The Sean McDowell Show - From Jihad to Jesus: A Radical Muslim Converts to Christianity (ft. Tomas Samuel)

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

Why would a radical Muslim become a follower of Jesus? Tomas Samuel was a strict Salafi Muslim who preached and taught Islam to convert more westerners. As he was studying elements of Christianity, he began to admire it. Now he's pursuing his Ph.D. and along with his wife, trying to serve people through Christ. *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Why would a radical Salafi Muslim become a follower of Jesus? Most of the people rejected me in Egypt, the people I used to know, I mean. Our guest today is Thomas Samuel, a new friend of mine who's written a book just coming out about his journey, so to speak, that we're going to get into today, called It's Your Time to Follow Me. People are full of hatred. I received 359 direct death threats. It cost me a lot. However... Thomas, such a treat to talk with you again. Thanks for coming on the show and your courage and willingness to share your story. Thank you, sir. I'm very honored to be with you today.

It's a blessing and I'm very happy to be with your audience, and I pray that God will use it for his glory. Well, let's start in our conversation where you start in the book. Is your childhood growing up in Egypt? What was your family like? What are some of your earliest memories? Actually, this is a fantastic special story in my opinion because my family was radical, or still actually is radical Muslims because they are still radical Muslims. And they grow me up in Egypt in the idea of, or in the path of Salafism because we believe that Salafism is a path and for people who may not understand the word Salafi Salafi are the group of people who believe

in Quran the book of Muslims and Sunnah the words of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, with the perspective of the ancestors of the nation of the Islamic nation. In another way, we say Al-Qur'an wa-l-Sunnah bimanhaj salafi al-Ummah, the Quran and Sunnah with the perspective or the worldview of Muhammad's companions and with the most radical foundational, fundamental perspective. It's very important, Shem, to say that it's fundamental, not extremist. This is a very important point people don't understand sometimes. A big difference between saying extreme. Extreme is something out of the line, right? When you say this is extreme,

like there is a middle point, there is a path, and you go extreme out of the path. No, we are not the extreme. We are the fundamentalists. We are the core. We are the followers of Quran and Sunnah. So in my opinion Salafism is the radical foundational fundamental Islam in the Muslim world. So they grow me up, they grow me up on these teachings, they grow me up with these values. I started to memorize the Quran since I was young. I remember well my mom used to tell me these very important words for me because it meant a lot to me. My mom used to look at me after her prayer or when she's about to pray and she says, may I see you a leader of Islam coming back with victory or a dead body coming back as a martyrdom. Imagine my mom is saying that she wants to see that I am giving my life to God to witness

for Islam because this is the highest moral we can achieve in Islam, to give your life to God, to be a witness for him by being a martyr for the Islamic Khilafah, or nation, or Ummah. And my mom used to teach me how to pray, to from since i was young and my dad as well but my mom was the focus because she's very religious my mom is very religious person and she and my uncle as well my uncle is you know so uh was the the imam of the mosque the mosque and they grow me up with the idea that I should become the next Imam and the next leader. This is the coming generation. And so I started to memorize the Quran since I was, I think, six or seven, until nine years old,

I was starting to be teaching and learning how to teach and how to lead the prayer. I was learning how to run a circle, a circle study. We have circle studies so much in the mosque still, when I was just 13. I was growing so fast in this path to be the coming leader. So this is what I remember the most, that my dream was to give my life to God, to do whatever it takes to be the coming leader who will give his life and die for Islam. So from your earliest memories, to serve God in some capacity was to sacrifice your life in some form of jihad. Your mom instilled that in you. You desired that, sought that, thought about that,

prayed about that. Was that really your greatest desire growing up? Is that fair to say? Yes, it was my greatest desire. Nothing better than this. And I have never seen something higher than dying for God. Wow. Now, do you have brothers and sisters? Where would you fit within that? Tell me a little bit more about your family insofar as you're comfortable sharing. I grew up with mom and two brothers who are younger, much younger than me. So they didn't attend these early days, what I talked about, because I'm older with 13 years and 11 years than my brother. So I'm the older among them and I grew up with two aunts. So I had three moms at home, two aunts and one mom and I had my dad and uncle we lived in what we call in egypt a family house you know it's not only a small family the big family all living together okay so presumably your mom wasn't

the first muslim in your lineage how that far back does your family go in the Islamic tradition? Well, for the Islamic tradition, we grow up, that was a very important point, that we grow up with the idea that we are from the Prophet's house, because I came from Aqil ibn Abi Talib. It's Aqil, the brother of Ali, the fourth Khalifa of Islam and the cousin of Muhammad. So I used to, this is something that has been planted in our hearts since we were young, like you are from the Prophet house. And this is, they used to tell us two things. This is an honor and a duty. It's an honor because God chose you to be from the Prophet house, but it's a duty

that you have to be a role model for all Muslims. So this is so unique. Wow, that was really built into you in different ways. Now, did you have Christians in your life? Did you have Jews in your life? What were some of those relationships like? And how did your Salafi worldview inform them? Actually, we don't have Jews in our life because uh in Egypt there are very few number of Jews living and they are always not

saying that they are Jews so in our area we have no Jews it's very rare to find Jews in Egypt okay so mostly we have Christians and I used to have have christians and i used to have christians christian neighbors and we used to have them in in our family building like we in the building we used to leave we used to have some christian neighbors and uh i i remember that they were always afraid of me because I was so strict Muslim. So I was always looking at them like, you are not one of us, you know. I remember one day, one of the very initial stories in my life, we rented a house for a Christian. So he came to pay the rent to our family so i have just watched a movie uh on on tv as a kid you know so i watched salah deen movie the

warrior of islam so it's uh it's it's not a good movie for kids by the way but I watched it. This is very plus 18 so it's full of blood and they're killing and so on. Anyway but the thing is when he came Salah ad-Din was fighting with the Christians, with the crusades so he was saying once he came I told him can I ask you a question because they were still inside everyone so I told him can I ask you a question he said yes I said why you hate us he said what I don't hate you why should I hate you I said yeah you Christians hate all of the Muslims you hate us and you want us to be like you and this is what the Quran is saying and you wanted to kill Salah bin so he said my son this is a movie I I we don't we love you

we don't want to do anything and my mom came out and she said no no he is he's a kid he doesn't know what he's saying but then after he left he looked at me and she said yeah they hate us they don't want us and they want us to be like them this is what the Quran is saying that Jews and Christians will never accept you until you are one of them so I grow up with hatred actually to Christians and Jews the most because I believe that they want to turn all of us to Christian and Jews and they are just tricking us actually. How common is this belief within Egypt about Christians and Jews, whether you think it's Salafi or from another sect of Islam or even in other Muslim countries throughout the world?

