My name is Latif. I was 24 years old, born into Saudi royalty in 1994. On August 14th, 2017, I was burning Bibles with my family for entertainment. What happened that night defied everything I believed about Allah, Christianity, and my own destiny. This is my testimony of how Jesus Christ changed everything.

I was born into a world where hatred was disguised as holiness. My father was Prince Abdul Rahman, one of the most influential members of the Saudi royal family, a man whose word could determine the fate of thousands. Our bloodline traced back seven generations to the founders of the kingdom. And with that heritage came not just unimaginable wealth but an unshakable belief that we were God’s chosen warriors against the infidels of the world.

Our family compound sprawled across 40 acres of pristine desert landscape. Surrounded by 20ft walls topped with razor wire. Inside those walls stood a palace that most people could only dream of seeing in movies. Marble floors imported from Italy stretched through hallways lined with gold leaf. Crystal chandeliers hung from 30ft ceilings, casting rainbows across walls adorned with the finest Islamic calligraphy money could buy. We had a staff of over 200 servants, three helicopter landing pads, and a garage that housed over 47 luxury vehicles.

But all of this material splendor served a darker purpose. Our wealth was a weapon in what my father called the eternal war between Islam and Christianity. From the time I could walk, I was taught that Christians were not just wrong, they were evil. They worshiped three gods instead of one. They had corrupted the true message of Jesus and they were actively working to destroy Islam from within.

My first memory of a Bible burning ceremony was when I was 8 years old. I can still smell the gasoline soaked pages. Still hear the crackling flames, still see my father’s face illuminated by the orange glow as he struck the match. He held my small hand as we watched the fire consume what he called the lies of the infidels. That night he told me I was participating in holy work that Allah smiled when we destroyed the tools Satan used to deceive the weak.

The ceremonies became a weekly tradition in our household. Every Friday after prayers the entire extended family would gather in the central courtyard. Cousins, uncles, aunts, and religious leaders from the local mosque would form a circle around a large metal basin. Servants would bring boxes filled with Bibles, Christian books, crosses, and any other Christian materials they had collected throughout the week. My father would begin each ceremony with a prayer asking Allah to bless our efforts to purify the world. Then one by one we would take turns throwing the Christian items into the fire. The adults would recite verses from the Quran about fighting against those who associated partners with Allah. We children would cheer and clap as the flames grew higher.

I remember feeling so proud during those ceremonies. My father would put his hand on my shoulder and tell the gathered crowd that I was a future leader of the faith. That I understood the importance of standing against the enemies of Islam. When I threw my first Bible into the flames at age 10, the entire family applauded. I felt like I had passed some sacred test, like I had proven my worthiness to carry on our family’s holy mission.

As I grew older, I took on more responsibility in these destructive rituals. By age 16, I was personally organizing the collection of Christian materials. I would send our drivers to hotels, airports, and shopping centers to search for any Bibles or Christian literature that foreign visitors might have left behind. I established a network of informants among the service workers in Riyadh who would report any Christians they encountered.

The servants in our own household lived in constant fear of being discovered as secret Christians. We had maids from the Philippines, drivers from India, and gardeners from Pakistan. Many of whom I suspected harbored Christian beliefs. I made it my personal mission to root out any signs of Christianity among them. I would search their quarters for hidden crosses or Bibles. I would listen for Christian prayers or songs. When I found evidence of Christian faith, I would report it immediately to my father who would have the offending servant beaten and deported within 24 hours.

I remember one Pakistani gardener who had worked for our family for over 15 years. His name was Matthew, though he tried to hide his Christian name by telling everyone to call him Muhammad. I discovered a small wooden cross hidden in his tool shed and confronted him about it. When he broke down crying and admitted he was a Christian, I felt no pity, only satisfaction that I had uncovered another enemy of Islam. I watched from my bedroom window as security guards loaded him into a van that would take him to the deportation center. I felt proud that I had protected our family from spiritual contamination.

Ask yourself this question. How does environment shape the heart? When you are surrounded by hatred from birth when every authority figure in your life teaches you that certain people are your enemies? When acts of cruelty are celebrated as righteousness, it becomes almost impossible to see clearly. I was not born evil, but I was systematically trained to believe that evil was good.

Our private Islamic tutors reinforced these beliefs with daily lessons about the corruption of Christianity. They taught us that Christians had changed the Bible to make Jesus appear divine when he was only a prophet. They showed us verses from the Quran that commanded us to fight against those who claimed Allah had a son. They filled our young minds with stories of Christian crusaders who had killed innocent Muslims. And they told us that modern Christians were planning new crusades against our faith.

