Invited to Speak at a Muslim Mosque | Seth de Fin

Transcript: 

Evangelist Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today I have a very special guest with me, Seth de Fin from South Africa. Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast. It’s

Evangelist Seth de Fin (00:14):
Such a pleasure, Evangelist Daniel.

Evangelist Daniel King (00:16):
And it is wonderful to be here with you. We are together in the nation of Mozambique in the city of Goran.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (00:27):
Gorangoza.

Evangelist Daniel King (00:29):
Gorangoza. Gorangoza. And we are here with Evangelist Christopher Alam, who has a great evangelistic ministry. He has been ministering across this entire southern part of Africa for the last 30 plus years and has a great team. And so last night at the crusade, many people were saved, many people were healed. We’ve actually seen some really great miracles here. Yeah, we really have. What some of the miracles over the last couple of days?

Evangelist Seth de Fin (00:59):
I think a lot of them were blind eyes seeing a lot of deaf ears, people hearing again, lots of pain, people with pain or full body pain. And they’ve been running around, you’ve gotten to run around and on the stage. That’s been, I think, a lot of the amazing miracles.

Evangelist Daniel King (01:17):
Now I first met you last March. I was invited to teach at the Christ for All Nations School of Ministry in Orlando.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (01:28):
Yes.

Evangelist Daniel King (01:29):
And you were one of the students there.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (01:31):
I was.

Evangelist Daniel King (01:31):
And you were actually helping to run one of the student podcasts. Yeah, that’s right. And so you actually interviewed me for your podcast and now I get to interview you on my podcast. So that’s cool. But tell me a little bit about how you ended up there learning from Daniel Kolinda and Christ for All Nations and some of the spiritual lessons that you learned while you were there.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (01:56):
Yeah. Well, how I got there was, our family’s been involved with CFAN. So I’m a pastor’s kid and with our church, we’ve been very much involved with CFAN. And so my oldest sister, she’s done the Evangelism Bootcamp in which you were also one of her lecturers.

Evangelist Daniel King (02:09):
Your sister’s name is?

Evangelist Seth de Fin (02:11):
Erin.

Evangelist Daniel King (02:12):
Erin. Yeah.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (02:14):
And so she was there. And so then afterwards I went through the fire camp and the SOE and then I wanted to do the bootcamp originally, but that year they had the School of Ministry. And so then my parents myself were looking at the School of Ministry and they saw that this first year for the students was completely free. So they thought it would be a great opportunity to go. And so I went along to the School of Ministry and it was an incredible experience, had an amazing

Evangelist Daniel King (02:38):
Lecture. What were some of the spiritual lessons you learned while you were there?

Evangelist Seth de Fin (02:41):
I think I liked a lot of the modules. I think especially some of them were like Faith: The Link to God’s Power, which is by a book of Reinhard Bonnke, which was incredible. I think a lot of them were great teaching about the core teachings of Christianity. So Daniel Kolinda teaching on what is the gospel of you coming in with the gospel and with the financial side of things as well. We learned a lot about our faith and finances, the Holy Spirit and empowering. So yeah, I think a lot of it was really just the core of Christianity and I especially liked the evangelical direction that CFAN goes into. So yeah. Now

Evangelist Daniel King (03:18):
You come from a really amazing spiritual legacy. You’re a direct desendant of Smith Wigglesworth, the great evangelist and man of God from England. And tell me a little bit about your family history and then how your whole family has been serving the Lord all the way down to you.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (03:40):
Yeah. So Smith Wigglesworth, a great healing evangelist, amazing ministry that he had there in England and also traveling then around the world, teaching different Bible schools, incredible. And then from him it passed down to his daughter, Allison. And then she had a daughter also named Allison and that’s where my grandma comes from. So Allison, she was a missionary in the Congo. She did a lot of work there and amazing there in the Congo. And from there, my grandma was born there in the Congo and they moved to South Africa.

Evangelist Daniel King (04:15):
What’s your grandma’s name?

Evangelist Seth de Fin (04:16):
Lillian. Lillian Defen. So then they came to the Africa and my great grandparents, they planted a church in South Africa, which is what would soon become ACT Church just a generation

Evangelist Daniel King (04:31):
Later. And now it’s pastored by your father, Pastor Peter de Fin, which I had the opportunity to meet him for the first time just this last week and attend the Sunday morning service. And it was just amazing to see what God is doing through ACTS Church. It really is. There were three services on Sunday morning and every service was packed full of people. And then now you’re planting other branches of the church and actually this Sunday, your father helped to dedicate a brand new location which your sister Erin is going to be helping to pastor along with her husband. What’s her husband’s name?

Evangelist Seth de Fin (05:09):
TK.

Evangelist Daniel King (05:10):
TK. TK and Aaron. And so it’s just neat to see what God is doing through the ACT Church. And so you’re a pastor’s kid. What is that like growing up part of a ministry like that?

