Omar gasped at what I was doing! He couldn’t understand that a preacher who was holding meetings with thousands of people attending would be gathering up the dirty dishes! “Pastor, are you waiting on tables? I have never seen a pastor do that before.” He was shaken, and I have often wondered if it was wise of me to take the servant’s role in that particular instance.
the crowd on the last day of the meetings. The people with books had attended each meeting.
our colorful and simple stage
Reuben was the best translator I have ever worked with. And a very close friend.
Joseph Timotheo was his Christian name. He was born into a Muslim family, and when he became a Christian he changed his name from Omar, in order to signify his new identity. I have always thought of him as Omar, though. He had been attending our evangelistic meetings from the beginning. It was the first time I was preaching a full evangelistic series. In Tanzania, that meant 21 consecutive days, with two or three meetings each Saturday, for a total of about 25 meetings. Very stressful, to say the least, but I was enjoying it. It felt in many ways like I was made to be a preacher in Africa! I have seldom felt a stronger sense of being in the place I was designed to be.
Omar came up to me about half way through the meetings, and requested a private meeting with me and Reuben Kingamkono, my translator. Since I was preaching in English, he didn’t know that I could speak Swahili, and I was more than thankful to have Reuben along, since my Swahili was still on a simple conversational level. He joined us for lunch one afternoon, a few hours before the meeting for the day was supposed to begin.
“I had a dream about you, Pastor,” he told me. “I think that God wants me to join the Seventh-day Adventist church. Before I tell you the dream, let me tell you about my past life.
As he told his story, I often wondered when reality was turning into exaggeration. I really had no reason to doubt his story, except that so much of what he was telling was so far out of my experience that I struggled to see it as credible. I honestly don’t know whether it is all true, but I will try to re-tell his story as well as I remember it. This happened nearly ten years ago, so I have forgotten many of the details of his incredible story. Some of the things he shared were so grotesque that writing them seems to be out of place, also.
“I grew up on the coast of Tanzania, near Tanga,” he began. “My family were strict Muslims, and so was I. I worshipped each Friday in the mosque, learned Arabic, and was preparing to be an Islamic teacher. Like most of the Muslims in that area, I was also deeply involved in witchcraft. I was part of the local group of sorcerers. We were involved in some of the worst kinds of activities you can imagine. I hope you have never been involved in the kind of things I have done, Pastor!
“We used to have gatherings at which we would be transformed. We would leave our bodies, and would go around as spirits to steal money from the businesses in town. We could get through the locked doors and steal the money out of the hiding places, because we were not limited by walls and doors. We were not able to steal from Christians who were faithful in paying tithe, though. We learned to not even try, and went where we knew money would be easier to get.”
“Sometimes I would ride on the back of a huge python with wings, and attend witches’ conventions in other countries. We would feast on all kinds of gross foods, and would participate in filthy orgies.”
Omar then proceeded to tell stories of many other things he had done by supernatural help, things so disgusting I dare not write them! Suffice it to say that he told of having very real and personal contact with demons of various kinds which led him in degrading himself horribly.
“It was no problem participating in these activities while being a Muslim. The Muslim leaders were also part of the group of sorcerers.
“I hated Christians and did everything I could to harass and destroy them... Until I had the vision.
“One night I was awakened from sleep by a bright light in my room. A shining being was standing at the foot of my bed. In his hand he was holding three books. One was the Q’uran, one was the Hadith, another book of Islamic writings, and one was the Bible. The being pointed to a fire that was burning there in my room, a fire that was not normally there. Into that fire, he threw the Q’uran. It was immediately consumed. Then he threw in the Hadith, and it was also immediately destroyed. Then he threw the Bible into the fire. I expected to see it burned up, but instead it grew larger and extinguished the flames. It seemed as if it was alive! It then opened up, and in shining brass letters I could see written, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son.’
“The angel then took me up and I could look down on the whole world. It was no problem to see the whole world; it was like looking at my own hand, it was so small and easy to see. I could see different people walking around. Some of them looked like Jesus Himself. I asked the angel who they were, and he told me they were God’s people, Christians who were covered by the life of Jesus. Then I saw other people who were walking around with their throats cut. The angel told me they were false Christian teachers. That must have been people like me,” Omar exclaimed.
Omar explained to us that he was a pastor for a charismatic church, but he was convinced that God was leading him from the church he was in to join the Seventh-day Adventist church.
“So, after your dream, you became a Christian?” I asked.