By the time I reached my teenage years, I was completely convinced that Christians were not just wrong, but dangerous. I believed they were actively working to destroy Islam, to mislead Muslim youth, and to steal the oil wealth that Allah had given to our people. I thought hatred made me holy, that my anger toward Christians proved my love for Allah. I had no idea that my heart was being consumed by a darkness that would eventually threaten to destroy my soul.

Looking back now, I can see that even in those years of spiritual darkness, Jesus was already working in ways I could not understand. But at the time, all I knew was the intoxicating feeling of power that came from believing I was fighting on God’s side against his enemies.

By the time I turned 18, my hatred for Christianity had evolved from childhood indoctrination into something far more dangerous, intellectual conviction. I was no longer simply following my father’s teachings. I had become a student of what I believed was righteous warfare against the enemies of Islam.

My father enrolled me in the most exclusive Islamic academies in Saudi Arabia where I studied under scholars who had dedicated their lives to proving Christianity false and Islam supreme. At the King Fahd Academy for Islamic Studies, I immersed myself in advanced Quranic interpretation and Islamic jurisprudence. My professors praised my enthusiasm for memorizing verses that dealt with fighting Christians and Jews. I could recite Quran 9:29 from memory. “Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the last day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and his messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the scripture.” I knew dozens of similar passages and I wielded them like weapons in debates with anyone who suggested that Islam should coexist peacefully with Christianity.

My father began grooming me for a role in the religious establishment that would extend far beyond our family’s Bible burning ceremonies. He introduced me to influential imams who controlled major mosques throughout the kingdom. He brought me to private meetings with members of the committee for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice, the religious police who enforce Islamic law in public spaces. These men saw potential in me. A young royal who combined religious zeal with political connections.

I remember one particular evening when my father sat me down in his private study surrounded by ancient Islamic texts and modern anti-Christian literature. He told me that Allah had blessed our family with wealth and influence not for our own pleasure but so we could serve as guardians of the true faith. He said that in a world where Christian missionaries were using money and medicine to seduce poor Muslims away from Islam, our family had a sacred duty to fight back with equal determination.

My heart was becoming stone, but I called it strength. Every act of cruelty I witnessed or participated in seemed justified by the higher purpose we served. When I saw our security guards beat a Christian servant for refusing to step on a Bible, I felt no compassion for his suffering, only satisfaction that justice was being served. When I heard reports of Christian churches being destroyed in other countries, I celebrated these victories as proof that Allah was blessing the faithful.

The systematic persecution in our household reached new levels of organization. Under my influence, I convinced my father to implement what I called a spiritual security system that would ensure no Christian contamination could take root among our staff. I designed a program that required all servants to attend mandatory Islamic education sessions three times per week. Those who showed insufficient enthusiasm for Islam or who asked too many questions about Christianity were marked for investigation. I established a network of informants among our staff offering monetary rewards to any servant who reported Christian activity among their colleagues. Within months, I had servants spying on servants, creating an atmosphere of fear and suspicion that permeated every corner of our compound.

A Filipino maid was deported after another servant reported finding her praying the Lord’s Prayer. An Indian driver lost his job because someone overheard him humming a Christian hymn. The monthly Bible burning ceremonies grew larger and more elaborate under my direction. I convinced my father to invite other royal families to participate, turning our private hatred into a social event that strengthened bonds between like-minded families. We began hosting what we called purification parties where hundreds of wealthy Muslims would gather to burn Christian materials while enjoying lavish feasts and entertainment.

I developed a sophisticated collection system that gathered Christian literature from across the region. I hired teams of workers to visit hotels, hospitals, universities, and airports, searching for any Bibles or Christian books that foreign visitors might have left behind. I established relationships with customs officials who would confiscate Christian materials from incoming travelers and deliver them to our compound for destruction.

The addiction to these burning ceremonies became stronger with each passing month. The flames became my drug and hatred my high. There was something intoxicating about watching those pages curl and blacken, about hearing the crowd cheer as another Bible was reduced to ash. I felt like I was performing surgery on the world, cutting out spiritual cancer that threatened to poison innocent Muslims.

But even as I reached new heights of religious extremism, a strange emptiness began growing inside me. Despite owning collections of Ferrari and Lamborghini sports cars, despite having access to private jets that could take me anywhere in the world, despite wearing watches encrusted with diamonds worth more than most people earned in a lifetime, I felt hollow. I had everything money could buy, but my soul felt like a desert. The paradox tormented me in ways I could not understand or explain to anyone. How could I feel so empty when I was so certain I was serving Allah faithfully? How could I experience such inner darkness when I was fighting so hard against the enemies of light?

I began having trouble sleeping, lying awake at night with a restlessness that no amount of luxury could soothe. My anger and depression grew worse throughout my early 20s. I found myself flying into rages over small inconveniences that would never have bothered me before. I began treating our servants with even greater cruelty, as if their suffering could somehow fill the void inside me. I increased the frequency of our Bible burning ceremonies, desperate to recapture the satisfaction I had felt in earlier years.

