Have you seen the Man in White?

It was 2015, and we were on a long road journey in Northern Iraq, at the height of the ISIS conflict.  As we travelled, my Iraqi colleague told me how he had met Jesus.  Firstly, and by way of introduction, Abdul (not his real name) told me of his role in the Iraqi and then the Coalition Special Forces.  He had been highly commended by General David Petraeus, who at that time was First Commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command – Iraq.  General Petraeus had wanted him to travel with his unit in other countries, but Abdul declined.  He wanted to stay in Iraq, and joined a telecom company in 2004.
 
It was whilst working for this company that he was kidnapped, and beaten daily by his Al Qaida captors, somewhere near Tikrit.  He was repeatedly hit and stabbed; wounds which were inflicted by AK 47s, one of which punctured his cheek.  On the third day he realised that the previously painful beatings had just completely stopped hurting.  Why?  Was he even still alive?  As he closed his eyes to focus, and to get his mind around what he was experiencing, Jesus appeared to him. 

“I am Isus,” He said.  “Today I will lead you out from here.”  As a Muslim, Abdul had only known of Jesus as a prophet, and he argued with Him about how he wouldn’t be able to escape.  But when he opened his eyes, Abdul found that his captors were arguing among themselves, and then one fired a shot at the feet of the other.  In the commotion, Abdul and those who were being held with him simply and quietly got up, and hastily walked out of the door. 

Once outside, all the others ran in the obvious direction, towards an open street.  But Abdul felt Jesus compel him to walk in the opposite direction, up an alley.  The guards rushed out and chased all the other captives, leaving Abdul to walk free.  He found a phone and rang his wife.  “Where are you?” she exclaimed.  “Where have you been?  I have just had a dream in which Jesus appeared to me, and told me you would be coming home today!” 

Abdul showed me the small hole in his face.  For some reason, unknown by the doctors, his cheek has never healed over.  From that day on he and his family have loved and proclaimed Jesus as the Son of God, much to the concern of other secret believers who, still to this day, often tell him to shut up for fear of repercussions.  In the following weeks, it transpired that his boss and his next door neighbour, who he had known for years, were also secret believers.  His father-in-law was a leading Islamic teacher who regularly lectured on religious affairs on Iraqi television.  But when Abdul’s wife told her father that she’d met with Jesus and that she was giving her life to Him, rather than rejecting his daughter, he quietly told her that although he couldn’t admit to it publicly, he fully believed what she had said about Jesus. 
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Abdul says he personally knows at least ten Muslims in Iraq to whom Jesus has appeared supernaturally.