How Nabeel Qureshi Shared the Power of the Gospel Til the Very End of His Life
Benjamin Gill : Sep 19, 2017
CBN News
"I left Islam because I studied Muhammad's life. I accepted the Gospel because I studied Jesus' life." -Nabeel Qureshi
(Houston, TX)— [CBN News] Christians around the world were saddened this weekend to learn about the death of Christian thinker and apologist Nabeel Qureshi at the young age of 34. (Photo: Nabeel Qureshi/via CBN News)
Nabeel's story resonated with so many as he shared his journey from Islam to Christianity. He summed up his life story in a tweet from 2014, pinned to the top of his Twitter page.
It simply says this: "I left Islam because I studied Muhammad's life. I accepted the Gospel because I studied Jesus' life. #MyStory #SeekingAllahFindingJesus"
A week before his death, he posted a final heartfelt Facebook message about the true heart of the Gospel: love.
"When we talk to people about our beliefs, we should do it through a lens of love. And the whole point should be to bring people together, to bring people together to the truth, and not to hurt one another but to help one another," Nabeel says. "My whole point in teaching is for love to reign."
Even as time was running out for him, Nabeel wanted to do everything he could to reach the world with the love of Jesus.
So he used his book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus as an outline for a final video teaching series, posting the videos on YouTube and Twitter as a final testimony for the world.
In his introductory YouTube post this summer, he described his goal as "providing brief insights into ministering to Muslims as well as responding to the most common Muslim objections to Christianity. It is designed for Christians and Muslims alike. I pray it will be encouraging and edifying for you!"
Nabeel's vision for reaching Muslims and the entire world for Jesus lives on through these videos. You can watch them here.
In the video series, Nabeel and his friend David Wood who led him to Christ, covered some of the book's highlights, like "The Importance of Relationships in Religious Dialogue."
"If we can choose any approach as the best possible approach it would be building up a friendship over time," Wood says.
He encourages Believers who share their faith with Muslims not to let their friendships with them crumble because of heated arguments they may have about their faiths.
"If you're talking about people's most heart-felt beliefs, if you're seriously talking and not just avoiding things, if you're actually communicating your views on these different topics and you disagree, that can lead to some very heated exchanges," Wood explains. "If you have a friendship that can endure that, then you can bring those things up."
Nabeel said while he may have been angry with David for challenging his faith, he respected him.
"I realized that his faith was important to him and my faith was important to me," Nabeel said in the video.
Nabeel and David also look at the different approaches to ministering to Muslims.
"If you want to reach out to Muslims consider who God has made you to be. Don't be daunted by this work. It's not about being a genius, it's not about being the most hospitable person in the world. It's about being humble in your heart," Nabeel explained. "If I suggest, you know, something coming into this, it's you know back and forth the reasons why you are a Christian and let those be good reasons."
David and Nabeel also go in depth into the different types of Muslims and the common objections Muslims have for Christianity and how to refute them.