Look inside your own heart right now. Have you ever experienced the hollowness that comes from pursuing the wrong things with total dedication? Have you ever felt the emptiness that results from building your identity around hatred rather than love? I was discovering that the human soul cannot survive on destruction alone. Something deep inside me was crying out for the very thing I was working so hard to destroy. But I was too blinded by my own righteousness to hear its voice.

The servants in our household began to fear me more than they feared my father. They could see something dark and desperate growing in my eyes. They whispered among themselves that the young prince was becoming someone to avoid at all costs. They were right to be afraid. I was becoming a monster and I was proud of my monstrous nature because I believed it made me holy.

August 14th, 2017 was my father’s 55th birthday, and he had planned the largest Bible burning ceremony our family had ever organized. For months, we had been collecting Christian materials from across the Middle East, preparing for what my father called a great purification celebration that would demonstrate our family’s unwavering commitment to defending Islam against Christian deception.

The guest list included over 200 of the most influential Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Royal family members, government ministers, wealthy businessmen, prominent imams, and religious scholars had all accepted invitations to witness what my father promised would be an unforgettable display of Islamic unity. The ceremony was scheduled to begin at sunset in the central courtyard of our compound which had been decorated with banners bearing verses from the Quran about fighting against those who associated partners with Allah.

In the weeks leading up to the event, our servants had collected more than 500 Bibles along with thousands of Christian books, magazines, and devotional materials. I had personally supervised the construction of a massive steel basin 10 ft in diameter and 4 ft deep designed to contain the largest fire our compound had ever seen. We had stockpiled enough gasoline and accelerants to keep the flames burning for hours.

As the sun began to set that evening, guests arrived in motorcades of luxury vehicles. The men wore traditional white thobes and red checkered gutras while the women were draped in elegant black abayas adorned with gold embroidery. Servants circulated among the crowd carrying silver trays loaded with dates, Arabic coffee, and sweet pastries. The atmosphere was festive, almost carnival-like, as if we were celebrating a wedding rather than preparing to destroy books.

My father opened the ceremony with a lengthy prayer, asking Allah to bless our efforts to cleanse the world of Christian corruption. He spoke about the history of our family’s commitment to Islamic purity, about the responsibility that came with our wealth and influence, and about the eternal war between truth and falsehood. The crowd responded with enthusiastic shouts of “Allahu Akbar!” that echoed off the walls of our compound.

As the senior male heir, I was given the honor of lighting the first fire. I stepped forward carrying an ornate golden torch that had been soaked in gasoline, feeling the weight of 200 pairs of eyes watching my every movement. This was my moment to demonstrate the leadership my father had been preparing me for. My opportunity to prove that I was worthy of inheriting not just his wealth, but his sacred mission.

The servants began loading the steel basin with Christian materials while I waited for my father’s signal to begin the burning. Bibles in dozens of languages were stacked like cordwood in the center of the basin. Christian books about prayer, theology, and personal testimonies formed layers around the Bibles. Crosses, rosaries, and other Christian symbols were scattered throughout the pile like kindling.

But as the servants neared the bottom of their collection, something unusual happened. One of our most trusted workers, a man who had been with our family for over 20 years, approached the basin carrying a single Bible that he seemed reluctant to add to the pile. It was bound in red leather, smaller than most of the other Bibles, and it appeared to be quite old. When he attempted to place it in the basin with the other materials, it somehow slipped from his hands and fell to the ground.

My father noticed the delay and asked what was wrong. The servant explained that this particular Bible had been found in the personal belongings of a Christian nurse who had been working at King Faisal Hospital before being dismissed for attempting to pray with Muslim patients. He said there was something unusual about the book, though he could not explain exactly what made it different from the others.

I walked over to examine the Bible myself, irritated by the interruption to our ceremony. The red leather cover was worn smooth by years of handling, and the pages had the yellow tinge that comes with age. When I picked it up to throw it into the basin with my own hands, an electric shock shot through my body from my fingertips to my shoulders. The sensation was so intense that I nearly dropped the book, but somehow my hands seemed frozen around its cover.

The crowd was growing restless, wondering why the ceremony had not yet begun. My father called out for me to light the fire immediately, but I found myself staring at this Bible with a fascination I could not understand or explain. Against every instinct I had developed over 24 years of hating Christianity, I felt compelled to open the book and read the words printed on its pages. I shook my head violently, trying to clear my mind of what I assumed was some kind of satanic influence attempting to distract me from my holy duty.

I threw the red Bible into the center of the basin with such force that it knocked over several other books. Then I raised my golden torch high above my head and lowered it toward the pile of Christian materials, confident that within moments they would all be reduced to ash and smoke.

