A Testimony of Salvation

The Orphan     

My name is Raymond Saba.  I was born in Lebanon.  My father came from a prominent Christian family.  He was a married man with children.  As a military officer in the Lebanese-French army he was stationed in Syria.  When he returned to Lebanon he brought a young, Syrian, Muslim servant girl with him.  That girl was my mother.  Life was very difficult for us.  My father moved my mother and her children, eventually five of us, into Christian neighborhoods.  He was gone for months at a time, and we were badly abused by our neighbors:  we were not even allowed to get water from the town well.  I remember one day my mother stumbling home, blue and bleeding.  She had been brutally beaten by the men of the town.  She suffered terribly.  I will never forget my mother’s prayers.  Every morning and evening she went out to the balcony and cried out for a god who could help her.  She would pray:  “God, I accept my condition, but I beg you, save my children.  She would address her prayers to Allah, Mohammed, Jesus, Mary – to anyone who might be able to help.  “Who can hear me?  Who will help me?” she cried.  It seemed to me that none of them ever answered.     My father was killed when I was very young.  He had many faults, but he always acknowledged us as his children and allowed us to use his name.  After his death, his family retaliated against my mother and took us to court.  They stripped us of the legal right to use the family name and sent us to various orphanage schools to receive an education.  All of a sudden I had no father and no name; and without a name, I had no place and no future in my own society and culture.                                                       

The Extremist     

I was sent to school in Tripoli, Lebanon, near the Palestinian refugee camps.  I identified closely with the Palestinian people:  they had become orphans like me.  The living conditions in the camps were inhuman; no electricity, no running water, open sewers in the streets.  In the face of such great suffering and injustice, I became a hardened radical at a very early age.  I remember crying out to God with raised clenched fists:  “God, if you exist, come down here and I will show you the ugliness and injustice of your creation."  He did not answer me then.     I remember the many nights I sat at the feet of famous Palestinian leaders, listening to them extol the glories of the Palestinian cause.  Night after night there were lavish recruiting banquets in the camps.  The speeches would go on for hours, and at the end, the leaders would always ask who was ready to stand up and be counted.  Who was ready to die for the cause?  Two of my friends answered the call.  They were among the first to lose their lives as suicide bombers.  We all knew they were heroes.  Something happened to me every time I heard one of those ‘altar calls’.  I would feel a hand on my shoulder that wouldn’t allow me to move.  Time after time I would look over my shoulder to see whose hand it was, but I could never see the hand that so forcefully restrained me.  I remember being angry with myself.  I was not a coward.  I was ready to be counted.  I desperately wanted to be a hero.  But someone or something beyond me wouldn’t allow it.

The Businessman    

I came to the United States when I was barely 18 years old.  I loved this culture from the minute I arrived.  I could easily avoid Arabs with their questions about my name and background.  Americans were wonderful.  They liked me.  They rewarded my hard work.  I completed my college education, left my long-time employer, and started my own company.  I became a citizen and changed my name.  Finally I was successful.  I was comfortable.  I was in control.  I was my own God!  I made my own rules!  I was definitely not looking for anyone or anything to rock the boat. God had other plans for my life.  He gave us dear friends, Harvey and Sue Sadow.  We had dinners together, solved the world’s problems together, and threw parties together.  One day, Harvey told me that he believed in Jesus.  I couldn’t believe he was serious and I began mocking him and mocking Jesus.  For years Harvey was patient with me, until one day he said to me:  “Raymond, the scriptures say, “If they do not receive your testimony, shake the dust off your feet and walk away.  We will not discuss this subject again.”    I was deeply offended.  This had become one of my favorite topics of conversation.  More than that, I was genuinely apprehensive.  I knew a door had been closed in my face.  I had never wanted the door to be opened; but now that it was closed, I was aware that I had lost something of great value.  I was afraid that the door might never be opened again. 

Conversion   

 Some time after these conversations, my wife gave me a book by Chuck Colson, Born Again.  I was reading the book to mock Colson.  I did not like Nixon or Kissinger, and he was part of that clan.  I read every chapter two or three times, trying to find his hidden agenda.  It was 3:00 A.M. when I finished the book, and far from finding a hidden agenda, I was convinced that Chuck Colson knew God on a first-hand, first name, face-to-face basis.  This God he had written about was his friend.  He was a victorious God, a God who had lifted him up when he was down.  I was jealous.  I was very, very jealous.   At that moment I spoke these words:  “God, if you really exist like this book says you do, I want to know you.”  I had barely finished speaking when I found myself on the floor, my face in the carpet, crying my heart out – feeling so sinful and desperate, knowing that I needed this God in my life.  After about 15 minutes, I realized I had lost control of myself.  I now knew that God was real and that He was Holy.  And I knew that He was going to require drastic changes in my life.  Some things I was willing and able to change.  Some things I was not willing or able to change.  So, being a businessman, I made a deal.  I ‘negotiated’ three conditions with God:  no Jews, no Jesus, and no returning to the Middle East.  The Jews were my first condition.  I had hated Jews all my life.  I held them responsible for the plight of the Palestinians.  As far as I was concerned they had stolen Arab land; they were imperialists and colonialists.  I could not deal with the Jews.  I wanted to be sure God understood that.  Jesus was my next problem.  I wanted to talk to God.  I didn’t want to talk to Jesus.  I didn’t understand how He fit in.  Besides, Jesus was a Jew.  I was an Arab.  How could I believe in Him?  I could believe in God, but I could not believe in Jesus.  I wanted God to understand that too.  My final condition was that God would never send me back to the Middle East.  I had left the Middle East once and for all.  I had escaped the Arab world where my family had been so humiliated.  I was not returning.  Ever!  I thought God and I had a good deal.  I was satisfied.  I went to bed that night and slept better than I had ever slept in my life.  Within days I began having visions.  I started smelling things.  I could smell the salt air of the Mediterranean and hear its waves.  I could smell the orange groves where I grew up.  I began seeing pictures of critical times in my life, times when I should have died.  The Lord was taking me back.  He was showing me:  “This time I was with you.  That time I was with you.”  I was overwhelmed by His faithfulness.  My heart ached.  He had been right beside me all those lonely years and I had never known Him. 

