My name is Ahmed.

I’m 32 years old, son of a Saudi prince.

On September 23rd, 2016, I nearly died in a car accident that changed everything.

What happened that night led me to abandon Islam and risk my life for Jesus Christ.

I was born into a life that most people could only dream of.

Yet, it became my most beautiful prison.

My father, Prince Abdullah bin Rasheed al-Saud, was third in line to the Saudi throne.

Our family palace in Riyad sprawled across 50 rooms, each more opulent than the last.

Marble imported from Italy covered the floors.

Crystal chandeliers from Austria hung in every hallway, and Persian rugs worth millions adorned our living spaces.

I had my own wing of the palace complete with a private theater, indoor swimming pool, and a garage filled with supercars I could drive before I even had a license.

Every morning, Nordimonyi, I would wake up in a bedroom larger than most people’s entire homes.

Servants would already have my clothes laid out, breakfast prepared exactly to my preferences, and my daily schedule organized down to the minute.

I had three personal bodyguards, two private tutors, and a driver who took me anywhere I wanted to go in one of our fleet of armored Mercedes vehicles.

When we traveled, which was often, we flew in our private Boeing 747, complete with bedrooms, conference rooms, and a full kitchen staff.

By the time I turned 16, I owned watches worth more than most people make in a lifetime.

I had access to unlimited money, could buy anything I desired, and had connections to the most powerful people in the world.

World leaders would visit our palace.

I shook hands with presidents, prime ministers, breakout, and billionaires who treated me like royalty because of my bloodline.

I had everything the world defines as success.

Yet inside my heart, there was an emptiness that no amount of wealth could fill.

My Islamic upbringing was as strict as our lifestyle was luxurious.

From the moment I could walk, I was expected to embody the perfect Muslim prince.

At age five, I was required to perform the five daily prayers without exception.

My father would personally check on me during fudger prayer at dawn, ensuring I was awake and properly positioned on my prayer rug.

Missing a prayer meant severe punishment, sometimes days of isolation in my room with only bread and water.

By age 8, I had my own private Islamic tutor, Sheik Muhammad, a stern man with a long beard who demanded absolute perfection in my recitation of Arabic prayers.

He would strike my hands with a wooden ruler whenever I mispronounced a word or showed any sign of distraction.

I spent 4 hours every day memorizing verses from the Quran.

And by age 12, I had memorized the entire holy book.

Everyone praised my achievement, calling me a blessed child of Allah.

But the words felt empty in my mouth, like repeating a foreign language I didn’t truly understand.

The expectations placed on me were crushing.

I wasn’t just Ahmed.

I was Prince Ahmed.

And every action I took reflected on our family’s honor and religious standing.

I had to be the first to arrive at Friday prayers at our private mosque, sit in the front row where everyone could see me, and demonstrate perfect Islamic behavior at all times when foreign dignitaries visited.

But I was often called upon to recite Quranic verses as a display of our family’s devotion to Islam.

The pressure to be the perfect Muslim prince never stopped.

But even as a child, something felt fundamentally wrong inside my spirit.

During the long prayer sessions, while I prostrated myself toward Mecca and recited the required Arabic phrases, my heart felt completely disconnected from the words coming out of my mouth.

I would look around at the other worshippers wondering if they felt the same emptiness I did or if there was something deeply wrong with me spiritually.

Ask yourself this question.

Have you ever felt like you were going through the motions of religion without feeling any real connection to God? That was my daily reality for 20 years.

The prayers felt mechanical, like a daily chore that had to be completed rather than a meaningful conversation with the creator.

I would repeat the same phrases five times a day every day.

Yet, I never felt like anyone was listening on the other side.

The question started when I was around 14 years old.

During my private Islamic studies, I began asking Shik Muhammad about things that troubled me in the Quran.

Why did Allah seem so angry and distant? Why were non-Muslims described as inferior beings destined for hell? Why were women treated as lesser than men in so many verses? Why did some passages seem to contradict others? My tutor’s response was always the same.

Do not question Allah’s wisdom.

Your job is to obey, not to understand.

But the questions multiplied like seeds in fertile soil.

I watched how our servants were treated.

Most of them foreign workers from the Philippines, Indonesia, and India.

Many were Christians, and I noticed something different about them.

Despite working long hours for little pay, despite being far from their families, they had a joy and peace in their eyes that I had never seen in any of the wealthy Muslims around me.

