“I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war” (Revelation 19:11).
One day Solomon (not his real name), a Muslim man in Nigeria, encountered a Christian woman who asked him if he knew that Jesus Christ was the Son of the living God. He replied, “Islam teaches that God has no Son.” But the woman was persistent and eventually got him to come to an Anglican Church in Kano, Nigeria. There Solomon prayed two things: “God, help me learn English,” and, “If you are truly alive, appear to me so I can believe.”
For four years Solomon lived with one foot in the church and the other in the mosque as he prayed that God would reveal himself. One night when he was caught up in a vision and taken back to Niger where he grew up. With his Mother seated outside making a meal, Solomon looked up and saw thick, dark, eastward clouds.
Suddenly he saw a man riding on a white horse in the cloud, crossing north to south, east to west. The horse was faster than anything he had ever seen in his life. He questioned, “How can a man ride on a horse in the clouds and not fall down?” He ran to his Mother, but she didn’t see anything. He then hid his face under a blanket, but his vision only sharpened. Suddenly a deafening voice cried out, “Solomon, this is the Messiah. Believe and follow Him.” Next he saw a great multitude in the cloud and then a Man appeared, bigger than the multitude, which bowed to Him. The Man opened a book, and the voice said to Solomon, “This is the Day of Judgment, and God will judge the earth.” Solomon fell to his knees, confessed his sins, and immediately began telling his friends that Jesus is the Messiah.
Solomon was one of AFM’s first cross-cultural workers in Nigeria, trained to reach the Fulani, a nomadic, mainly Muslim and animist, people group in West Africa. Years later, even though ministry to the Fulani is fraught with persecution, hot and harsh climatic conditions, and adversaries spreading lies about Solomon, the number of Fulanis finding Christ continues to grow. Jesus, the Messiah, is gathering in the nations before the Great Day of Judgment.
Solomon’s story is not unique. The political, economic, climatic, and migratory crises that are engulfing our globe have created wide-open hearts within peoples traditionally closed to the Gospel. People in places where Christ has never been known are longing for an anchor, a relationship with the living God. And this is our mission, this is our passion: to train, to equip, and send cross-cultural workers, like Solomon, to areas that still lack a viable and
visible church (throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Africa) that unreached peoples might know our God.
The Rev. Christopher Royer