Were you kind of a minority of the elite or is this a little bit more of a common viewpoint among Muslim nations today? No, I think it's a common view because if you look around, you will see how much there is a hate of anti-Semitism, for example. And people, they have

this hatred since the young age. I remember my teacher in school and it was the Christians are a minority as most of the time and it was a Muslim school and once the Christians

go out in the religion lecture, they go out to attend outside another lecture for Christians. The teacher used to look at us and said, you know what? These Christians don't clean themselves. You know, they are dirty. They are not unclean people. So I think most of the Muslims will have this perspective. That's why it's very popular. Some stuff is very popular in Egypt, like for example, Christians are unclean, Christians

are unfaithful. They kiss each other in the church on the night of Christmas when they turn on the lights because in the Coptic church they turn off the light for a moment to say that the new light Jesus Christ has come to the world so they say no they turn off the light so they can't kiss each other and we grow up with these ideas you know and imagine how how we see people when you have this in your back mind, how you see your friends, how you relate to your neighbors and to the people of Christian and others around you. This is so mean, in a very mean way. So there's two historical events that I think really help unpack your worldview. One was in the early 2000s, the death of a Hamas leader. What happened and how did that affect you how old were you at that point by the way if you recall i think i was a teenager

in that time and i remember that i was in my early teenager years and i remember that we were sitting and suddenly we heard cries and everyone was my aunt was like kind of crying out and it was the announcement of the death of Ahmed Yassin the leader of Hamas and that he was shooted a rocket. And this was a funeral in our house. My aunt would cry, and my mom was crying, and they were just insulting Jews, and they're saying that I'm cursing them. All the curses you can imagine that should be poured on the Jews, and how awful they are and how they killed a very unique, important leader for us.

And we used to have songs, Islamic songs, not the normal songs, Islamic songs about that, that they killed the paralyzed man because he was scary for them and they could not do anything except killing him. And this was important for me because I felt like I would be the coming leader. I will not stay silent. I am a revolutionary guy by nature. I'm a little bit in that character and I don't

like to stay silent. It's not me. I I should do something about it. You know? So, this is what I I decided on that day that I will be the coming leader and I will be the coming guy who will give his life to die for God. You know, it's interesting that a lot of people think if we can kill the leader in Hamas or some radical Islamic sect, this will scare people away. But it had the opposite effect on you and said, I want to be a part of this and I want to die for the cause. That's a very, very interesting response.

Now, you also talk about 9-11 and what you remember during that and how it affected you. So how old were you and how did that affect you? Still, I was older and actually I remember very well because I was in my room. I remember this very well, I was in my room and I heard the word Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, you know this very famous screaming that Muslims do when they do anything positive or big, Allahu Akbar, and it was my old family was watching TV and they watched them. They destroyed the towers and they were so proud. At last, they destroyed their economy. They destroyed the Americans.

It was like victory for them. It was exactly like victory. And they were just bowing down for God with thanks to the lord that he helped them to allah that he helped them to destroy the nations and he he is redeeming the islamic um and it was it's the dream of khilafah brother that's the problem it's the dream of khilafah they don't even see Egypt as a country. They see Egypt as just a state of the Islamic states, because the Islamic state is just some countries together. That's the Islamic history. So they don't believe in Egypt as a country.

They don't believe in Iraq as a country. They don't believe in Syria as a country. But they are all part from Islamic state that should come back one day. If we want that or not, it will come back. This is how they think. Now you described shifting from wanting, this created a desire to die as a martyr, but it didn't work out for you. What happened that prevented you from doing so? And then what was the shift that came after that?

The biggest problem happened when 2003, America attacked Iraq in 2002, 2003, around that time and they were attacking for us the best and the most one of the most actually important places after Palestine and Meccan Medina it's Iraq it's the state because it used to be capital of the Islamic Caliphate for a long. So for us it was like not one more country, not one more. We are fed up with that, it's enough, not more. So for me, I used to grow up with, I grew up with these Islamic songs about jihad all the time, about jihad in Kosovo, in Shishan, in Bosnia, in the Balkan area, in this is what we grow up with. In the time that people was hiding, uh, for it to say was hiding porno CDs in their teenage time to watch, we were hiding, me and my group. We were hiding the heavy CDs to watch Do you have the people doing the fights?

Really? We were just enjoying that and we watched them in the mind and die and we imagine that they die smiling for God and When they did that I Decided that this is enough. I want to go to jihad. And for this time, I'm not just dreaming or not just wish. It's serious. So I went upstairs to one of our neighbors who was connected so much to the jihadi in Egypt.

And we know him personally. So I asked him, I told him, please, I want to go to jihad. It's enough. He looked at me with very open eyes, and he said, Blast, I was waiting for this moment. I felt like, oh my god, it's time for me to die for God. Because actually, I was scared. I will tell you something that I have never shared before. I was scared, I was very scared. You know what I'm scared of? I'm scared of God.

Because God will, everyone will pass by, according to the Islamic religion, everyone will pass by it. Even if you will not enter it, you will pass by it. This is what the Quran is saying. وَإِن مِنْكُمْ إِلَّا وَارِدُهَا Every one of you has to pass by it this was on on your god at this a decision it's a must let's say it's a must to pass by so i was afraid to pass by hell i was afraid i wanted to avoid this with my life i wanted really to avoid this i want to go to paradise i was so scared of hell and if the passport to help to to pass by to to avoid hell and go to paradise is to die for god good and well this is easy let me die for him and by the way many of the salafi people are just scared but people don't know that they are

just scared very scared because god is very scary in islam very scary how many verses that are very strong and very harsh and very scary. The talks make you frightened all the time. It's very hard. So after I told him that, he told me, okay, just wait for a phone call. And I was preparing myself, preparing my bag, hiding it under my band. You know, like I'm going to jihad. That's end of story. Until I received the phone call, I was so glad seeing his number on the phone, over the phone.

But I received the bad news. He said, no, you will not go because they caught the people. You cannot go. For me, this was kind of an electric shock coming from heavens on my head. It was like, I don't know, I don't have the words to describe how painful, how awful I felt, and how much I felt rejected by God. Someone would say, yeah, but this is not a reason to be rejected by God. You know, this is, you wanted to go to jihad and it didn't work. Yeah, but don't you know that Muslim jihadi are called by name to die for God.