When they thought no one was watching, I would see them quietly praying, and their faces would light up with genuine happiness.

I witnessed my father’s harsh treatment of anyone who displeased him, justified by his interpretation of Islamic authority.

I saw the fear in people’s eyes when they approached him, the way even grown men would tremble in his presence.

This was supposed to be godly behavior, yet it felt cruel and heartless to me.

The contrast between what Islam taught about compassion and mercy and what I actually observed in our daily life created a growing crack in my faith.

The emptiness inside my heart grew deeper with each passing year.

I was suffocating in a golden cage, surrounded by luxury but starved for genuine spiritual connection.

Desperate for truth but afraid to seek it.

The discovery that changed my life happened during Ramadan in 2015 when I was 26 years old.

Our household employed dozens of servants, most of them foreign workers who lived in modest quarters behind the main palace.

Among them was Maria Santos, a Filipino woman in her 50s who had worked for our family for over 10 years.

She was quiet, hardworking, and had a gentleness about her that stood out among the staff, while other servants seemed nervous and fearful around our family.

Maria carried herself with a quiet dignity that I found intriguing.

One scorching afternoon during the fasting month, I was wandering through the less used sections of our palace, seeking solitude from the suffocating religious obligations that filled every hour of Ramadan.

The constant prayers, Quran recitations, and family gatherings celebrating our devotion to Allah felt more empty than ever that year.

I found myself in the service corridors, an area I rarely visited when I heard soft singing coming from one of the servant quarters.

The voice was Maria’s, and she was singing in English, a language I spoke fluently, thanks to my western education.

The words were unlike anything I had ever heard.

She sang about someone named Jesus who loved her unconditionally, who had died for her sins, and who gave her peace in the midst of trials.

The melody was simple, but there was something so genuine and heartfelt in her voice that I found myself frozen outside her door, listening to every word.

When the singing stopped, I heard her speaking, apparently in prayer.

But this wasn’t like any prayer I had ever heard.

She wasn’t reciting memorized verses or repeating formal phrases.

She was having a conversation, speaking to this Jesus as if he were right there in the room with her.

She thanked him for protecting her family back in the Philippines, asked him to help her send money home for her daughter’s education, and even prayed for our family, asking Jesus to bless us and open our hearts to his love.

I had never heard anyone pray with such intimacy and genuine emotion in all my years of Islamic prayer.

I had never witnessed or experienced anything that felt so personal and real.

This woman who had so little compared to my wealth and status was speaking to her God as if he were her closest friend, and there was a joy and peace in her voice that I desperately longed for in my own spiritual life.

A few days later, curiosity overwhelmed my caution, and I found an excuse to visit the service area when I knew Maria would be working elsewhere.

Her small room was spartanly furnished, containing only a bed, a small table, and a wooden cross hanging on the wall.

But hidden beneath her mattress, I discovered something that made my heart race with both fear and fascination.

A black leather Bible written in English.

I knew I was crossing a dangerous line.

From childhood, I had been taught that the Bible was a corrupted book, that Christians had changed God’s true words, and that even touching their holy book could contaminate a Muslim’s faith.

The punishment for possessing Christian materials in Saudi Arabia was severe, and for a member of the royal family to be caught with a Bible would bring unimaginable shame and consequences upon our entire household.

But something stronger than fear compelled me to pick up that book.

My hands trembled as I opened it, expecting to find the evil and corrupted teachings I had been warned about.

Instead, I found myself reading words that seemed to speak directly to the questions and longings I had carried for years.

I quickly closed it and returned it to its hiding place, but the brief glimpse I had gotten left me hungry for more.

For several nights, I couldn’t sleep.

The memory of Maria’s peaceful prayer and the few verses I had read from her Bible haunted my thoughts.

During the pre-dawn prayer times, while I mechanically recited the required Arabic phrases, my mind was filled with questions about this Jesus that Maria sang about with such love and devotion.

I began making excuses to spend time in the service areas, hoping to overhear more of Maria’s singing or prayers.

Each time I heard her speak to Jesus with such intimacy and trust, the emptiness in my own religious experience became more apparent.

Here was a woman who had been separated from her family for years, working as a servant in a foreign land.

Yet she possessed a spiritual peace and joy that all my wealth and religious education had never given me.

Finally, my curiosity overcame my fear.

One night during the final week of Ramadan, after the household had settled into sleep following the evening if meal, I crept back to Maria’s quarters.

My heart pounded so loudly I was certain it would wake someone.

