EXTERNAL RESOURCES
Kutsal Kitap (Turkish Bible): www.incil.info
Free Online English to Turkish Translator:
translation.babylon.com (English to Turkish)
Free Online English to Turkish Translator:
Google Translate (Turkish to English)
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Read Christian, Puritan, Reformed and Protestant exhortational works, Catholic and Protestant polemical & apologetical works, histories, martyrologies, and works on eschatology online: Hail & Fire Library
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"The Testimony of Yuce Kabakci,
Another Prodigal Son"
by Yuce Kabakci
(Turkish Christian, a Former Muslim Converted to Jesus Christ)
"I have other sheep that don't belong to this fold. I must lead these also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock and one shepherd." (John 10:16)
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"This is His story. A story that testifies to his sovereign will. There were no Christians, no churches, no Christian bookstores around. He decreed that I would be saved and he came to save me"
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This is my story. A story, that is about only one thing. It is not a story about me even though I started it as my story. It is all about the grace of Jesus Christ and how he raised me up from the dead. These verses from Ezekiel apply to my testimony very well.
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For more information or to find out how you can assist Yuce in his seminary training and his missionary work:
Global Church Ministries
"Let me share with you what He has laid on my heart in terms of ministry ... I am a Turk and Turkey is known to be the most unreached country in the entire world ... The translation of the current Turkish Bible is very poor and I believe it is imperative that we have a correct (both literal and dynamic) translation of the Bible. To that end, I plan on taking some elective courses in advanced Greek. ... The biggest of all my dreams is to establish a Turkish school of theology with my dear brother Fikret Bocek ... In the long run, we want that theological institution to be the school that sends out missionaries, pastors, and Bible teachers through entire Turkey and even abroad." Yuce Kabakci, "Evangelical Vision of Yuce Kabakci"
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"No eye looked with pity on you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you. Rather you were thrown out into the open field, for you were abhorred on the day you were born. "When I passed by you and saw you squirming in your blood, I said to you while you were in your blood, 'Live!' Yes, I said to you while you were in your blood, 'Live!' (Ezekiel 16:5-6).
It was as if the Lord Jesus Christ said the same things to me that we read in John 11:43: “When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth."
He called me and I came forth, this is the story of how He accomplished the work of salvation in me so that: …they may see and recognize, And consider and gain insight as well, That the hand of the LORD has done this, And the Holy One of Israel has created it. (Isaiah 41:20) because: "I, even I, am the LORD, And there is no savior besides Me. It is I who have declared and saved and proclaimed, And there was no strange god among you; So you are My witnesses," declares the LORD, "And I am God.
I was born in Izmir, a city known as Smyrna in the book of Revelation. I was born into a traditional Muslim family in Turkey. Though they identify themselves as Muslims, they have always been far from what a Muslim ought to be. So, I was deprived of any kind of formal religious education because they somewhat feared that I would be a religious fanatic, which they don’t approve at all. Most of my religious education came from my grandmother’s pious way of looking at life and her prayers. She would always make me pray before going to bed. I was praying some Arabic prayers but did not know what they meant. But somehow those prayers would make me feel safe and content as a little child, knowing that God is watching over me as I sleep. As I was growing up, I became more intimate with Islam and the way Muslims live their faith. Every year, we would offer a lamb to Allah as a part of our tradition but I never knew what that sacrifice meant both to him and to us. But as a little kid, I would usually cry for that lamb, who was slain for no reason.
