Khartoum

On a visit to Khartoum, Sudan, two colleagues and I were meeting with two new believers who were from a Muslim background. Our purpose was to talk about a strategy for sharing the Gospel to the 25 million Arab Muslims in northern Sudan.

 We pulled some chairs into a circle under a Neem tree and began getting to know each other. Ahmed and Abdul began to share how God worked in their lives to bring them to Himself.  Ahmed had been having the same dream over and over for nearly three years.  No one had been able to interpret his dreams until one day one of my colleagues sitting with us under the Neem tree met Ahmed, and he was able to tell him about salvation through Jesus Christ. This is what Ahmed had been dreaming about for years, and he quickly accepted Christ.  In turn, Ahmed helped Abdul interpret the dream that he had been having for over a year and Abdul also became a believer.

 As these two Sudanese men sat before us, we asked them to share their ethnic background.  All Sudanese Muslims will say that they are Sudanese Arabs because of the Arabization brought on by Islam.  Ahmed shared that he was from a people group called Baggara –people scattered across Sudan and Chad who were nomadic herders.  Ahmed said that we should have heard of his tribe since they are mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible.  He pointed us to Jeremiah 35 where his tribe, called the Rechabites, is highlighted. Ahmed shared with us how God used many things including that dream to make it possible for him to be one of the Rechabites who fulfill the Lord's promise in Jeremiah 35:19 that at least one of this tribe shall always stand before God.

 After returning to my hotel room I read Jeremiah 35, and I realized the importance of  what Ahmed shared with us.  Throughout the Old Testament God is very patient with the Israelites and their disobedience to Him.  God warns the people of Israel of their unfaithfulness by using other people groups as examples. The Rechabites are one such example of a people who remained faithful to God.  They made a covenant with God that they would live in tents, that they would not consume strong drink, and that they would not settle down and grow crops but they would tend to their animals.  They pledged to obey God and to remain faithful to Him.

 Ahmed later shared with us that he was not the only Rechabite to know God through Jesus Christ as he had led 19 others from his people group to saving faith in Christ.

 As we continued our meetings with Ahmed and Abdul, we began to ask them more questions that would help us develop our strategy for taking the Good News of Jesus Christ to the unreached people groups of the north.

 In the shade of the tree we drew with a stick a rough map of Sudan in the dirt.  We asked Ahmed and Abdul if they knew of other believers in the north, and they said that they knew many.  Then we asked how they knew them, and they replied, “We met them on our trips by motorbike to the towns and villages of the north.” With a stick they drew the Nile River on our dirt map and indicated six towns along the river where they had visited.