No Jews     

God dealt with my conditions one by one.  One evening I was watching videos of a trip some friends had taken to Israel.  They had met and interviewed both Palestinian and Israeli leaders on the trip.  In one of the interviews with an Israeli government official, the official referred to Palestinians and Arabs in such a derogatory way that everyone in the room gasped.  I was the only Arab in the group, and instead of being angry, I started crying and I couldn’t stop.  I realized that this man was enslaved by hatred, the same way I had been enslaved for 40 years by hatred.  In an instant, God washed away my hatred of the Jewish people and all of the political beliefs that hatred had spawned.  All of a sudden I had love for my enemies. God had not agreed to my first condition.  My hatred of the Jewish people was not acceptable to Him.  He was cleansing and changing my heart.  He took my hard, cruel heart, and in its place, He gave me His heart of mercy and compassion. 

No Jesus    

I wanted to know everything about God.  I began voraciously reading the Bible.  Reading the Gospel of John, I was transported back in time to when Jesus walked the earth.  The scriptures were clear, three-dimensional, in color.  I was no longer reading the words:  I was living them.  Every word Jesus spoke He was speaking directly to me.  It seemed to me that I was literally, physically, with Jesus as he walked the dusty roads.  I was with Him on the Sea of Galilee.  I was with Him as He healed the sick and raised the dead. I was with Him as He walked to the cross – and at that moment, I realized I loved him.  He was perfectly good.  He had given everything, holding nothing back.  Of all the men ever born, not one deserved to live more than Jesus; yet He willingly went to His death.  He could have saved Himself; but He chose not to.  He willingly laid down His life so that I could live.  The enormity of that choice truly stunned me!  What a phenomenal distinction!  I had grown up in radical causes.  I had lost friends.  Never had I encountered a leader who was willing to give up his life for the people.  The lives of the leaders had to be preserved at all costs.  The cause could not survive without them:  they recruited others to die.  But Jesus wasn’t like any of the leaders I had ever known.  With only a ragtag band of followers, and no possible human way to sustain His cause, He willingly went to His death.  Once again, God had not agreed to my condition.  He wanted me to know His Son who died on the cross for me.  Time after time He had preserved my life, bringing me safely to this point.  Suddenly, I knew whose hand had kept me from laying down my life all those years ago.  At that moment I gave my heart and my life to Jesus, and I have followed Him with joy ever since.

No Arabs    

The Lord resolved my final condition in a way I could never have expected.  In 1996 my wife and I went to Israel.  It was an intensely emotional time for me.  I had always wanted to be one of the first to ‘liberate’ the land.  But God had other plans.  I did not go with a gun; I went with the love of Jesus as my only weapon.  While we were in Israel the Lord gave me a vision.  We were in our hotel room on the Sea of Galilee when the Spirit of God spoke to me and said:  “I am not finished with you.  I am sending you back to the Middle East.  I am sending you to Syria to tell the Syrian people how much I love them.”  In 1997 I took my first trip to Syria as the Lord instructed me, and I have been there many times since.  I have walked and prayed in the land, and I have told the Syrian people how much God loves them.  I have told them about Jesus, God’s Son, who died on the cross for them.  Just as the Lord had completely changed my heart toward the Jews, he completely changed my heart toward the Arabs.  He took away all of my hatred and bitterness for the violence that had been committed against my family, and for the humiliation I had suffered because of my name.  He filled my heart with love for the people of Syria and for all the Arab peoples.  God had not agreed to my final condition.  The bitterness and hatred in my heart toward my own people was not acceptable to Him.  Once again, He took my hard cruel heart, and replaced it with His heart of mercy and compassion.                                                          

Conclusion    

It is really a miracle that I am here in America.  I should have died in Lebanon.  I was so full of anger, so full of hatred.  I had no future.  I had no hope.  I had no love for human beings.  God brought me 7,000 miles and taught me a new language so that I could meet His Son, Jesus.  Through Jesus I have a first-hand, first name, face-to-face relationship with the Almighty, Eternal God.  He is my father.  He has made me His son and He has given me His name.  No family name in all the earth compares with the Name of Jesus.  He has changed my life and my priorities forever.  I used to work 18 hours a day.  I was driven to be successful.    My wife used to ask me, “When will you have enough?”  I would tell her, “I’ll know when I get there.”    She would always reply, “You’ll never get there.  You’re running away from your past – and you can never get far enough away from your past.”  All that is over now.  Because of Jesus, I’m not running anymore.  The desperation I lived with for so many years is completely gone.  The hatreds that were a normal, everyday part of my life are gone.  I am at peace.  And I live now so that others can know the peace I have in Jesus Christ, my Savior, my friend, my Lord, and my God.

“For 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.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” John 3:16-17

Raymond S. - Washington, DC