But something impossible happened when the flames reached the red leather Bible. Instead of catching fire like the other books around it, it seemed to repel the flames. Every time the fire tried to consume its pages, the flames would bend away as if pushed by an invisible force. I poured additional gasoline directly onto the Bible, but still it would not burn. The other books in the basin were blazing brightly, but the red Bible remained untouched.

My father stepped forward to see what was causing the delay. When he observed that one book was refusing to burn while all the others were being consumed normally, his face darkened with anger. He began shouting that this was a sign of Satan’s attempt to interfere with our holy work, that we needed to pray harder and try harder to destroy this cursed object.

I grabbed a long metal rod and used it to push the red Bible deeper into the flames. But no matter how close I brought it to the fire, it would not burn. The crowd began murmuring among themselves, some suggesting that we were witnessing a demonic manifestation, others proposing that Allah was testing our faith by making our task more difficult.

In my frustration and embarrassment, I made a decision that would change my life forever. I reached directly into the fire with my bare hands to grab the red Bible, determined to throw it into the flames with such force that it would have no choice but to burn.

The moment my skin made contact with the leather cover, an explosion of blinding light erupted from the flames, so bright that it seemed to turn night into day. But here is what terrified me most. I was the only person who could see the light. The 200 guests continued their conversations and observations about the stubborn Bible, completely unaware that a supernatural radiance was blazing from the fire pit.

In that light, I saw a figure walking toward me through the flames, a man with wounds in his hands and feet, his face radiating love and sorrow in equal measure. When he spoke, his voice was gentle but carried the authority of someone who had created the universe with his words.

He said, “Latif, my son, why are you burning my love letters to you?”

The question pierced my heart like a sword, cutting through 24 years of hatred and indoctrination. In a single moment, I knew beyond any doubt or rational explanation that I was looking into the face of Jesus Christ. The very person I had spent my entire life fighting against.

The world around me began to spin as my mind struggled to process what was happening. This was impossible according to everything I had been taught. Jesus was supposed to be dead, just a prophet whose followers had corrupted his message. He was certainly not supposed to be standing in our fire speaking Arabic to a Saudi prince who had dedicated his life to destroying Christianity.

But as I stared into his eyes, I saw something that shattered every assumption I had ever made about who Jesus was and what he represented. I saw infinite love looking back at me. Love that was not diminished by my years of persecution against his followers. Love that was not angered by the hundreds of Bibles I had burned. Love that somehow saw past all my hatred to the broken heart of a young man who had been searching for truth in all the wrong places.

The last thing I remember before losing consciousness was Jesus reaching out to touch my forehead and feeling a warmth spread through my body that was unlike anything I had ever experienced. When that warmth reached my heart, it encountered the fortress of hatred I had built there and began melting it like ice in the desert sun.

I collapsed in front of 200 shocked guests, my body convulsing as if I were having a seizure. My eyes rolled back so far that only the whites were visible. The last sound I heard before everything went black was my father screaming for someone to call a doctor.

I woke up 3 days later in the master bedroom of our palace, my vision blurred and my head pounding with a pain I had never experienced before. The room was filled with the scent of burning incense and the sound of low voices reciting Quranic verses. My father sat beside my bed with two Islamic clerics and a doctor, all of them watching me with expressions of deep concern and fear.

The first thing I noticed was that I could barely see. Everything appeared through a thick gray haze, as if I were looking through layers of gauze. The doctor explained that my eyes had suffered some kind of trauma during what he called my episode at the ceremony, but he could find no medical explanation for the sudden onset of partial blindness. The clerics whispered among themselves about jinn possession and spiritual warfare, convinced that evil spirits had attacked me because of my faithful service to Islam.

But I knew the truth. I remembered every detail of my encounter with Jesus. Every word he had spoken. Every feeling that had coursed through my body when his warmth touched my heart. The partial blindness was not a curse or an attack. It was a sign that my spiritual eyes were beginning to open while my physical eyes were learning to see the world differently.

My father leaned close to my face and asked what I remembered about the night of the ceremony. I could see the worry in his eyes, the fear that his carefully groomed heir had somehow been damaged by whatever had happened in those flames. I told him I remembered falling unconscious, but I said nothing about Jesus or the supernatural light or the love I had felt radiating from those wounded hands. Some instinct warned me that the truth would be more dangerous than any lie I could tell.

The clerics spent hours praying over me, placing their hands on my forehead, and commanding any evil spirits to leave my body in the name of Allah. They burned more incense, sprinkled holy water from Mecca around my bed, and recited powerful verses from the Quran that were supposed to drive away demonic influences. But I felt no evil presence in my room. Instead, I felt a peace that seemed to emanate from somewhere deep inside my chest, a calmness that had never existed in my heart before.

