September 22, 2017 Show with David Wood on “Remembering NABEEL: Reflections from a Close Friend of the Late Nabeel Qureshi who Lead Nabeel to Christ”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 22nd day of September 2017.

Many of you know by now that less than a week ago on Saturday, September 16th,

Nabeel Qureshi, a Christian apologist focusing his ministry upon the

Muslim people, the Muslim people from which he came, he went home to be with the

Lord at the age of 34 after a very courageous and noble and valiant bout with cancer.

And although those who know him or knew him, those who have met him, those who have been blessed by his ministry, have been very seriously dismayed by this news, at the same time, knowing of his faith in Christ and knowing of his unwavering faith in Christ and something that was unquestionable, undeniable, we who are

Christians do not grieve or mourn as those who have no hope. And we know that Nabeel is with this

Christ, this same Jesus Christ who he came to love, honor, and obey, and follow.

And this same Jesus Christ that was his longing to see his fellow, his former fellow

Muslims embrace as their Messiah, as their only hope of salvation. Nabeel is now with this

Christ in eternity, not feeling any more pain or sorrow, not feeling any regret or remorse, and it's such a buffer to the pain to know that he is there.

And I could not think of any better person than to pay tribute to him today than one of his closest friends, if not his very closest friend,

David Wood. David Wood, who is a former atheist, an apologist, a debater, and founder of Acts17 .net,

or Acts17apologetics, and AnsweringMuslims .com. He is the one who led

Nabeel to Christ in college. So our topic today is Remembering Nabeel, Reflections from a

Close Friend of the Late Nabeel Qureshi Who Led Nabeel to Christ. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron, Sharp, and Zion, David Wood.

Hey, how's it going, Chris? It's going well, and much better than I deserve as always, brother. And for those of you who don't know,

David Wood is one of three of the most frequently interviewed guests on Iron, Sharp, and Zion radio, especially when you're talking about the old days of broadcasting out of WNYG and WGBB on Long Island, New York.

And I think this may be the second time, but it may even be the first time that I've ever interviewed you on the phone, because you were always kind enough to drive from the

Bronx out to Long Island and be an in -studio guest, and you did so quite frequently, and you did so very often with very little notice.

And it was always a blessing to have you on the program so often, and you always had so much information on Islam especially that I'm sure many of our listeners were totally unaware of.

And by the way, in studio with me is my co -host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor. And it's good to be here. And if anybody wants to join us on the air with a question or a comment, or perhaps you have a little tribute that you'd like to make of your own to Nabeel, perhaps you knew him, perhaps he actually transformed your life in some way, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. And please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA, and only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter that compels you not to identify yourself, and we will grant that request.

But before we go into the tribute itself to Nabeel, tell us,

David, something about Act 17 apologetics and answeringmuslims .com. Well, both of those were started with me and Nabeel back in the day.

And we started apologetics ministry, and we called it

Act 17, of course, because Paul preaching the gospel in the intellectual capital of the ancient world and having public discussions with the

Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, and we thought that's a good model for today.

And then Answering Muslims was a blog we started to post our debates and to post videos and have discussions with Muslims.

And if anybody wants to hear David's testimony, you can type in David Wood in the search engine at ironsharpensironradio .com

in the archive, which is labeled past programs, podcasts, and you can hear his testimony.

He also has a YouTube testimony that is quite fascinating, and I'm sure you could get a lot of other information at act17 .net

about David. But I know that you were an atheist, and obviously, since you led

Nabeel to Christ, you must have been a Christian by that time when you were in college with him.

Did he know you at all when you were an atheist? No, I was...

well, people would have to watch the testimony to get the full details, but I was in jail when

I became a Christian. And so I spent several years incarcerated, and that's where I started studying apologetics.

I mean, when I became a Christian, I was actually a little angry that no one had ever told me that there's any evidence whatsoever for Christianity.

And so I spent several years there studying apologetics so that, you know, so that other people wouldn't be in the same position that I was.

And it was after I got out there that I went to college and met

Nabeel there. And yeah, so Nabeel always knew me when I was a Christian. And what drew you to him as a person that kind of made that friendship click even before he himself became a born -again believer?

Well, we were both on the Old Dominion University speech and debate team, and so we would go out to tournaments at other universities.

And the first tournament that we both went to, we ended up sharing a hotel room.

But this was always the case for the next couple years that the other students who were on the team, after the tournament, they would go out to clubs or they would go out drinking.

And Nabeel and I didn't want to do that, so we would stay back in the hotel. So we would always end up hanging out in the hotel together.

And we found out very quickly that we both wanted to discuss Christianity and Islam.

And we, you know, sort of came to an agreement early on that, you know, there are three possibilities here.

Either Christianity is true and Islam is false, or Islam is true and Christianity is false, or they're both false.

They can't both be true. And if one of them is true, then it's possible that God has arranged us to be hanging out together all this time, and maybe

God wants us to get to the bottom of this. And so we understood from right in the beginning that we, you know, we had each other's best interests in mind and that we were going to make sure we were both on the right path.

Well, that is refreshing in a politically correct age where you're not supposed to talk to people about their differences, at least not also question or challenge or seek to refute or disagree with their beliefs.

That is anathema in our day and age. There's nothing wrong with people sitting around and having nice little ecumenical chats about their theological differences and never challenge the other person to repent and believe upon Christ.

But it's good to see that that's the kind of relationship that you two had, because that shows it was a genuine relationship.

It shows it was a kind of a friendship where you both really had genuine compassion and concern about one another's souls, and therefore to sweep things under the rug, to leave things absent from your conversations about how one can be right with God and how one can attain eternal life.

That would have been the height, I think, of selfishness and wickedness on either of your part for you to leave that off of the table of discussion.

So now, before Nabeel became a Christian, by God's mercy, what was your friendship like?

Did you actually enjoy social activities together then? Did you do a lot of laughing together?

Did you enjoy each other's sense of humor? Because I happen to know, I later found out, how much of a sense of humor you both had when you came to the very church where I was a member before moving to Pennsylvania, Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Merrick, Long Island, New York, where you put on a presentation with Nabeel there, and it included the filming of a very comical skit that we will talk about in a little bit.

But if you could let us know about your personal relationship with him outside of specifically religion.

Oh, yeah. Well, we clicked instantly. We had similar personalities.

We were both very sarcastic. We were always joking. We were always making fun of each other without getting upset about it.

I think it was like that first weekend where we started talking, where we started getting along so quickly.

This was right after the September 11th attacks, and they would be showing Osama bin

Laden on television. I'd yell for Nabeel. He'd be off somewhere, and I'd go, Hey, Nabeel, get over here. Your uncle's on television.

He would run in, and then he would make a remark about Hitler being my grandfather or something like that.

So it was like that. We did tons of stuff together. I've been posting a lot of pictures.

I have a lot more, but when I've gotten a chance, I've been posting pictures on Facebook of him being at my wedding and at my wife's graduation and all the times we were hanging out over the years.

We always had lots of fun together. I wish I had it recorded, but there were times for various events.

One of them was the big graduation celebration where all the graduating students got together for final speeches, and Nabeel and I did a rap song where I beatboxed and he rapped.

The crowd went nuts. It's interesting because people don't know us like that now. They think of Nabeel as a speaker and a writer and stuff like that, but we were known as kind of goofballs in college.

Well, that's a classic picture that you have on Facebook that I actually used to promote this interview today of you two sitting there with sunglasses on and so on, doing kind of a

Miami Vice look or something. He certainly was a gifted young man.

At 34 years of age, the Lord took him home. One can only wonder what he would have accomplished on earth had he remained, but obviously

God infinitely knows better how to orchestrate his plans than we do.

One of the things that I believe I am correct on in regard to Nabeel's Muslim faith is that I think was he not a member of the

Ahmadi Muslim religion, which is a much more tolerant and peaceful sect of Islam?

Yes. In orthodox Islam, and this is in the Quran and the

Hadith, they believe that in the return of Jesus, that Jesus is actually going to return to this world.

The Ahmadis believe that it already happened. So they believe that in the 1800s, a man named

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was the second coming of Jesus.

So they call him the promised Messiah. Now, orthodox Islam teaches that there's no prophet after Muhammad, but the catch is they do believe in a prophet after Muhammad, namely that they believe

Jesus is coming back. And so orthodox Muslims say Ahmadis, you know, they're heretics because they believe in a prophet who came after Muhammad.

