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A Former Muslim Cleric (preacher) who converted to Christianity after encountering Jesus Christ in a dream — has now been ostracized from his family and brutally beaten and persecuted for his conversion from Islam. However he states that his new found faith in Jesus Christ has taught him how to forgive.
In an interview with World Watch Monitor, Tofik explained in detail how he was trained and raised to be a radical Islamic cleric in West Africa.
According to Tofik, he had been raised to hate Christianity and Christians at a very young age. He also shared how he (and other Muslims) would purposely go into certain towns and villages in search of Christians and churches that they could attack.
“Our [islamic] teachers would tell us every time there was a new church in town and we were told to go and attack the people and destroy the church. So that’s what we did,” he explained.
Many of the [islamic] students who were being trained by radical clerics would even burn the bibles that they attained from their attacks, however Tofik says that for some reason he could not join them [in burning bibles].
Adding that he even kept a Bible for many years, not knowing why, though he says he “now understand[s] it was God holding my hand”.
After attaining more [islamic] training in Saudi Arabia, Tofik returned to his home town and became a prominent imam. From there he reportedly led in the creation of 16 new mosques and forbade the preaching of Christianity within or near them.
However Tofik eventually became involved in an interfaith tree-planting project, not long after that, He had a dream about Jesus.
“There was an incident in 2002 where I had a vision from the Lord early in the morning around 3 am. In the vision I saw Jesus very clearly telling me to follow him,” he said.
“I asked the person who was calling me to follow him, ‘Who are you?’ He said, ‘I am Jesus Christ’.”
Although the dream freaked him out, he eventually went back to sleep where he would have yet another dream of Jesus appearing to him.
“Jesus appeared saying ‘It’s Me, follow Me. When you follow me you will pay a price, there will be persecution in your life, but in the end you will be victorious. I am with you,'” he recalled.
After the experience, Tofik converted to Christianity and began attending a local Church to learn more about the Jesus Christ he had once hated and persecuted.
Although Tofik shared his new found faith with his predominantly Muslim family, many of them were too afraid to leave the religion for the great persecution they knew would follow.
However after converting to Christianity, Tofik was considered “Dead” to the Muslim community and was greatly attacked and persecuted by his once Muslim friends.
They burned down his house, stole his cattle and possessions, and tried to kill him. However Tofik remains steadfast in his new found faith.
“The Bible became my weapon. I travelled many places to preach and teach about the Christian faith,”
“The voice of Jesus himself spoke to me in my dreams about persecution, so I knew it was going to come and was ready. For those who destroyed my household, I was initially involved in prosecuting them at court but later I said ‘no’ and chose to forgive them, and leave it in the hands of the Lord, so the people were released.”
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