But I had to know what was in that book that gave her such peace.

I carefully retrieved the Bible from its hiding place and took it to the palace library where I could read by lamplight without being discovered.

I knew that touching this book could cost me everything if I were caught.

But the spiritual hunger inside me had become unbearable.

I needed to know if there was truth beyond what I had been taught.

If there was a God who actually cared about individual hearts rather than just demanding blind obedience.

Opening to a random page, I found myself reading something called the sermon on the mount in the book of Matthew.

The words I read that night shattered everything I thought I knew about God and religion.

This Jesus spoke about loving your enemies, blessing those who persecute you, and showing mercy to others.

He talked about God as a loving father who cared for even the smallest sparrow and knew every hair on people’s heads.

Look inside your own heart right now and ask yourself, when was the last time you heard religious teaching that felt like good news rather than a burden of rules and obligations? That night, reading Jesus’s words for the first time, I encountered a version of God I had never imagined possible, one who offered love instead of fear, grace instead of harsh judgment, and personal relationship instead of distant ritualistic worship.

September 23rd, 2016 started like any other day, but it would become the night that divided my life into before and after.

The tension in our household had been building for weeks.

My father had been pressuring me relentlessly about an arranged marriage to Princess Fatima, the daughter of a powerful Saudi minister.

At 27, I was considered past the ideal age for marriage, and my continued resistance was becoming a source of family shame.

That evening, during what was supposed to be a celebratory dinner, announcing my engagement, I finally reached my breaking point.

The whole family was gathered in our formal dining room along with Princess Fatima’s family, discussing wedding plans as if I had already agreed.

My father spoke about me as though I weren’t even present.

outlining my future like he was arranging a business merger rather than his son’s marriage.

When he turned to me and demanded that I publicly accept the engagement that night, something inside me snapped for months.

I had been secretly reading Maria’s Bible, and Jesus’s teachings about love and free will had been working on my heart.

The idea of entering a loveless marriage arranged purely for political and financial gain felt like betraying everything I was beginning to understand about God’s design for human relationships.

I stood up from the table and in front of both families declared that I would not marry someone I didn’t love.

That I needed time to figure out what I truly believed about life and faith.

The silence that followed was deafening.

My father’s face turned red with rage, and he began shouting about dishonor, family obligation, and my duty as a prince.

The shame I was bringing upon our family name, he said, was unforgivable.

Princess Fatima’s father stormed out with his entire family, declaring the engagement permanently broken.

My father’s final words to me that night were burned into my memory.

If you walk out of this house tonight, you are no longer my son.

You have 1 hour to come to your senses or you are dead to this family forever.

I went to my room, packed a small bag, and made the decision that would change everything.

I took my fastest car, a McLaren P1 that could reach speeds over 200 mph, and drove into the Saudi desert with no destination in mind.

I just needed to escape the suffocating expectations and find some space to think clearly about the direction of my life.

The desert highway stretched endlessly ahead of me in the darkness.

I pushed the speedometer higher and higher, reaching 180 mph as I tried to outrun the turmoil in my heart and mind.

The wind roared through the slightly open windows, and the engine scream matched the chaos inside my soul.

I felt like I was caught between two worlds.

The Islamic faith and Saudi culture that had shaped my entire identity and this new understanding of Jesus that was calling me towards something completely different.

At exactly 2:17 a.

m.

, according to the car’s digital clock, my left rear tire blew out at maximum speed.

The McLaren immediately went into an uncontrollable spin, veering off the highway and tumbling down a steep embankment.

The world became a terrifying blur of spinning lights, shattering glass, and crushing metal as the car flipped end over end at least six times before finally coming to rest upside down at the bottom of a rocky ravine.

When the spinning stopped, I found myself hanging upside down, held in place only by my seat belt.

Blood was running down my face from multiple cuts, and my left arm felt like it might be broken.

But the real terror began when I smelled gasoline.

The fuel tank had been punctured in the crash, and I could hear liquid dripping steadily onto the hot engine components above my head.

Smoke was already beginning to fill the passenger compartment.

I tried desperately to unbuckle my seat belt, but the mechanism was jammed from the impact.

My injured arm couldn’t generate enough strength to free myself, and panic began to overwhelm my thinking.

The smoke was getting thicker, and I knew that an explosion was only moments away.

I was trapped in what would certainly become my metal coffin, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to save myself.