Ahmadis respond by saying, well, all Muslims believe in a prophet after Muhammad, namely the second coming of Jesus. And the

Muslims, of course, respond, well, that's not how Jesus is going to return.

And so Ahmadis are usually a persecuted minority wherever they are in the

Muslim world. But you're right, they are generally more peaceful and tolerant because they believe in a person after Muhammad whose interpretations of Islam are authoritative.

But because they're persecuted, they often flee Muslim lands when they get the opportunity.

And that's actually why Nabeel's family moved to the United States because Ahmadis were persecuted in Pakistan.

So they ended up over here in the United States. And what's interesting is that Ahmadis, whenever they get a chance, have to flee their own areas.

But when they get to the United States, they become spokesmen for Islam, to defend

Islam. And they're very often on news programs after terrorist attacks, defending the claim that Islam is a religion of peace, even though many of them come to the

West, specifically because they've been persecuted by orthodox Muslims. Now, when you hear these defenses of Islam by the

Ahmadi representatives, are they making any distinguishing clarifications about how they are unique amongst their fellow

Muslims? Or perhaps they wouldn't even call them fellow Muslims, I don't know, the ones that are actually, you know, perpetrating terrorist attacks and so on.

But do they typically make it a point to distinguish themselves from the more notable or knowable, more highly recognizable

Sunnis and Sufis and so on? No, when an

Ahmadi leaves Islam and becomes a Christian, Muslims respond by saying, well, that person was never a real

Muslim to begin with. He was an Ahmadi. But when Ahmadis defend

Islam and defend the claim that Islam is a religion of peace, they're just presented as Muslims. And as long as they're defending

Islam, then most Muslims are generally happy that they're doing that.

And so there's usually no qualification. If they're promoting or defending Islam, they're just called Muslims.

That's interesting. And in fact, I don't know if you remember this, but you are actually the one that introduced me to what a

Ahmadi Muslim is, because we were driving around in my hometown of Amityville.

And you just happened to spy out of the corner of your eye a sign in Amityville for an

Ahmadi mosque that I didn't even know existed. And you said, oh, they have an Ahmadi mosque here in Amityville.

And I said, what? And you said, yeah, there's the sign there. And we drove by it.

And it was the old Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus Hall that the Ahmadi Muslims had purchased.

And I actually developed an acquaintance with the imam there. And he brought quite a large handful of his congregants there, the members of the mosque, to New Hyde Park Baptist Church to hear

James White speak on a defense of the New Testament, the reliability of the manuscripts where we have received the

New Testament. And they also, I believe, 30 of them showed up at his debate that you moderated in Queens, New York, with a very well -known imam in Jamaica, Queens, New York.

This was at a very large Presbyterian church, old historic

Presbyterian church in Ridgewood, I believe. And it was interesting that the imam came up to me afterwards.

And he said to me, I would love for Dr. White to come and speak at our mosque as long as we can ask questions.

I said, really? And then that imam, not long after that, he was no longer in the

Amityville mosque. And I could not track him down. I have no idea where he is. But hopefully something like that will be able to be developed in the future.

And one of the things I wanted to say about that, that made me realize how unique and different they were, that imam treated me to lunch in an

Indian restaurant in Hicksville, Long Island. And he actually told me about how you know an

Indian restaurant is owned by a Hindu or whether it's owned by a Muslim. He said, if it's owned by a Muslim, you will never see alcohol served and it will typically be very low key, inexpensive, not highly decorated and so on.

And whereas a Hindu Indian restaurant will usually be very fancy and decorated with a lot of ornaments and idols and they will typically serve alcohol.

But during a discussion, the imam was really saying that he could not understand how

I could believe that he, without Christ, would be in hell for eternity after he left this life, if he had not repented and embraced

Christ as his only hope for salvation. And he did not believe that about me. He did not believe that my

Christianity would be something that damned me, which really surprised me.

Now, are they universalists? Or what is the deal with that? Yeah, there is a there is a strong.

There is a strong current of universalism among Ahmadis and that they believe that that hell is temporary.

So they believe that yes, you make you you go to hell, but Allah eventually brings you out of it after you've after you've paid for your sins.

So it's almost like a Roman Catholic purgatory. Something like that. Yeah. Well, I just want to take we are getting some listeners before we move on with the discussion.

We are having some listeners respond to the conversation that we're having.

And first of all, we have Mary in Shillington, Pennsylvania.

She says, I, like so many, am grieving the passing of Nabil. He was a true man of God who touched so many lives.

Although I never met him personally, I feel in so many ways I did know him and my life is one of those he touched.

I was first introduced to Nabil at Camp of the Woods as Ravi Zacharias spoke so highly of him.

He was anxiously awaiting the birth of his child, Aya. I was filled with interest as Ravi spoke of him for several reasons.

One, we both shared the medical field, his background of being a Muslim and the level of his education and all he had accomplished, which

I could not truly wrap my mind around at so young an age. What truly sparked my interest was how he had poured himself into learning about the

Trinity. My life will be forever blessed because of his teaching on the Trinity.

I can remember taking notes as I listened to his teaching, stopping the CDs so I could write down every verse and chapter he spoke of.

I wanted to read every detail and attempted to write down every word he spoke so I could have the notes verbatim.

I have listened to that CD so many times. He was faithful to the word of God and desired that men would come to a saving knowledge of Jesus.

It poured out of him. I have always tried to learn more about the Muslim faith and to hear of his life as a

Muslim was very special. He was truly one of a kind, gifted in so many ways.

We who learned from his teaching and his life have been impacted forever.

I am so sorry for the grief that Michelle will have not only now but also in the years to come without him by her side and the loss that Aya will have without him to be a father to her.

For an earthly perspective, we ask why and feel he died so young. We may even think it is such a waste of life for someone so gifted with so much potential to touch so many with the truth of the gospel and eternity.

But I must stop and remember that a sovereign lord knew Nabil from before space and time and called him by name and knew his days before there was one.

This was his appointed time to walk here among us. I say thank you Abba for giving us

Nabil Qureshi who showed us Jesus with a passion. Today he beholds the savior he loved and professed.

Someday the tears that are being shed for him will no more be and we who share in the blessed hope of eternity will be with him and with our precious lord and king forever.

What a blessed assurance the redeemed of the lord have to God be the glory. Well thank you very much Mary in Shillington, Pennsylvania and as our way of saying thanks for writing in today you are getting for free

Seeking Allah Finding Jesus video study a DVD set that Zondervan has so graciously provided to us so make sure we have your full mailing address in Shillington, Pennsylvania and we'll have that shipped out to you.

And just to let our other listeners know if you send in a lengthy tribute like that or a lengthy question they'll have to for the sake of time edit it to enable more people to contribute to the program with their own thoughts and questions.

Now that's an interesting point that Mary in Shillington, Pennsylvania brings up that Nabil was in the medical field.

How far did he excel in his degrees? Did he actually become an MD? Yeah and that's really one of the, as she pointed out and you pointed out, is sort of how fast he was moving.

So we finished college and I went off to graduate school in philosophy and he went off to medical school,

Eastern Virginia Medical School, and while he was still in medical school he did a master's degree in Christian apologetics from Biola University.

So he was in two graduate programs at the same time. He graduated in both so he got his master's degree in Christian apologetics and his medical doctorate.

After that he went on to Duke University where he got a master's degree in religion and after that he was accepted to Oxford University and he did a master's degree at New Testament but it was actually something more specific like early

Jewish history or something like that. But he completed a master's degree at Oxford University and was going on to his doctorate in New Testament at Oxford.

Also before that he completed three books, two of them were bestsellers, and he was working on a couple more.

So to be only 34 years old and to have done all that in addition to speaking and debating around the world, it makes you think, you know, hey if he had another 40 or 50 years what was this guy going to accomplish?

So yeah he was moving at breakneck speed all his life.

Now did he make a conscious final decision to say, well I am not going to pursue medicine any further even though I have these degrees and I'm going to exclusively focus on apologetic ministry?

Did he actually reach that point? Well he actually reached that point while he was still in medical school but he was like three years into medical school when he realized he wanted to do like New Testament studies or, you know, continuing apologetics.

He was toying with the idea afterwards of working as like a medical missionary or working in the medical field a little bit for a while but, you know, after exploring his options he just decided to go full -time into apologetics and ministry.