The people who die for God are called by name in Islam. The people who die for God are very special in Islam. So why I'm not special? What I did that did not include me with the special people. I used to pray every day a lot more than the the main five prayers i prayed all the sunnah prayers all the night prayers i i memorize the quran i do everything possible to be a good muslim and leading the prayer I started after that to lead the prayer in the mosque and to be teaching and helping Muslims and doing everything possible. So why on earth I'm not chosen?

This for me was a big question mark. I started to retreat a little bit from being with groups and with people. I was so frustrated. So I was not trying to be involved with many people. I just go to pray and come back. After a while I started even to disappear a little bit from the mosque which is so forbidden for us as Salafi people. We should pray in the mosque, men should pray in the mosque but I was so sick in my soul. I can say that. And one of my leaders started to miss me.

So he started to say, like, where is the guy? And he asked it and he knew about that I was going to jihad and it didn't work. So he called me and he asked it to meet me. And his first question, why you are angry? Why you are sad? I told sad i told him why because i was i was not accepted god didn't let me die for him and then this man said a prophecy i believe it's today that it was a prophecy like the lion see he said maybe god wants you to live I said what do you mean he said a guy like you should not die a guy like you I saw him talking I saw him preaching I saw

him praying you should be the guy who is reaching out for his brothers in Islam reach out for people and bring them to become Muslims, to become radical Muslims, to become Salafi Muslims. And this is your goal. This is your point of going and starting up. And when you speak, many will die because you will bring to Islam jihadi people. You will bring to Islam preachers. You will bring to Islam jihadi people, you will bring to Islam preachers, you will bring to Islam students,

you will bring to Salafism, a lot of manpower. I like the idea. That's a good, that's a very good idea. So I decided that I will be the da'iyah, you know, da'wah, we call it da'iyah. So the Daya, you know, that we call it the area. So the guy who is spreading out a reaching out for Muslims, but I was I was oh my god, like a fire in a dry grass.

Thomas, let me jump in here for a second, because I want to ask you some questions about this shift in your life. But I just want to point out to people and you said you're going to share something you hadn't shared before. And this is at the moment you thought you were going to get called for jihad. I literally thought you were going to say, Sean, I got to confess. I was afraid to die. I was afraid. I thought that's what you were going to say. Because in American Western culture, there's far more fear of death than there is fear of God. People live their lives afraid of death and what that might mean more than they have a palpable fear of God. For you and your community and your culture you grew up in, fear with God was palpable. It was

real. It was visceral. You felt it far more than fear of death. So I don't want people to miss how radical of an experience that was for you. So this fellow says, maybe you're not supposed to die for Allah. You're supposed to live for him. In the book, you start walking through ways you would kind of live for him and even evangelize Christians, so to speak. So interesting to me. Pick up a story where you left off and what that looks like in your life at this stage. I started to be like really reaching out. Denim works 24-7 to reach out for Muslims to bring them to Islam.

I became so popular in doing that. Many people started to know me and many people started to come. Actually, I was successful in doing this job. Many people became radical Muslims, became Salafi, or at least started to take care of their faith. And they became like to repent in the Muslim understanding also and to become real Muslims because for us most of the people are not real Muslims they are because for example when you don't pray the five prayers you are not a real Muslim because what's your excuse

so for me they started to be a real Muslim but the problem that the more i do that the more i succeed in doing that i felt that there is something missing there is something that is not equal to jihad you know because i was dreaming of jihad and i i used to think that for example muslims we go to heaven anyway because actually this is a big problem in Islam they think that there is a hadith that says if you say no God except Allah and Muhammad is his prophet you will go to heaven even if you steal and you commit adultery you will go to heaven and this means that you may go to hell for purification but then you will go to heaven at the end you will not remain in hell for eternity

that's for sure as a muslim so they accordingly i started to feel like I'm calling people it's good to call people to be radical Muslims but something more something more strong than that and here I started to think of calling Christians to Islam interesting this was really fun because I tried to play it safe in the beginning so i decided to do that online so in in three months i got three uh women to to to from islam to to from christianity to islam and uh today i can say that they were not real Christians, they were non-Christian. Interesting. But at the end, for me, they were Christians, you know? This is what I know. This is what I grew up with.

So I worked so well with that. So I felt that maybe I got three Christians in three months. That's easy job. I think my next step should be the Pope of Egypt. The Pope of the Coptic Church. Why not? He's not harder than Omar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph of Islam, who was really very infidel and he came to God.

So for me, this is not a hard job. But I need to study. I need to be realistic. So to study, I started to attend Islamic apologetic lectures and polemics. And here, the story starts to be more interesting, actually, because I was shocked in these meetings. In the beginning, I liked it. I was happy with what i learned but after a

while i started to feel like that these people speak 80 percent about christians and 20 about christianity 80 percent look for christians look how they look look for her for the women with their hair look for how they talk look for um they are unclean, they are these stuff. But at the end, 20% only about Christianity. And this 20% was, for me, another problem because I used to call it too obvious to be true. Too obvious to be true too obvious to be true for example when you tell me you know what Jesus said um for example um I uh my father is greater than I this is a big verse but definitely Christians have a have comment on that Christians would have an answer or have something to say

about it? But they never mentioned that. They always mentioned that, oh, but they have bad answers and they don't have an answer actually. They don't have real answers on our questions. This is what they say, that Christians have no real answers, but they never discuss it. So I went to one of the imams after the prayer and after one of the lectures, sorry, and I told him, may I ask you a question? We have a lot of intelligent people in Christianity. There are professors, there are engineers, doctors, and in Egypt, actually, many Christians are having very good jobs so don't you think that they they have opinion about these verses or why why

don't they don't become Muslims for example his answer was I want to ask you a question told him what he told me who is the most intelligent people on earth? I told him, I do not know. Who are the most intelligent people? He said, Japanese. Japanese people are the most intelligent. I said, why? He said, because of technology and they are the best with electronics.