In that moment of complete helplessness, when death was staring me directly in the face, I cried out to the only God I had ever known.

Allah, if you’re real, if you have any mercy, save me now.

I’ve tried to be a good Muslim.

I’ve prayed five times a day.

I’ve memorized your Quran.

Please don’t let me die like this.

But nothing happened.

No peace came to my heart.

No supernatural strength filled my arms.

No miraculous rescue appeared.

If anything, the terror and desperation only increased as more smoke filled the car, and the smell of gasoline grew stronger.

I felt completely abandoned by the God I had worshiped my entire life.

Then I remembered the Jesus that Maria prayed to with such confidence and love.

In my desperation, with nothing left to lose, I called out, “Jesus, if you’re real, if you’re really the son of God, like that Bible says, please help me.

I don’t know much about you, but Maria says you love everyone.

If that’s true, please save me.

” The moment I spoke Jesus’s name, something supernatural happened that I will never be able to fully explain or forget.

An overwhelming peace flooded my heart, replacing the panic with a strange calm that made no sense given my circumstances.

It was as though someone had wrapped me in invisible arms of love and safety, even while I was still trapped in that burning car.

But more than peace came.

Supernatural strength flowed through my injured arm.

I reached up to the jammed seat belt mechanism and with one powerful motion that should have been impossible in my condition, I tore it free.

I dropped down onto the car’s ceiling and crawled through the shattered rear window just as flames began to lick at the dashboard.

I had barely scrambled 20 ft away when the entire McLaren exploded in a fireball that lit up the desert night.

As I lay on my back in the sand watching my car burn, I knew with absolute certainty that it wasn’t Allah who had saved me.

So I’m asking you, just as someone who’s experienced this divine intervention would, when have you ever felt God’s presence so powerfully that it changed everything you believed about reality? I spent 3 days in King Fil Specialist Hospital in Riyad and the doctors couldn’t explain my miraculous survival.

The emergency room physician who first examined me kept shaking his head in disbelief, saying that someone who had been in such a severe crash at that speed should have been dead or at least permanently disabled.

My injuries were remarkably minor.

A broken left wrist, several deep cuts that required stitches, and bruising across my chest from the seat belt.

But my spine was intact.

My brain showed no signs of trauma.

and all my vital organs were functioning perfectly.

The hospital staff whispered among themselves about Allah’s obvious protection over the prince’s son.

Religious visitors came daily to my room praising God for sparing my life and interpreting my survival as a sign of divine favor upon our royal family.

My father who had been furious with me the night of the accident now saw my survival as vindication that Allah had forgiven my rebellion and wanted me to return to the path of proper Islamic devotion.

But I knew the truth.

Every moment I lay in that hospital bed.

I could still feel the supernatural peace that had flooded my heart when I called out to Jesus in that burning car.

The memory of that divine intervention was burned into my consciousness more deeply than any of my physical injuries.

It wasn’t Allah who had saved me, and I couldn’t pretend otherwise, no matter how convenient it would have been for my family relationships.

The internal conflict was excruciating.

Here I was being celebrated by my family and the Saudi religious community as a living testimony to Allah’s mercy while knowing in my heart that it was Jesus Christ who had rescued me from certain death.

Every time someone praised Allah for my survival, I felt like I was betraying the God who had actually answered my desperate prayer in that moment of ultimate crisis.

When I was finally released from the hospital, I made a decision that would have shocked my family if they had known.

I was going to get my hands on a complete Bible and read it from beginning to end.

Maria’s hidden copy had only given me glimpses of Jesus’s teachings, but I needed to understand everything about this God who had demonstrated such personal love and power in my life.

Through a network of underground Christians that I discovered existed even in our strict Islamic society, I was able to obtain a complete Arabic Bible.

The risk of possessing it was enormous, but I had to know the full truth about Jesus Christ.

I created a hidden compartment behind my bedroom’s air conditioning unit where I could store the Bible safely, and I began reading it every night after the household was asleep.

The Gospel of John became my starting point and from the very first chapter I encountered concepts that revolutionized my understanding of God.

The idea that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life was completely foreign to everything I had been taught about Allah.

This wasn’t a distant angry deity demanding perfect obedience and threatening eternal punishment for any failure.

This was a God who loved humanity so much that he was willing to sacrifice himself to save us.

As I read through the Gospels night after night, I began to see the stark differences between Jesus and the Islamic understanding of God.