Now going back a little bit to where he was first led to Christ, you know, you were talking about how you would have friendly debates with him and so on and discussions.

What was it that finally made him fall to his knees and really cry out to Christ for repentance, recognizing that this

Christ truly is his God and not merely a prophet, a lesser prophet than Muhammad, but really the

God of all the universe? Well it was a very long process.

We're talking about four years from the time we met. For about the first two and a half years we focused mainly on Christian topics.

So we were studying the reliability of the New Testament, evidence for the deity of Christ, evidence for Jesus' death and resurrection, and so for these things we would read books and we would write down our arguments and then, you know, compare our thoughts about these things.

We would watch debates, we would go to debates, we'd watch videos on both

Christianity and Islam. Nabeel would give presentations to it.

We eventually started having an apologetics group that would meet at Mike Lacona's house, and he's a New Testament scholar, but we would meet at Mike Lacona's house and we'd actually have

Nabeel come over and give a presentation. I remember one presentation he gave on the scientific miracles of Muhammad and we would sit there and then critique them and it was cool because he would take it and then we would give presentations and he would respond and so on.

But for about the first two and a half years or so we focused on Christian topics and then eventually

I pointed out that, hey, we should be looking at Islamic topics with the same level of scrutiny that we're applying to these

Christian topics, and so we started going through Muslim sources, looking at the history of the

Quran and the history of Muhammad, and that's actually when I started buying lots of Muslim sources and reading them.

So a lot of the arguments I use today when I'm talking to Muslims or debating

Muslims is material that I learned back then while going through the Muslim sources, and a lot of this was very new to Nabeel.

The books that he read in Islam, like some of the early books that I read on Islam, were not primary sources.

They're written by later Muslims or later academics, and when you read these you get a very positive picture of Islam, and these are the sorts of books that Nabeel read about when he was studying

Islam. And when I was going to the early sources and bringing him information, a lot of this was new because it hadn't been filtered for him, and he didn't tell me until later after he became a

Christian, but he told me later after he became a Christian that he was very bothered by some of the material that we were finding in the

Muslim sources. When I would show him something from the Muslim sources early on, it looked like it wasn't affecting him at all.

It looked like he was just completely unaffected by it. There's no problem here, and he would be defending it. It wasn't until later that he told me, no, this was really, really bothering him, bothering me.

So we began studying the Muslim sources, and also during this time I was noticing that Nabeel was changing in his sort of attitude.

When we first met, he was telling me that Islam was proven true by history and logic and science and every area of study you could examine proved that Islam was true.

And I noticed after a few years, and especially after we started studying Islam, that he didn't have that same confidence anymore.

And one day I asked him again, hey, why do you believe in Islam? And he said, he gave a completely different answer from when we first met.

His new answer was, well, the people I feel the presence of God on most strongly were my grandparents, and they were

Muslims. Plus, it makes sense to me. And that was terrifying to me, because as long as you're saying

Islam is proven true by history and science, that's something we can sit down and open up books and start having discussions back and forth on.

In other words, that's something I can refute you if you're wrong. But when you say, hey, you believe in Islam because the person you feel the presence of God on most strongly is your grandma, there's not a lot

I can do to show you that that's wrong. It's sort of going from the realm of the falsifiable to the non -falsifiable.

But even then, I started thinking, well, even though he's taking his feelings about his grandparents as evidence here,

I can still show that there's better evidence for Christianity. And so I kept on, and then about six or eight months or so after that,

I noticed that he changed again, and his position became, well, we're human beings, we're flawed, we've been raised to have certain biases, and by the time we're investigating these things, we're so biased that we may not even be able to get to the truth.

And if we can't get to the, if we can't know that we can get to the truth, then God's not going to hold us responsible for getting to the truth.

And therefore, I'm going to go ahead and continue being a Muslim, because if I'm wrong, God's not going to hold me accountable.

He knows that I was raised by Muslim parents and that I, you know, I'm not capable of getting to the truth about these things if I'm wrong.

And so that was just utterly terrifying. If you no longer trust your own reasoning abilities to reason through these things,

I don't know what I can do in the world of apologetics. And so, you know, at that point, it was, at that point,

I was more focused on praying for him and, you know, God, do something here. And that's when he started getting dreams and visions.

It was one night after that where he actually prayed. He said it was the most sincere prayer he'd ever prayed. He said, God, I don't know what's true here, but I need you to show me.

If it's Islam, show me, so I'll follow that. If it's Christianity, show me, and I'll follow that. But just give me some sort of vision, and I'll follow it.

And at that moment, the room he was in, he said, faded to black, and all he saw were thousands of crosses.

And he said to himself, that doesn't count. He didn't go with it, because he thought, hey, this could just be in my mind or something.

So he prayed for a dream, and he got a dream telling him to convert to Christianity. And he prayed for, well, give me more dreams.

And so he got more, and it was still even long after that that he eventually converted. So it was a long train of all kinds of different things that actually led up to him actually giving his life to Jesus.

We're going to be going to a break right now. If anybody would like to join us and get online to ask your own question of David Wood, or perhaps you have a comment, a summarized tribute that you'd like to give to Nabeel, because he has touched your life, our email address is chrizarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the

USA, and only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter over which you are asking.

That's chrizarnsen at gmail .com, chrizarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away,

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And as David Wood can attest to, because he's been at my pastor's luncheons, in fact, he was the speaker at one about a year and a half ago,

I believe, and everyone there in attendance was absolutely blown away by the ministry of David Wood discussing how we are to evangelize

Muslims. He was giving us some very helpful information about Islam and about evangelizing Muslims. But this year, as I said, or should

I say this October, in honor of Reformation Day, we have Bill Shishko as the speaker, and he is the domestic missionary for Reformation Metro New York, and he is a conference speaker, an evangelist, and quite a brilliant brother in Christ whom

I have known since the 1980s and consider him one of my dearest friends. So I hope that you come out and join us

October 26th from 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. Indeed, you are a man in ministry leadership.

We are now back to our discussion with David Wood, former atheist, apologist, debater, and founder of Acts17 .net

and AnsweringMuslims .com. We are discussing remembering Nabeel, reflections from a close friend of the late

Nabeel Qureshi who led Nabeel to Christ. And before the break, we were talking about, or you were explaining how when

Nabeel began to doubt whether his Islamic religion was authentic and whether the claims of Christianity were true, he began praying more fervently for signs, and according to his testimony, he was seeing these signs.

And just out of curiosity, were all of these things occurring to him when he was asleep, or were these visions that actually appeared to him while he was in a conscious, awake state?

The first one, the crosses, was a vision. So he was awake and conscious and sitting in his hotel room when everything faded to black and he saw crosses.

And so he prayed for something different. He prayed for a dream. And then after he got the first dream,

Muslims are very often much more confident about dreams than I would be.

If I had a dream tomorrow telling me to convert to Buddhism, I wouldn't really care. I'd probably dream.

And so when Nabeel told me his first dream, I was thinking, well, you know, maybe just psychologically you are having some thoughts about converting to Christianity.

Late night of pizza with you. Yeah. So wondering exactly what the source of that is.

So anyway, it wasn't even something that would make me think that he should be converting to Christianity.

I wasn't considering it much evidence. So that's for the first one.

But as for the second dream, after his first dream, he prayed to God and he said, you know,

God, this is just, you know, it's a dream and it's open to lots of interpretation. And, you know,

I don't want to convert and change my life and base my eternal destiny on something that, you know,

I'm just dreaming and that involves a lot of interpretation. So could you give me a dream that I don't have to interpret?

It's just so clear that I don't even have to interpret it. And so that's what he prayed.

And then after that, he had his dream where he's standing outside of a of a narrow door and he looks inside and he sees me at a feast and we're all waiting for someone to show up to a feast.

And he earlier in the day, as far as real life earlier in the day, he had we had agreed to go out to lunch.

And then in his dream, he sees me at this feast and he says,

David, you said we're going to eat together. And he said, I didn't look over. And all I said was, I invited you, but you never responded.

And he knew when he woke up that that was heaven and that that was the place he wanted to be.

And he called me up on the phone and he said, he said, he said, hey, try and interpret this dream for me.

And he actually said, I was, OK, so I'm standing outside of a narrow door and I see you in at a feast and you're in there and you're waiting and he explains everything to me and he says, so how would you interpret that?

