Thoughts on the Confessions of the Apostate Prophet
By: Deji Yesufu
People who worry about the dangers of the use of the internet do so because they are usually uninformed about some basic facts of life. The internet does not influence people as such; it only helps to amplify whatever is within you. If you are good, the internet will bring your way resources that will enhance the light within you. If you are bad, the internet will deepen the darkness within you. Chapter five of my book, HUMANITY, is titled Boko Haram. In that section, I tackle the question of how Islamic insurgency took root in Northern Nigeria through this dreaded group. One of the people who informed a lot of what I wrote in that section of the book was a man called David Wood. I met Wood via the Internet. Wood is a convicted felon, who met Jesus Christ in prison.
After leaving prison, David Wood headed off to the university. He pursued a career in psychology up to a Ph.D. level and then abandoned everything to carry out outreach to Muslims through the Internet. His calling to Islamic Evangelism, if you like to call it that, began fortuitously in the university when he met a young man called Nabeel Qureshi. Nabeel was a staunch Muslim, but he and David became very close friends. Both of them challenged each other to something of an oath – they were both going to study the Bible and the Quran, as well as the historical narrations behind their individual religion and they will allow the conclusions they reach to make them make a decision. If Islam was true, they would both become Muslims. If Christianity was true, they would both be Christians. They embarked on this journey when it was becoming increasingly easier to get information on both religions from the internet.
When they were done studying Christianity, Nabeel made the assertion that it was clear that 99% of what he had learnt about Christianity from Muslim sources was untrue. It was also clear to him that a historical Jesus once lived; it was clear to him that Jesus died on the cross for sinners; but he still had doubts about the Trinity and had not really submitted to the biblical accounts of Christ’s Lordship. Then the two friends embarked on the journey of studying Islam and the Muslim sources. Interestingly, while David was a psychology student, Nabeel was a medical student – but they found time out to do this independent research. To research Islam, they relied on the Muslim’s most trusted sources – which were now readily available on the internet in English. Many of the accounts they read of the origins of Islam and the life of Muhammad were very disturbing.
Nabeel approached David and told him that he was seeing a stark difference in the lives of the two main figures in the two religions. From all available sources on him, Jesus walked this earth a perfect man. But from all available sources on him, Muhammad was a man beset with a lot of weaknesses. In fact, the two men discovered, that if one were to follow the account of the Quran in its entirety and the account of Islam’s most trusted sources, Boko Haram and other Muslim terrorists around the world were the true Muslims. What we call moderate Muslims today are apostates in the true sense of the religion according to the Muslim sources. These things troubled Nabeel. Eventually, he bowed to Christ’s Lordship and went on to become an evangelist. Nabeel died in 2017 at 34 years of age of stomach cancer. Many Muslims blamed his death on his conversion to Christianity. Nabeel, who filmed his final days on his deathbed, confessed Jesus as Saviour till the end.
A few years after Nabeel’s death, David Wood befriended a man called Ridvan Aydemir, with moniker: “Apostate Prophet” or AP – for short. AP was a Muslim from Turkey. His parents had migrated to Germany, and then he had come to the United States of America to study. AP grew up in a typical Muslim family, but he resented a few things he saw while growing up. He felt that Islam was too harsh. He resented the fact that he had to be beaten to learn the Quran. He saw how women were badly treated in Muslim homes. He saw double standards, essentially – the tendency for people to say one thing, and do something else. He saw it everywhere among Muslims in Turkey. At an early age, he had made a commitment at heart that the moment he had the opportunity, he would leave Islam. It is safe to say that AP’s migration to the United States was all in a bid to flee Islam. Subsequently, he emerged as an Atheist and created a YouTube channel that he named “The Apostate Prophet”. On that channel, he uses his platform to criticize Islam and to preach Atheism. When AP met David Wood, it was very easy for Wood to explain the inconsistency of Atheism to him because Wood used to be an Atheist himself. AP did not convert to Christianity and Wood did not force anything on him. I believe that AP took his time to examine the claims of all religions, and may have been particularly influenced by the consistency in the Christian faith. AP never confessed Christ in his videos, but one could see that he was attending Christian conferences and was increasingly associating with Christians.