Jesus touched lepers that society had rejected, ate with tax collectors and sinners that religious people avoided, and showed compassion to women in a culture that often treated them as property.

His teachings about forgiveness, mercy, and unconditional love were unlike anything I found in the Quran or Islamic tradition.

The sermon on the mount particularly captivated me.

Jesus’s teachings about loving your enemies, turning the other cheek, and blessing those who persecute you were revolutionary concepts that challenged everything I had been taught about strength, honor, and justice.

In Saudi culture, revenge and maintaining family honor were considered sacred duties.

But Jesus was teaching something entirely different, a way of life based on love rather than fear.

Romans 10:9 became the turning point in my spiritual journey.

If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

The simplicity of this message overwhelmed me.

Salvation wasn’t earned through perfect prayer performance, pilgrimage to Mecca, or strict adherence to religious laws.

It was a free gift offered to anyone who would simply believe and accept it.

Ask yourself this question.

Have you ever discovered that everything you thought you knew about God was incomplete or even wrong? That was my reality as I wrestled with these new revelations night after night.

The God I was discovering in the Bible was so much more loving, personal, and gracious than the Allah I had tried to appease my entire life.

The internal war between my cultural identity and this new spiritual understanding was tearing me apart.

I was Prince Ahmed bin Abdullah al-Saud, descendant of the founder of Saudi Arabia, raised to be a guardian of Islamic faith and tradition.

Everything about my identity was tied to being Muslim.

But I was also Ahmed, the man who had cried out to Jesus in desperation and received a miraculous rescue that had changed my heart forever.

For weeks, I lived this double life, performing my Islamic duties during the day while secretly studying Christian scriptures at night.

I attended Friday prayers at our family mosque, led religious discussions with visiting dignitaries, and participated in all the expected royal religious ceremonies.

But my heart was no longer in any of it.

Every Arabic prayer felt hollow compared to the intimate conversations with Jesus I was learning to have in the privacy of my room.

The burden of this deception grew heavier each day.

I felt like I was lying not just to my family but to God himself every time I participated in Islamic worship while knowing that Jesus was the true way to salvation.

The guilt was becoming unbearable and I knew that I would eventually have to make a choice that would change everything.

The truth was setting me free spiritually, but it was also terrifying me with the implications of what full commitment to Christ would mean for my life, my family, and my future.

I was standing at a crossroads where I could no longer serve two masters, and the decision I was about to make would cost me everything I had ever known.

The moment of my complete surrender to Jesus Christ came on a cold February night in 2017, exactly 5 months after my accident.

I had been wrestling with the truth for so long that the internal conflict was destroying my peace and health.

I had lost weight from the stress, barely slept more than a few hours each night, and found myself constantly on edge, knowing that I was living a lie that grew more unbearable with each passing day.

That night, alone in my room, with my hidden Bible open to Romans chapter 10, I finally admitted to myself what my heart had known since the night Jesus saved me from that burning car.

I was a sinner in desperate need of a savior.

And that savior was Jesus Christ, not Allah.

With tears streaming down my face, I knelt beside my bed and prayed the most honest prayer of my entire life.

Jesus, I whispered into the darkness.

I believe you are the son of God.

I believe you died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead.

I’m sorry for living a lie for so many months.

I accept you as my Lord and Savior.

Please forgive me and make me your child.

I don’t know what this means for my future, but I trust you completely.

The moment I finished that prayer, I felt the same supernatural peace that had flooded my heart during the accident.

But this time, it was accompanied by an indescribable joy that seemed to fill every cell in my body.

I knew without any doubt that I had been born again, that my sins were forgiven, and that I was now a child of the living God.

The emptiness that had plagued me for 27 years was finally filled with the presence of Jesus Christ.

But along with that spiritual transformation came the crushing realization of what my decision would cost me.

I was now a Christian living in one of the most Islamic countries in the world.

A member of the Saudi royal family who had committed what my culture considered the ultimate betrayal.

I couldn’t continue to live this double life participating in Islamic prayers and ceremonies while knowing that Jesus was my true Lord.

The Holy Spirit was convicting me that I had to be honest about my faith regardless of the consequences.

For the next 3 months, I began secretly preparing for what I knew would be my inevitable escape from Saudi Arabia.

I started transferring money from my Saudi accounts to international banks in Switzerland and Germany using shell companies and offshore accounts that my business education had taught me to establish.

I converted as much of my wealth as possible into diamonds and gold that could be easily transported, knowing that once my family discovered my conversion, all my Saudi assets would be frozen immediately.