On the fourth day after my collapse, when everyone had finally left me alone to rest, I remembered the red leather Bible that had refused to burn. I needed to find it, to see if it had survived the fire, to understand what had happened to me. Using the servants’ hallways to avoid being seen, I made my way slowly to the central courtyard where the ceremony had taken place.

The steel basin still contained the ashes of hundreds of burned books. But as I searched through the debris, my partially blind eyes caught sight of something impossible. There, sitting unharmed in the center of all that destruction was the red leather Bible. It was completely intact, not even singed by the flames that had reduced every other book to charcoal and ash.

I picked it up with trembling hands and again I felt that electric sensation flowing from the leather cover into my fingertips. This time however the feeling was not shocking but comforting, like holding the hand of someone who loved me unconditionally. I tucked the Bible inside my robe and returned to my room, my heart pounding with a mixture of excitement and terror about what I was about to do.

That night, after the compound had fallen silent and my family was asleep, I locked my bedroom door and opened the red Bible for the first time in my life. I had to hold it close to my face because of my impaired vision, using a small flashlight to illuminate the pages. I began reading from the beginning, starting with the Gospel of Matthew, expecting to find the lies and blasphemies that my teachers had warned me about.

Instead, I found words that seemed to speak directly to my soul. The very first chapter told the story of Jesus’s birth, describing him as Emmanuel, which means God with us. As someone who had always felt distant from Allah despite my religious devotion, the idea of God choosing to be present with humanity touched something deep inside me.

But it was when I reached the fifth chapter that my entire worldview began to crumble. Jesus was teaching his followers about how to live. And his words were nothing like what I had been told Christian doctrine contained. In Matthew 5:44, I read, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” I had to read that verse five times before I could believe what it actually said. These were not the words of someone trying to destroy Islam or corrupt innocent people. These were words of life. Words that called people to a higher standard of love and forgiveness than I had ever imagined possible.

My Islamic training said this must be satanic deception designed to make me weak and vulnerable to Christian influence. But my spirit recognized the voice of truth speaking through those ancient pages.

Night after night, I continued my secret reading, hiding under my bed covers like a child reading forbidden stories. I discovered parables about lost sheep and prodigal sons that painted a picture of God as a loving father rather than a distant judge. I read about Jesus healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and showing compassion to society’s outcasts. Most shocking of all, I read about his death on a cross, willingly sacrificing his life to pay for the sins of the very people who had rejected and crucified him.

Have you ever felt torn between what you were taught and what you knew was true? Every page I read created a deeper conflict between my lifelong Islamic education and the growing conviction in my heart that Jesus was exactly who he claimed to be. My mind screamed that this was impossible, that I was being deceived by the enemy of Islam. But my spirit kept responding to the love and truth I found in his words.

During the day, I was forced to maintain the facade of being a faithful Muslim prince, recovering from a spiritual attack. I attended prayers with my family, participated in religious discussions with visiting clerics, and expressed appropriate anger about the Bible that had mysteriously survived our burning ceremony. But every conversation felt like a betrayal of the truth that was growing stronger in my heart with each passing day.

I began using encrypted internet connections to search for more information about Christianity, particularly looking for testimonies from other Muslims who had converted to faith in Jesus. What I discovered amazed me. There were thousands of former Muslims around the world who had experienced similar supernatural encounters with Jesus. Their stories gave me hope that I was not losing my mind or falling victim to demonic deception.

One night about 6 weeks after my encounter with Jesus, I found the courage to pray to him directly for the first time. I knelt beside my bed in the darkness and whispered, “Jesus, if you are real, if you are truly the son of God, as these pages claim, please show me more of yourself. I am willing to lose everything to follow you, but I need to know for certain that you are worth such a sacrifice.”

The response was immediate and overwhelming. Love flooded my heart like warm honey, washing away years of anger and hatred in a matter of seconds. I felt Jesus speaking to my spirit, not in audible words, but in thoughts and emotions that were clearly not my own. He assured me that he had been calling my name since the day I was born. That he had seen every Bible I had burned and every Christian I had persecuted, and that he loved me too much to let me continue destroying myself with hatred.

Over the following weeks, my physical vision gradually returned to normal, but my spiritual sight became clearer than it had ever been. I could see that our Christian servants were not enemies trying to deceive innocent Muslims, but human beings created in God’s image who deserved love and respect. I could see that our Bible burning ceremonies were not acts of holiness, but expressions of the very evil we claimed to be fighting against. As my eyes healed, my soul began to see clearly for the first time in 24 years.

The love that was melting the ice around my heart created an unbearable conflict with the life I was expected to live. As a Saudi prince, I knew that eventually I would have to choose between following Jesus and maintaining my position in a family that had built its identity around hating everything he represented.