And I said, I don't have to interpret it. That's a that's a that's a story in the Bible. I said, go to Luke 13 and he opened up his

Bible in Luke 13 and the NIV study Bible that he had, he opened it up and the heading was the narrow door.

And it's about, you know, being outside of the narrow door and there's the, you know, the feast on the inside with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

And you don't want to be locked out where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And he said what

I said, hey, I don't have to interpret this. That gave him a flashback to his prayer that God, can you give me something that is so clear that I don't need to interpret it?

And of course, even that that he didn't he didn't convert after that. But when he told me that and he had never read, he had never read that.

He had never read. He had never read that in the gospel of Luke. And so that made me start thinking, well, maybe there is something here.

Maybe there is something to these dreams, because now it's not just, hey, here's something telling me to convert, which could just be your psychological state or something like that.

Here's something where you prayed for something you didn't have to interpret. And you actually find yourself transported into a passage of Scripture here.

So he prayed for a third one after that. This was a dream about him being trapped on a stairway that was leading out of the mosque, and he tried to get off the stairway.

The only way off was to leave the mosque. And even after that, it was still several months before he before he became a

Christian. Now, I have watched a television network that you have participated on the

Trinity Channel. I don't know. Do you still have a program with them? No, that was a few years ago that we were doing shows there.

Okay, well, I had called them at one point, because being from a theologically reformed background, being a cessationist,

I have always wondered how to react to these stories of extra biblical visions and so on.

And one of the hosts, I don't know his name. I can't remember it right now. But he shared my theological position and would even be what would be called a cessationist to an extent.

But he said that in his experience, the vast majority of Muslims who come to faith in Christ through a dream or a vision, it's something that is completely absent from their life after they are born again.

He said it's not like they are the charismatic or Pentecostal that would be continually receiving extra biblical revelation, or at least claim to.

Was this the experience with Nabil? Did these dreams and visions in his life cease after he became a born -again believer?

Yeah, well, afterwards, he still, because of those experiences, after he became a

Christian, he still believed in being guided by dreams. And so he would pray when he had some decision to make, you know,

God, give me a dream to answer this. But there was never anything after that where it really seemed like he was getting, you know, clear answers to these things, which look like they, you know, there may be, you know, miraculous intervention here, like him being, you know, in Luke 13.

And so over time, he just, he focused on them less and less. And I mean, for the, you know,

I would guess for the past eight or nine years, I've never heard him mention receiving anything, you know, special from a dream.

So when he had that final breakthrough where he was truly committed to the fact that Jesus was his

Lord, God, and Savior, where he repented and was trusting in the finished work of Christ alone, well, perhaps that's a follow -up question.

Was the gospel that came soon after his embrace of the true gospel that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone?

Or did it take some time after he acknowledged that Jesus was his God? Because obviously someone could believe that Jesus is his

God and not believe in the gospel. So how far after his experience in embracing

Christ as truly God did he actually believe that the cross was the only hope for salvation and that our works could not contribute anything to that?

Well, he was, I mean, as a, for Muslims, their biggest obstacle, their biggest stumbling block for Muslims is the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the

Trinity. And so Nabeel was around several

Christian apologists, and he had a pretty good understanding of what

Christianity taught. He would even, there were times in the months leading up to his conversion where he was actually coming to church and Sunday school with us, and he would actually read the relevant passages and be joining in the discussion about the

Bible right there in, you know, Sunday school for kids. And so he's, you know, he's actually studying, and again, he knew enough

Christians to where he knew what Christianity teaches, but it was actually the deity of Christ that was the main obstacle.

In fact, maybe a month or so before he became a Christian, he said, can

I believe that Jesus died on the cross for sins, believe in the

New Testament, believe in the Bible, and submit to Jesus, but not believe in his deity and not believe in the

Trinity? And I said, well, you can believe in that. There are people who believe what you just said, but no, you wouldn't be actually accepting the gospel.

And so that was kind of the final straw. So it wasn't he believed in the deity of Christ and later came to, you know, came to understand the gospel.

It was, he understood, you know, he started believing everything in the gospel except the deity of Christ.

And so eventually he accepted the deity of Christ, and that was, he had a full set there.

And that was obviously a huge hurdle because of that being the sin of shirk. Now, I'm not sure if the

Ahmadiyya sect has that strict of a view. Do they have that, if you have partners with God, and of course, believing that God came into the flesh, into human flesh would be a sin that would, in the eyes of a

Muslim, that would be considered shirk, the worst sin that you could possibly commit.

But did the, the Ahmadiyya, is the way I think you're pronouncing it, the

Ahmadiyya, did they have that harsh of a view of that understanding? Oh, I mean, of course, that comes directly out of the

Quran. That's over and over again in the Quran. But those who lean towards universalism in the

Ahmadiyya community would maybe believe that you could be forgiven of it after spending enough time in hell, but that would be something very, that would be one of the big sins that keeps you in there for a while if they're, if they're universalist.

Okay, well, we're going to find out more about how Nabeel's parents and family reacted to his conversion and some more subsequent things that occurred in Nabeel's life after his born again experience after these messages.

If anybody would like to join us on the air, you can send in an email to Chris Arnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

And we have quite a number of you waiting. And I thank you for your patience, because there are a lot of you waiting to just pay little tributes to Nabeel.

And we appreciate that. And we'll get to as many of you as possible. And if you could always remember to give us at least your first name, your city and state and your country of residence.

If you live outside the USA, a number of you have emailed me without providing that information.

And it would be helpful if you could give us your city, state and country of residence. Don't go away.

God willing, right after these messages, we'll be back with David Wood and his tribute to his dear friend, now in eternity with Christ, Nabeel Qureshi.

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That's liyfc .org. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned in to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, our guest today for the full two hours with about an hour to go is

David Wood, founder of Acts 17 Apologetics and answeringmuslims .com.

We are addressing the theme, Remembering Nabeel, reflections from a close friend of the late

Nabeel Qureshi, who led Nabeel to Christ. This is Nabeel Qureshi, for those of you who just tuned in, who was a

Christian apologist, a Muslim convert to Christianity, working with Ravi Zacharias' ministry,

Ravi Zacharias International, and who developed cancer and tragically went home to be with the

Lord at 34 years of age last Saturday. And we are paying tribute to him today.

Before we return to our discussion, I just have to make a few announcements from sponsors who are having special events.

The Gospel of the Reformation, a 500th anniversary celebration, is going to be held at the

Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, New York, featuring a close mutual friend of David Wood and mine,

Dr. Tony Costa, who is professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

He will be speaking at this anniversary celebration of the Reformation on Friday, September 29th, and Saturday, September 30th.

If you would like more information and directions to the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, go to wotchurch .com.

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The following day, Hope Reform Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island, New York, will also be having the privilege to have

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If you'd like to attend that worship service and hear Dr. Tony Costa preach, go to hopereformedli .net,

hopereformedli, for longisland .net, or call 631 -696 -5711, 631 -696 -5711.

And then coming up in November from the 17th through the 18th, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is holding their

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alliancenet .org, click on Events, and then click on Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology.

And then coming up in January from the 17th through the 20th, the G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia, the

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Well, now we are back to our tribute to Nabeel Qureshi, a dear friend of David Wood going back many years to their days in college where David Wood led

Nabeel, who was an Ahmadi Muslim to faith, saving faith in Jesus Christ.

And that is where Nabeel for thereafter placed his, all his trust and hope in the finished work of Jesus Christ on Calvary and worshiped him as his true

Lord, God, Savior and King. And before the break, we were talking about how the embracing of Christ as truly

God was a huge hurdle because of the fact that that is the worst sin in Islam that you can believe, believing in the

Trinity and the deity of Christ because it's considered the sin of shirk. You want to explain that a little bit more,

David? Yeah, well, in Islam, as you've mentioned, the, you know, there are various kinds of sins and the worst sin is the sin of shirk, which is association and refers to associating partners with Allah.

So this can be like polytheism. This can be a belief in, you know, deities who take your prayers to Allah.

But certainly saying that Jesus is Lord or that Jesus is the Son of God or that God is

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, those would all be considered shirk in Islam. So when you tell a

Muslim, you know, believe that Jesus is the divine Son of God and believe in the Trinity, they're hearing, hey, believe this thing, which is a one -way ticket tail.

