Key Quotes: 

Good follow up is the result of good pre crusade training.

Don’t seek to be great. Seek to preach about a great Jesus.

 

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Evangelism Coach Daniel King

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Christopher Alam was born to a Muslim family. When he became a Christian, he was arrested and imprisoned. But now he is a Christian evangelist who loves talking about Jesus.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:16):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:53):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King and I am always excited to tell people about Jesus. My special guest today is evangelist Christopher Alam. He was a Muslim, but he converted to Christianity. And now he goes all over the world, telling people about Jesus, brother, Christopher, tell me, how did you get saved?

Christopher Alam (01:20):
I lived in Pakistan and I, I will say Muslim man, never seen a Bible nor have I ever met a Christian until I was 21 years of age. But I had a lot of problems in my life and I was suicidal. I wanted to kill myself. And then one day I met him in Richmond on the street to begin to tell me about Jesus for the first time in my life. And you know, it was interesting because many people talk about it, period of searching and seeking. It was never that way. For me, I just felt in an instant that this is what I have been waiting for all my life. And I decided to give my life to Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:01):
Now, your family was a very significant family. Your, your father was in the military.

Christopher Alam (02:10):
My father was in general and I was an army officer, myself. My father especially was highly respected. And yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:19):
And so what impact did that have on your life when you became a Christian?

Christopher Alam (02:24):
Well, you know, in Muslim society, what happens is if a Muslim becomes a Christian in, you know, in their belief, apostasy is punishable by decks. And you know, there are many different reasons for that. So if it wasn’t gonna become the Christian, normally his family would kill him before anyone else got to him because it’s like he has dishonored his family. And the only way the family can receive, it’s honored by killing. And that’s called an honor killing as many different kinds of honor, and this is one of them. And so they wanted to kill me when I give my life to Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:04):
Wow. And you ended up leaving the Middle East and going to Sweden and attending Bible school at in Sweden, you met your wife there and then you came to Tulsa and went to Raymond, can tell me some about how that happened in your life.

Christopher Alam (03:24):
What happened was when I gave my life to Jesus, I was you know, I was a reserve officer in the army. I was first put in a mental hospital for psychiatric evaluation because the assumption was why would anyone do anything that would cause him to lose his life? It killed, unless, you know, there was something wrong with him. So that’s why I was in a mental hospital. I came out of a mental hospital. I was under house arrest. And then I escaped from Austin restaurant. I was preaching on the streets and I was arrested for preaching on the streets. And then they realize what was then I was in prison for almost a year. And then I came out of prison and then they you know, they did their best to get me to renounce Christianity and come back to Islam.

Christopher Alam (04:13):
And when I refused, that’s when I was threatened with execution. So I had to escape and I went to Afghanistan, the Soviet union, Turkey, Belgium. Then I ended up in Sweden where I go to asylum. And then I met my church. I met, I came to Sweden, 77, got a bit of asylum in 78, my wife at the end of 70. And I know I met her in, in, in, in church, in 78, we got married in 79. And then I got baptized with the Holy spirit. And then I heard of Rayma. Some of other agents books really changed my life. So that’s when we came to Bible school in 1981,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:55):
What a tremendous journey. And now you are an evangelist and you’re going to two nations, many different nations around the world. A lot of work in, in Africa, particularly in Zimbabwe and some of the surrounding countries. How did you become an evangelist?

Christopher Alam (05:14):
Well, I always felt a calling on my life, right from the beginning to tell people about Jesus and I started on the streets. I worked a lot in the beginning with drug addict products. That’s where I started hippies and drug addicts and drunks. And then I began to minister, to university students in Sweden after I had gotten political asylum there. And then I got brother Hagan’s books. And then I began to see the gifts of the Holy spirit in my life. I began to pray for the sick begin to see many healings and miracles and my first trip overseas. And I felt like God was leading me overseas, but I didn’t know anybody have money. You know, I had nothing, so, but God opened the door. So for a hundred dollars, I could actually go to hold him and spend 10 days there and preaching and Catholic churches.