When I started high school, I’ve grown to like reading. Hanging out with my friends and doing those futile and somewhat immoral things didn’t seem very appealing to me. Somehow, I found this book by Baruch Spinoza called “Ethics”. I very much enjoyed that book and then went on to read “ A Critique of Pure Reason” by Immanuel Kant and “Discourse on the Method” by Renee Descartes. I was amazed with this new way of looking at life. As a result of that, I began to look at my friends and they way they lived their lives with an utter contempt. Being religious seemed to be more impossible every day. My mother didn’t want me to touch the Quran because it was a holy book, not to be touched carelessly. It seemed very odd to me that God would give us his revelation to know him but yet at the same time withold it from us because of some religious rituals. So I concluded that even if he is knowable, he is not worth knowing. Although I never became a full-edged Atheist, I would define myself as a deist or even an agnostic. To me, Allah was the “wholly other” that no men can be successful at knowing. With these thoughts in my mind, I went off to college in a small city in Turkey. There, for the first time I was away from the care of my parents and I had to learn how to live on my own. I was consistently trying to apply that worldview which I had learned from Hegel, Spinoza, Kant and Descartes. But to no avail… The more I tried to live according to their principles, the more life seemed to be meaningless. After reading their works one more time, I began to see the inconsistencies in their worldviews. So as a last resort, I turned back to religion, particularly Islam. It filled that empty space in my heart. I would never miss a prayer time. I would try to do everything that I saw in Quran. But there was still a problem. How do I get rid of my sins? I was praying, fasting and doing all that I could to get rid of them and not commit them in the same way again. But they never stopped following me, and torturing my conscience. After all, even if I did everything I could, there was no assurance that I would go to heaven. I didn’t know how much good works I had as opposed to my sins. It was very possible that I was deceiving myself with a false sense of assurance and at the last day Allah could throw me into hell for the reasons only known to him. As I was reading the Quran, I would often times come across with names like, David, Abraham, Jesus and Moses. Quran speaks of them very highly and refers to them as sinless prophets. I thought maybe I should read the Bible as well. But I didn’t know how to go about it. I looked for every bookstore to buy one but I couldn’t find a Bible. Then I gave up on that and decided to stick with Quran.
One night, I had a very strange dream, which I would remember the next day as if it really happened. In my dream I saw a grave and slowly someone was pushing me towards that grave and I saw a man wrapped up in white linens, lying in the grave. And suddenly he woke up and walked away from me. Then I saw three women, rushing to the grave. As soon as they looked into it, they began shouting, “He is not here, he is not here, he is not here, the Lord is not here”. I woke up, strangely remembering every single detail of the dream but it made no sense whatsoever.
Three months after this, as I was reading my newspaper I saw a Bible add. I called them immediately and asked for a Bible. They sent me one and I did all my cleansing rituals even before touching it. I opened the Gospel of Matthew and started reading it. It seemed more like a novel than what I would expect from a Word of God. I kept reading until the chapter 27. For the first time, I was reading about Jesus’ crucifixion. As a Muslim, I had been taught that he was taken up to heaven before he was crucified but Judas Iscariot was crucified instead of Jesus. After I turned several pages, I saw something that caused the Bible to slip through my hands. He was resurrected. He was in linen clothes and he came back to life. Angel’s words, “He is not here” echoed in my mind. I remembered my dream immediately and being so scared, I fell on my knees and started praying ; “Please Allah do not test me like this, do not make me a Christian. I want to be a faithful Muslim, not a Christan.” After this experience, I did not dare to touch the Bible again. After a couple of weeks, my sister, who then lived in IL, called me and asked me to finish my studies in Turkey as soon as possible so that I could start my MBA degree at the University of Chicago. I was very excited to hear that and now having the Bible, I thought it would be a good opportunity to convert those “deluded and deceived” American Christians into Islam. But I had no idea that I was on my way to Damascus and soon to see the glory of Christ irresistably displayed.