I said, okay. he said because of the technology and they are the best with electronics and i said okay then he said at the end they bow down before a statue so it's not by intellect it's by faith so it has nothing to do with intellect i told him okay but actually i didn't buy this answer it was for me like not a real answer and i felt like i'm wasting my time i'm just gaining hatred for how christians are stupid because they don't mind their own book in a very in the right way and i felt like i'm getting deceived here by way or another because definitely they have answers. Christians definitely,

they have at least comments. Otherwise, they are very stupid. You know, I'm sorry to say. Right, right. Because the verse is very clear. For example, this is eternal life. That they know, they may know you only,

the Father and God, Jesus Christ, you may have sent. So it's a very clear verse right if it means what the muslim says so for for me i i i was definite that they have another understanding so i left them and i started to say i will search myself for a bible i need to find a bible and if i found a Bible, I will study it myself and get Christians to be Muslims. And that's easy. But the problem, how I find a Bible, because I used to have some beard, I used to have no mustache. I was afraid, I looked so Salafi, and I was afraid to go to a library, to a Christian library and ask for a Bible. They will think

that I'm going to bomb the library. So I was afraid of that. So I didn't succeed. So I started to ask among Christians and here is a very important point that they are, Christians were so afraid to speak to me. Nobody told me who is really Jesus Christ. Christians were so afraid and we need to learn to be bold. We need to learn to stand bold for our faith. Everyone was just afraid and avoiding me until one guy accepted to give me a bible online and I opened the gospel of John and in the beginning it was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and I felt that I understood nothing what this is what does this mean this is so philosophical I was expecting a Quranic bible you know something like the quran you have to do this and do that

something like that you know uh when i did not find it and i started to go inside a little bit in the gospel and i found that jesus go jesus when jesus came down where is god why do you not speak about god yeah but jesus is god yeah but i i i don't see any divine way of talking here you know it's very simple so very philosophical in the beginning very simple in some stories inside that i don't understand and i needed someone to summarize this for me you know i needed someone to tell me this is one two three four this is christianity and accordingly i started to search on internet and i was not able to find that um because it was not that popular this arguments between christians and muslims there were debates

for sure but all the debates is for ahmed didat and i i didn't watch in the beginning Josh Mcdwell debate I watched the others oh why because actually it was not popular among because remember I get this from Muslim and this debate is not popular you know there of course not yes yes josh and and and anise these two are not popular there and he's uh sure was not popular also so uh i i started to to feel like it's very easy to defeat christians you know just do like i need someone to summarize the faith to me not to say christians so so i decided that i uh i will surf on the internet until one day that's the moment i got uh uh on the time of dial-up there used used to be advertising box, you know, jumping and coming on and so on. So a box pumped to my laptop screen, sorry, my PC screen, and it was written on it,

do you love Allah? And I said, yes, I love Allah for sure. I'm a Muslim who loves Allah. I clicked it, and it was a Christian website. It was a very special Christian website, very simple getting from story from Adam to Jesus Christ in a very magnificent way, in a very simple way and at the same time you can see the line of God behind the story so much connected so much related so much deep for a moment after I read the whole website everything in the website I read because it was so interesting and I said this is wow but wait a minute how could I like it? I'm a Muslim. I am a Salafi Muslim, not a normal Salafi.

Not as a normal Muslim. I should not like that. And for the first time, I start to look at my library that was full and packed with Muslim books and to look at the website. Look back here and back there, back here and back there. And suddenly I said to myself, for the first time in my life, maybe we are wrong. Wow. there back here back there and suddenly i said to myself for the first time in my life maybe

we are wrong wow this was something very hard to say it's very hard for a salafi to say that and i started to to say no maybe this is wrong i i need to read the quran i opened the quran i started to read and i started to see it with very new eyes as i'm reading it for the first time oh my god how i believe that how i how i relate this how how mary is the sister of aaron and and at the same time the daughter of Imran, but she is the mother of Jesus. Wow. I'm lost, you know? I'm lost in the details. And actually, I started to ask myself a deeper question. Who said that God exists?

I have never asked myself this question, Shem. I have never. I don't know. It was for me a surprise. And, like, I don't have enough evidence except the Quran but what if the Quran is wrong what if the Quran is not the only true book so in a while in a very short while I became an atheist I got a job in here for a second. Your thinking was not if Islam is false, maybe Christianity is true. But if Islam is false, all of religion, at least monotheistic religions are false. That was your thinking, right? Yes.

Yes, all religions are false because Islam is false. You know, what else could be true. That makes sense. There's a lot of folks that are Mormons who will rather than coming to Christianity and think, well, maybe that's wrong, they'll go to agnosticism or atheism. That's a common thing. You feel burned. You probably felt deceived and so you didn't want to get burned

and deceived again. So tell us about how long were you an atheist? How did this affect you? And then ultimately, let's start there. How long were you an atheist and what was it like long were you an atheist how did this affect you and then ultimately let's start there how long were you an atheist and how did what was it like to live as an atheist i stayed around six months of being atheist not for a long time but uh but i did everything wrong in this in this very short period everything wrong i was looking as a salafi in the morning in the five prayers but after the last prayer i am free to do whatever i want i was free to do everything wrong and this

was very many people because how i look even if i cut my beer a little bit and which is wasn't which was very weird thing and for my for my surroundings and why you are doing that i said ah security has some issues with me i need to be careful these days but actually it's not security it's was that i want to be an atheist i want to do practice more atheism and freedom from this god i don't have any god anymore so i want to enjoy life but at the same time i'm so afraid to say to people that i become an atheist because they will kill me so i need to keep the balance i'm sorry so that's a very big shift now you're afraid of dying in a way that you weren't afraid before. So taking God away, in this sense, your reasoning was,

there's no life after death, there's hence no accountability, no heaven or hell, so I want to live this life for pleasure for the moment, so I don't want somebody to kill me while I've still got breath and can enjoy myself. Is that a fair encapsulation? Exactly, exactly. I want to enjoy life, I don't trust that I will have after death. life still got breath and it can enjoy myself is that a fair encapsulation exactly exactly i won't enjoy life i don't trust that i will have after that and i i did everything i wanted everything i dreamed of to the extent that i started to feel like is that everything is that everything because i can do whatever i want i can hide hide. I can pretend. I can lie.

And then is it true that this is all what we have, all what's in it? This is naive. And I started to feel like I am wary of pleasure, that it's too much pleasure too much to the extent that you are never satisfied but actually you have different feeling you get bored especially if you still have inside you this feeling of what's the proof what what what's what will be there i mean i still a seeker i'm still a seeker i still want to find the truth find an answer so i started to move from being atheist to start to feel like who knows even atheism is not enough especially when i started to try to be an intellect and I tried to back myself up with some arguments for atheists. This was so awful because I started to feel like we are dancing for our DNA. No, we are.