Evangelist Seth de Fin (05:25):
A lot of involvement I think with the ministry just from the start. Our parents have, well we’ve really had the pleasure I think of growing up in ministry and going through the ranks in the different areas, the departments. My mom helped out along with the kids’ ministry. So she involved a lot of us in learning from there and then going to some other different ministries, learning how to teach and to preach. And then from there it goes into youth and being a leader over there or to different departments like my sisters, they’ve been in the band or in the sound, myself in the media. And so I think it’s been just a lot of involvement, which has also been a very big blessing growing up in the church environment.

Evangelist Daniel King (06:06):
And what do you feel God’s calling is upon your life?

Evangelist Seth de Fin (06:10):
For me personally, I know in this season it definitely is evangelism and traveling around. I really have a passion for souls and not just seeing people, but just for the soul behind that one person. That is really where my heart is at, is with evangelism at the moment.

Evangelist Daniel King (06:31):
That’s awesome. We need more good evangelists in the body of Christ. We do. And so you have this calling to be an evangelist. So evangelist Christopher Alam has kind of taken you under his wing and this summer you’ve been traveling with him here to Mozambique. And so he’s got a missions base in Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe. And in Zimbabwe, they keep a truck and a sound system. They have all the equipment to do a crusade. And then every year they will do eight to 10 crusades through their ministry. And over the years he’s done crusades in every single town across this part of South Africa. I mean from Mozambique to Malawi, to Zimbabwe, to Zambia and up into Tanzania. I mean, it’s absolutely amazing the impact of Christopher Alum’s ministry. And so he invited you to come here to Mozambique. So this year the focus is Mozambique, six different crusades and each crusade he’ll come and do like two back to back.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (07:43):
Yes, that’s

Evangelist Daniel King (07:43):
Right. And then they’ll take a little break and they’ll come back and do two more. Yes. And so you’ve been here for all of them so far, right?

Evangelist Seth de Fin (07:50):
So far all of them, yes. Yeah.

Evangelist Daniel King (07:52):
Okay. So tell me a little bit about kind of what you’ve seen, what you’ve experienced, what you’ve learned from hanging out with the great man of God Christopher alum.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (08:02):
It’s been very awesome. I think coming here to Mozambique. The first one we did was in Zambia and then afterwards we’ve been working this area in Mozambique and it’s an amazing because I’ve never really been part of crusades. Even going into CFAN and training, I’ve never really been part, especially of preaching on a crusade, which has been I think one of the biggest learning curves for me. But it’s been very exciting to see the whole process of how the teams come down. They do a Bible school with the churches and we come down, they’re setting up the crusades and we get to see the worship and to actually preach. I think that’s probably been some of the biggest, what’s called our teaching moments is actually being there and speaking on a crusade because it’s very different to some of the things that I know CFAN does.

(08:47):
So it’s I think shifting a bit of a culture to Pastor Christopher Alam, but it’s been absolutely amazing learning to facilitate the healings and the prayer has also been a really, really big one. And I think also just trusting God as well with it because sometimes you may feel tired or you might not feel all completely up to it, but then God still shows up. So I think that’s also been an incredible moment to see when doing crusades.

Evangelist Daniel King (09:13):
Yeah. So you preached the first night that we came here to this city and you did a great sermon on talking about sacrifice.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (09:24):
Yes.

Evangelist Daniel King (09:24):
Take us through the short version of what you preached.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (09:28):
Okay, perfect. So the basic concept is like from Genesis to Jesus. And so how first God created a perfect world, it’s this amazing environment which God created people in to live in harmony with a perfect relationship with God. But after which we know Adam and Eve, they sinned, they fell in the garden and from that day sin entered the earth. But God still wanted to be reconciled with man. And so we had to come up with a plan to be reconciled, to be forgiven. And so in the Old Testament, we know the way this was done was through animal sacrifice. So we see in the Levitical laws, you have to take an animal, like a lamb, put it on an altar to slay the animal. Its blood would flow out, you’d put the blood on the different sides of the altar just so they can be forgiven.

(10:13):
But then we see later in Hebrews, it says that it’s impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. And so we know that this wasn’t the perfected form of this reconciliation, but what God had in mind was that this would just be a foreshadowing of to a greater sacrifice that was to come and this would be Jesus. And so Jesus, this slam of God would come and he would be slain and his blood would be poured out for the forgiveness of our sins. And so now we can have this relationship because of a sacrifice.

Evangelist Daniel King (10:42):
And Jesus was the perfect sacrifice. He was the

Evangelist Seth de Fin (10:44):
Perfect sacrifice.