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One day, during a live broadcast on the “Apologetics Roadshow” channel, AP made the confession. Someone asked AP if he was now truly convinced of the Christian religion or if he was just taking a leap of faith. AP explained that he was actually taking a leap of faith, not that he was totally convinced of the Christian faith. He explained that as a rational human being, he still had questions and doubts but that he understood enough that religion must be “faith” – that the Atheist manifesto, which commands adherents to prove all things logically, cannot explain the essence of life. He was concerned with the idea of birth, living and death. He explained that there has to be more to life than just dying and fizzling out into nothingness – as atheists explain. He felt that man was not just a body but a living soul that would live forever. He was concerned with where his soul would go after death. He then explained that he has been visiting an Eastern Orthodox church, and has been speaking with the priest there. He felt more and more comfortable with the Christian faith. Obviously, from his words, AP is not yet there. But when you consider the vast gulf, an avowed atheist must leap over to come to some love of religion, one cannot but thank God for what is happening in that man’s life. (See more on AP’s confession here).
I was a bit unhappy that AP chose the Eastern Orthodox Christian religion as a denomination. But it occurred to me that AP is Turkish. Turkey used to have a thriving Christian population, but all of that was wiped away with the coming of Islam and the sword with which they took over lands by force and compelled all its peoples to become Muslim. Orthodox Christianity has thrived in the Eastern parts of the world under great persecution from Muslims. I could understand AP’s sympathy for this historical reality. Besides, the splits among Protestant groups are not anything anyone wishes to be identified with. Many agnostics and atheists who are taking religion seriously today, are converting to Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. They do not find the constant fighting among Protestants appealing at all. I hope this is a lesson to those of us who think that division is a virtue in religion.
AP’s confession of Jesus Christ is making me re-examine my view of all Christian denominations. In my private prayer, I used to pray for only my denomination – the Reformed Baptist. I no longer do that. I now pray for all Christian denominations. I do this because I see Jesus Christ in every religion that names the name of the Lord – even including Islam. In Nigeria, in the 19th century, an Islamic cleric in Kano State began to study the Quran intensely. He became fascinated by an individual called “Isa” in the Quran. He then used to preach all around Kano about this “Isa” figure in the Quran and he drew a following in the process. The emir of Kano at that time became concerned and explained to this man that this “Isa” you are preaching about is the same person as the Jesus Christians preach. He told him that if he continued to do so, he would be killed. The man was unperturbed. He continued to preach “Isa” everywhere to the point that his movement was called the “Isawas”. The Kano authorities had him arrested and before he was executed, he told his followers that certain men would come and show them more about Isa. He was eventually killed, but a few of his followers were preserved.
One day white missionaries arrived in Kano and they told the Isawa about Jesus. The followers said, yes, they know about him – and that they had been expecting these men to come. The Isawas continued to be a thriving Christian group in northern Nigeria and some of their descendants include the late Prof. Ishaya Audu (one-time Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, I met him as a student in ABU) and General Yakubu Gowon, former head of state of Nigeria and the man who helped preserve the unity of Nigeria during this country’s civil war in the late 1960s. I read this story from Ayodeji Abodunde’s “History of Christianity in Nigeria”. I also tell this story to explain that when scripture says the name of the Lord is mighty to be save, it does not mean that that name must be read in the Bible alone. Even the name of Jesus in the Quran saves Muslims.
In closing, the point of this essay is to show us how Jesus is working through all of life. The internet is a good thing; it is a street with many addresses. You have the liberty to go anywhere you want on this street. Some use their time there to browse pornography – that is the street the content of their heart has led them to. Others use it to know more about Christ and what he is doing in the larger world – that is the street these have chosen to belong to. What streets do you live on here on the internet? I pray for the Apostate Prophet that what Christ has begun in him, he will bring to ultimate fruition. I also must thank David Wood for the gracious work that he is doing. May the Lord Jesus Christ bless him.
Thank you for reading.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY and VICTOR BANJO.
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