And by God's grace, Nabeel, finally, in spite of the fact that he knew that there might be a horrible reaction from fellow family members and fellow

Muslims, he knew that he had to believe in this

Jesus as his Lord, God, Savior and King in order to not only honor

God and please God and obey God, but also to have eternal life where he is now enjoying eternity right now with that very same

Jesus whom he embraced. We'll go to a couple more of our emails right now.

We have a first -time listener. And I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name, but the name is

Alisher or Alisher. And Alisher is from Dallas, Texas.

And Alisher says, most of the Christians from Muslim background usually have a good cultural and family -related memories.

And these are mostly mingled with practicing Islam and being around Muslim community. Usually when

Christ comes to their life, they have a hard time of leaving those behind. How did

Nabeel deal with it? I have been mourning the loss of a beloved brother and friend.

And that's Alisher or Alisher in Dallas, Texas. Very good, timely question for the point in the story that we have arrived at.

Yeah, that's, I could tell that Nabeel had these sort of dual loyalties in our first discussion.

When we got into our first discussion, he explained what he believed about Islam and all the evidence that proves that Islam is true.

And after he finished explaining everything that he believes, I said, if you're wrong, do you want to know it?

And that's an important question to ask because some people, they know. Yeah, some people say no. And when people say no,

I say, all right, let's talk about a football game. But you've already, you don't want to know the truth and therefore no point in continuing this discussion.

But lots of people say yes. Most people say yes. If I'm wrong, I want to know it.

Nabeel said yes and no. He said, yes, I would want to know the truth about God, but no, it would destroy my family.

And so you sort of, I could see right there that he has this loyalty to wanting to know the truth about God.

He has this loyalty to the truth, but he also just doesn't want to do something that's going to hurt his family.

And just so people know that Nabeel had the closest family that I've ever seen.

I mean, we went away on our first trip. We were gone for three days and we came back to the airport and his mom hugged him in the airport parking lot for like 10 minutes.

And I was thinking, man, I did five years in prison and my mom didn't hug me. And so, you know, but that's how close he was.

And then, you know, when I started going to his house and his parents would be there and they were just very, very close.

And so this was one of the most difficult things for Nabeel and for other

Muslims who have close families is, I mean, it's not just some belief, it's tied to everything.

It's tied to everything they do during the day. I mean, in Islam, even something like the five daily prayers, it's kind of a structure to your life.

Your life is structured around Islam and then, you know, the Islamic fasting and so on, where they all get together as a community for Ramadan.

You know, there's a kind of structure to their life where Islam is related and connected to everything they're doing.

And so, you know, to leave that, to say, I'm no longer a

Muslim, it's like you're just being totally ripped out of everything you know. And it's very different from lots of other people who, you know, for lots of people, if they told their parents, hey,

I've converted to something, it's not the end of their relationship or something like that. It's not, you know,

I mean, when I became a Christian, I could have told my parents I was becoming a Buddhist or a pagan or anything and it really wouldn't have mattered much to them as long as I was being better than I had been before.

As long as I was being good, they would be thrilled. In Islam, not so much. It doesn't matter if you're being a good boy afterwards, if you're renouncing

Islam. So it's always a concern for Muslims that, you know, if you confess

Jesus as Lord, it's not just something that, according to Islam, is going to get you sent to hell. It's going to radically alter your life right now until you die and then you go to hell.

So that's why it can be very difficult to reach Muslims with the Gospel because Islam is so heavily tied to so many different things.

Well, so how did Nabil's parents and family respond after he became not only a

Christian, but a Christian very much in the public eye? I mean, a Christian who very rapidly rose to the point where he was a renowned figure, especially after beginning working with the

Ravi Zacharias in international ministries. Yeah, well, no, I mean, it's been difficult for them every step of the way.

I was the one who baptized Nabil, and Nabil didn't want to tell his parents that he was being baptized.

And I understand that in lots of different parts of the world where becoming a Christian and getting baptized and, you know, if you're in Saudi Arabia, you don't want to make that a public thing.

You know, if you're in the underground church or something like that. But, you know, with Nabil here in the

West and, you know, knowing that his parents were, you know, that they're not on the level of idol, of being an idol for him, but, you know, it's pretty close.

And so with Nabil, I thought it was important that he tell his parents that he's a Christian before he's baptized.

And he said, no. And I said, well, I'm not baptizing you until you tell your parents.

And he said, no, the baptism's already scheduled, and I'm going to do it. And I said, well,

I'm going to pray that your parents find out. And he said, okay. And a couple days before the baptism, his parents went over to his apartment, and he wasn't there.

And they had a key, and they went in, and his computer was open to me and him talking on email about him being a

Christian. And so, yeah, they did find out. He came back to his apartment, and they were there waiting on him to have a discussion.

And so that was very, it was extremely difficult for his parents. His parents were leaders of the

Islamic community there in Tidewater, Virginia. And so it's very embarrassing to them, because in Islam, it's,

I've seen this over and over again. If your child converts to something else, the surrounding community treats you like it's your fault.

You've been a bad parent. Not, hey, you've raised your son so well that he's willing to go, he's willing to go wherever the evidence points.

He's willing to go wherever the truth leads. Not, hey, you've, and that's, a lot of that did come from his parents, them encouraging him to go out and study and pursue

God. And they encouraged that sort of thing. But in the Islamic community, it's not, hey, you did a great job raising your child so that he's even willing to follow

God, even if it hurts and even if it radically alters his life. It's, you're a bad parent because your son or your daughter left

Islam. And so it was very humiliating for them. It could have been, it could have been a lot worse.

I've talked to many former Muslims in the West where they say that when they told their parents they had converted, that that was the last time they ever saw their parents.

They were just cut off. But it's also fairly common for parents to try to convert their kids back to Islam.

And that's usually done by bringing them around to various Muslim scholars who are going to show them the truth.

And so that's what, fortunately, that's what Nabil's dad did. They didn't cut him off. They wanted him to convert back to Islam.

And so Nabil's dad started bringing him around to various Muslim scholars. And it was cool because Nabil was perfectly happy by this point.

Because we've been studying this stuff. We've been studying apologetics and going through the evidence for Christianity and Islam for several years by this point.

And so he was well prepared. And he was telling me once that his dad was taking him to an

Islamic center in the UK where he's going to meet with the scholars who are going to show him that Islam is the truth.

He called me up and he said, hey, can we put together a sort of comprehensive case that we can discuss with the leaders there?

And I said, sure. And we put together this 80 -page document of problems with standard

Muslim beliefs. And he went in there with his dad and met with the scholars and laid this down for them and said, all right, let's go through this.

And so it took a while for his dad to realize that that wasn't going to work.

But his dad still believed that at some point Nabil would return to Islam.

And later, of course, when Nabil is marrying a Christian wife, his parents didn't attend the wedding because for them it's like another step.

It's like now it's going to be more difficult for you to come back to Islam because you have a Christian wife.

And then you're out with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. And it's more of an embarrassment to them, right?

It's not just, hey, your son converted to Christianity. It's your son is preaching

Christianity around the world and telling people why Islam is false. And so they had to deal with that.

And I mean, I don't even think we can imagine the kind of pain that they must have been in.

And in fact, yesterday at the funeral where people are greeting the families, I looked up to Nabil's parents and his sister.

And I apologize to them for not being loving, more loving towards them over these years, because I really haven't been.

It's always been my attitude, well, he rejected your path, get on with it. I haven't had a lot of compassion for what they've been going through.

But yes, I mean, it's extremely difficult. And any hope that they had that he was eventually going to return to Islam is now, of course, crushed because he died.

But even then, I mean, even then you could see the difference. Whereas Nabil's in -laws, so his wife and her parents, they were calm and they're obviously upset that Nabil is gone.

But they have hope that they believe that he's with Jesus. Whereas Nabil's family was,

I mean, they were sobbing. I mean, they were sobbing uncontrollably. And so very, very sad situation there.

And this was just yesterday at the funeral? Yes. And well, going back to the

Ahmadi background that Nabil's from, do his parents have a universalist understanding where they are certain that Nabil is in heaven, even if he abandoned their faith?

I've never asked them about the specifics because there is variation within the

Ahmadi community. That seemed to be Nabil's view when we were having discussions back when, back before he was a

Christian. I know it's his sister's view, but I haven't, I don't know what his parents exactly believe on there, along those lines.