Evangelist Daniel King (10:45):
After him, we don’t need to sacrifice bulls and goats and sheep anymore.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (10:50):
Yeah. I think I really like that sermon as well, especially for Africa where there’s a lot of African traditionalism where they still have rituals of slaughtering chickens and goats and cows and all sorts of things for this empowering and for protection and stuff, but knowing that there’s no power in an animal’s blood. And so I think that’s a reason that I really like speaking this sermon is because it does speak a lot to the culture and what people partake of. Now

Evangelist Daniel King (11:19):
That’s amazing. That’s a great sermon. Now I got a question for you. How old are you?

Evangelist Seth de Fin (11:23):
I’m 19.

Evangelist Daniel King (11:24):
Yeah. So that’s what’s amazing is you’re 19 years old and I was talking to Brother Christopher Alam and I said, “It’s really beautiful to see how he’s kind of taking you along to these crusades and giving you an opportunity because I think by experiencing what he’s doing as a very experienced evangelist that you are cutting a decade off your learning curve of what it takes to be an evangelist. Yes,

Evangelist Seth de Fin (11:58):
That’s

Evangelist Daniel King (11:59):
True. And I think that’s what God is doing in this time and age is he is accelerating the harvest where in years past it would take a whole lifetime to reach a hundred people for Jesus. Now in a moment at a crusade, you have the privilege of leading a hundred people to Jesus or a thousand people to Jesus. And so the harvest is accelerating because Jesus is coming soon. Absolutely. And we need to go after the harvest, go after souls all over the world. And so because of that, I think God is ready to release young people out into the harvest. And sometimes people would say,” Oh, they’re not very experienced. “But I think the key is just getting out there and getting started and letting God use you. Absolutely. And so what would you say to encourage other young evangelists who feel like they want to be used by God?

Evangelist Seth de Fin (12:58):
I think that’s like what you just said, I think that’s a great thing to just do is start where you are. And that’s something that CFAN, when we were in the school of ministry, they taught us a lot is if you’re not going to do it here, you’re not going to do it out there. If you’re not going to do it with what you have, you’re not going to do it with what is going to be given to you. And so for myself, it’s like I want it to be used by God and I would love to be doing all these crusades, but what I first started doing was I would go outside of my house to my neighborhood. I’d literally ride my bicycle around to different areas to the car wash or to a garage or something. And I would just tell somebody about Jesus, which has opened so many doors, but also it’s a great training field as well.

(13:38):
If you just be faithful with where you are now or in your school or in a university or around your neighborhood, something as simple as that, then God trusts you with more. And

Evangelist Daniel King (13:52):
You really have a heart for apologetics as well. And you’ve been going to a big mosque that is right near where you live. Yes. Tell us that story. What’s been happening with the mosque?

Evangelist Seth de Fin (14:06):
That’s been quite fun. What do you want me to share? How we got into it or?

Evangelist Daniel King (14:11):
Yeah. Tell us how you got started and the door that got opened.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (14:15):
Okay. For a long time I’ve had a –

Evangelist Daniel King (14:19):
Well, first we got to say, this mosque is one of the biggest mosques in Africa.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (14:26):
Yeah. It’s the largest mosque in the whole Southern hemisphere.

Evangelist Daniel King (14:28):
Wow.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (14:29):
Yeah. So it’s

Evangelist Daniel King (14:30):
Huge. And it’s right near where you live, right? Yes.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (14:33):
Yeah.

Evangelist Daniel King (14:33):
Okay.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (14:34):
Right next door. And so for a long time I’ve had a heart with apologetics. I loved it. My brother, my older brother who’s done theology, he kind of introduced me to the field. And so I’ve loved it ever since. And then what happened was, just I’ll share how I first got in and what’s happening now, is when I was in the school of ministry, I met a few other apologists there that also have a heart for Muslims. And so we’d go on our own initiatives to universities where the Muslims have their own tents set up there. So we’d learn just to converse with them. So I learned a lot of that experience and it really put a much bigger fire in me to like, okay, I really want to go. So then when finally I came back home after the school of ministry, I saw the mosque and I was like, okay, I’ve got to just go.

(15:15):
And so I started going there and I would start to speak with some people. And first I had no idea what I was really doing or what I was looking for, but I would just try to speak to some people that are there. But then recently what’s been happening in the last couple of months is there was one day I went and it wasn’t my normal time, like in the afternoon somewhere there. It was a Monday evening. And so I went Monday evening and I saw that they had these almost like a cell group type of a version, like a Christian Muslim version of a cell group. And so they invited me to go into this cell group with them. So I sat in and I was like, okay, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to come every Monday, a Monday evening for the cell group.

(15:57):
So then I started going Monday evenings attending. I started connecting with more people around me and getting some friends. And then there was something that happened just a few weeks ago in which I got in trouble at the mosque. What happened was I had to pick up my dad from the airport and so I decided let me go a little bit earlier today because it was on a Monday. So I went down and I saw two teenagers around my age. So I though, okay, let me speak to them about Jesus quickly. So I went to them and we had a great conversation.

