Meet Zeebandee Abedini (pictured between Dr. John and Naomi Biswas), the sister of a Christian pastor serving in Iran named Saeed Abedini, who was arrested, beaten and tortured only recently released from solitary confinement, but still in prison. One night Zeebandee received a visitation of a bright shining figure standing by her bed who introduced himself as Jesus Christ. She later gave her mother a showing of The Jesus Film. Soon Zeebandee and her mother became a Christians. Her older Muslim father was adamant at first but began to look into John’s Gospel and read it for himself and also became a Christian.
Now John 1 talks about the Son who came from “the bosom of the Father” to further the Trinitarian mission of bringing many sons to glory through the power of the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 2:10). The world rejected him, it says in John 1:5, but “to all who receive him," it says in John 1:12-13, “he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, not of the will of the flesh not of the will of man, but of God.”
To Muslims who worship a strict "monad" – one solitary being called the Muslim Allah – and in a religion where the torments of hell are more real than even in some Christian traditions (one threat of Hell in every 7.9 verses of Koran, apparently) – God can seem overpowering and distant. But Zeebandee’s family learned of an approachable Jesus who is warm and inviting (John 1:35-42). John 1:38 is both friendly and approachable: “And they said to him Rabbi, where are you staying? He said unto them ’Come and see.’"
That’s the Gospel Jesus who died and is now glorified but bearing the marks of his suffering humanity even while in heaven (Revelation 5). Perhaps this month of Ramadan God-fearing Muslims will yet find the One and Only Son who can speak so poignantly to those reading of him for the first time: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”