Well, Alisher in Dallas, Texas, thank you so much for submitting that question to David Wood.

You have also won a free DVD set, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, the video study version of his book.

And please give us your full mailing address. And by the way, since you're a first time questioner in our audience, you are also getting a free

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB. And we thank the publishers of the

NASB and we thank Zondrefin for providing us these DVDs today for listeners who are participating in the program with their own questions and comments.

So please make sure we have your full mailing address. And let me go to another listener.

We have Santhosh, and of course,

I apologize again if I am mispronouncing your name. Santhosh, who is living in Hicksville, Long Island as an international student.

He is from India. And it's interesting. I just mentioned Hicksville before because there are a lot of Indian restaurants in Hicksville.

I used to go there with my late wife and we used to love going to the Indian restaurants. And that's where the

Imam, the Ahmadi Imam took me for lunch as well in Hicksville. But Santhosh says,

I am influenced by the work of Nabeel and you, meaning David Wood, over the years.

I have two questions. Apart from Nabeel, did you debate with any other friends? And the second question is, how did you overcome the pain of losing

Nabeel? Well, obviously, this is a very fresh thing in your mind and heart that's occurred. But have you ever debated a friend other than Nabeel?

Obviously, you've had a lot of debates with Muslims. Oh, yeah.

I'm assuming that by debate here, he doesn't mean the formal debates. I've done, I think, close to 60 formal public debates.

I'm assuming he means interpersonal discussions and that kind of debate.

But yes, of course. Since I became a Christian, I've been doing this a lot.

And Nabeel isn't the only one of the best friends I've had who became a

Christian after, you know, getting into these kinds of discussions. Yeah, I had another friend who was in prison with me, whose name was

Philip. And he was kind of a pagan when we became bunkmates there in prison.

And that took several months of discussions. And he was a very, very, very intelligent guy, one of the most intelligent people

I've ever met. And he eventually became a Christian. And my wife, of course, my wife was an agnostic when we met.

In fact, my wife came up to... I met my wife when she came up to Nabeel and me when we were arguing about the resurrection.

We're in an airport arguing about the resurrection. And she comes up to us and starts arguing with both of us. And she was walking away.

And I told Nabeel, I said, I'm going to marry her. And he apparently thought I was joking, but I wasn't.

And so I ended up in discussions with her. And it was about two weeks later when she became a

Christian. And we got engaged about two months afterward. Yeah, so I've had several friends along the way that were not

Christians when we met and later became Christians. As far as the other part of the question, how

I'm doing, I'm technically a sociopath.

I'm a diagnosed sociopath. So our emotional attachments to other people are significantly reduced.

You're like Spock. Yeah, we tend to deal well with tragedy, which if we become

Christians and so on, that can actually help us because when tragedy strikes, we can focus on helping other people.

But at the same time, it's not just that I have reduced emotions when it comes to things like tragedy.

It's, I mean, I believe that Nabeel's with Jesus. And so as far as he's concerned,

I mean, he's much better. He's much better off. The sad part is that his daughter isn't going to grow up with her father and that Nabeel would have still gone on making a huge impact and doing more amazing things and putting out more books.

And so it's that kind of loss. So the feeling bad, as far as Nabeel is concerned,

Nabeel gets to see Jesus. It's for other people in our world.

But you notice that's something that we can also do something about, right?

If we're upset about the loss of Nabeel because he was going to have such a tremendous impact on the world, well, guess what?

Everyone pull out your books, start studying and work towards filling those shoes and go out and reach out to Muslims and preach the gospel to Muslims and raise up a generation of future

Nabeels. And so if we believe that God is in control and that God knows what he's doing, then this doesn't turn out for bad.

Even though it looks bad, it may feel bad, but this doesn't ultimately turn out for the bad.

It turns out for the good. Darrell Bock Well, thank you, Santhosh. Please give us your full mailing address in Hicksville, Long Island, so we can mail you out a free copy of the

DVD set, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, a video study, compliments of Zondervan Publishing.

And also you're getting a free New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the

NASB, since you are a first -time questioner on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. We're going to go to our final break.

It's going to be a briefer break. And when we return, we'll get to as many of your questions and comments and tributes as we possibly can get to before running out of time.

And if anybody would like to join those already online, I would do so now before we run out of time.

The email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. That's chrisarnson,

C -H -R -I -S, at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

USA. Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with David Wood and more of our tribute of Nubil Qureshi.

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and look for their 50 % sale on commentaries. We are now back with the concluding portion of our program today with David Wood.

We are paying tribute to his dear friend who just went home to be with the Lord last Saturday, Nabeel Qureshi, a

Muslim convert to Christianity. In fact, our friend David Wood, who is on the program, for those of you who tuned in late, he was the instrument in God's hands that led

Nabeel to Christ. And there was no better person to pay tribute to him today on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, especially since David has a long -time connection with our program and has been on the program possibly more times than any other person interviewed, especially in the old days, while broadcasting out of New York.

He ranks up there with Phil Johnson of John MacArthur's Grace to You Ministries, and Steve Camp, the

Christian recording artist, I believe, as far as the frequency with which David has been on the program.

But we have another listener who has something to say. Her name is Katie from Jacksonville, Florida.

I have a friend that God brought into my life about five years ago. She is not a believer, she's a staunch

Catholic, but we have had many great spiritual conversations, and I've been blessed with ample opportunities to share the gospel with her.

She regularly attends a Bible study that I lead in my home. These are all great things, but I find myself getting discouraged sometimes over a lack of conversion.

After hearing about your friendship with Nabeel and how his conversion took a long time, and I have now been greatly encouraged and inspired to persevere in my friendship and dedication to my friend, do you have any other advice or words of wisdom regarding how to be a good friend and working through issues like this?

Oh, absolutely, and this is something that went back to when I was friends with Nabeel.

I would hear from Christians who would tell me that I'm spending too much time focusing on talking to Nabeel and preaching to Nabeel.

They'd say, look, you know, you're spending years of your life with most of your time dedicated to one person.

Think about all the people that you have out there that, you know, you could reach in that same time rather than talking to this person who's obviously hard -hearted.

And I think lots of people have a kind of Billy Graham crusade mindset when it comes to the gospel that, you know, you get up, you preach the gospel, and people come down and convert, or, you know, they go off, and then you go to the next place, and you do the same thing.

You make sure that people hear the gospel, and if they reject it, then, you know, that's on them. And, you know, that sort of ministry, the sort of people that that approach is effective around is with people who they already believe in, you know, they believe that God exists.

They believe that Jesus is the Son of God. They believe in the Bible. They just never kind of made a commitment and said, all right, now

I'm going to follow him. I'm going to acknowledge him as Lord. And so you present them with the gospel, and then they, you know, they can respond to it, and they can actually dedicate their lives to Jesus.

But if you're talking to people like Muslims who have been indoctrinated all of their lives to reject everything you're saying in the gospel other than, you know,

God exists or something like that, then that's a much more in -depth process, and that's the sort of thing that's going to take a long, long time.

If you ever walk up and preach the gospel to a Muslim, and he converts, I guarantee you there were other people who were there before you doing a lot of the groundwork.

But as far as, you know, as far as advice for sort of long -term relationships, I would say, you know, like Nabil and I did, try and come to an agreement here at the beginning that, hey, we're friends, and we care about each other, and one of us is right and the other's wrong, or we're both wrong, but if one of us is right here, then, you know, we may be here because God put us here so that one of us could help the other.

So let's agree on that and start working from there. And then, you know, wherever we have disagreements, very popular in our culture to say, hey, you have disagreements, but, you know, it's wrong to point out these disagreements, you know, get to the point where, look, if we have a disagreement, and it's something important, and it's something theological, and it's something about, you know, that affects our, that can affect our eternal destiny, that's the sort of thing that we need to get clear on.

And we need to see what the disagreement is and then see who's right and who's wrong.

And as good friends, we should be doing that. We shouldn't be avoiding that if we're good friends. We should be focusing on these kinds of things if we're good friends.

And another point of advice for whoever you're talking to, whether, you know, it's a

Muslim or anyone, is I've seen lots of people who think that they have to do all their studying and know everything about whomever they're talking to and their ideology before they go in so that they don't get stumped with some objection or some question.

And that's certainly never been how I've interacted with people.