The transformation happening inside me was becoming harder to hide with each passing day. I found myself secretly protecting our Christian servants from persecution rather than reporting them for punishment. When family conversations turned to planning future Bible burning ceremonies, I made excuses to leave the room. When visiting clerics praised my commitment to fighting Christianity, I felt sick to my stomach, knowing how far from the truth their assumptions had become.

Love was melting the ice around my heart. But I was dying inside from the deception I was forced to maintain. Jesus was asking me to surrender everything I had ever known for the sake of everything I had never dared to hope for. The question was no longer whether I believed in him but whether I had the courage to follow him no matter what it cost.

For 8 months after my encounter with Jesus, I lived two completely different lives within the same body. During the day, I played the role of Prince Latif, beloved son of a prominent Saudi royal family, faithful Muslim committed to fighting against Christianity. But at night, I became someone else entirely, a secret follower of Jesus Christ, reading his words by flashlight, praying in his name, and wrestling with the growing conviction that he was calling me to abandon everything I had ever known.

The deception was slowly killing me from the inside. Every morning I woke up feeling like a fraud, knowing that I would spend another day pretending to hate the very person who had become the center of my spiritual universe. When my father discussed plans for future Bible burning ceremonies, I nodded and smiled while my heart broke for every sacred word we would destroy. When visiting Imams praised my dedication to Islamic purity, I felt nauseated knowing how completely my allegiance had shifted.

The most difficult moments came when I was forced to participate in the continued persecution of our Christian servants. My family’s systematic oppression of anyone suspected of Christian faith had not diminished after my supernatural encounter. If anything, my father had become even more vigilant about maintaining spiritual purity in our household, convinced that the mysterious Bible that had refused to burn was evidence of increased Christian spiritual warfare against our family.

I remember one particularly painful incident involving Maria, a Filipino maid who had worked in our household for over 3 years. She was discovered praying the Lord’s Prayer in her native language while cleaning one of the guest bathrooms. Another servant reported her to my father who immediately summoned me to participate in her interrogation and punishment.

As my father screamed at this terrified woman, demanding that she renounce her Christian faith or face immediate deportation, I stood silently beside him, dying inside. Everything within me wanted to defend her, to tell my father that her prayers were not a threat, but a beautiful expression of love for the same Jesus who had appeared to me in the flames. But I knew that revealing my true feelings would accomplish nothing except to destroy my ability to help other Christians in the future.

I watched helplessly as Maria was beaten by our security guards and then loaded into a van that would take her to the deportation center. The last thing I saw was her tear-filled eyes looking at me through the rear window, silently pleading for help that I was too cowardly to provide. That night, I wept for hours, begging Jesus to forgive me for my complicity in persecuting his followers.

But Maria’s persecution also marked a turning point in my secret spiritual journey. I could no longer participate passively in the systematic abuse of Christians while claiming to follow Christ myself. I began using my position and influence to secretly protect other believers in our household, warning them when investigations were planned, helping them hide evidence of their faith, and in some cases providing them with money to escape before they could be discovered and punished.

I established a covert network of communication with several Christian servants using coded messages and late night meetings to coordinate our efforts to avoid detection. We developed signals that could warn of approaching danger and safe locations where Christian materials could be hidden from the regular searches conducted by our security staff.

The irony of my situation was not lost on me. The same prince who had once taken pride in hunting down Christians was now risking everything to protect them. The hands that had thrown hundreds of Bibles into flames were now secretly distributing copies of the gospel to hungry souls who had been forbidden to possess God’s word.

But even these small acts of rebellion could not satisfy the growing conviction in my heart that Jesus was calling me to something far more dramatic than secret assistance. During my nightly Bible reading sessions, I found myself drawn repeatedly to passages about counting the cost of discipleship, about taking up one’s cross, about losing one’s life in order to find it.

In Luke 14:33, Jesus said, “Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” I must have read that verse a hundred times, each reading making it clearer that my comfortable position as a secret believer was not sustainable. Jesus was not asking me to add him to my existing life. He was asking me to surrender my existing life completely in order to receive the new life he wanted to give me.

The breaking point came in April 2018 during the holy month of Ramadan. My family had organized a special ceremony to mark the midpoint of the fasting period, inviting several hundred prominent Muslims to witness what my father called a renewed commitment to Islamic purity. The centerpiece of the event would be the burning of over a thousand Christian books and Bibles that had been collected from across the Middle East.

As I stood before that massive pile of Christian literature, holding the same golden torch I had carried 8 months earlier, I found myself completely unable to light the fire. My hand trembled as I brought the flame toward the books and my entire body rebelled against the act I was being asked to perform. How could I burn the words of the same Jesus who had appeared to me in love, who had forgiven me for years of persecution, who had called me his son?