Christopher Alam (06:08):
And we’ve got many people saved, healed baptized in the Holy Spirit. And on the last night the father of, one of the leaders in the Catholic student movement was paralyzed from his waist down. He was a paraplegic and God raised him up in an instant and that opened the door for me. So I began to go to Homeland and preach what were the Roman Catholics. And and so, you know, God began to do it. You know, a lot of what the doors that were open to me was simply because of the miraculous I saw you know, children, born deformed brain damaged, healed, blind, deaf people. I mean, huge numbers create the miracles. And then after that got up in Africa, India. So I began to all more and more crusades. Now, during this time, the early years I was actually teaching full-time at a Bible college I was at a lecture at a Bible college, and then I kind of left that as I went more and more into the mission field. So, you know, more and more crusades. So I left the Bible college after four years and I went full time into the missions field. And so my crusade ministry, you can say began in 1983 in 37, 30, 38 years now.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:29):
And tell me about what God has accomplished in the last 38 years, where have you gone? Where have you seen great fruit?

Christopher Alam (07:39):
You know, we have seen, you know, I haven’t lost count, but more than 1500 churches have been starting as a direct result of our crusades and many many people have been we’re pastors today, evangelists and pastors in Africa and Asia, and even in Eastern Europe were saved. And microsavings, I, I run into pastors with strong churches from places like Poland and and, and you know, Malawi and Zimbabwe Zambia, and also in, in, in India and Burma would have been saved to our ministry. So because the thing was that I was doing evangelism, but the thing I discovered was there was a little lasting fruit. The crusades were great. So I began to pray that God would send me some people who would work with me in that. So we began to develop a followup program and that has been very successful.

Christopher Alam (08:39):
So before every crusade, now we do it three weeks mobile Bible school in which we train the local churches on how to disciple new believers. So we do that a lot in the digital to the crusade itself. A lot of work goes into what happens before and after the, so that has really been the key to our late successful. And so, you know, because, because of that, because a lot of people have to stay in the churches, I believe that has given us credibility in Southern Africa. So the word has gotten around that if we come and do a crusade in their town, they know that the churches are going to grow. So you know what, that it takes years to build up that kind of reputation. So, you know, we do crusades in Southern Africa, South central Africa, and we work with other denominations in places where there’s nothing, we plant our own churches. Otherwise we run churches. We give them to the other fellowships and groups to run those churches. We also have a church planting Bible school. So know I’ve done a lot of things, you know, top of my we’ll call, it started Bible school. Didn’t start another one in Asia, one year Bible school with an emphasis on church, planting crusades, pre crusade, teaching post crusade. Follow-Up all that. Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:00):
Talk to me about your process of doing post crusade follow up. We don’t want to just make converts. We want to make disciples. So I feel this is very important for what, what are you doing?

Christopher Alam (10:12):
Interesting? Well, the first thing I want to say is that the great commission isn’t just to preach the gospel. The great commission is to preach the gospel and to make disciples and to teach them all things that Jesus has taught. So it’s a, it’s a bigger process than just the preaching of the gospel and the alter. It’s a bigger thing. And I spoke to a problem in demand. I asked him what he did about, and he said nothing. That’s not what God has called me to do. The churches should do it. And I thought, you know, that that’s a good thought. But then I realized that most of the churches, like in places like Africa and Southern Asia, they don’t have the know how to make the second, neither do they have the motivation because they have worked for decades without succeeding. And so we realized, so we have to inspire them.

Christopher Alam (11:06):
We have to give them the know-how. So that’s when I thought, because good follow-up is a result of good training. So my thought was, how do we do that? Well, we do that by motivating them training the churches, in fact now when we do it in Africa except the church as a participating church, unless they cancel all their programs except their Sunday morning services and work together with us six days a week and let us train their people. And also, we also demand that we also require that a sizable percentage of the membership of the leaders participate in the we, you know, we call it the mobile Bible school. So when we do this, then as soon as the crusade ends, we, we handled the decision cards to the churches. And that would correspond to two criteria. We use, we divided map of the entire town grid.

Christopher Alam (12:05):
So each church would get a decision card from the immediate vicinity. We won’t give them cops on the other end of town. That’s the first thing. The other thing is that the number of cars to get to the number of workers provided to be trained. And then we teach them, we walk with them how to do the follow-up process. And we also teach the pastors how to get their first three Sundays after the crusade to welcoming the new believers, making them the center of attraction and getting them to share their stories and testimonies. And then of course, these people are visited at the church members visit to visit the new believers in their homes. It’s, it’s quite an alien, it’s this conflict.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:00):
You also see notable miracles when you preach. Tell me a story of one of the significant miracles that you’ve seen God do.