For example, I started to feel like one of the major things, I started to feel that I still want life to be fair with me. Least of what I want life to be fair if I'm atheist. There is no fairness, supposedly. There is nothing. Fair is unfair. Good is not good. Everything is the same, so it doesn't matter but actually it mattered it mattered a lot it mattered for me that after after i do whatever i want to do then what then what then i will i will die and that's it and that's very empty and i want want to believe. Actually, I like this book where it says, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. I really need a lot of faith to be an atheist because I want to believe that nothing created everything. And then they start to analyze it and say, no, the rains dropped down and it became a monocel. What are you talking about?

What are you talking about? This is still will keep keep this will not answer the question as i always say atheists for me the main problem with it that it doesn't give you an alternative it takes you away from everything but then what is the alternative what's then what then what okay i'm with you i'm atheist huh what let's do ah nothing enjoy even joy look for this even joy let's enjoy why why because if there is no negative there is no positive if there is no evil there is no good so why enjoy why i call joy a joy it's not a joy maybe it's pain, but I don't realize it. I mean, it's very naive. There is no intellectual base for that.

And we can go in details for many hours talking about this because it has nothing. But I became more agnostic and I started to say, I don't know. I actually do not know. It's easier for me to be ignorant than to be an atheist actually. But then still after a while I felt like when I say I do not know, then do I do not, the problem that I do not know so I cannot take a decision because of lack of knowledge or I do not know because I cannot know that's a big question and I started to feel like or to see that if there is a God

then there is a possibility of knowledge to to know him because there is a problem with decision-making skills, not a problem with, in agnosticism, the problem is decision-making skills, not the lack of knowledge. Because in any mean, by any mean, you will lean towards one of the scale balance scale balance you know one of the sides of the scale you should lean towards one of them you will be more into actually we don't know but most probably there is no god or sure i don't i know that there is a god maybe but i don't know. But you still lean towards even with 0.1%. This means that you lean towards something. And it's impossible for me logically to keep the balance for a long time. It's impossible. That makes sense.

So you shift from Islam to atheism and then agnosticism. Now you move towards Christianity. And that's not the end of the journey. There's going to be some things that surprise people come back to, but tell us why you move towards Christianity, but then at this stage in your life actually become disillusioned with it. Yes. I moved from agnosticism after a while of being agnostic and I started to take a decision that there is a God,

as I said, I leaned towards it. So I became more like a deist that there is a god but maybe he left us or maybe we are abundant or maybe he's not a person i don't know but there is someone something control us and i i started to to live with that for a while, for around another six months, around that time. But it was an awful experience because even with believing that there is a God, you feel without having this God as a person,

you feel that you speak to the air all the time because there is no response, you know, speak to the wall, you are speaking to the hand, you know, so no response, no one is feeding back with anything, no communication and besides being leading the prayer in the mosque, I was a learning and development consultant, this was my job actually where I get my salary. So I was teaching soft skills. I teach leadership, communication, customer service, sales, you know. So I asked myself a simple question after being so tired of a lot of pressure and a lot of problems that I needed God in it. I needed someone to help me.

So I got this question to my head, which says simply, if I am a communication skills trainer, why God cannot be a communication skill trainee at least? It's a fair question. Right? He should have something I teach it and I'm a human, I'm limited, and I teach him communication skills. Why God cannot be that knowledgeable about communication, you should

have communication in return right okay so why is not communicating or is communicating in a way that i don't understand also i will share something with you that i didn't share before uh in any of my interviews i was tired one day and i decided to kill myself oh my goodness wow yes i was tired i was overwhelmed and i had some tablets to for my blood veins that narrow the blood veins and i i took all of it and And I said, let's die. Wow. And I said, this is, I'm tired. And I was afraid to die,

but now I don't care because I'm tired, because I'm alone. But the problem that the medicine that I have taken is very strong and painful. It's not your blood vessels. So imagine my blood vessels coming, started to appear on my head and on my face. It was so bad. I mean, it's so painful.

You feel that something is squeezing you from inside. It's very painful. And I started to cry for the first time in my life. And I started to say, God, if you are there, get me out of this. And I will be a real seeker. I will search for you. This time I will search for you. For real.

If you get me out of that. I slept or fainted actually and I woke up like nothing has happened to me like nothing has happened like I did not take this medicine at all but I found that

I have no option except down down gunning down on my knees, crying out for God, telling him, look, I'm trying to search for you, but you are so big for me to find you. And I'm so small for you to find me. So please do something and find me. In that night, I went to sleep and i saw in my dreams that i'm running in a very long road a lot of tree branches full of thorns chasing me want to kill me and at the end of the road there is a man there is a house with a man standing there i shouted help me do something

he stretched his hand put it on my shoulder and brought me before him and i found once i stood before him that he is jesus christ i looked and he looked deep in my eyes and he said it's your time to follow me i i woke up of my dreams and i said you know this is most probably hallucinations you know because I'm busy with the idea. And I very occupied with the movies that I watch. This is not real. But in the next night, I got the same dream with the same details. So I walked out this time and I started to say,

Look, this is not a joke. I looked at heaven and he said to him, Please, if you are really Jesus Christ, come to me one more time with the same details. Otherwise, I will not think of you again. Imagine what? He came. And this time, he looked deep in my eyes and he said, didn't I tell you it's your time to follow me? Wow. This additional word statement, didn't I tell you,

was my proof that he was listening. This was my proof that when i said to him if you are jesus christ come to me one more time this was my proof and i was full of tears i didn't i was not able to take it this he's full of love this is not the god I know. The God I know, if I challenged him, he would say, oh, go to hell. Don't waste my time. You are stupid. But this Jesus is different. He's full of love.

And he just understands you the way you are. So I woke up not as a Christian, but as a believer in Jesus. This Jesus I want to believe in, or at least a seeker of who Jesus is. I want to know two questions, actually. Who is Jesus and why me? Okay. This was getting me crazy. Why me?

Why not any other Christian? Not any other christian not any other person and it took me some time to to get to know that i got connected to tell talk with one of the pastors and he was apologist by the way and this was the first christian apologist i meet ever and he started to i talked to him and he answered and he asked to meet me and he listened to my story the way you listen now and he he told me something that was very wise this was the first response i get in my life from an apologist and actually i learned a lot from this response after i told him so why me he told me thomas when you asked god to come to you again, did he come?

