Famed Muslim-turned-Christian apologist Nabeel Qureshi has explained over the years how spiritual visions and dreams led him to accept Jesus, but amid his most recent battle with stage IV stomach cancer, Qureshi said that he recently — for the first time in his life — encountered Christ in a dream.
The evangelist said that the dream unfolded after he prayed to God for guidance and direction as he continues to go through chemotherapy to battle his condition, adding that it is something he had “never seen before,” The Christian Post reported.
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“A lot of people who are leaving Islam and become Christian do so because they have seen Jesus in a dream or a vision. I did receive dreams and visions when I was seeking the truth about Christianity and Islam but I never actually saw Jesus in a dream or a vision,” he explained in a recent YouTube video. “I saw things that led me to the gospel. I was thrilled to have seen Jesus in a dream. I had been praying for it. I had been asking for guidance and I think I got some.”
While Qureshi is aware some might dismiss the dream as being something his mind simply conjured up due to his intense prayer quest to see Jesus, he dove further into the details in an effort to help people understand what he says he saw and experienced.
Listen to Qureshi talk to The Church Boys podcast last year about his faith and conversion experience:
In the dream, he said he was sitting inside of what appeared to be a “large, indoor structure” and was waiting for Jesus to appear. Then, he said Christ emerged, describing him as looking to be in his early 30s, wearing a white robe and a green sash.
“The way he appeared to me was striking, very striking. He wasn’t glowing. Some people say they see a lot of light. I didn’t see a lot of light,” he explained. “I saw a man in his young 30s, which was striking to me because whenever I see pictures of Jesus … if you look at paintings or artist depictions, they usually depict Him as a middled-aged man in his 40s.”
While Qureshi said he doesn’t remember most of the conversation he had with Jesus, he did recall something that he found a bit odd: Jesus apparently referenced a “baby” and a “sponge bath.”
“I remember Him saying the word ‘baby’ followed by the words ‘sponge bath,'” Qureshi recalled, with a laugh. “Now, not exactly what I was expecting to hear from Jesus — ‘baby’ and ‘sponge bath.’ But those are the only things that I remember from the dream, apart from the hug and what he looked like and where we were.”
Qureshi, who was clueless as to what this message could have meant, ended up going to the store after he woke up to buy a sponge and later that night he decided to bath his daughter. But to his surprise, the baby — who normally loves playing in the bath — was shrieking in tears, “absolutely terrified” and inconsolable when he placed her in the water and took out the sponge.
This left Qureshi shocked, wondering why she wouldn’t calm down when she’s normally fine in the bath, so he rushed through the bath and went to pray, feeling as though the dream and bath might have been “almost like a prophetic act that we see in scripture.”
Watch Qureshi explain this below:
As he prayed, something dawned on him: His daughter’s fear, he came to think, could be symbolic of his own fear as he bravely fights cancer. In essence, Qureshi admitted that he’s “terrified” of the illness and wondered whether he is perhaps not letting God perform a “cleansing” on him, as he’s found himself consumed by asking only for a “rescue” from the situation.
Qureshi proceeded to draw a comparison between his daughter’s fears over the bath and his own terror amid his cancer battle.
“Jesus told me to give (her) a sponge bath and when I go to cleanse her, she is so terrified of the sponge that she doesn’t let me cleanse her even though, I, her father, am holding the sponge. She’s just terrified, she’s asking to be rescued so much so that I can’t actually cleanse her the way I wanted to,” he said. “I began to think that if this wasn’t an image that God was showing me of what’s going on in my life, where God is my father and he has been cleansing me, or at least he wants to cleanse me through this, through this cancer, this illness. I am not saying that this was God’s will for me to have this cancer or illness, but what I am saying is that if you have an illness you can glorify God through, you can be cleansed through it, you can learn from it and become a better person by it and give God the glory through it.”
See the original video in its entirety here.
Qureshi has caught attention in recent years for his open discussion about his conversion from Islam to Christianity.
(H/T: Christian Post)
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