On November 8th, 2023, I threw 53 Bibles into the Sena River in Paris to defend Islam.

And over 300,000 people watched live as Jesus Christ did something so impossible that scientists still can’t explain it.

What would you do if God himself proved that everything you believed about religion was completely wrong? My name is Karim and I am 32 years old.

I grew up in Marseilles, France in a family that took Islam very seriously.

My father came from Algeria in 1989 and he never wanted us to forget where we came from or what we believed.

Every morning at 4:00, he would wake up to pray and he expected me to join him as soon as I was old enough to understand what prayer meant.

My mother taught Quran classes to young girls in our neighborhood and she wore full hijab every single day.

Even though many French people gave her angry looks when she walked down the street, from the time I could walk and talk, I knew that being Muslim was the most important thing about who I was.

I was not like other boys in my neighborhood.

While they played soccer and got into trouble, I memorized verses from the Quran.

By the time I was 12 years old, I had memorized over half of the Holy Book.

My father would smile so big when visitors came to our house and I would recite entire chapters without making a single mistake.

The older men from the mosque would nod their heads and tell my parents that Allah had blessed them with a very special son that made me feel proud and important like I had a purpose that other kids did not have.

School was hard because I was different from everyone else.

The other kids ate pork in the cafeteria, but I brought halal food from home.

They drank alcohol at parties when we got older, but I always said no and told them it was wrong.

They dated whoever they wanted and wore whatever they wanted, but I followed the Islamic rules about staying away from girls and dressing properly.

Some kids made fun of me and called me names, but I did not care because I believed I was storing up rewards in paradise for later.

When I got to university to study political science, I became even more serious about defending Islam.

I joined groups that worked to protect Muslim rights in France.

We went to protests when the government tried to ban hijabs in schools.

We organized boycots against companies that supported Israel.

We held counterprotests whenever right-wing groups said bad things about Muslims.

I felt like I was a soldier fighting a war to protect my faith and my people from everyone who wanted to destroy us.

By 2023, I had become well known in the Muslim community in Paris.

I ran social media accounts with over 85,000 followers where I posted videos about Islamic issues and criticized the French government for how it treated Muslims.

My videos got millions of views, especially when I confronted Christians who were trying to convert Muslims in our neighborhoods.

I was engaged to a beautiful woman named Amira, who was just as devoted to Islam as I was.

We plan to get married in 2024 and raised children who would be strong Muslims just like us.

Everything in my life was exactly how I wanted it to be.

Then in October 2023, something happened that made me angrier than I had ever been in my entire life.

A Christian missionary group started coming into Muslim neighborhoods in Paris, handing out Bibles and trying to convert our people.

They would set up tables outside mosques and go doortodoor talking to Muslim families about Jesus.

They called their campaign project Emmanuel and they said openly that their goal was to make Muslims become Christians.

I could not believe they had the nerve to invade our communities and try to steal our people away from Islam.

I started filming them and posting videos online showing how aggressive and disrespectful they were being.

My followers were just as angry as I was, and hundreds of them commented that someone needed to do something big to stop these missionaries.

One evening, I came home and found a package at my door with no return address.

Inside were three French Bibles and and a note in Arabic that said they were praying for me to discover the truth about Jesus Christ.

The note was signed by someone from Project Emmanuel.

They knew exactly who I was and they had the disrespect to send me their false books as if I would ever betray Islam.

Was shaking with rage as I held those Bibles in my hands.

I took pictures and posted them online immediately and my followers told me I needed to do something dramatic to send a message that Muslims would not accept this missionary invasion.

That is when I started planning what I called Operation River Cleansing.

I would collect as many Bibles as I could find and throw them all into the Sini River right in front of Notre Dame Cathedral.

We would film everything and post it online for the whole world to see that Muslims in France were ready to fight back against Christian missionaries.

I had no idea that Jesus was watching and that he was about to do something that would destroy everything I thought I knew about God.