I said, yeah, he came. He said, okay. Then ask him why me. He will answer. This is a very personal relationship. Don't make me interfere in it. This was a very wise answer. For the first time, I i listened the word personal relationship

this is a personal relationship between you and god i started to meet him for several weeks and i didn't know that i was getting discipled right he was discipling me and I it took that it didn't take few weeks it took actually three years all what I do that I study Islam and Christianity why Islam because simply this is the only worldview I have in my head for God sure I don't have any other image for God so it took me three years just studying Islam and Christianity until I told him I want to get baptized and I want to become a Christian. And he actually was not welcoming the idea so fast. He was asking me to wait, but I insisted and I found my way to get baptized. And this was not wise. I was not ready according to him. And also I didn't mention

these details before, but I insisted to get baptized so fast. And I got baptized, and I fall very fast after that in what we call the doubt after faith, or the being skeptic after faith. After I came to faith, I started to ask myself, did I do the right step? Is it the right thing? Maybe there are other religions that we never hear God is right also. And also let me say something very important.

The church pressured me a lot. I was cussed out of many churches, by the way. Many churches were afraid of my questions because I was a guy who asked a lot. And at the same time, I was the guy with many problems because I came from this Muslim background with the Salafi background so they were afraid of my family sure so they don't want me to be involved in the church so it was a double pressure actually and it was hard for me to continue but with this pressure I started to feel more skeptic and christians are not welcoming me for real and

maybe there is something else i love jesus but maybe there's something else still and this broke me to stress a little bit and when i stressed i decided to do some breathing exercises that i learned then i tried to find a group of breathing exercises. And instead of the breathing exercises group, I found a meditation group. Let me stop for a second before you jump into this. A couple of pieces you had described how in some of the Christian experience you had, it felt so ritualistic that it kind of felt like Islam over again, and that it really was in a different faith. That was such an important point. But you also describe how your doubts came from intellectual questions you had,

but also the way Christians were treating you or not treating you relationally created some doubts. So I don't want people to miss that it was both of those. It was asking questions, but also Christians maybe not living as we're supposed to, loving people, inviting questions. And so you go into these breathing exercises, and now you're shifting from Christianity to this new age worldview. Pick up the story. I started to find this meditation group, and I liked it so much because I started, it was a free group for everyone and it's made by Indians. So I felt like, oh my God, this is the roots of meditation. They are the best in meditation.

And I started to go to their house. I do meditation with them. But I found out that it's more than meditation. Because after the class, you should share experiences. We feel things and we share it. We hear sounds and we share about it. We hear voices. And when you ask them, what are these voices? They say, these are the masters. And this made me curious. And when you ask them, what are these voices? They say, these are the masters.

And this made me curious. I'm a curious guy. And I started to be like, I want to know what are these people. Maybe they have the truth too. So I started to attend regularly. And I started to sit after the session with them to eat and to have some socialization. And I was the best. Like, I follow the instructions.

Do meditation. I do meditation. Do meditation every day. I keep it every day. I'm a Salafi, you know. It's easy for me to keep it. I i i have to do try to do increase the time of meditation i increase the time of my meditation from one minute to seven hours to seven hours sitting doing meditation can you imagine that i was so dedicated to learn seven hours doing in the nothing worlds going into the deep meditation

reading their books reading uh until they told me i started to ask them a lot of questions and what is good about them that they like to answer they like questions and they like to answer questions so i started to go uh with these questions and and with these answers and i like the answers because they have their way they make you more curious they have this style that make you more curious um and this is actually new age style and that's why many people follow new age because it make you curious ask me any question i can make you more curious. Like, for example, what's the meaning of life? I can answer you in a way that makes you so curious. For example, the meaning of life is what you really mean and what you really understand when

you go deep in your personal experience and feel it and become one with it actually what i said now is nothing if you analyze this is nothing i was listening what it makes you like wow this guy is wise but actually this is the new age style people don't want to believe that but i really went into that and this is how they do it i became so good in that and I liked it. I was so curious. I learned how to do until they said you should meet the big boss like you meet you should meet the Goro the big Goro and I met the big Goro. It was a movement called PSSM Pyramid Special Society Movement and it was they believe in the energy

of pyramids and they uh they had a big boss called bahara marish patrici he passed away two years ago and uh he's very well known in india in many places in india and uh he met me and he said i remember his words also he said you are intelligent guy and we want you with us. I like it because meditation gives you peace in a way. It's fake peace, but in the beginning, you feel it peaceful. I will tell you why it's fake after a few moments. But you feel nice.

You feel calm. You feel that you don't care about problems anymore. You can deal with everything. And I felt that, and this encouraged you to feel that you are doing the right thing. So I walked forward until they decided that I should go to India. You are very special. And they started to believe that I am the reincarnation of someone called Vemana.

And they sent me to India to attend a very, very big conference for meditation called Dayana Mahasakram, the very universal conference for meditation worldwide. I went there. I was very affected by them, talking like them, speaking like them.

Even I got the Indian accent in my talk. This was very hard for me. But I was like that. I was like imitating them and everything. This is what I want to say. I became a copy of them. Until after I went there, people started to see dreams about me as a guru.

They announced me as a guru, as a teacher. And once I went down the stage after my first speech, I found a group of people bowing down before me. And this was shocking for me, Sean. This was normal there. It's a matter of respect, not worship. But for me still was very shocking because I didn't grow up like that.

And I believe that bowing should only for God, you know, I cannot ever take this place. And there I was, it was kind of something giving me my mind back, you know, I get my mind back, you know, and I start to feel like what I'm doing, what I am doing. People bowing down for me. Do I believe that did I believe myself I know that this is all just not real but I I like the flow I like the flow I I started to think also that there is something demonic in it because you have, you feel demonic stuff in this. I saw people healing people. I saw people elevating. I saw strange things. I saw very weird things from the monks there.

And you don't feel comfortable with it. You know, you don't have peace when you see it. You feel uncomfortable and you feel like, oh god there's something wrong here and the second thing that i felt that god is answering my question about something in islam i know this is suddenly unrelated but it's related because in islam i used to ask myself how many people followed Muhammad? How many people followed Muhammad? You know, this was very strange for me. But actually I saw in India,

in this Dara Mahasakram, 80,000 people following Dara Mahasakram. 80,000. Can you imagine? And they're very simple people just believe what people say to them because they want to get healed or they want to get glory or they want to be nice so i decided that only jesus was different for me but i decided something strange i decided that i will go back to egypt and i will worship jesus alone

and as if i'm the only one who worshiped jesus and i came and to make the long story short because this will take another time i i was able to introduce faith to my wife nancy who was not my wife at that time. And I invited her to faith and she came to faith. But the problem that after she got baptized and we got married and I was casted out of my family because I got married to someone out of our group, we lived together and Nancy started to feel like, why you are not ritual? Why you don't want to go to church and do things? And for me, it was like, again, I did a lot of rituals in my life. I'm tired of that.

