From Witch to God’s Warrior
of the occult and witchcraft—that was, until she heard about Jesus Christ. .
I first heard the name Christ in a dream. I was just seven years old. In my dream I saw people running about talking of the second coming of Christ. What made this even more strange was that my family—we’re Fijian Indian—is a clashing mixture of Muslim on my father’s side and high-caste Hindu on my mother’s, and I had never heard of the concept.
Instinctively, I knew not to ask my father the meaning of the dream or about Christians. He’ll kill me, I thought, but not literally, of course—so I asked my older sister, who explained about Jesus Christ.
“Why, Sehra [that’s my Muslim name],” she said, “He was the prophet of the Christians.”
I didn’t tell her about my dream, however, but never forgot it. Some years passed before I plucked up the courage to inquire further into Christianity. As an adolescent in school, I asked a Christian girl about Jesus.
“Would you like some information?” she asked. “If so, I can get some sent to you.”
But I was scared to receive it via the post. What if Father opened it, I thought. He would be furious. My father was a devout Muslim; he prayed daily and celebrated all the Muslim festivals. He would have been shamed to know his daughter was actively seeking information about Christianity.
“Oh, send it,” I blurted. And when the package arrived, he simply handed it to me without censoring its contents.
My father was a politician and owns property and businesses in Fiji and Australia, so while still a teenager, he sent me to Australia for nurse education.
In the hospital I associated with many Christian girls and went to their various denominational churches with them, but somehow, what I heard and observed there never made complete sense to me. Nevertheless, I was impressed and when my birthday came around and one asked me what I would like for a present I said, “I’d love a Bible,” so she bought me a brand new King James Version.
I’ve always sought spiritual fulfilment and truth, but for the next seven years I really didn’t read the Bible gift, instead I studied many different traditions and Christian denominations. With my ancestral background, I was easily drawn to the Eastern religions. I’d learned much from my “adopted” grandfather, a Muslim mullah, who taught me to read palms.
I drew closer to the occult and practised what I now consider witchcraft—psychic renderings, mental telepathy and associated activities, as well palmistry. I was good at it, as I was also beautiful and attractive, and worked as a model. But all the time I was searching.
Then a Norwegian patient who was studying to become a minister invited me to visit with her and attend her church. I went, but I didn’t find satisfaction there either. But as she departed Australia for home, she gave me the book Good News for Modern Man, which is a contemporary-language Bible.
That book became so precious to me, it possessed me such that I couldn’t wait to get home to read it further. I read it through and through again, reading morning and night. But as I became more familiar with its content, I realised there was no biblical support for keeping Sunday as Sabbath and worshipping on that day. The disciples kept the Saturday as Sabbath, and I wondered why my Christian friends didn’t.
Friends invited me to join them at their church, which I did, being baptised and participating fully in its activities and forms of worship. But it was still unsatisfying. The Sabbath–Sunday issue would not go away. When I asked a minister why we worshipped on Sunday and not the Saturday as the Bible said, he replied, “Oh, because Jesus rose from the grave on Sunday, and that’s why Sunday is now the Sabbath.”
But I looked for reasons from the Bible. I never found them. It bothered me to the point where one day in my morning prayers, I cried to God to solve this dilemma: “Help me, help me find a church that teaches and keeps the whole truth of the Bible!”
That evening my boyfriend met a minister from a local church. Being aware of my problem he told the minister to visit me, which he did. When he arrived we discussed the issue. I discovered the minister was from the Seventh-day Adventist church, which has as one of its distinctive beliefs an emphasis on the Second Coming—it’s there in its name, Adventist.
Upon realising this, I was immediately taken back to my childhood dream, which suddenly took on new meaning. And when I discovered that this minister’s church worshipped on Saturday, the biblical day I’d discovered in the Bible, I immediately accepted his invitation to attend Bible studies.
I was satisfied, at last.
I thank God for His leading in my life. It hasn’t been an easy one, and I often feel stress because of my alienation from and the tension surrounding my Muslim family. I empathise with Job, who in his suffering said, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him [Jesus].” (This is a favourite verse of mine.)
But as a family, we’re getting on better these days. In fact my dear Muslim father, who suffers from a heart problem, even asked me to pray for him. As each time the Lord brings him back to health and strength, he acknowledges the power of the living God.
I continue to pray for him as I await and long for the day of Christ’s reappearing, thankful always for the knowledge and salvation He brought me, first in a dream, then from friends of Christian denominations, and finally a minister determined to preach and practise only what he found in the Bible.
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