"Ziblim Abdulai" enjoyed a lot of privileges as he grew up in a chief imam’s home. As a young boy he was sent to madrassah school, where he learned to recite more than half of the Qur’an from memory. He viewed Christians as the unclean people, and he grew in his zeal to disprove their faith.

He also developed a strong interest in engines, and learned to be a motorbike mechanic. He gained a good reputation and was successful in his work. One day, a serious accident almost took his life. His mind became tormented. He began to search the Qur’an for some assurance of salvation, but without success. That’s when my own near-accident brought us together.

I leaped to safety but the oncoming truck wrecked my bike. I pushed it to Ziblim’s shop, and as he assessed the damage, he noticed a leaflet I was holding, titled, “How can I be saved?” He asked if I would give it to him, which I was happy to do. My bike was there for four days, and whenever I went to check on it, Ziblim was waiting to ask questions about sin and atonement. After that he came often to my home, where we read and compared the New Testament and the Qur’an. One day Ziblim was unusually quiet. In the Qur’an he saw, “Allah loved not the impious and guilty….Allah hates sinners.” This he compared with Romans 3:22-24, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ.” He understood that God hates sin but loves sinners and has made provision to credit His righteousness to sinners.

After about four years of Bible studies, he accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior and told me about the flood of peace that enveloped him. He said he could feel the presence of God with him. He attended church two Sundays, his face full of joy. But the third Sunday he didn’t come. After the service, I went to his house and discovered that he was dead! I was shocked. I entered the room where he was lying in a corner, wrapped in white calico. I asked a man what had happened. Hesitantly, with his right hand cupping his mouth, he said quietly, “He was poisoned.” The father, as imam, had been shamed by his son’s becoming a Christian, so the son had to be eliminated. A man stood at a corner trumpeting, “Allah Akbaru! Allah Akbaru! Allah Akbaru!” The term can mean a call to prayer, a war cry, a call to fight or to stop a fight. Whatever he meant, it was clear that Ziblim was no longer a living stigma to the community. And whoever had poisoned him would be rewarded in paradise.

I wept profusely. My loss was enormous and sudden. Ziblim was buried in the yard of their home. He was not fit to live in this world. But his death was heaven’s gain.