The underground Christian network that had provided my Bible also connected me with organizations that helped religious refugees escape persecution.

through encrypted communications.

I made contact with a German Christian ministry that specialized in assisting former Muslims who had converted to Christianity.

They began preparing safe houses and legal documentation that would allow me to claim asylum in Europe once I managed to leave the kingdom.

The hardest part of my preparation was maintaining the facade of Islamic devotion while my heart belonged entirely to Christ.

Every morning when I performed the required dawn prayers, I felt like I was betraying Jesus.

Every Friday when I attended mosque services with my family, I felt the weight of deception crushing my spirit.

I began having private conversations with Maria, carefully revealing my spiritual transformation while swearing her to secrecy about my plans.

Maria became my spiritual mentor during those crucial months.

She taught me Christian prayers, helped me understand deeper biblical truths, and most importantly showed me how to have a personal relationship with Jesus rather than just religious knowledge about him.

Through her guidance, I learned to pray conversationally with Christ, to find comfort in his presence during my daily struggles, and to trust his plan for my future, even when I couldn’t see how escape would be possible.

The opportunity for my departure came in an unexpected way.

In June 2017, my family decided to make the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, a journey that would keep them away from Riyad for 2 weeks.

Normally, I would have been required to join them, but I convinced my father that I needed to stay behind to handle some urgent business investments that required my personal attention.

He agreed, thinking that my focus on family finances showed maturity and responsibility.

The night before my family left for Mecca, I had dinner with them for what I knew would be the last time.

Sitting around our formal dining table, listening to my father discuss plans for expanding our business empire, and my mother talk about potential marriage prospects for me, I felt overwhelmed with grief for what I was about to lose.

These were the people who had raised me, loved me according to their understanding, and provided me with every material advantage in life.

But I also knew that staying meant denying Christ and living a lie that was destroying my soul.

Look inside your own heart right now and ask yourself.

What would you be willing to sacrifice to follow Jesus completely? That night I was facing the loss of my family, my inheritance, my cultural identity, and quite possibly my life if I was ever caught by Saudi authorities.

After my family departed for Mecca the next morning, I put my escape plan into motion.

I had arranged for a trusted driver, one of the few servants who wasn’t completely loyal to my father, to take me to the Bahrain border under the pretense of a business trip.

From there, I would fly to Jordan using false identification documents, then continue to Germany, where my asylum application was already being processed.

Before leaving the palace for the final time, I went to Maria’s quarters to say goodbye.

This humble Filipino woman had unknowingly planted the seeds of my salvation by living out her Christian faith so authentically that it attracted me to Jesus.

I gave her enough money to return to the Philippines immediately, knowing that when my conversion was discovered, any servant who might have influenced me would face severe punishment.

I also left a handwritten letter for my family explaining my conversion and my reasons for leaving.

I told them that I loved them deeply, but could no longer deny the truth that Jesus Christ was the only way to salvation.

I asked for their forgiveness and express my hope that someday they might understand my decision, even if they couldn’t accept it.

As my car pulled away from the palace gates for the last time, I looked back at the only home I had ever known, knowing that I was trading a kingdom on earth for citizenship in the kingdom of heaven.

The journey from my palace to freedom took 18 terrifying hours that felt like 18 years.

My driver, Hassan, had been promised enough money to relocate his entire family to another country.

But I could see the fear in his eyes as we approached each checkpoint on the road to Bahrain.

He knew that helping a member of the royal family escape could cost him his life if we were caught.

At the Saudi Bahrain border, my heart pounded so violently I was certain the guards could hear it.

I presented my regular passport, acting as though this was just another routine business trip, while silently praying that Jesus would blind the officials to any suspicion.

The border guard examined my documents with unusual thoroughess, asking detailed questions about my business in Bahrain and when I planned to return.

Each second felt like an eternity, but finally he stamped my passport and waved me through.

Once in Bahrain, I immediately destroyed my Saudi identification and activated the escape plan that had taken months to arrange.

Using falsified Jordanian documents that the Christian underground had provided, I boarded a late night flight to Aman.

As the plane lifted off from Bahrain International Airport, I pressed my face to the window and watched the lights of the Arabian Peninsula disappear below me, knowing I might never see that part of the world again.

The flight to Jordan was the longest 4 hours of my life.

Every moment I expected Saudi security forces to somehow board the plane and drag me back to face my family’s wrath.