What would you do if you were so certain you were defending the truth that you never questioned whether you might be completely wrong? November 8th, 2023 was called and gray and the weather forecast said it would rain by afternoon.

I loaded 53 Bibles into my car that morning.

Bibles we had collected over 3 weeks from bookstores and hotels and Muslims who wanted them destroyed.

My heart was beating fast because I knew this protest would be seen by millions of people online and would make Muslims around the world proud of what we were doing.

12 other activists met me at 2:00 in the afternoon near a bridge directly behind Notraam Cathedral.

We had chosen that spot on purpose because Notre Dame was the most famous Christian church in France and the throwing Bibles into the river right there would send a powerful message.

Everyone arrived on time and I gave each person four or five Bibles to throw.

I had a professional camera to live stream everything to my social media accounts and the several others had their phones ready to film from different angles.

We wanted video from every direction so no one could say we made it up or edited it later.

At exactly 2:00 I started the live stream and within seconds hundred of people were watching.

I held up one of the Bibles and spoke directly into the camera with my voice strong and confident.

I told everyone that these books represented Christian attacks on the Muslim communities and that today we would cleanse Paris of this spiritual pollution.

The other activists cheered and raised their Bibles in the air.

I gave the signal and we all moved to the edge of the bridge.

I threw five Bibles over the railing first and watched them splash into the gray water below.

Everyone else threw theirs right after me.

And within 30 seconds, all 53 Bibles were in the Sine River floating on the surface as the current started carrying them away.

The live stream exploded with viewers.

5,000 people were watching.

Then 10,000, then 25,000.

Muslims from around the world were commenting about how brave we were and Christians were posting angry messages about what we had done.

I felt victorious and powerful like I had won an important battle for Islam.

But then something impossible started happening that should not have been physically possible according to any laws of nature.

I understood the Bibles that we had thrown into the river stopped floating downstream like they should have.

Instead, they started moving against the current going the opposite direction the water was flowing.

They gathered together in the water directly below where we stood on the bridge as if an invisible force was collecting them and arranging them on purpose.

Within just a few minutes, all 53 Bibles had formed a perfect circle in the water.

The formation was too exact to be random or caused by wind or water currents.

People walking on the bridge started stopping to watch and pulling out their phones to record what was happening.

My live stream viewers were going crazy with comments asking what we were seeing and if it was real or some kind of trick.

Then the Bibles began rising up out of the water.

They did not just float to the surface because they were already floating.

They lifted up into the air about 6 ft above the river held up by nothing you could see.

All 53 books hovering information with water dripping off their pages.

Several of the activists with me started backing away from the railing with fear on their faces.

This was not natural and everyone could see that.

The hovering Bibles began to glow with soft white light that seemed to come from inside the books themselves.

My camera was capturing everything and my live stream viewer count had exploded to over 100,000 people watching in real time as this miracle unfolded in front of us.

Then I heard a voice that did not come from any person nearby.

It came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, clear and powerful, speaking in perfect French.

The voice said, “Karim, why do you persecute me?” Those words hit me like someone had punched me in the chest.

I knew immediately who was speaking even though everything I believed told me it was impossible.

This was Jesus Christ asking me why I was fighting against him.

My legs almost gave out and I grabbed the bridge railing to keep from falling.

Several other activists were crying and all of us recognized we were experiencing something beyond anything human beings could do or explain.

The live stream comments were complete chaos with people arguing about whether this was real or fake or staged somehow.

But I knew the truth.

This was real and it was terrifying.

The glowing Bibles began moving through the air and arranged themselves into letters that spilled out, “I died for you.

” The words hung there in the sky for several minutes while hundreds of people gathered on the bridge and river banks to witness what was happening.

Some took photos, others got down on their knees to pray.

Some ran away in fear.

The voice spoke again.

And this time it was not just talking to me, but to everyone watching.

It said, “Come to me all who are tired and carrying heavy loads.

And I will give you rest.

