Before you read further: I just read this book by Bilquis sheikh (I Dared to call Him Father). I could not write a book review as this is the life of a Woman of God, so the next best thing is to present her testimony in a short manner. I highly recommend this book to any believer.
I Dared To Call Him Father
By Bilquis Sheikh from Pakistan
Born in 1920 into a family of noble birth, Bilquis Sheikh, as a middle-aged married woman was deserted by her husband, a general and a minister in the Pakistani government. She retreated to her family mansion to live out her life in tranquil luxury with her grandson and fourteen servants. It was here that some extraordinary things began to happen.
“La illaha illa Allah, Muhammad rasul Allah (there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the prophet of Allah).”
The call drifted through her bedroom window. Every morning for 46 years it had echoed in her ears. The normalcy of the call to prayer was a comfort after the strangeness of the previous night, when Bilquis had experienced an evil presence in her garden. Being a practical woman, she had tried to rationalise away the experience, but when her grandson also experienced a similar presence, she took the advice of her maids and summoned the local Mullah. For three days he recited prayers and portions of the Qur’an in Arabic. Everything seemed to return to normal. In her biography Bilquis relates the story:
“After these experiences I found myself drawn to the Qur’an. Perhaps it would help to explain the events and at the same time fill the emptiness within me. Certainly its curved Arabic script had often sustained my family in the past. Previously, I had read the Qur’an as a duty. This time I felt I should really search its pages. I took my copy, which had belonged to my mother, relaxed on the white eiderdown coverlet of my bed and began to read. I started with the very first revelation to the young prophet Muhammad, as he sat by himself in a cave on Mount Hira:
‘Read in the name of thy Lord who created, He created man from a clot. Read and thy Lord is most honourable, who taught [to write] with the pen, taught man what he knew not’ (Surah 96:1-5).
“At first I was lost in the beauty of the words. But later on in the book there were words that did not comfort me at all:
‘And when you divorce women and they reach their prescribed time, then either retain them in good fellowship or set them free with liberality’ (Surah 2:231).
“My husband’s eyes looked like black steel when he told me that he did not love me anymore. I shrivelled inside as he spoke. What had happened to all our years together! Could they be dismissed just like that? Had I, as the Qur’an said, ‘reached my term’? The next morning I picked up the Qur’an again, hoping to find the assurance I needed so desperately. But the assurance never came. I found only directives on how to live and warnings against other beliefs. There were verses about the prophet Jesus whose message, the Qur’an said, had been falsified by early Christians. Though born of a virgin, Jesus was not God’s son. ‘Say not three’, warns the Qur’an against the Christian concept of the Trinity. ‘Desist, it is better for you. God is only One God: far be it from His glory that He should have a son’ (Surah 2:171).
“Back in my bedroom that evening as I read, the Qur’an’s many references to the Jewish and Christian writings, which preceded it, again impressed me. Perhaps, I wondered, I should continue my search among those earlier books? But that would mean reading the Bible. How could the Bible help since, as everyone knew, the early Christians had falsified so much of it? But the idea of reading the Bible became more and more persistent. But where would I obtain a Bible? Perhaps Raisham (my maidservant) would have a copy. But I dismissed the thought. Even if she did, my request would frighten her. Pakistanis have been murdered for even appearing to persuade Muslims to turn traitor-Christian.
“I could understand why Raisham, a Christian, refused to talk about the murder of a Muslim who had recently become a Christian. She knew, as well as I did, who had killed that girl. The girl had forsaken her Muslim faith to be baptised a Christian. So her brother, infuriated by the shame this sin had brought upon his family, had obeyed the ancient law of the faithful, that those who fall away from their faith must be slain.”
In the end Bilquis asked her Christian chauffeur to procure a Bible for her. He was so afraid that Bilquis had to threaten to fire him before a Bible mysteriously appeared on a table. When her daughter, Tooni, called in to see her, she noticed the Bible on the table and asked Bilquis to read something from it.
“Light-heartedly, I opened the little Bible and looked down at the pages. Then, a mysterious thing happened. It was as if my attention was being drawn to a verse in the lower right hand corner of the right page. I bent close to read it:
‘I will call them My people, who were not My people; and her beloved, who was not beloved. And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people; there they shall be called the sons of the living God’ (Romans 9:25-26).
“I caught my breath and a tremor passed through me. Why was this verse affecting me so? I closed the book, murmured something about this not being a game anymore and turned the conversation to another subject. But the words burned in my heart. Early in the evening of the next day, I retired to my bedchamber where I planned to rest and meditate. I took the Bible with me and once again leafed through its pages. I read another puzzling passage:
‘But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness’ (Romans 9:31).
“Ah, I thought, just as the Qur’an said; the Jews had missed the mark. The writer of these passages might have been a Muslim, for he continued to speak of the people of Israel as not knowing God’s righteousness. But the next passage made me catch my breath again. ‘For Christ is the end of the struggle for righteousness by the law to everyone who believes’ (Romans 10:4). I lowered the book down for a moment. Christ? Was He the end of the struggle? I continued to read: ‘For the word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart…that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is the Lord, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved’ (Romans 10:8-9).
“I put the book down again, shaking my head. This directly contradicted the Qur’an. Muslims knew the prophet Jesus was only human, that he did not die on the cross but was whisked up to heaven by God and a look-alike put on the cross instead. Now dwelling in an inferior heaven, this Jesus will someday return to earth to reign for forty years, marry, have children, and then die. In fact, I heard that there is a special grave plot kept vacant for his remains in Medina, the city where Muhammad is also buried. On the day of resurrection, Jesus will rise and stand with other men to be judged before Almighty God. But this Bible said Christ was raised from the dead. It was either blasphemy or…my mind whirled. I knew that whoever called upon the name of Allah would be saved. But to believe that Jesus Christ is God? Even Muhammad, the final and greatest of the messengers of God, the Seal of the Prophets, was only mortal.