Christopher Alam (13:11):
Well okay. Now let me just say the fresh on the pops in my mind, this was in Eastern Europe years ago, and we were in an actually Roman Catholic. We had like 8,000 people inside 4,000 outside jammed. People were standing everywhere in the aisles and even in the vestry and in the back of the Jewish building, behind the alter table, there were about to be 400 people. And then while I was when I finished preaching, I began to pray. I suddenly heard people screaming and I look back and I looked over the altar table and I saw the top of the little blonde walking. And I had I remember I had 27 students on the Bible college in Sweden or with me, I was living in Sweden at that time. And they were screaming and weeping and pointing towards this child.

Christopher Alam (14:08):
I walked across across the alter table. And I saw the way that the child was walking. So I knew that she had been paralyzed. She had been laid. Now, the story of this child was she was born brain damaged. Our eyes would cross. She wouldn’t say her tongue was hanging up here drooling. She was in a fetal position. Her knees were drawn up like this. And, you know, she was totally brain-damaged. And what happened was when the power of God came on there, the mother put the child on the ground and people begin to hear the sound of bones cracking, and the fingers begin to straighten out the eyes were straight and this challenge on its own and begin to walk. And that’s why people were screaming. So, anyway, I didn’t know all this, but I, I took the child by the hand and I remember I walked to the front of the table and I immediately, my spirit knew that something immense had happened here.

Christopher Alam (15:15):
I didn’t know the details, but I just, you know, sometimes, you know, in your heart and I, and I suddenly, I felt this, this is how I felt. I felt like I, you know, there was I had, I had read somewhere, which says that no man can see God and live. And that, that moment was the Daniel. I believe that I was going to die because I have seen the glory of God. That’s how I felt. So I remember I left the child. I crawled up to the alter table and with a tablecloth hanging around this huge cement table and I was under it. And I, at that time, we had only two children, the youngest one hadn’t been born. And I pray for my wife. I begin to pray for the children that the Lord would take care of me when I be gone, because I seriously believe that I was going to die.

Christopher Alam (16:07):
Then I said, Lord, I’m ready. You can take me home. Then I heard a voice that said you hadn’t seen anything as yet get out and stand before the people. So I stuck my head out from under the alter table and what I see because the whole place was packed up. There was a space of about 10 feet wide and three feet. That was my space. I had stood. And I had preached suddenly. I saw parents bring about I think about six boys of different ages, totally paralyzed. And as they put them on the platform, each one of the six got up and began to walk. So I was, you know, then the power of swept over the crowd. And I took off my jacket and into the crowd because people were crushing me against the altar table. And I told the people, I said, we touched this jacket.

Christopher Alam (17:03):
You’ll be healed. Miracles are happening. Anyway, we ended the meeting one 30 at night. And then and then what happened was that I came back a year later. You know, I used to do one service in that church every year. And in July, I came back next July and the old men, the priest took me aside. He said, brother, I want to show you something. He opened the door and showed me a room. It was full of wheelchairs and crutches and things. He says for 90 days, for three months after you live every single day, I had a line of people outside the parsonage with crutches and artificial limbs and braces, neck braces, blesses hearing, just all kinds of things. He says. Then after 90 days, I stopped. And you know, when he finished, I saw those things. My head was spinning. I just know that there are a lot of things we don’t understand that there are dimensions. We haven’t touched, but when we preach Jesus that is when the Holy ghost comes down and God can do way beyond. We can ask a thing. And so that was probably on the most astounding and outstanding things I’ve ever seen in my life.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:26):
That’s amazing. I, I believe that God is raising up a new generation of young evangelists that will go out into the world and see a great harvest of souls. And I first met you when I was a much younger evangelist. I remember you were very encouraging to me and telling me about all the miracles and, and the testimonies of, of what you had done. What advice would you give to a young evangelist if you were coaching a young evangelist?

Christopher Alam (18:55):
The first thing I would say to them never seek to be great. Never, you know, a lot of people, our ministry center don’t see it, that seek to make Jesus exalted, make much, make much a big deal, make a big deal across on the blood and of Jesus Christ. If you do that that’s the first thing. Secondly, make a covenant with God. And I had to do that to do that 35, 36 years ago, the Lord said to me, he says, he says, I will use you. But if you make a covenant with me not to talk about the things that I have done for your life and ministry for financial brain, again, all for self promotion, this is, if you can make that covenant with me, I will take care of you. You will never let, and I’m going to use you.