I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t even pray properly because my mind was racing with questions about whether my family had already discovered my letter and begun pursuing me.

from Aman.

I flew to Frankfurt, Germany, where representatives from the Christian refugee organization were waiting to receive me.

Pastor Klaus Vber, a gentleman in his 60s who had been helping former Muslims for over 20 years, met me at the airport with tears in his eyes.

He embraced me like a long-lost son and said, “Welcome home, brother Ahmed.

Jesus has brought you safely to freedom.

” My first weeks in Germany were a shocking adjustment that nearly broke my spirit.

After 27 years of living in unimaginable luxury, I found myself in a small refugee center room that was barely larger than my former walk-in closet.

The single bed, small desk, and shared bathroom down the hall represented my entire world.

Now, I went from having servants attend to my every need to waiting in line for basic meals and doing my own laundry for the first time in my life.

But the physical hardships were nothing compared to the emotional devastation of complete family rejection.

3 days after my arrival in Germany, I received a phone call from my father that I will never forget as long as I live.

His voice was cold with a fury I had never heard before, even during our worst arguments.

“You are no longer my son,” he said with deadly calm.

You have brought shame upon our family name that can never be forgiven.

You are dead to us.

If you ever set foot in Saudi Arabia again, or if we ever find you anywhere in the world, we will kill you ourselves to restore our honor.

You have chosen your path, and now you will face the consequences alone.

The line went dead, and I collapsed on my small bed, weeping with a grief that felt like it would kill me.

In choosing Christ, I had lost everything that had defined my identity for nearly three decades.

I was no longer Prince Ahmed.

I was no longer part of the Alsaw royal family.

I was no longer wealthy, powerful, or respected.

I was just Ahmed, a refugee who owned nothing but the clothes on his back and his faith in Jesus Christ.

The persecution didn’t end with my father’s disownment.

Within weeks, I learned that the Saudi government had placed a bounty on my head, officially declaring me a traitor to the kingdom and to Islam.

Photographs of me were circulated to Saudi embassies worldwide, and my family hired private investigators to track my location.

I had to change apartments three times in my first year in Germany, always moving in the middle of the night when intelligence suggested that Saudi agents might have discovered my whereabouts.

But in the midst of this persecution and loss, I began to experience the true meaning of Christian community and Jesus’s promise that he would never leave me or forsake me.

The small German church that had sponsored my asylum welcomed me with a love that I had never experienced, even in my own family.

These simple working-class Christians treated me not as a former prince, but as a beloved brother in Christ who needed their support and care.

On September 23rd, 2017, exactly one year after my car accident, I was baptized in the cold waters of the Ryan River.

Pastor Klaus had asked me to choose the date that would be most meaningful for my public declaration of faith, and I knew immediately that it had to be the anniversary of the night Jesus saved my life.

As I went down into those waters, I felt like I was being buried with Christ.

And when I came up gasping in the frigid air, I knew that I was truly born again.

More than 50 people attended my baptism, many of them former Muslims who had made similar journeys to mine.

As I stood dripping wet on the riverbank, wrapped in towels and surrounded by my new Christian family.

I realized that I had gained far more than I had lost.

I had traded earthly riches for heavenly treasure, temporary pleasure for eternal joy, and human approval for God’s acceptance.

Today, 7 years after my escape, I pastor a small underground church that meets in my apartment, ministering primarily to Muslim refugees and converts who have found Jesus Christ.

We gather every Sunday in my living room, singing worship songs in Arabic, praying for our families who have rejected us, and studying the Bible together.

Many of these precious brothers and sisters have stories similar to mine.

They heard the gospel, encountered Jesus personally, and chose to follow him despite losing everything they had ever known.

The financial struggles are real and constant.

I work as a translator to pay my rent and buy groceries, earning in a month what I used to spend on a single dinner in my former life.

I live in a small apartment, take public transportation, and shop at discount stores for my clothes.

But I have never been happier or more fulfilled than I am right now.

So I’m asking you just as someone who has walked this path would, what are you holding on to that might be preventing you from surrendering everything to Jesus? What comfort, relationship, or security are you afraid to lose for the sake of following Christ completely? If God can save a Saudi prince’s son and give him a life of purpose and joy, he can transform your life, too.

No matter what your background or current circumstances might be, Jesus is calling your name right now.

He’s offering you the same salvation that he offered me in that burning car seven years ago.

Will you answer his