“I lay back on my bed, my hand over my eyes. If the Bible and Qur’an represent the same God, why is there so much confusion and contradiction? I do not know when I fell asleep.”
After further study and some vivid dreams, Bilquis, armed with many questions, decided to visit some educated Christians. That evening she drove her black Mercedes to the home of the Mitchells. His shocked wife opened the door, only to see Bilquis standing there. She came to the point quickly. She asked Mrs. Mitchell whether she knew anything about God. Mrs. Mitchell’s answer startled Bilquis: “I’m afraid I don’t know too much about God,” she said, “but I do know Him.”
“Mrs. Mitchell,” Bilquis gasped, “forget I am a Muslim. Just tell me: what do you mean when you say you know God?”
“I know Jesus,” replied the preacher’s wife. Bilquis relates what happened next. “Then she told me what God had done for her and for the world, by breaking the dreadful deadlock between sinful man and Himself by personally visiting this earth in human flesh (the Lord Jesus Christ) and dying for sinners on the cross. The room was quiet again. I could hear trucks passing on the nearby main road. Mrs. Mitchell seemed in no hurry to speak. Finally, hardly believing my own ears, I took a deep breath: ‘Mrs. Mitchell, some peculiar things have been happening at our house lately. Events of the spirit. Good and bad; both. I feel as if I am in the midst of an immense tug of war and I need all the help I can get. Could you pray for me?’
“The woman appeared startled at my request, then, collecting herself, she asked if I wanted to stand up, kneel or sit down as we prayed. I shrugged, suddenly horrified. All were equally unthinkable. But there was this slender, youthful woman kneeling on the floor of her bungalow. And I followed her! ‘Oh Spirit of God,’ said Mrs. Mitchell in a soft voice, ‘I know nothing that will convince Begum Sheikh who Jesus is. But I thank You that You take the veil off our eyes and reveal Jesus to our hearts. Oh, Holy Spirit, do this for Begum Sheikh. Amen’.”
Bilquis returned home and read John’s Gospel, as Mrs. Mitchell had recommended her to do. She immediately read a startling announcement about Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Some days later, Bilquis had to take her grandson into hospital. In the waiting room she read her Bible, which caught the eye of a Christian doctor. After a discussion, the doctor, with tears in her eyes, encouraged Bilquis to pray to God in a personal way.
“Why don’t you pray to the God you are searching for?” she said. “Ask Him to show you His way. Talk to Him as if He were your friend. Talk to Him as if He were your Father.”
“On returning home I prayed, ‘I am confused, Father. I have to get one thing straight right away.’ I reached over to the bedside table where I kept the Bible and the Qur’an side by side. I picked up both books and lifted them, one in each hand. ‘Which, Father?’ I asked. ‘Which one is your book?’ The thought came to me – in which book is God revealed as a Father? Why, the Bible of course!”
There and then a battle began to rage as Bilquis determined to read the New Testament right the way through. She now fully realised she would have to accept Jesus as the Son of God to know the forgiveness of her sins and eternal life in Heaven. She thought of all the rejection she would receive from her family. ‘Traitor’ – that’s what they would call her. Fear came over her as she recalled the Islamic command that ‘Whoever of you turns back from his religion, then he dies while an unbeliever, these…are the inmates of the fire [hell]‘ (Surah 2:217). But the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Bible, demanded total allegiance and would not settle for anything less than complete submission and commitment. As she came to Revelation, the last book of the Bible, she read:
“See, I stand knocking at the door. If anyone listens to my voice and opens the door, I will go into his house and dine with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20).
Bilquis saw the issue clearly. The scriptures, the dreams, the intervention of Christians – everything was conspiring to point her in one direction. Decision time loomed. Accept or reject? Open the door or close it. She knelt in front of the fire. From her broken, repentant and divinely convinced heart, she cried out in faith, ‘Oh God, don’t wait a moment. Please come into my life. Every bit of me is open to You.’ She believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. She was saved and she knew it. It was 3 O’clock in the morning on December 24th, 1966.
What a change came over Bilquis! She was a new person in Christ. As time passed, she invited all the poor people from the village into her mansion. Instead of looking down on the poor, she embraced them. Instead of being a bitter recluse who constantly scolded her servants, she became gracious and joyful. With Christ’s help she could forgive her husband for dumping her. She discovered that when she lived in obedience to Christ, a wonderful peace and presence of God was with her; but when she disobeyed, by acting in pride or self-sufficiency, she felt God’s presence withdrawing. In this way, and as she studied the Bible, she discovered how to live a consistent Christian life.
Word leaked out that she had become a Christian and that she attended a Christian group. Her family rejected her as a traitor. The local people abused her. Threatening letters and telephone calls started coming her way. Most of her servants fled as rumours increased that some religious Muslims from the Mosque were plotting her death after Friday prayers. The threat of being burnt out was very real. One day she smelt smoke. Thankfully, Bilquis and her servants managed to extinguish the flames before the whole house caught fire. Finally in 1972, after experiencing 6 years of persecution, Bilquis and her grandson left for America where she lived until 1997. At the age of 77 she passed into the wonderful presence of her beloved Saviour to be with Him forever.
Book by Bilquis Sheikh
Source: http://thepilgrimage.org.uk/testimony4/
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