Because the problem is, you know, you keep studying and so on, and that can take a long time before you're ever actually interacting with people.

But obviously, you do need some, you do need to be able to make a case for the deity of Christ and the reliability of the

New Testament and Jesus' death and resurrection. You need to know the basics, the fundamentals of the gospel.

Every Christian should be studying to be able to give that kind of case. But if you're talking about opposing ideologies, especially if you're in a, if you have a good, close relationship with someone, you're in a position where you don't have to learn everything ahead of time.

If someone brings up some objection or argument or position that you've never heard of before, there's no shame whatsoever in saying, you know,

I haven't thought of that. I haven't heard of that before. I haven't studied that. Could you let me have about a week so that I can go look into that?

And then we'll meet again in a week to discuss this after I've studied it. And you can study it, of course, in the meantime as well.

There's no shame in that. And if you're good friends, you know, that keeps the conversation going. And so those would be a few basic points

I'd bring up. Well, thank you, Katie. And let's see, where in Florida was

Katie from? In Jacksonville, Florida. And Katie, please give us your full mailing address because you've also won the

DVD set for Seeking God, Finding Jesus, a video study by Nabeel Qureshi.

And being a first time questioner on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, you're also receiving a free New American Standard Bible.

And this is compliments of Zondervan for the DVD set and compliments of the publishers of the NASB for the

Bible. And we thank both of those organizations for helping to make today's program a richer experience.

And let's see here. We've got quite a number of people here that are writing in questions.

We have Lillian in Brooklyn, New York, spelt in a very different way than I've ever seen it before.

L -I -L -Y -A -N in Brooklyn, New York. And she says,

My name is Lillian. The first time I heard of Nabeel, I was searching through YouTube for ex -Muslims stories.

I had a Muslim friend who I had dialogue with. I listened to his testimony. Then I read his books.

I followed his journey throughout his battle with cancer. When he passed away, I felt like I lost a great friend, even though I never met him.

That seems to be a common thing people are saying. We thank you, Lillian, for contributing to the program.

And you are also receiving a free video or DVD set of Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, a video study by Nabeel Qureshi.

You're also receiving a New American Standard Bible. Please give us your full mailing address so we can send it out to you in Brooklyn.

One thing, going back to the previous question very quickly, we have to trust in the fact that we as humans can only plant and water seeds.

Only God can give the increase. Am I right, David? Oh, absolutely. I believe that God puts us in situations.

We have to be thinking that even though God is ultimately the only one who can change a person's heart, that I'm in the hands of God now.

Maybe God put me here specifically for this, specifically to reach this person.

We're told to preach the gospel and to do the work of an apologist, to be able to give a defense for what we believe.

If these are commands in Scripture, then we are the ones that God uses to reach people.

Okay, we have, let's see, we have

Asman, or I'm sorry, oh, I'm sorry, that was the last name.

Sarah, we have in Russell Springs, Kentucky. She says, this is a tribute to Nabeel Qureshi.

I would like to thank David for his ministry and persistence with Nabeel as they were investigating the claims of Christianity.

Nabeel is such an inspiration to me. I, among many others, feel as though Nabeel was a friend, even though I never met him.

We have that again. He was intelligent, steadfast, passionate, just truly amazing.

What stands out the most about Nabeel is how he reflected the character of Christ in this world.

I admire his gentleness and respect for others as he discussed matters of faith.

He was courageous and kind. He was willing to give up everything to follow the Lord. Nabeel inspired me to begin studying apologetics.

I am currently in my last year of a Christian apologetics program at Liberty University. I found

Nabeel at a time when I was questioning my own faith. I am truly amazed by his example.

His legacy will live on. I am so sorry for your loss, David. I mourn with you and will continue to lift you and his family up in prayer.

And that's Sarah in Russell Springs, Kentucky. And thank you, Sarah. Give us your full mailing address because you've also won a free copy of the

DVD series, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. And you've also won a free New American Standard Bible as well.

And let's see. We have, we have, let's see.

Well, this goes on to the issue of Nabeel's discovery that he had cancer.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about that before I even ask the question of Aaron in Indianapolis, Indiana.

What, tell us something about how he first heard that he had developed cancer and how you had heard of it.

And when did this go from optimism to realization that there was no earthly or little earthly hope of survival, but of course, great hope for eternity with Christ?

Well, when Nabeel found out that he had stomach cancer, he was already, at first, they gave him a preliminary diagnosis of stage three.

Then they did some more careful scans and determined that it was stage four.

But he had already had stomach troubles for a couple of years before that. In fact, I remember him having stomach troubles when we were still students in college, when he was a

Muslim. It would be mainly when he would eat something in the morning, he would have bad stomach pain.

If he ate something the rest of the day, he would eat like a horse if we were out eating. But in the morning when he ate some sort of big meal, that's why he didn't, he wouldn't eat in the morning because he had such stomach pain.

But going back just a few years ago, Nabeel would have problems eating, he wouldn't feel good.

And for a while, he just ignored it. Eventually, when he went to the doctor, he went in there and said, hey,

I have stomach pain and so on. And they said, well, here, take some antacids. And so he would try that for a few weeks. This is when he was in the

UK. So he would take antacids for a while, and then he would go back to them a few weeks later and say, hey, it's not working.

And they would say, OK, try this other antacid here. And he would take that for a few weeks and come back and say, you know, that didn't work.

And they would tell him, take this other thing. And so he did that for a couple of months, trying their various introductory treatments there.

And then he moved back to the United States and went in and said, hey, I've been having stomach pains. And they said, well, here, take these antacids.

And he said, I already went through all this in the UK. And they told him, well, you still have to go through it here because we have our list to check off, that you have to go through this process.

And so this was a couple more months when they finally scanned him and found out that it was cancer.

And so this, of course, you know, he knew something was wrong with his stomach, but it was kind of a shock.

You don't expect to go in there and find out that you've got stage 3 or stage 4 cancer. But I talked to him right after he got his diagnosis.

And he was in good spirits. He was happy. And, you know, behind the scenes, behind the scenes, he was acknowledging, yeah,

I may die, but, you know, I'm going to believe that God can heal me.

And so in his videos, he's saying, you know, he's asking people to pray for him. And he's going around to people who are going to pray for him to be healed and so on.

And, you know, and at first, for those first several months, he was getting better.

So he was getting chemotherapy, and he would go in for the checkup, and it was better.

And, you know, it wasn't until several months later where it started getting worse. It was spreading to other areas of his body.

And so if people want to watch his videos, you can tell up until just a few months ago, maybe three or four months ago.

He was still looking totally healthy, still looking very good. But eventually, the cancer spread into other organs.

And that's when you saw a very rapid, rapid decline. And, you know, as that went on, as it went on, you know, things got worse and worse.

And people were still praying for him. But yeah, he deteriorated very quickly.

Now, when I saw, I just saw a video of him in his hospital bed.

Like it was, in fact, I know it was the day before he went home to the Lord. How long before that was that film?

Do you know? Where he was basically acknowledging that the doctors were not going to do anything more than give him medication for discomfort.

And then, you know, there were still some, there were still several days before he died. When those were recorded, he posted one where he was pointing out that they were going to discontinue the feeding and so on.

And then after that, he posted one more brief thought that he believed that he's supposed to love everyone.

And he wanted that to be how he's remembered. And that even when he was criticizing

Islam and, you know, telling people things that they might not want to hear, he just wanted people to understand that he was doing all of that out of love and not out of hatred.

And he asked people to forgive him if he's ever come across as not loving them. And that was his last message.

And I noticed after that, because I wasn't down there, his parents were down there and I was worried that, you know, that they didn't want me to be there in the same room with them while they were there.

And at that time, I was still, I didn't know how, I didn't know if he was going to have weeks left or what.

But those last few days, I wasn't down there. But I noticed that I was texting him messages after those last videos and asking him, you know, if he wants me to come down or what.

And I just wasn't getting any responses. And so, yes, he was, after discontinuing the calories, then, you know, eventually he became less and less responsive until he was just basically asleep.

And then Mike Lacona was the last person that I know apart from his parents who was there.

Mike Lacona visited him the day before he died. And he was unresponsive.

I think he lifted his hand at one point or something. And then Nabeel died the next day. Okay, well,

I will now read Erin's question from Indianapolis, Indiana. She was wondering if anyone in Nabeel's family that are

Muslim or any other Muslims close to him blamed his conversion to Christianity for his cancer, his development of cancer and his subsequent death.