So she brought a friend and she told me, Thomas, what's your problem? What's your problem with your faith? Why you are not practicing? I told her because I believe one, two, three, four. I believe that faith is not rituals. I believe that it's a relationship. I believe that we should be focused on Jesus Christ alone. I believe that the Bible is our only script that we should be following.

And I said, Thomas, that she told me okay so you are evangelical i told her no uh i'm christian she said yeah you are evangelical christian i thought i don't know that and she took me to the church for the first time to another church where i felt welcomed and i felt not alone where i felt everyone is praying the same way I pray, freely, without rules, without limits, and very open to God, and everyone is blessing the other, and I felt like I found myself.

On that day, I decided to give my life to Jesus 100%, not 99, not 99.5, 100% I want to live for Jesus Christ, not only to die for him. So one of the things you walk through in your book, we won't do this here, is you lay out a case for the Bible being reliable. And one of the things I thought was fascinating is when you compared reading the New Testament for the first time in the Gospels, how different it was from the Quran. Like some of these sayings were kind of divorced from context. There's no details given in the Quran. These spiritual sayings in the Bible were told the people and the place and the time and details we can check out that are actually confirmed when we check them out. You walk through that,

you walk through one of the big challenges that you have for the Quran, Surah 4, that denies that Jesus died on the cross, and you walk through the historical record that this is just really, in a sense, overwhelming from within the scriptures, without the scriptures. Jewish sources, Roman sources, cannot deny that Jesus died, yet the Quran comes six centuries later and denies that. So I appreciate a lot of the apologetic material I want folks to know is in your book. We're not going to go into, but do you recall a moment where you really had an experience of grace? Is this when you went to the church? Because it'd be easier for people to watch this and say, well, I was committed to this faith, I was committed to that faith, and now I'm just committed to the Christian faith. But at the roots of the Christian faith is a recognition that one

is a sinner and needs God's grace and can't earn it. Given that you came from such a background of striving, help us understand when you got God's grace and what that meant to you. First of all, that's an amazing question. And I found after going through all these worldviews, that there are something very common between worldviews, something very common between all views, something very common between all world views except Christianity. It's partially in Christianity but not in the same way.

What is very common that simply all religions ask you to worship in a way or another. Worship, call it worship, call it meditation, call it yoga, call it bowing down, call it worship call it meditation call it yoga call it bowing down call it mantra call it whatever but it's worship a kind of worship and then they say this worship will make you righteous in a way or another or a righteous call it good call it faithful call it good, call it faithful, call it religious, call it whatever, but it will make you righteous. So you worship, and then you become righteous, and when you become righteous, you will get your reward, and this reward is salvation, or call it paradise, call it nirvana, call it Moksha, call it regardless, whatever you call it in different religions. But in Christianity, and this exists supposedly in all religions, these three, but in Christianity, I found something very unique, very unique and very different.

I found that Christianity is not asking me to worship to get salvation to be righteous and beget the salvation i found that christianity is exactly the same three but the opposite it's exactly the opposite christianity is saying you get salvation you get salvation first and it's by grace and it's for free and you cannot get it yourself you cannot work it yourself you cannot become righteous yourself you need salvation and when you get salvation you will become righteous by god's grace again so you get salvation for free by jesus christ dying on the cross and resurrecting you become righteous in jesus christ who died on the cross and resurrected. And accordingly, you get the Holy Spirit that gives you the power to worship. So, you will not worship to get saved.

No, you are saved so you worship. You are not fasting to get saved. You are saved so you fast. And so on. It's exactly the opposite. And I found that this really matter this really matter that i need to get grace first i need to be saved first so i become righteous i cannot make myself righteous ask any person can you make yourself righteous even atheists can you make

yourself can you can you be sure that you do no mistakes you know you do no sins at all no you cannot nobody can keep himself from being sinner no one can keep himself from doing the wrong things no one keep himself from being alienated and this is more important this existential problem of meaning why i exist why i why how should i be believing my life uh where i'm going to this existential questions will keep fighting will keep chasing you and this so you these questions needs one answer with all love to the amazing james sire in his books and his amazing contribution on world views, there is, in my opinion, there is one answer that can sum up all these answers. It's salvation.

You need to be saved. And accordingly, I am saved, so I am God's image and Jesus is in me. I am saved, so I live in Jesus' image and this is how I behave. I'm saved, so I am so on. I'm saved, and so on. I'm saved, so I will be with Jesus after that. I am saved, and that's the most important.

And accordingly, I am righteous before God's eye. I am respected before God's eye. I am welcome before God's eye. And God is standing for us. God is standing for us. And accordingly, I'm enjoying my worship. I'm not worshiping fear anymore. I used to cry in my prayers.

You can, nobody can imagine how much I cried in my prayers. Asking God and hearing the stories of Muhammad companions, how they used to pray as slaves. You know that? That's what they teach us, that they used to pray like slaves and they put on, Omar ibn Khattab used to put on the clothes of slave and the chains in his neck to show himself as a slave when he's standing before God, to tell him, I am your slave, I am nothing, just forgive me.

And I'm standing with confidence and I see Paul saying, in confidence we enter to the holiness. What's the difference? There is a big difference here. In confidence I can enter with the blood of Jesus Christ to the holiness of God. Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, he says, I am afraid if my right leg is inside heaven and the other is outside, I cannot trust God's deceit. What? What? In meditation, they tell you the highest you can reach is meditation.

