zechariah he was a nice person
he was a decent person he was very smart
he was the only christian in the whole
of the school
and i hated him and because i thought as
a muslim i must be better than him
but he was better than i we start to
beat him
every single day that we come to school
and we agreed on that night
we need to kill him it was dark
it was cold and we went ahead of him
and we were five of us we climbed a tree
and we waited there and from far away
we saw that a torch coming
and the light became bigger and bigger
as it
approaches us and the minute that he
just
went under the tree we jumped at him
he was crying he was screaming
he was shouting we broke his arm
we broke his leg he started to bleed
and because he started to scream and
begging for help
i put my hand in his mouth
so that no noise will come out similar
when you are slaughtering a sheep you
know it's just
shivering and the others were beating
him
i felt very proud you were actually
doing something for
for allah you know you want to please
him
and suddenly he could no longer
breathe and we could not hear his voice
we left him in the wood between life and
death
we went back you wash yourself
and you pray and zechariah
never came back i've never seen him
again
[Music]
i was born and raised up in a very very
fanatic muslim family
when i was a child my father brought me
to a quran school
i was only eight years old and my father
just dropped me there
they shaved my head we sat in a circle
the sat in the middle of this circle and
he has a very long whip
i was forced to memorize the quran
every mistake that you do this whip will
just come
right in the middle of your head
you're not allowed to cry because in our
culture they tell you
men never cry i was crying every single
night
and they told me you belong to the
islamic ummah
and that's why you fight for it you stay
loyal to it i started to hate people
to hate everybody who's not a muslim
and i especially used to hate the jews
so i was preparing myself to go
and fight for allah in the jihad
but every night i went to bed and when
we put the light off
i did not know what will happen with me
if i die my cousin was severely sick
and the doctors they said he's going to
die they gave him
only a couple of days and one day came
two people
they were coptic christians and one of
them
want to greet me and then i saw he had a
cross
and then i pulled my hand back i said
well i'm not going to touch a hand
it was a cross and then he said to me we
hear that this child
is sick who would like to pray for him
and only out of politeness
i told them okay and they started to
speak to god
like a person that he speaks to his
friend they said god please
heal this child the minute that they
said i'm in
this child opened his eyes for the first
time
in four weeks he started to move
his hands he started to speak
he sat down in his bed and he started to
walk
and one of those two persons who prayed
[Music]
sat down with me and he said to me you
know what
the real miracle is that god
want to change your heart
do you believe that yeshua is alive
and i told him yeah because according to
the islamic
tradition god took him to heaven and
he's alive and he will come back one day
and he said to me because he's alive
you can speak to him that changed my
entire
life and when i started to read the
scripture nobody needed to convince me
to love the jewish people the only way
for muslims to start to love the jews
is when they meet yeshua
i loved my family i loved my father
i loved my mother and i loved my
community
and when i decided to follow yeshua
my grandfather and my father said to me
you are no longer one of us they made a
funeral
they invited friends and family they
brought a coffin
to the cemetery and they said our son
is dead to be declared dead
with no family i said to god
where are you i hear this voice
and this voice told me you know that
the grave where your name is written
you know that grave is empty and guess
what
my grave is also empty
i went to egypt for the first time after
many years
and i was in a pastoral conference and
one of the sudanese pastors came to me
it's an elderly man's gray hair
started to speak to me and he asked me
where did you come from
i told him my story he started to cry
and then i asked him why are you crying
and he said to me do you remember me
my name is zechariah
and suddenly i remembered him
the last time i saw him it was in that
dark night
i could hear suddenly the way that he
was screaming
even though that was 25 years
suddenly i started to see his broken arm
and broken legs
i started to see the scars which
i caused him i started to be
full of shame i was a bad person yeah
i was terrible so the career
looked me straight into the eye again
and he said to me answer because
you hated me so much
i was always praying for you he opened
his bible
and the minute he opened his bible i saw
that my name was written
in the first page
i hated him he prayed for me
on that day god confronted me
he said to me even before you start to
think about me
i was thinking about you to love
those who hate you you need someone
whose name is yeshua
[Music]
you