Muslim Culture (Finnish Society for Missiology and Ecumenics, 1984).

None of the Karachi interviewees thought there was anything unusual in God using dreams and visions to draw men and women to Jesus Christ. One reason may be that the authority of the Bible is denied in Pakistani Islam, and thus it is difficult for Muslims to meet Jesus through reading the Bible. Muslim teachers tell people that the writings of the Bible have been corrupted by Jews and Christians, that we cannot know whether anything in them is true, and that in any case they are abrogated (cancelled) by the coming of the Qur'an. At the same time, young people are strictly forbidden to read the Bible for themselves.

Dreams and visions, on the other hand, are accepted by Pakistani Muslims as experiences in which truth can be communicated. So Jesus reveals his glory directly to those whom God is calling through a dream or vision, and these individuals subsequently accept Jesus' Lordship and the witness of the Bible as well.

God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. He wants all people to know the saving power of the good news about Jesus. The love of God the Father will find ways beyond our cultural expectations to draw men and women to His Son Jesus Christ.

Gordon Nickel is missions director at Bethany Bible Institute in Hepburn, Sask. and a resource missionary for the Mennonite Brethren Missions/Services Muslim ministries team.

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