Questions on the road to faith for a Middle East listener

Yemen. 10:15pm. M was listening to an Arabic song on his radio before going to bed. When the song finished he decided to look for something interesting on another station. While searching, he heard the voices of two people talking, ‘We are Arab Christians of several nationalities… Lebanese, Jordanian, Yemeni, Iraqi…’

‘Aren’t all Yemenis Muslims?’ M wondered. He listened as the broadcasters tried to explain what Christians meant when they spoke about the Son of God. To M this was blasphemy. A phone number was given to encourage listeners to send questions and comments by text message. Grabbing his mobile phone, he sent a text message, ‘I heard you saying that Jesus is the Son of God. We (Muslims) say that Jesus is the word of God. Please explain to me the difference.’ He hesitated and then clicked ‘send’.

In the morning Feba Radio staff discussed how to explain what they meant by ‘Son of God’. They receive this and similar questions every day. The team prayed that M and thousands like him would be touched by the answer they would broadcast.

M listened that next night to the broadcasters’ answers. He continued using his mobile to text further questions. Finally he decided it was time to get a Bible, even if he believed the text was unreliable. Some weeks later, he started reading the Bible and asking more questions, and one day he told a close friend about the Christian radio station.

They both listen regularly now, reading the Bible and sending text messages to the broadcasters. They haven’t decided to follow Jesus yet, but the programmers believe that God will use their programs and that M and others will eventually take this step of faith.