Evangelist Daniel King (16:24):
This is the good kind of trouble to get into.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (16:25):
Yeah, exactly. It’s a great kind of trouble. Exactly. Although it’s kind of scary because you’re in a very vulnerable position. But we went over there. I started speaking with them. I though nothing was wrong at the moment. And we had a great conversation. They conversed very, very nicely. They were very willing to participate as well. And then one of the main people at the mosque who knows me, and they’ve been very, very generous. I can’t really speak badly about the mosque. They’ve been very generous to me. But he came and he didn’t look particularly happy I was speaking with these teenagers. So afterwards I closed the conversation with the teenagers. I walked with him and he kind of just told me, “Listen, you can’t just come in here and speak to young people who might not be well established in their faith. You can speak to the scholars, the teachers and those people, but not to the younger people.”

(17:09):
So I was like, “Okay, that’s fine.” So then I though it was over, but then he said, “You know what? Whatever you want to say, you’re going to say it tonight.” He’s like, “I’ll give you 20 minutes to speak.” And so I kind of thought he wanted to just deal with me once and just thought, okay, the Christian is just going to crash at this point. And so I was really, really scared at this point that he’s putting me on the spot. And so I immediately sent a message to some of my friends and family saying, “Please just pray. Got a bit in trouble at the mosque, but just pray that I can tell him about the gospel effectively.” And then what happened was, because I’ve never gotten a chance to do that yet. And so then he called me up in the class with a couple of people there.

(17:48):
And so he gave me like 15, 20 minutes just to speak. And so we gave them the gospel.

Evangelist Daniel King (17:53):
How many people were in the class? I

Evangelist Seth de Fin (17:55):
Think some people were coming in and out, but I would say it was close to 20, 25, something like

Evangelist Daniel King (18:00):
That. Wow. And so they let you talk for 20 minutes?

Evangelist Seth de Fin (18:03):
Yeah. They just let me talk for 20 minutes. He said, “Brother, you can say whatever you want.”

Evangelist Daniel King (18:07):
What an opportunity.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (18:08):
I know.

Evangelist Daniel King (18:09):
And so what did you talk about?

Evangelist Seth de Fin (18:11):
So I first opened with a bit of my testimony with Islam, how I sort of came to the truth of, okay, Christianity really is true, which is also part of the reason I have a heart for Muslims is because some of the claims from Islam really shook my faith originally. And so I started a bit with my testimony about why I’m Christian now and how I sort of met the Lord and then gave them a bit of the gospel rundown of how we believe Jesus, who is the son of God. He came down the cross for our sins, rose again from the grave and he’s alive today. I gave them that in the beginning. Then in the middle part of it, I gave them a bit of an apologetic sort of a structure of what’s known as the Islamic dilemma, a very common argument against Islam.

(18:55):
And so I gave them a bit of a breakdown for that. And then at the end I gave them the gospel one more very clear time of Jesus, he’s the son of God and he died on the cross. His blood was shed for our forgiveness and he rose again from the grave. And if we just put our faith in that and we turn away from our sins because they don’t think Christians really need to repent. If after all he forgave our sins, we don’t need to repent. But I told them we do need to repent, as Paul says. And so we turn away from our sins and we can have this relationship with Jesus.

Evangelist Daniel King (19:27):
What an amazing opportunity.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (19:29):
Yeah.

Evangelist Daniel King (19:29):
And I pray that God continues to give you fruit

Evangelist Seth de Fin (19:34):
And

Evangelist Daniel King (19:35):
Boldness. I think that the thing I love about this story is you’re going, you’re engaging with them. A lot of people sometimes are afraid of Muslims or Islam, but I think if you go and build a relationship, begin to talk to them.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (19:55):
That’s true.

Evangelist Daniel King (19:55):
Begin to eat with them, and it gives you an opportunity to have a voice. Yes. And as evangelists, we are seed planters and maybe you don’t see the harvest right away in that type of situation. That’s true. But what a privilege to have the opportunity to plant a seed.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (20:15):
Absolutely.

Evangelist Daniel King (20:16):
And who knows when that seed will grow and produce a harvest in their lives.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (20:22):
Absolutely. That’s

Evangelist Daniel King (20:23):
True. All right. Well, Seth, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism podcast. Thank you so much

Evangelist Seth de Fin (20:29):
Having

Evangelist Daniel King (20:29):
Me. Great being here in Mozambique with you. Absolutely. And I’m excited about the calling of God in your life to be an evangelist. Praise the Lord.

Evangelist Seth de Fin (20:37):
Praise the Lord. Thank you so much.

Evangelist Daniel King (20:39):
Yes, sir.