“Not immediately afterwards. I first went to my imam and told him what I had seen. I told him that Issa is the Son of God, and that He was born of a virgin, and we can only be saved through Him. At first he tried to gently persuade me that I was wrong, but soon he became violent and told me that if I became a Christian, he would kill me. My family turned against me as well, and I had to flee. I fled into the forest, where I was confronted with demons who showed up in various forms and tried to scare me and turn me back to sorcery, but I prayed and Jesus protected me. I got away from them, and lived with some Christians in the area for a while, but the Muslims found out where I was, and tried to kill me. The demons were also tormenting me for leaving sorcery, and so I left and came here to Mbeya, far from the coast.
“At first I started to visit the mosques and tell them what had happened to me and try to get them to become Christians too, but they chased me away. I got in contact with some Christians here in the area, and they took me in. They sent me to a three-month pastor-training school. Then I went up the valley and started a church, which I am still pastoring. Last week I started attending your meetings, and everything has changed. Now I see that I have been wrong in what I have believed and taught, and I know that God is leading me into His true church.”
We were stunned and overwhelmed by all we had heard already from this man who was clearly seeking truth and being convicted by the Holy Spirit. We sought to tell Omar that the same God who had led him from Islam was now leading him into a fuller understanding of truth, because he had a seeker’s heart and wanted to know the truth. Omar had more to tell us, though!
“I had a dream a few days ago, and now I know what God wants me to do. In my dream, I was walking along a path. As I was walking, I heard a voice speaking. I looked to the right, and I saw a hill with a small path going up it. At the top, you were standing. You had the open Bible in your hand, and you were talking about the truths from God’s Word. You stopped speaking and looked directly at me. You said, ‘Omar, come up here. Come and follow Jesus.’
“I wasn’t sure if I should follow your advice, since you were teaching new things that I had not heard before, things that my church does not teach. How would I know what to do? Then you told me to look down the path where I was heading. I could see that the path was going to a huge furnace of fire, and that the others who were walking on the path were being burned up in the fire. I knew what I must do.
“I began to walk up the hill towards you. You were speaking to me in Swahili, not in English like in the meetings. You called me ‘Omar,’ not ‘Joseph Timotheo.’ I wanted to go to where you were. I wanted to follow Jesus, and I know that He was calling me. As I was walking up the hill, I felt somebody pulling me back. I turned around to see who it was, and I could see that it was the pastor who is my boss. He was pulling me back, telling me not to go to you. He wouldn’t let me go, and I didn’t know what to do. I turned back towards you and asked you what I should do. You told me, ‘Omar, look at his pants.’ I looked at his pants, and they were covered with feces! The filth was spreading all over him, and I broke free from his grasp and escaped. I came up and stood beside you and you taught me more. That dream gave me courage to come and talk to you.”
Reuben and I were stunned and awed. Clearly God was working in this man’s heart. It was around this time, when Omar had finished telling his story, that I got up and cleared away the plates we three had been eating from. As I took them to the kitchen to be washed, Omar’s reaction made me wonder if I was doing the right thing. It seems strange, but I think that when Omar saw me “lower” myself to clear away plates he was shocked too much, too soon. In his church, pastors were treated nearly like gods, and they would never lower themselves to menial labor. Perhaps seeing me do that planted a seed of doubt in his mind, which we could have helped to prevent by taking more time to slowly introduce him to the way things are done in our church. It would take time before I began to wonder this, though.
the baptism
At the end of the three weeks of meetings, 164 people were baptized. Omar Joseph Timotheo was one of them, and after the baptism special mention was made of him and his decision to leave his job as a pastor. Most of the other people had been studying with members of the local church for several months prior to the meetings, but Omar was baptized after just three weeks of meetings. That is another thing that we may have done wrong. Perhaps we should have waited a little longer. It is always hard to know, and so easy to question ourselves afterwards.
Omar and me standing with two of the church leaders, Pastors Mtenzi and Kajula.
Omar dictated a letter and had it sent back to his church. The head elder of the church read it before the congregation, telling them of their pastor’s decision to leave his church and join the SDA church. He gave an appeal to the congregation, asking those who wanted to follow their pastor into the new truths he had learned to stand on one side, and those who did not to stand on the other side. About half of the congregation stood on the side showing that they wanted to follow in the footsteps of their pastor, and the members of the local SDA church began to study the Bible with those people.
