Najjar had been raised a devout Shia Muslim and a Twelver. For all his life, he had prayed for war. He had believed what his fellow Twelvers believed, that the more chaos and carnage and bloodshed that occurred in the Middle East, the more likely it was for the Mahdi to come and establish justice and peace. To pray for war and even genocide, especially against the Jews and the Christians, had been his religious duty, he had always believed, because it would hasten the coming of the Promised One. But now Najjar was a completely different person. Jesus Christ had appeared to him personally in a vision in the mountains of Hamadan. “Come and follow me,” Jesus had said. Jesus had shown Najjar the scars in His hands and feet, where nails had been driven during His crucifixion. And at that moment, Najjar had known beyond the shadow of a doubt that all he had ever been taught by the mullahs and the ayatollahs was a lie. He believed at that moment that Jesus truly was King of kings and Lord of lords, that Jesus was the Alpha and the Omega, and that He was coming back soon. And at that moment, at the very instant his eyes had been opened to the reality of Jesus’ love and compassion and forgiveness for him, Najjar had bowed down and worshiped Him and vowed to follow Him forever.
Ever since, he had been devouring the Bible. He had read it for hours each day, beginning when he first opened his eyes in the morning and making sure he did not go to sleep without meditating more on God’s Word and even memorizing large passages of it. He couldn’t get enough of the Scriptures. He was like a man who had been groping through the desert, parched beyond belief, had stumbled into an oasis of palm trees surrounding a spring, and was now gulping down fresh, clean, sweet water as fast as his system would allow.
And hour by hour, it seemed, Najjar felt his perspective on life, on the world, on the future changing dramatically. Now he knew that the prophet Isaiah had taught that the Messiah would be the Prince of Peace. Now he knew that Jesus had taught His disciples, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Now he knew that David had written in the Psalms, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” So he spent hours on his face before his God, often in tears, praying that war and chaos and genocide would not come, and yet he had the strongest sense that they were coming anyway.
He couldn’t see how events could turn out any other way. The Twelfth Imam was going to launch simultaneous nuclear attacks on Tel Aviv, New York, and perhaps London and Paris as well. Or Washington was going to attack Iran first using all the intelligence he himself was providing. Or the Israelis were going to hit first because they felt President Jackson and his advisors were too cowardly or were dragging their feet too long.
The question, Najjar thought, was no longer if war was coming but when. Which prompted a second and more pressing question: Why? Then again, the more Najjar studied the Scriptures, particularly Bible prophecy, the more he saw that Jesus and the prophets and the apostles all said that wars and rumors of wars would be prevalent in the last days before His return. Nations would rise against nations. Kingdoms would rise against kingdoms. Revolutions and lawlessness and death and destruction would come like birth pangs, the holy Scriptures foretold. Followers of Christ weren’t supposed to cause or foment or desire such traumas, but they were not supposed to be surprised by the fiery trials that were coming. To the contrary, they were supposed to be ready and be prepared, for the Day of the Lord was coming at a time when the world would be caught off guard. Indeed, if Najjar was reading the Scriptures correctly, it seemed to him that in the last days the Lord was going to allow great trials and tribulations to occur to shake people out of the notion that anything but faith in Jesus Christ could save them.
Before their escape from Iran, Sheyda had told him she was convinced that God had chosen Najjar not only to know the truth of salvation and full redemption through Christ Jesus but to proclaim that truth to all of Iran. Their people had to know the Good News of God’s love and free gift of forgiveness, she had insisted. Every single one of the seventy million people in his beloved country needed to hear — in Farsi — that Jesus Christ was the Way, the Truth, and the Life and that no man or woman could come to the Father except through faith in Jesus Christ. Time was short, she had said, but the message had to go forth, and even though it went against every natural instinct within him, Najjar Malik had begun to wonder if Sheyda was right.
Was his Lord really calling him to preach the gospel without fear? And if so, how? He was a stranger in a strange land. He was a prisoner of the US government. How could he possibly get out? Where would he go? And how could he spread the Word before it was too late?
Word of the events in Beirut ricocheted across the globe.
Reuters moved the story first, without a byline, just nine minutes after the first explosion, noting simply that “the motorcade carrying the Twelfth Imam and his entourage was attacked by a series of car bombings in Beirut” and that the casualty count and condition of the Mahdi were “at present unknown.” Miroux’s intention wasn’t to deceive or even necessarily to heighten the suspense of an already-extraordinary global drama, though he would later be accused by some media critics of both. The truth was he simply didn’t know how to write what he had seen. The world needed to know about the attack first and foremost, he told himself, so he dictated a four-hundred-word story by satellite phone to his editor at Reuters headquarters at Canary Wharf in London.
Twelve minutes later, Reuters posted the first of what would become multiple updates. This time, the story was bylined—Jacques Miroux in Beirut—and this was the story that took the world by storm. Seventeen people were dead. Twenty-three were wounded. “But the Twelfth Imam emerged from the crumpled, blazing wreckage with barely a scratch on him, holding a boy covered in blood, but according to two police officials interviewed by Reuters, the boy was either ‘uninjured’ or ‘healed.’” The article quoted no fewer than six bystanders saying they were certain they had just witnessed “a miracle.” There was no mention, however, of the “angel” sighting in the Shatila refugee camp, not because his editors in London wouldn’t include it but because Miroux had not yet told them.
The Associated Press was the first to publish grisly still photographs from the scene, as well as exclusive photos of the Mahdi holding little Ahmed — photos taken on a bystander’s mobile phone — sixteen minutes after the first explosion. Within thirty minutes, Al Jazeera was the first network to broadcast live images from the site of the attack, plus exclusive videos of the actual explosions themselves and even of the Mahdi emerging from the wreckage of his SUV with the boy in hand. These, too, had been shot by several different witnesses and residents of the neighborhood near the stadium; Al Jazeera had purchased them for a rumored six-figure sum in US dollars.
An hour later, Agence France-Presse became the first international news service to report on the “angel” sighting in a story headlined, “Thousands Claim to Hear, See ‘Angelic Being’ Hovering over Mahdi in Beirut Refugee Camp.” The report quoted more than two dozen people, all unrelated and unknown to each other, who said they had been in the crowd in Shatila and had both personally seen the heavenly figure and heard him call their name and tell them to follow “the Promised One.” The wire story moved with photographs of the “divine apparition,” one taken by an AFP reporter, the other two taken on mobile phones by witnesses.