The crowd grew restless as I stood frozen beside the unlit fire. My father approached me with concern, asking if I was experiencing another spiritual attack like the one that had caused my collapse the previous year. I looked into his eyes and realized that I could no longer maintain this deception even for another day.

I’m asking you just as a brother would. What is Jesus asking you to surrender? Have you ever reached a moment where you knew that following him would cost you everything you had worked to build? Everything that provided your identity and security. Everything that connected you to the people you loved most.

That night in April 2018, I faced the most difficult decision of my life. I could continue living as a secret believer, maintaining my wealth and position while helping Christians in small hidden ways, or I could step into the light, confess my faith publicly and accept whatever consequences followed.

Jesus was asking me to choose him publicly, to stop hiding my love for him behind a mask of Islamic piety. He was calling me to become his open follower regardless of what such a decision might cost me in terms of family relationships, financial security or physical safety.

I spent the entire night in prayer wrestling with God like Jacob had wrestled with the angel. I poured out my fears about losing my family, my terror about facing their anger and disappointment, my uncertainty about how I could survive in a world where I had no identity except as a Saudi prince who hated Christianity.

But by dawn, the peace that had first filled my heart in those flames 8 months earlier had returned. Jesus had not promised that following him would be easy or comfortable. He had promised that it would be worth whatever it cost. I knew that I could no longer live a divided life loving Jesus in private while persecuting his followers in public. The decision was made. I would tell my family the truth about my faith in Jesus Christ regardless of the consequences. I would choose Jesus over my inheritance, over my family’s approval, over the security and privilege that had defined my entire existence.

“Jesus, give me courage to lose everything for you.” I prayed as the sun rose over our compound. I had no idea how dramatically that prayer was about to be answered.

The opportunity to confess my faith came sooner than I expected. 3 days after my decision to stop living a double life, my father called a family meeting to discuss our strategy for the upcoming year. The entire extended family gathered in our main conference room: uncles, aunts, cousins, and several prominent imams who served as our spiritual advisers. The agenda included plans for expanding our anti-Christian activities and my potential appointment to a leadership role in the kingdom’s religious police.

As I sat listening to my father outline his vision for my future as a defender of Islamic purity, I felt the Holy Spirit moving in my heart with an urgency I had never experienced before. This was the moment Jesus had been preparing me for during those eight months of secret discipleship. This was when I would have to choose between the comfortable lie of hidden faith and the dangerous truth of public confession.

My father was describing his plan to establish a new foundation that would fund anti-Christian missionary work throughout Africa and Asia when I found myself standing up in the middle of his presentation. The room fell silent as every pair of eyes turned toward me, wondering why I had interrupted such an important discussion.

“Father,” I said, my voice somehow steady despite the terror coursing through my veins. “I have something I need to tell you and our family. Something that will change everything between us.”

My father’s expression shifted from confusion to concern as he saw the seriousness in my face. He gestured for me to continue, probably expecting me to announce an engagement or share news about a business venture. Instead, I took a deep breath and spoke the words that would end my life as a Saudi prince forever.

“Father, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. I believe he died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead. I have given my life to him and I can no longer participate in burning Bibles or persecuting his followers.”

The silence that followed was so complete that I could hear my own heartbeat echoing in my ears. For several seconds, no one moved or spoke, as if my words had frozen time itself. Then my father’s face began to change, shifting from shock to disbelief to a rage more intense than anything I had ever seen in his eyes.

“You have lost your mind,” he whispered at first, his voice barely audible. Then he began shouting, his words echoing off the walls of our conference room. “You have brought shame upon five generations of our bloodline. You have betrayed Allah, betrayed your family, betrayed everything we stand for.”

My mother rushed into the room, drawn by the sound of my father’s screaming. When she heard what I had confessed, she collapsed into a chair, weeping as if I had died. She kept repeating the same phrase over and over: “My son is lost. My son is lost.”

The imams present began reciting verses from the Quran about apostasy and the punishment that awaited those who abandoned Islam for Christianity. One of them declared that I was no longer a Muslim and therefore no longer entitled to the protection of my family or the kingdom. Another suggested that my confession was evidence of demonic possession that required immediate exorcism.

But it was my father’s ultimatum that cut deepest into my heart. Standing over me as I remained seated at the conference table, he gave me a choice that he believed was generous under the circumstances.

“You have until sunrise tomorrow to renounce this madness,” he declared. “You will publicly confess that you were temporarily insane, that Satan deceived you into believing Christian lies. You will burn a Bible with your own hands in front of our entire household. And you will recommit yourself to faithful service to Allah and our family’s mission.”

“And if I refuse?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“If you refuse, you are no longer my son. You will be cut off from your inheritance, expelled from this family, and forbidden from ever setting foot on our property again. You will leave with nothing but the clothes on your back. You will be dead to us.”