Omar met with severe opposition from the leaders of his church. Just like he had seen in his dream, his boss opposed him fiercely, telling him he was going to hell and was joining a cult, but Omar knew what God was calling him to do, and he chose to leave his job rather than leave the truth he had learned. His wife also opposed his decision, and even though we met with her several times and she seemed willing enough to support her husband when we talked with her, when they were alone she told him she would divorce him if he got baptized. The opposition he received and the loss of position and income were very difficult for Omar, and I have often wondered what we could have done more to help him. Omar became an Adventist, but he soon returned to his former church. The last we heard of him he was “dancing on the stage in front of his former congregation”, according to the lay missionary who told us. I am sure there is nothing Biblically wrong with “dancing to the Lord,” but from what we had heard from Omar’s reports of what worship was like in his church, that was pretty much all they ever did. Sad.
Omar didn’t back-slide at once, though. We knew he was in danger and faced severe opposition, so we decided to bring him to the Kibidula Training Center, where I was a teacher, so he could get more grounded in his new faith. There we soon discovered that Omar was illiterate. He said he could read Arabic from his time studying in the Muslim school, but he was not able to read Swahili. We wondered how a person could become a pastor without being able to read, but we found out that he had a great ability to memorize Scriptures, and he would just open the Bible and quote from memory while looking like he was reading. Unfortunately, in our setting, the verses we were using were different from the verses he knew, and he struggled to follow our teaching.
Omar is standing to the left of me in this picture. This was at a lay missionary weekend while Omar was at Kibidula.
Omar was a hard-worker, however. I remember him working in the fields, out-plowing the rest of us with his hoe. He always showed great respect for me as the main teacher in the school, and the one who had led him to the truth he now loved. He would harvest a weed that was growing profusely around the farm, and cook it up for him and myself. I had acquired a taste for bitter herbs, and when he heard that, he told me I would love that weed. He was right! He would bring it to the kitchen and cook it himself, and the two of us would enjoy it. Nobody else liked it enough that we needed to worry about sharing!
In spite of his difficulties with reading, he did his best, but after a few weeks I think the stress was taking a toll on him. Omar was probably going through culture shock, looking back on this. So much was so different for him, and so much had changed in his life in a very short time. From being an idolized leader of a growing congregation, he was now working on a farm. His marriage was strained, his former job was gone, and the future was very uncertain. We could not promise him wealth or job, although we did hope that he would be able to take a position at Kibidula or in a local church after finishing with school. I think that Omar became disillusioned and lost courage, and had trouble communicating what he was going through to us. He no longer received the same degree of respect from those around him, and he was now just a struggling student at a school where everybody else had been Adventist for much longer than him.
Some issues came up at home with his children, and Omar left Kibidula. We heard from him a few times, and it seemed that he would come back. One day one of the other missionaries at Kibidula saw Omar waving at him, leaning out from the window of a passing bus. After that, we just heard a few scattered reports now and then, and found out that Omar had returned to his former job.
I don’t judge him. In my thinking of Omar and the brief time that I knew him, the criticism I have is directed at myself, not at him. Omar didn’t fit in to our world, and we are the ones who should have taken more initiative. He was different, understanding Jesus and the Bible in a way unfamiliar to us, and I think the responsibility was upon us to seek to understand him, to spend enough time with him that we could communicate in a way he could understand. Joseph Timotheo, the Muslim witch turned Christian pastor, was illiterate, and we who could read had a responsibility to lead him softly and gently, to help him to understand the parts of the Bible that he had never had a chance to study for himself, and which he could not read on his own. We, who could speak his language, had a responsibility to do our best to communicate well with our brother, to find out what he was really going through, and to seek to understand his heart and his struggles.
Looking back, I am sure that things could have turned out differently. I believe that we could have done better in representing a fuller truth of Jesus to Omar than we did. The Lord had clearly been leading him through dreams, communicating in the way that Omar understood, but we dropped the ball when the Lord brought Omar to us. I wonder where he is today, and am sure that God is blessing him. Although it is true that we are responsible to follow the truth that we know, I am sure that God is wise enough to see the full situation of a person’s life, and for all I know, Omar is still enjoying a growing walk with the Lord. I just hope that if that walk ever again leads him through the doors of a Seventh-day Adventist church, that the church members there will be better at receiving him and meeting his needs than we were.
As we are learning to go into a deep culture study of the people we are working with, I hope that in the future we will be able to better work with people like Omar. By understanding more of where a person is coming from and what their particular needs and issue are, I hope that next time the Lord brings such a person across our paths, we will be better stewards of the responsibility we are given. As Seventh-day Adventists, our religion is very based on books and the ability to read them, but the truth of God should be able to be transmitted to and understood by illiterate individuals and whole cultures. Our God does not live in temples made with hands, nor in books printed on paper, and His truth can be communicated orally as well as on paper. May God help us learn how to do that!
1 comment:
Amen... what a story... it is heart breaking and challenging... how much responsability we have... may God help us!
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