Yes, I am aware of some of his family members. I'm not going to say specifically.

Sure, I understand that. But, yes, some of his family members did say that, you know, they asked, why are you doing this to yourself?

You've done this to yourself by the choices you've made and so on. And so, yes, that was which, of course, that's got to be difficult.

That had to be difficult for him. Well, thank you, Erin. You've actually won our last

DVD set of Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, the video study by Nabeel Qureshi, thanks to Zondervan Publishing.

And thank you very much for contributing your question to our program today. We do have another listener.

We have a bunch of other listeners. But let's see, we'll go to Grace in Charlotte, North Carolina.

And let's see here, I have to enlarge Grace's question because her font is microscopic.

And Grace's question is, David, would you share with us the one thing that you learned from Nabeel about Christian living during the last day of his life?

Could you touch on what you felt when you realized that his prayer to be healed was not going to be answered on this side of heaven?

Yeah, well, you know, there's always a concern that, you know, someone is going to die in a way that's not honoring to Christ.

Because, you know, when everything has just been stripped away from you, and you're in pain, and you know your daughter's going to grow up without you, and that all your hopes for the future, all the books you're planning on writing, you're just not going to be able to do that, right?

And you know that God can do what he wants, and that God could have made you so that you don't get cancer.

God could heal you. You know that God is sovereign here.

In that situation, you always wonder, is this person at the end going to become angry?

And, you know, is he going to lash out at God? Is he going to get upset? And Nabil, in his last two, the video before his last one, he prayed and he said, you know, if God heals me, then, you know, good.

But if he doesn't, I love him anyway. And so it was awesome to see that, you know, even when everything's been stripped away and you know you're losing every earthly thing, that you can still be faithful.

And so that was awesome that he got that example. And not only for Christians, but also for Muslims, because there are

Muslims who always say when people leave Islam that it's for money or it's to get something.

It's you're selling the truth. You're selling salvation just to get some earthly gain. And so there are times when, you know, all earthly gain is just stripped away and people are still serving the

Lord. And that objection, that criticism has to go away. And they have to acknowledge that, no, this person really sincerely submitted to Jesus as Lord.

And what was the other part? Basically, the thing that you learned the most from his life while he was on, you know, his last days on earth, from his last days on earth as a

Christian. Yeah, that would be it. I mean, the significance of honoring

God, even when, you know, even if you happened to feel like, you know,

God, you could have done something to save me from all this, but you didn't. But I'm going to love you anyway.

I mean, that is, that's huge. And that is an answer that's a kind of apologetic that he can never give through his arguments, right?

I mean, he can give, and Nabil could give a defense of the resurrection and the deity of Christ and the New Testament and so on.

But the criticism is always, no, you had some other motive for leaving

Islam. It was something else. And so it's, even in dying, it's still, he's giving us a special kind of apologetic.

And it's, you know, it's similar to the resurrection of Jesus, where the worst thing in the world happens through Jesus' death on the cross.

The worst possible thing that could happen is for our creator, the one in whom we live and move and have our being, dies at the hands of sinful human beings.

That's the worst possible thing that can happen. And yet we find out that it's the best possible thing that could ever happen.

And so that sort of resurrection thinking, that what looks like the worst can actually be the best, we see this in other areas.

And as Christians, we have to, this should be part of our thinking that we see, you know, something that seems awful,

Nabil dying. And yet, and yet, we see that amazing things can happen even through these things.

We have Ron C. in Atlanta, Georgia. And he says, we as a family have been blessed by the ministry of both

Nabil Qureshi and David Wood. My question for David is, how are you able to address the non -Christian community so fearlessly?

You are very bold and strong when you convey the meaning of truth.

I do have a lot of non -believers as my friends, but it hasn't been as easy to convey any advice.

Well, I mean, as far as, I don't, I'm just, I'm just wired in a certain way where I'm not scared.

You can saw my head off and I'm not scared. So that comes in handy if you're talking to people who say they're going to chop your head off if you don't stop talking about Muhammad or something like that.

As far as advice, if you, as far as talking to unbelievers, it kind of depends.

It kind of depends on whom you're talking to. But I would say everyone, all

Christians need to learn, again, a defense of the basic Christian doctrines.

And once you have a defense of the basic Christian doctrines, then find people who don't know that Christianity is true and find out if they're really interested.

And you can do that, again, with a simple question. Hey, if you're wrong, do you want to know it? I would encourage people to ask questions.

I find out lots of Christians, they just go out and they proclaim a message and, you know, instead of actually getting into a discussion, just asking a simple question like, hey, you know, what do you believe about how the universe got here?

And you can find out a lot about a person when they answer that question. And also, once you've asked people what they believe, hey, what do you believe about the universe?

What do you believe about Jesus? What do you believe about the Bible? What do you believe about the Quran? Depending on whom you're talking to.

And start asking, why do you believe that sort of thing? And then you start getting into any kind of reasons that they may have.

You find out if they've actually studied or if they just absorbed the, you know, the beliefs of their parents or their community.

And, you know, after going through some of those things, then ask a question like, if you're wrong, do you want to know it?

Because if I'm wrong, I want to know it. Do you want to know? And once you've got that, then you sort of, you understand where the person is coming from.

You understand what the person's issues are, what objections they may have to Christianity. And if you're the right person to continue having a discussion with them.

And if you are, then you can say, hey, well, why don't we get together and discuss these matters?

And so you can have even pretty hostile unbelievers. And you find out that they actually like to talk.

The cool thing about the hostile unbelievers is they want to preach a message to you. So they're kind of open to having discussions and dialogues and debates.

And you may find it easier to talk to someone who seems aggressive or hostile. You may find it easier to have a discussion with them than someone who just doesn't care a lot about what people believe in.

Or someone who believes that people should just mind their own business and not talk about things. And so even when some people seem hostile and aggressive, those can actually be the people that it's easier to have a conversation with.

So I keep that in mind. And give us your full mailing address, Ron C.

And you will receive a free New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the

NASB since you are a first -time questioner. So give us your full mailing address in Atlanta, Georgia. And we'll have cvbbs .com

ship that out to you as soon as possible. We have Melina in Jacksonville, Florida.

With all of Nabeel's traveling, were David and Nabeel able to stay close even though their ministries went separate ways?

Yeah, our ministries went separate ways when, I mean, at first we were dealing a lot with like Jihad and Sharia and so on.

And Nabeel and I actually were sitting down when we realized you kind of can't focus on counter -Jihad and counter -Sharia issues and be preaching the

Gospel on campuses and stuff like this because they think of you as a counter -Jihadist and not as like a Christian preacher or an apologist and so on.

So we were actually discussing this. And I'm the one who asked him when he was sort of rustling with this.

And I said, look, it doesn't look like you can do both with complete effectiveness. And so if you had to choose one, you know, going out, sharing the

Gospel on campuses and churches around the world or confronting Jihad and Sharia and the threat that Islam poses, which one would you choose?

And he said, well, Islam has to be confronted. Jihad has to be confronted. Sharia has to be confronted.

But if I had to choose one, I would rather go around and preach and do scholarly work and so on.

I said, well, I think we should split up because I can do the counter -Jihad and counter -Sharia stuff and you can do the other stuff.

But if we're recognizing that you kind of have to pick one to be as effective as you can be, then we would have to go about that.

And after that time, then Nabeel sort of formed his own ministry for a while, Creed 26, and then he got picked up by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

And after that, we were for several years. We would only see each other if Nabeel happened to come to New York or something like that.

But he was traveling, I think, 250 or 280 days out of the year that he's going around.

He's on the road preaching. And so I didn't stay much in contact with him for a few years until things started flowing down.

He started going to college and so on. That's when we were able to catch up more. Now, we are out of time, David. I don't want to put you on the spot, but are you able to stay on with us for a little bit longer and we'll air the other part of the interview at a future date?

If you can't do that, I understand, because neither of us knew this until just now. But can you stay on with us a little bit longer?

Sure. No problem. All right. Well, as far as this audience goes live, I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. And don't forget that David Wood's contact information is acts17 .net,

acts17 .net and answeringmuslims .com, answeringmuslims .com. Please pray for the

Nabeel Qureshi family, that they may find peace in the absence of their loved one who is now with Christ for eternity.