And actually, there is no meaning. Meditation is the meaning. This is what the goers say. Really. In atheism, they say, actually, there is no meaning, don't bother yourself with all of that. In agnosticism they say no, we do not know if there is a meaning or not because we do not know what do you mean by that. And in deism they say, oh we cannot say that there is a definite meaning actually, but there is some kind of meaning that is earthly we are not sure of what will happen after no one you can give the answer except jesus christ who said come to me because

i am the light who said come to me and the living water who said i am the truth the way and the life who said everything that nobody dared to claim And he did it in front of everyone. Jesus didn't die on a cave in the mountain, hiding from people, and didn't resurrect in front of the mirror, alone, with nobody seeing him. No, he did both in front of people, and people were witnessing. Nothing can confront that, my dear brother. This shift in your life, especially there's a component that we left out at the beginning. I read to my wife last night when I was reading your book that you and some of your fellow Salafi kind of followers would carry around like a candle or a lighter that if you sinned, you would

burn your hand to just remind yourself what hell was like so you would stop sinning. That kind of slavery to fear, to sin is so different than what grace brings and transforms from the inside out. So then we can begin to be the kind of people God desires us to be. So the desire to not to sin has a completely different motivation. I love how that comes out in your story. Now I've got a couple more questions about your story. What did this cost you? Did you tell your family? Did you stay in Egypt? What happened? How did you eventually, you and your wife, come out and start to proclaim to the world as you do now in your book that you're a Christian? small church everyone was coming to us talking about religion everyone was confessing faith having discussions and so on and this made us a lot of problems that we were in need to leave and we left by god's grace in safely to another country and

i received i decided after i left i found found out that Nancy's family knew about it. My family doubted and the police knows about it. So I said to Nancy, who else we care about? Let's put this on Facebook. Let's announce our faith. I'm tired. I want to be in, come to the light. I didn't travel to stay hiding and I put on Facebook

I witnessed that there is no God except the Lord Jesus Christ and I worship him and I received within a week 300 or two weeks I received 359 direct death threats wow around that number yes and people were so strange my dear brother in talking about killing me they were so innovative i don't know why they were so innovative a guy called me i will never forget this guy a guy called to me you know i will not kill you i want to rob your hand and get your wife and sleep with her and then bite, torture her and then cut her into pieces and give her to dogs. Jeez. And you are watching while you are watching. I told him, oh, my God, how you thought of that?

How you thought of that? How you get such an idea people are full of hatred full of hatred towards converting and towards feeling that they are wrong that's their problem they are afraid to feel wrong they are afraid to feel like oh my god if this guy converted maybe islam is wrong so i am wrong so this costed me i i that i do not connect with my family anymore i do not connect with my friends anymore most of the people rejected me in egypt the people i used to know i mean or insulted me or threatening me or so it cost me a lot however i did not lose anything because i got my satisfaction in jesus christ this is very important i saw the presence of the lord in every step in my life i saw it i

saw it i witnessed for it and i'm here to witness about that jesus was there with me. I never ever, I have billion of stories. We need billion of episodes to cover what God's grace happened and what happened with me during this journey. So we flee and we struggled a little bit in the beginning as everyone, as some people are escaping from their country, you know, it's not easy in the beginning as everyone, as some people are escaping from their country, it's not easy in the beginning. And it took me some time, but as I said, I witnessed from the first week

about that. And then I decided to try to work and serve the Lord. But then God called me to be dedicated for ministry and it has its own story that I mentioned maybe in the book and it's a long story that made me accepting that I will become servant for the Lord this is what I will do no I would serve the Lord and I

accordingly I started to search for study because I love to study also a few people like to study by the way I love to study and or most of them and it was not easy to find the right study and in my circumstances and in the country where I am until I studied some apologetics in some apologetic academy then because I was a big fan of apologetics and studying different religions and world views then I started to I found a very interesting friend telling me about another friend who's a friend of his and his name is Joshua Lingle and I really care to mention his name and I think he is a common friend also and this is how we got to know each other so Joshua is very special he is the president of I2 Ministries and the Dean of MMW, Mission Muslim World University,

where he got in contact with me and I found really welcoming. And like, you find your place, man. He was like, you are in the right place, Mission Muslim World University. This is you, Thomas. And I joined the study. it's a pathway of masters and I did the pathway and I was honored that you lectured to me in this school. And it's an amazing intensive program of 40 doctors

in 30 different courses completed together or into squeezed together in intensive nine courses and now after you join that you go to God's Bible School and then you continue your master's thesis I'm very honored that I did my thesis on the Trinity yes you did and it's about to be also a book that will come out soon after this one, after my testimony, it will be the Trinity revealed. I am answering the book of Rahmatullah Hindi, which is the truth revealed. Rahmatullah is the godfather for Ahmed Didat and Zakir Naik and all the Muslim apologists. I'm answering his chapter on the Trinity. Wow. I didn't know he was the godfather of Didat. Yes. Which takes us back to

that debate he had with my father, early 80s, almost about 40 years ago, that was. Well, let's come back and revisit and discuss that book down the road for now i want people to pick up your book that is coming out called it is your time to follow me and we kind of walked through some of the details in this book there's a lot of stories there's a lot of insights there's a lot of apologetic content that we didn't even get to so i hope people pick it up just to support you and to get your story out there but But here's my last question, Thomas. You feared death when you're a Muslim. I'm sorry, you didn't fear death when you're a Muslim. You wanted to die. You feared God more because of your understanding that God could

ultimately determine your eternal fate. You became an atheist and you feared death because this life from that perspective is all that there is. Given that there's death threats on your life, do you fear death now? I'm welcoming death actually, but not in the sense of Islam. I'm welcoming to be with Jesus Christ. However, I have one condition for anyone who wants to kill me. Please, read the Bible before you kill me and look at the cross

and read why Jesus has crucified and resurrected. And then you are welcome to do whatever you want. But read his story because he deserves to be read, actually. Thomas, that is a mic drop moment for us to end on. I'm honored to have you on.

Love your story. You have blessed me powerfully. I want you to know that. And by the way, I did my dissertation, which I had that chance to lecture on when we met a few months ago. And one of my favorite apostles, if not my favorite apostle, is Thomas. He gets a bad rep as being called a doubter. He's not a doubter. He said, give me evidence. I will not believe unless you can show me the hands and show me the wounds. I'm that way. Give me the evidence. Give me the proof. And you are that way, so I think your

name is very prophetic that you are living out in many ways the example of the Apostle Thomas we will do this again it's been great to make your acquaintance folks who are watching here, make sure you hit subscribe, we want to highlight remarkable stories like this

as we can, we're going to have Thomas back down the road to talk about his case and defense for the Trinity, which I'm already looking forward to. If you thought about studying apologetics, you heard today how valuable and important apologetics is. Whatever your journey is, theism, atheism, agnosticism, new age, Islam, we've talked about it all and apologetics is like a golden thread that goes to that. We'd love to have you come study here with us at Biola, fully distanced. In fact, we've had some people from Egypt and other parts of the Middle East and around the

world be a part of our program. Thomas, it was an honor. I'm really looking forward to doing it again. Thank you, my friend. Thank you. Thank you, Tom.