Stop fighting against the truth.

Stop resisting my love.

I am the way and the truth and the life and no one comes to God except through me.

” Then everything stopped as suddenly as it started.

The Bible slowly came down into the water.

The glow faded away and the river looked normal again like any other November afternoon in Paris, but nothing would ever be normal again.

Over 300,000 people had watched the live stream.

Dozens of witnesses had filmed from different angles.

Jesus Christ had responded to our protest with a public miracle that proved he was exactly who Christians said he was.

I collapsed against the bridge railing, unable to process what I had just experienced and knowing that my entire life had just been turned completely upside down.

What would it take for you to admit you were completely wrong about the most important thing in your life? The two days after the Sen River miracle were the most confusing and scary days of my entire life.

The video had been in viewed over 15 million times on every social media platform you can think of.

News organizations from around the world were calling me wanting interviews.

The French government opened an investigation to see if we had somehow staged the whole thing or used illegal technology to make it happen.

I was caught between Christians saying this proved Jesus was God and Muslims saying I had betrayed Islam for attention or money.

I could not sleep at all.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw those Bibles glowing in the air and heard the voice asking why I was persecuting him.

My whole identity had been built on being a faithful Muslim activist who never compromised.

Now I was facing the possibility that everything I believed my entire life was wrong and that Jesus really was God and I had spent 32 years fighting against the truth.

Amamira came to my apartment on November 10th demanding to know what had really happened on that bridge.

Had I planned this with Christians all along? Had I been secretly wanting to convert and use the protest as a way to get publicity? When I told her everything in the video was real and I had genuinely experiences Jesus speaking to me, she looked at me like I had lost my mind completely.

The scientific investigation was interesting because every expert who looked at the video footage could not explain what happened.

Physicists said there were no wires or drones or any technology that could have made the book float like that.

Engineers said waterlogged books should not have behaved the way they did in the video.

Every scientist who examined the evidence honestly reached the same conclusion.

They could not explain it using any natural laws they knew about.

I was drowning in evidence that contradicted everything I believed and I did not know what to do with it.

On November 12th, something amazing happened.

A priest named Father Antoine from a big church in Paris came to visit me at my apartment.

He was not there to be mean or to gloat about what happened.

Instead, he brought one of the actual Bibles that we had thrown into the river.

The police had recovered several of them and somehow Father Antoine got one to show me.

The book was damaged from the water with wrinkled yellow pages.

Father Antoine opened it to a story in the Gospel of John about Jesus healing a blind man.

The religious leaders refused to believe the miracle had happened even when the man who had been blind his whole life could suddenly see perfectly.

Father Antoine said gently that Jesus performed miracles not to show off but to reveal it to Ruth to people willing to see it.

He said I had experienced my own miracle and now I had to choose whether I would deny the evidence because it threatened my beliefs or simply testify to what I had experienced like the blind man did.

His words cut straight to my heart because I was doing exactly what those religious leaders did 2,000 years ago.

I was trying to explain away a miracle because accepting it would destroy my entire identity and worldview.

But I could not deny what I witnessed because too many people saw it and too much evidence existed.

Father Antoine invited me to meet privately to discuss what I experienced and to learn what the Bible actually taught about Jesus.

I was terrified to accept because if other Muslims found out I was meeting with a priest, I would be completely cut off from my community and possibly even physically hurt.

But I was more terrified of rejecting truth after God himself revealed it to me so dramatically.

Over the next week, I met with Father Antoine three times in a private office at his church.

He did not pressure me or manipulate me.

He simply opened the Bible and showed me what it said about Jesus claiming to be God, performing miracles to prove his claims, dying for sins, and rising from the dead.

The difference between what Islam taught and what Christianity taught was huge and impossible to ignore.

Islam said Jesus was just a prophet who did not die on the cross and definitely was not God.

Christianity said Jesus was God who came to earth as a human and deliberately died for sin and came back to life three days later.

Both could not be true at the same time.

