A former Palestinian terrorist and Muslim has recounted how he became a Christian after Jesus appeared to him in the United States.
Taysir “Tass” Abu Saada said that he grew hostile to Jewish Israelis and others following the 1967 Six Day War, which the Arabs lost.
He said after his family moved to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, he ran away to join Fatah and fight under the former Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Yasser Arafat, to whom he also became a personal driver.
Saada said apart from being Arafat’s driver, he was at some point a sniper and an assassin.
“After the Six Day War, I felt as if I was having a nervous breakdown, and my hatred just grew and grew. I did not understand how we could lose so many wars against Israel.
“We were bigger than Israel in numbers and size, we had more equipment – everything we had was more than they had, but still, we lost the wars against them,” he said in a testimony shared in JewishRoot.net but which was reported by Christian Post.
Saada added, “I was thinking that once against, our leaders sold us to the Jews. That was when I decided to go and fight for our land, which I believed was ours.”
He further recounted that after his family found him to return to Qatar, his father encouraged him to continue his education in the West hence he travelled to the United States in 1974.
Jesus appearing in bright light
He said while in the United States in 1974, apart from meeting and marrying an American, he also met a Christian called Charlie.
According to him, Charlie shared the gospel with him after they were friends for 19 years.
He recalled that in 1993, Charlie opened up to him about his faith and told him if he wanted to experience peace of mind he had “to love the Jews.”
“I completely froze and asked him how he could even think of such a thing – to love the Jews. He knew I hated them. For me, as for most Arabs, a good Jew was a dead Jew,” Saada said.
The Gazan further stated that when Charlie opened the Bible to John 1:1 to him, he was frightened and reluctant. He however remembered that immediately his friend read the scripture about the divinity of Jesus Christ, he began to shake violently and subsequently fainted.
Saada said when he regained consciousness after the supernatural experience during which Jesus appeared to him in a bright light, he immediately surrendered his life to Him.
He said his wife and his son have also surrendered to Jesus and are now Christians.
Return to Israel
Saada said he returned to Israel in 2003 with the full knowledge that he would be arrested.
According to him, he felt that Jesus called him to confess his violent sins to Israelis and also have a change of heart.
He stated that after 14 hours of interrogation, he was allowed to go by an Israeli colonel.
Saada, 73, said he and his family have established “Hope for Ishmael,” an Evangelical outreach to Muslims as well as “Seed of Hope,” a humanitarian non-profit that provides necessities to impoverished people in the Middle East region.
Israeli-Hamas conflict, a sign of end time
He said the raging Israeli-Hamas war is preparing many Muslims in Gaza to become followers of Jesus Christ.
Christian Post quoted Saada as saying in an interview aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), recently that the scale of violence and destruction in the Middle East is “not normal” and that it is a sign of the end time.
He said many Muslims in the regions are becoming disillusioned with Hamas and radical Islam because of the war, adding that this is making them to be more open to the gospel.
He stated that he is preparing to move back to Gaza, where he was born, after the war to be part of the “harvest.”
He said “Hamas is an ideology that spread among many people, not only in the Gaza Strip but all over the world. However, God has a plan. And I believe the Arabs’ and the Jews’ plan is also part of that, and that is where my hope is,” he said.
Gazans encountering Jesus in dreams
The author of “Once an Arafat Man,” an autobiography, said many non-Christians in the region are encountering Jesus in dreams and that his sources who are ministering to Gazan Palestinians believe the harvest “is going to be huge” following the Israeli-Hamas conflict.
“That is why I am back in the Holy Land, to move to the Gaza Strip and take part in rebuilding. I believe with all the destruction, with all that happened, with the hardship the Palestinians have gone through, they cannot sit back but will ask, why? God is going to do a lot of work, and I want to be part of that,” Saada said.