An ISIS fighter who reveled in killing Christians now follows Jesus Christ after a \u201cman in white\u201d repeatedly appeared to him in dreams and said, \u201cYou are killing my people,\u201d according to a missionary leader.<\/p>\n
A worker with the international evangelical group Youth With a Mission, or YWAM, came in contact earlier this year with the ISIS fighter, who, though understandably guarded, confided that he had become a Christian.<\/p>\n
He confessed he once had \u201cactually enjoyed\u201d killing Christians, according to Gina Fadely, international director of frontier missions for YWAM.<\/p>\n
Fadely revealed the story in an interview May 29, 2015, on The Voice of the Martyrs Radio Network , the Christian Post reported.<\/p>\n
The ISIS fighter, she said, \u201ctold this YWAM leader that he had begun having dreams of this man in white who came to him and said, \u2018You are killing my people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd he started to feel really sick and uneasy about what he was doing,\u201d Fadely said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fighter said that just before he killed one Christian, the man said, \u2018I know you will kill me, but I give to you my Bible.\u2019\u201d Fadely recounted. \u201cThe Christian was killed and this ISIS fighter actually took the Bible and began to read it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said that in another dream, Jesus asked the ISIS fighter to follow him, and the ISIS fighter \u201cwas now asking to become a follower of Christ and to be discipled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fadely recalled the story in the biblical book of Acts of Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor of Christians who had a dramatic encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and became known as the Apostle Paul.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, who knows? Perhaps this man will be like Saul in the Bible,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In an interview with WND, VOM spokesman Todd Nettleton, who conducted the radio interview, said that what makes the development \u201cso rare is that this ISIS fighter reached out to another Christian and shared his story.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe there are secret Christians within ISIS,\u201d Nettleton said. \u201cMaybe the Christians they are persecuting had a chance to share with them. There are secret Christians within ISIS.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kevin Sutter, a YWAM director who joined Fadley in the radio interview, said an Arab leader had told him that there is a \u201cspiritual hunger\u201d that is \u201cunprecedented\u201d among Muslims.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany people are now following Jesus, but they keep it quiet,\u201d Sutter said. \u201cThey haven\u2019t gone public about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said many \u201ceven have church in their own home\u201d and will \u201cserve communion to one another as they\u2019re watching TV.\u201d<\/p>\n
Convert, be taxed or die<\/p>\n
ISIS has declared the creation of a caliphate in portions of Syria and Iraq, and garnered pledges of allegiance from Sunni jihadists across North Africa and in other parts of the world.<\/p>\n
ISIS fighters have targeted anyone who does not embrace the militant Sunni Wahhabi form of Islam that originated 200 years ago in Saudi Arabia, which secretly continues to help finance ISIS.<\/p>\n
ISIS kills all Shiite Muslims in territory it conquers as well as other ethnic minorities such as the Yazidis, whose women and children are being sold into slavery.<\/p>\n
ISIS generally does give Christians the choice of converting to Sunni Islam, paying a tax called a jizya or being killed.<\/p>\n
ISIS also is known to have killed other Sunni Muslims whom its fighters believe are not devout enough.<\/p>\n
In February, ISIS beheaded 21 Coptic Christians in Libya and then in April released a propaganda video showing the beheadings of 30 Egyptian Christians, all of whom opted not to convert or pay the tax.<\/p>\n
And now, a U.S. defense official has confirmed ISIS fighters have captured 88 Eritrean Christian refugees in Libya. A spokesman for an Eritrean refugee group said the ISIS jihadists stopped the truck and demanded the Muslims on board identify themselves. Those who claimed adherence to Islam were then asked questions about the Quran.<\/p>\n
Nettleton said Christians should not \u201cwrite off\u201d ISIS fighters \u201cas being out of reach of God\u2019s grace and out of reach of God\u2019s spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the case of the unidentified ISIS fighter, Nettleton said he \u201creached out, thereby potentially blowing his cover and getting himself killed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would be told return (to Islam) or be killed,\u201d Nettleton said. \u201cThe fact he reached out shows a great deal of courage.\u201d<\/p>\n
ISIS generally, however, has not accepted such repentance and has been known to kill those who may have sought to return to Islam, believing they are not faithful enough.<\/p>\n
Muslims refer to such conversions as apostasy, which they see as a conscious abandonment of Islamic law, or Shariah, in word and deed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An ISIS fighter who reveled in killing Christians now follows Jesus Christ after a \u201cman in white\u201d repeatedly appeared to him in dreams and said, \u201cYou are killing my people,\u201d according to a missionary leader. A worker with the international evangelical group Youth With a Mission, or YWAM, came in contact earlier this year with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1233,2458,391,2442,989,1409,2456,759,1547,1252,2457],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6832"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}