The weight of his words settled over me like a burial shroud. $50 million in inheritance. A family that had loved and supported me for 24 years. A lifestyle of unimaginable luxury and privilege. Security. Identity. Purpose. Belonging. Everything that had defined who I was would disappear with the sunrise if I chose to follow Jesus publicly.

I looked around the room at the faces of people who had been my world since childhood. I saw disappointment, anger, fear, and genuine grief in their eyes. They were not evil people in their own understanding. They truly believed they were trying to save my soul from eternal damnation, trying to protect our family from spiritual contamination.

But I also remembered the face of Jesus in the flames, the love I had seen in his wounded eyes, the peace that had filled my heart when I first read his words. I thought about the Christian servants who had suffered under our persecution. About the Bibles we had burned that contained God’s love letters to humanity. About the new life Jesus had promised to those who would lose their old lives for his sake.

The choice was exactly what Jesus had warned it would be in Matthew 10:37. “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” I had to decide whether my love for Jesus was stronger than my love for my family, whether my faith in his promises was greater than my fear of losing everything familiar and secure.

I looked directly into my father’s eyes and gave him the answer that would change both of our lives forever.

“Father,” I said, my voice surprisingly calm. “I love you and I love this family more than you will ever know. But I love Jesus Christ more than anything else in this world, including my own life. I choose Jesus, even if it costs me everything you have listed.”

The explosion of rage that followed was unlike anything I had ever witnessed. My father began throwing chairs, shouting curses, calling me names I had never heard him use before. He commanded the imams to perform an immediate exorcism, convinced that no son of his could make such a choice while in his right mind.

For the next two months, I was essentially held prisoner in my own home. My bedroom door was locked from the outside. My internet access was cut off. And armed guards were stationed outside my windows to prevent any escape attempts. My family brought in Islamic scholars from across the region to pray over me, to debate with me, to convince me that I was under a powerful delusion that could still be broken if I would just submit to intensive spiritual counseling.

During those long weeks of confinement, I experienced a peace that I had never imagined possible. In losing everything the world valued, I had found the only thing that mattered eternally. The same Jesus who had appeared to me in the flames was present with me in that locked room, sustaining my faith when the pressure to renounce him became almost unbearable.

My family’s strategy was to wear down my resolve through isolation, emotional manipulation, and constant theological arguments. They brought my childhood friends to testify about how much they missed the old Latif. They had my mother sit beside my bed, crying for hours, begging me to return to Islam for her sake. They showed me photographs of Christian persecution in other countries, warning me that this would be my fate if I insisted on following a religion that was hated throughout the Muslim world.

But every attack on my faith only strengthened my conviction that I had made the right choice. The peace I felt in that prison room was worth more than all the luxury I had lost. The relationship I had discovered with Jesus was more satisfying than any earthly relationship I had ever known.

2 months after my confession, my father finally accepted that I would not change my mind. On a cold December morning in 2018, he opened my bedroom door and told me I had 1 hour to gather whatever personal belongings I could carry in a single suitcase. After that, I would be escorted off the property and forbidden from returning.

As I packed my few possessions, I tucked the red leather Bible that had started this entire journey into the bottom of my suitcase. Everything else I left behind: designer clothes, expensive watches, electronic devices, photographs, and every other reminder of my former life as a Saudi prince.

The walk from my bedroom to the front gate of our compound was the longest journey of my life. Servants who had known me since childhood lined the hallway, many of them weeping as they watched me leave. Some of the Christian workers managed to whisper words of encouragement as I passed, telling me they were praying for my safety and thanking me for the protection I had secretly provided them.

My mother was waiting at the front gate, her face swollen from crying. She embraced me for the last time and whispered in my ear: “I will never stop praying that you come to your senses and return to us.” Despite everything that had happened, I could hear genuine love in her voice, mixed with a grief that broke my heart.

As the gates of our compound closed behind me for the final time, I stood on the street holding a single suitcase, with no money, no contacts outside my family’s network, and no plan for survival. I was physically poor but spiritually rich beyond measure. I had lost everything the world considers valuable. But I had gained the only treasure that truly mattered: a relationship with Jesus Christ that no earthly power could take away from me.

The first night of my new life, I slept on a bench outside a mosque in Riyadh, clutching my suitcase and praying for Jesus to show me what came next. I had no idea that my greatest adventures in faith were just beginning, that the same God who had pursued me through flames would now guide me through an entirely new kind of fire. The forge in which he shapes ordinary people into extraordinary servants of his kingdom.

Look inside your own heart right now. What is Jesus asking you to surrender for the sake of following him? The path of discipleship always requires us to lose our lives in order to find them. To give up what we think we need in order to receive what we actually need. My story is not unique in this regard. Every true follower of Christ must eventually choose between the security of the familiar and the adventure of faith