This testimony mentions suicidal thoughts. If you are struggling, please reach out to a crisis line in your country or someone you trust today.
Yusuf grew up in a loving Muslim family in a Muslim-majority country. He had never read a Bible. Yet from the age of nine, he says, a radiant man in white kept appearing in his dreams, and the dreams kept coming true. It took more than twenty years, a crisis and a desperate prayer for him to learn that man’s name.
For his safety, Yusuf shares his story anonymously and does not name his country. In this episode of the God’s Truth Podcast, he tells Abigail Smith how Jesus pursued him through dreams, and how the night he finally prayed to Jesus by name, fire fell. What follows is his account.
A garden and a man in white
Yusuf’s family practised their faith sincerely: mosque, prayers, fasting. At six, he dreamed that Satan was chasing him through a narrow underground cave. At nine, he dreamed he was walking in a garden in heaven beside a man in a radiant white garment. “I felt holiness, love, power and authority,” he says. As an ordinary Muslim boy, he had no idea who the man was. Today he is certain it was Jesus. The same figure appeared in his dreams again and again over the years.
From that night on, Yusuf began to dream of his future in remarkable detail, sometimes weekly: moving countries, exam results, the exact salary he would earn, events a year or even ten years ahead. He now recognises it as a prophetic gift of the Holy Spirit (Joel 2:28). He asked his parents for a Quran so he could find the God of his dream. He read half of it as a child but found no connection, and an emptiness stayed with him.
A cake for the King
In 2010 he had another dream. He was standing in a dark space where several people in white garments were praying around a cake bearing the name of his country. As he reached to cut the first slice, an inner voice told him not to eat it, but to give it to Him. Beside him stood Jesus, and Yusuf handed Him the first piece.
He describes the Jesus of that dream as resembling the face on the Shroud of Turin: darker-skinned, with a long face and strong features. He believes he was seeing Jesus as He looked during His life on earth. He only understood the dream many years later. God was telling him that he would one day preach to his own nation and offer its first fruits to Jesus. Today, he says, that is exactly what he is doing.
Rescued, then forgetful
Back home after studying abroad, Yusuf faced a powerful boss who bullied him and, he says, set out to block every route to another job. He turned to alcohol and lust. Then he dreamed of an angel wrapping him in its wings while his boss tried and failed to strike him. The next day, a colleague persuaded her to let him go in peace.
While he waited anxiously for a visa to work abroad, he fasted through Ramadan and saw a book open in heaven with his name and the country he would move to. One morning, lying half awake, he heard a voice, assertive yet gentle: “Yusuf, get up and go to your mother. Your work visa is arriving soon.” Further dreams told him it would come in nine days, at what salary, and that he would travel by plane and then by train. All of it happened exactly.
And within two months, he admits, he had forgotten it all. He went back to drinking and empty relationships, still bargaining with God and promising to change when he turned thirty. Even so, God gave him a wife he now believes was chosen for him, and a dream that their first child would be a daughter, which proved true. Yusuf is honest that he was proud and selfish in their first years of marriage. He urges couples not to give up, because God later used him to bring his wife to Christ.
“Who are You?”
In March 2024, Yusuf fell seriously ill. He does not share the details, but he describes six months in which his pride collapsed, his life lost its colour and he struggled with thoughts of ending it. He prayed to Allah, and nothing changed. The God who had always seemed close in his dreams now felt completely absent. So he began to ask a deeper question: not which religion, but who is God really?
He had once argued that Jesus could not be God, and that Christians worshipped three gods. Now he watched debates between Muslims and Christians, and for the first time he heard that God is love (1 John 4:8). It undid him. He had always believed God could only be a distant authority, and that a God who came down to our level was not worthy of respect. Then he began to see that coming down was the very heart of His mercy. He watched testimony after testimony of former Muslims who had met Jesus through dreams, visions and near-death experiences.
One of them said simply: don’t ask me who Jesus is. Ask Him. So one night Yusuf cried out: God, I don’t even care about the sickness anymore. I need to know who You are. You’ve always spoken to me in dreams. Tell me in a dream.
Three days later, he dreamed he was holding a Quran in one hand and a Bible in the other, and a voice behind him said, “Read, and you will understand who I am.” The next morning he watched a former Muslim describe a verse in the Quran that acknowledges the Torah and the Gospel. Yusuf opened the Bible and began reading the prophets, among them Isaiah, Jeremiah and Zechariah. Again and again, he found them pointing to a Messiah who would be more than a man, who would be betrayed and pierced (Isaiah 53:5; Zechariah 12:10). They all pointed to Jesus.
The baptism of fire
Intellectually, Yusuf was convinced. But leaving behind the faith and culture of his upbringing felt like betrayal, and he wanted to be sure. A few nights later, alone in his apartment, he prayed for the first time directly to Jesus. He confessed every sin he could remember. He forgave the boss he had hated so deeply that he could hardly bear to visit his home country.
Then, he says, the presence of God filled the room with an intensity that made every part of him cry out that a holy God was there. A burning, like hot wax, began to pour from the top of his head down to his toes. His whole body burned like fire, and something like electricity seemed to flow from his hands and fingers. He wept and laughed at the same time, unable to control himself, and felt completely forgiven. “I have never experienced love like this,” he says, “not from my wife, not from my mother, not from my daughter. It was beyond earthly love.” It was as if the Father was saying: Son, I love you. Of course I forgive you. Welcome.
Later he found it described in Scripture. John the Baptist promised that Jesus would “baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” (Matthew 3:11), and Paul writes that believers are sealed with the Spirit “unto the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30).
Yusuf’s journey shows how patiently God pursues a heart. For over twenty years, He spoke through dreams to a boy who did not know His name, until that boy finally asked the right question and received the answer in fire.
Scriptures in this episode
- Joel 2:28, your young men shall see visions
- Job 33:14–15, God speaketh in a dream, in a vision of the night
- 1 John 4:8, God is love
- Isaiah 53:5, He was wounded for our transgressions
- Zechariah 12:10, they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced
- Philippians 2:6–8, He humbled Himself
- Matthew 3:11, the Holy Ghost, and with fire
- Ephesians 4:30, sealed unto the day of redemption
- Jeremiah 29:13, seek Me with all your heart
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