Either Islam was right and Christianity was false or Christianity was right and Islam was false.

There was no way to believe both.

The turning point came on November 18th, exactly 10 days after the miracle.

I was alone in my apartment watching the viral video again for probably the hundth time when I noticed something I had missed before.

When the Bibles arranged themselves into the words, “I died for you,” the camera briefly showed my own face reflected in a shop window.

My expression showed absolute terror mixed with recognition.

Deep down, even in that moment, I had known who was speaking to me.

I had known it was Jesus.

I had known he was real.

But I had been too afraid to admit it.

I fell to my knees right there in my apartment, not facing Mecca like I had done thousands of times, but simply looking up toward heaven with complete honesty.

For the first time in my life, I prayed directly to Jesus Christ.

I said, “Jesus, if you are really God, if you really died for me, if what Father Antoine taught me is true, then I need you to save me.

I do not know how to face what this will cost me.

I do not know how to tell my family or Amira or anyone else.

But I cannot keep denying what you showed me.

I cannot keep fighting against you.

Please forgive me for throwing your word into the river.

Please forgive me for hating Christians.

Please save me.

The response was immediate and overwhelming.

The same peace I had felt briefly when I heard Jesus voice on the bridge flooded through my whole body.

It felt like every burden I had carried my entire life just lifted off my shoulders in an instant.

All the anger and defensiveness and constant need to prove myself through religious works.

All of it disappeared.

I felt loved in a way I had never experienced through Islam.

A love that was not based on how well I performed or how devoted I was, but was simply given freely because Jesus had already paid the price for my sins.

I cried for hours, experiencing both sadness for the life I was about to lose and joy for the truth I had finally found.

When I stood up, I was not the same person who had organized the Bible protest 10 days earlier.

I was completely new and transformed by grace I did not deserve and could never earn.

What would you sacrifice to follow the truth after God revealed himself to you in a way you could not deny? Telling Amira about my conversion was the hardest conversation I ever had in my life.

I called her on November 20th and asked to meet at a cafe in central Paris.

When she arrived, she could tell something had changed about me.

I was calmer than I had been in weeks, and that seemed to scare her.

I told her everything about my meetings with Father Antoine, about reading the Bible and discovering who Jesus really was, about praying to him and experiencing supernatural peace and forgiveness.

I explained that I had surrendered my life to Christ and could no longer continue living as a Muslim or planning a Muslim marriage and family with her.

Amira reacted exactly how I knew she would.

First, she did not believe me, thinking I was joking or testing her.

When she realized I was completely serious, she became angry and accused me of betraying everything we had built together and destroying our future.

Finally, she started crying and begging me to change my mind, to talk to an imam, to take more time before making such a terrible decision.

She said, “Karim, they will kill you.

Not the French government, but your own people.

Muslims do not forgive people who leave Islam.

Even if they do not physically harm you, you will lose everyone who ever cared about you.

Is this Christian God really worth all that? I took her hands and told her as gently as I could that yes, Jesus was worth everything I was going to lose because what he was giving me in return was eternal life and the truth that no one could take away.

She stood up, took of her engagement ring, placed it on the table between us and said, “Then we are done.

Karim, I cannot marry someone who betrayed Islam.

You are dead to me.

She walked it out and I never spoke to her again.

The news spread through the Muslim community in Paris.

Within one day, my father called from Marseilles and his voice was called with a fury I had never heard before.

He told me I was no longer his son, that my name would never be spoken in our house again, and that I had brought shame on our entire family.

My mother would not even come to the wound.

My sister sent messages saying they hated me and never wanted to see me again.

The threats started immediately with my social media flooded with messages promising violence and calling me a traitor who needed to be punished according to Islamic law.

I had to move out of my apartment because neighbors were harassing me and threatening the building owner for letting an ex-Muslim live there.

But something remarkable also started happening.

The miracle video was still going around the world and my conversion story spread with it.

Dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of Muslims began reaching out to me privately, saying they had watched the video and were questioning their own faith.

Many admitted they had been secretly doubting Islam, but were too afraid to explore Christianity because of family and community pressure.

My public conversion gave them permission to consider that maybe Jesus really was who Christians said he was.

Father Antoine introduced me to other former Muslims who had converted to Christianity throughout Europe.

These believers understood exactly what I was going through because they had walked the same path.

They gave me practical help, emotional support, and spiritual guidance as I learned what it meant to follow Jesus.

On December the 25th, 2023, Christmas Day, I was baptized at Father Antoine’s church, in a ceremony that over 200 people attended.

The service was livereamed and over 500,000 people watched as I publicly declared my faith in Jesus Christ.

During the baptism, Father Antoine read from the Bible about being buried with Christ through baptism and being raised to live a completely new life.

The symbolism was perfect.

The old Kharim who threw Bibles into the same river was buried in the baptism water.

The new Karim saved by grace and transformed by Jesus love came up out of the water to live a totally new life dedicated to sharing the truth that set me free.

In early 2024, I connected with a Christian organization that works specifically with former Muslims.

They helped me find safe housing, gave me the financial support during my transition, and eventually offered me a job, sharing my testimony at churches and conferences throughout Europe.

I have now spoken to thousands of people telling the story of how Jesus revealed himself through an impossible miracle and transformed an angry activist into a joyful follower of Christ.

The most incredible thing happened in March 2024 when several of the other activists who participated in the original Bible protest contacted me privately.

They had been haunted by what they witnessed on that bridge and wanted to know more about Jesus.

Over the following months, three of them surrender their lives to Christ.

We now meet regularly to study the Bible together and support each other through the challenges of following Jesus in a place where it costs everything.

In June 2024, I met Sophie, a French Christian woman who worked with a refugee ministry at a church in Paris.

Unlike Amamira, who loved me only when I was a good Muslim, Sophie loved me for who I was in Christ.

She did not care about my past as a Muslim activist or the controversy around my conversion.

She saw me as a new creation forgiven and changed by Jesus.

We got married in September 2024 in a beautiful church ceremony, celebrating not just our love for each other, but God’s faithfulness in bringing us together.

The ultimate full circle moment came in November 2024, exactly one year after the sin river miracle.

With permission from French authorities, we organized a Christian worship event on the same bridge where I had thrown the Bibles.

Over 1,000 believers gathered to worship Jesus, to celebrate his supernatural intervention, and to share the gospel with hundreds of Muslims who came because they were curious about what happened a year earlier.

During that event, I held up a Bible, one of the actual books that had been thrown in the river and recovered later, and I told the crowd that this book contained words of life that I had tried to destroy.

I explained that Jesus had proven himself more powerful than my hatred, more persistent than my resistance, and more loving than I could understand.

I invited anyone who witnessed the miracle or heard about it to consider that Jesus was calling them just as he had called me.

27 people prayed to receive Christ that day on the bridge.

Muslims who had been questioning their faith.

French people who had seen the miracle video and been interested and even tourists who happened to be there and heard the testimony.

The Muslim activist who threw Bibles into the Sin River to protest Christian missions no longer exists.

In his place stands a man who gives out those same Bibles with humble gratitude, sharing the love of Jesus Christ with anyone willing to listen.

If God can transform someone like me, someone who destroyed his word and hated his followers, then he can absolutely transform you.

No matter what your background is or what mistakes you have made, I lost everything I thought mattered when I surrendered to Jesus.

My family, my fianceé, my community, my reputation, my security, all of it gone.

But I gained everything that actually matters.

Eternal life, perfect peace, unconditional love and purpose that goes beyond this temporary world.

That is not a trade I would ever take back.

That is not a decision I have regretted for even one single moment.

Jesus did the unthinkable in Paris, proving himself real to millions of witnesses.

Now he is calling you to do the unthinkable to trust him with your eternal soul and follow him wherever he leads.