In order to be able to engage with Christians in any kind of religious argument, I had to know the Bible very well. So for that end, I picked it up again and started reading it from the first page to the last. But what I saw in the Bible was not something that I expected. Christ was continually emphasizing his purpose of coming to the world as the lamb of God who would die for the sake of his people. God was being pictured as a loving Father and the practices of Pharisees resembled so much to my understanding of religion. This book certainly does not have the same message as my book, Quran, I said. So I went to the Islamic theological department of my university and asked the professors to account for the vast differences between the two revelations. For the firs time, I heard that the Bible had been corrupted by the first or second century Christians to make it fit to their beliefs, and that no one has the Bible that was given to Jesus back then. Very well, I said, but “what is the historical evidence on which you base this theory” I asked. They were, somewhat indignantly, making up some possible theories as to what happened. I did not hear a single evidence or any objective reasoning from them. I was utterly dissappointed because they were my last hopes in answering those questions. The verses of the Bible, the parables of Jesus were sounding in my ears wherever I went and I was neither able to study for my exams nor listen to any of the lectures at the university. So I decided not to go to classes any more until I solved this issue. I spent my whole time in different libraries, trying to find some historical documents to validate the historical accuracy of the Bible. Reading Josephus, Tacitus, and other Roman and Jewish historians made it almost impossible for me to dismiss the veracity of the Bible. History was backing up the Bible. But my main conviction did not come from them. I reasoned, that if God gave the Bible as his revelation in the first place, why on earth he would allow finite men to corrupt it completely? If they did corrupt it, how could he hold those men accountable who believed in Jesus as their God and Savior for 600 years until Islam came along? If he didn’t hold them accountable for their blasphemy, then how can he be a just God? If the Word of God is to be tested or verified by me then it fails to meet the standards of being the very Word of God. So the burden of proof does not lie with the Bible but with the Quran, which claims to be a revelation from God but at the same time denies all the basic tenets of both the Old and New Testament. From an Islamic point of view, I was not able to account for not being a Christian. Contemplating on all of these led me one step closer to Christ, but what about accepting him as my God and worshipping him? It still sounded very much blasphemous until I read this passage in John’s gospel: “Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am." Also, the epistle to Romans was the part of the New Testament that impacted my decision the most. Chapter 1, 3 and 5 gave all necessary answers that I was not able to find through continental rationalists. Everyday, I found myself trying to defend the Pharisees but Jesus was rebuking me for my faulty understanding of God and he was showing me what a great hypocrite I was. He was saying to me: "You try to justify yourselves in front of people, but God knows your hearts, because what is highly valued by people is detestable to God. (Luke 16:15). After that point, Christ seemed so desirable, so lovable and worthy of praise. Everyday I would go to the Bible to learn more about him and hear his voice. When he said, that “no one is able to come to me unless my Father draws him to me” then everything started making sense and I felt that drawing hand on my neck. I was kicking against the bricks but God was at work subduing my rebellious will to show what it is to believe in Christ. I spent those days in tears and prayers. At last, I lifted up both Quran and the Bible and asked God to show me for the last time, which one is his true Word.
Also read the "Evangelical Vision of Yuce Kabakci."
"Turkey is known to be the most unreached country in the entire world ... The translation of the current Turkish Bible is very poor and I believe it is imperative that we have a correct (both literal and dynamic) translation of the Bible. To that end, I plan on taking some elective courses in advanced Greek. ... The biggest of all my dreams is to establish a Turkish school of theology ..."
I was so afraid to make a mistake by choosing something that did not come from him. I looked at Islam and saw my conscience wounded and bleeding, and then I looked at the cross of Christ and saw my sins piercing him, seperating him from His Father. When I read the last words of Jesus on the cross, “It is finished”, then I understood that I would be eternally damned if I didn’t trust in that sacrifice eternally. The love of Christ on that cross, made me to cry out and say: You did this for me? You died for a worm like me? Then how can I not love you? How can I not dedicate my whole life for you? How can I not do whatever you command me to do? Apart from these words, I don’t remember myself saying a specific prayer and I don’t know when exactly He regenerated me and then saved me but I know one thing for sure, not only for sure, but even the whole world were nothing but a delusion, that if I were not who I thought I was, I know this very fact that “my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will take His stand on the earth. "Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God; Whom I myself shall behold, And whom my eyes will see and not another. My heart faints within me! (Job 19:25-27).
This is His story. A story that testifies to his sovereign will. There were no Christians, no churches, no Christian bookstores around. He decreed that I would be saved and he came to save me in my little room. Those who have heard or read my testimony usually tell me that I have a wonderful story. I know they mean it for good but I want to tell them that it is NOT my story it is HIS story. I was determined to convert Christians who were two continents away from me but in my little room He converted me and changed the direction of my entire life. So, I beg you to join with me to say these verses with praise and thanksgiving: "I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION." Therefore, God's choice does not depend on a person's will or effort, but on God himself, who shows mercy. (Romans 9:15-16)
"And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God." Luke 9:59-60 KJV
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