Christopher Alam (19:55):
And that was, you know, a thing that really releases you because we, we live in a world and everybody wants to be known, famous to have money, to have this and all that. It’s a great thing to live a life when we are totally deliberate and free from that this desire to have enough. Another thing is a numbers game. Don’t chase numbers. I mean, honestly, since 1989, I have never put in my newsletter. So many people got saved or so many people in the crowd. I just put a photo up there and let people make their own game on. Yes, I know because I was told years ago by an older man about very wise, he says, Christopher don’t play the numbers game. And I looked at him. He says, you know what? He says, I tell you why people play the number of games.

Christopher Alam (20:43):
They think that if they have great numbers, that will bring great support. He said, you don’t want money from people by numbers. You need the support of those who join their hearts to you because let’s see the hand of God on your life. He says, that’s the first thing. Secondly, whenever you give a number, there always be somebody else who will say he had more people than you and others who would say you want to exaggerate says, don’t even go there. And I’ve seen whether it works. I mean, since 1989, never read privately. I can tell you, you asked me how many people do think I can give you a guess, but I guess as a guest, you know but, but the thing is that, you know, I tell people, I said, it’s good just to be free from these things free from the numbers game and free from the pressure of having to prove anything, because the power is not in us.

Christopher Alam (21:37):
It is impossible. So we have to wrap our lives around the cross and be in Christ. And that is the key to our having fruit and success and one man, a man of God who was a pastor, he said years ago, he said, brother, there’s a great difference between results and fruits. He says that fruits contain results, but just results are not fruit. And I thought how to that is, you know, the older you get, I’m 66. Now I’ll be 67. So you may begin to think of eternity and you think of life in terms of pleasing God, rather than the bigness of my ministry. And that’s why I’m sharing these things. It sometimes takes people to get it. You know, it took me years to get it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:29):
Thank you for sharing that tremendous advice as we speak, you are about to go to Tanzania for another crusade. Tell me what you’re going to be doing there.

Christopher Alam (22:42):
I’m working with a brother called doctor econ. The man is a legend and been in Tanzania. I think 46 will be seven years. I’ll be doing two crusades with them, with him. I couldn’t bring my own equipment and my team because of the lockdown, but we’ll be working with buddy. So I’m glad to be able to do these two crusades because last year I couldn’t do anything in Africa. Nothing.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:07):
If one of our listeners would be interested in, in supporting your ministry, what is your website? How can they find you to find more information?

Christopher Alam (23:18):
W w w dot Pentacostal fire.com

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:38):
Wonderful. Well, brother, since you named your website, Pentecostal fire, you must believe in Pentecostal fire. W would you pray a prayer for the people who are listening and pray for the fire of God to come upon them? Amen.

Christopher Alam (23:55):
Let’s pray together. Father in the mighty name of Jesus. We come before you, we come before your throne. I thank you, Lord Jesus for the price that you paid for us, that you were you were whipped and bruised and beaten and crucified bearing upon your own self, our sins and our diseases. And by your stripes, we have been ill. I thank you, Jesus, that you have baptized us with the Holy ghost and with fire. And you have seated together who seated us together with Christ in the heavenly places on your own right-hand side. I thank you father for your calling upon our lives for the anointing of your Holy spirit, upon our lives. And I pray father that each one of us may, may walk with you and we use by you for your glory. I thank you, father, how precious it is to be called by God to do your work.

Christopher Alam (24:47):
We thank you, father in the name of Jesus, use each one, father who is listening to the sound of my voice, touch them. Father caused them to increase in wisdom and power in the knowledge of God, and then be anointed of the Holy spirit. May they all bear much fruit father confirm your word in their mouth with science forming in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen. Daniel. I want to share one little thought that came to me when I was praying, you know, we are the five-fold ministry gifts and I used to teach on the five-fold ministry gifts and generally the apostles prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. And if you look at what the apostle does, he really does a whole bunch of things and what the prophet does and what the pastor does and what a teacher does. But you know, the evangelist in interesting, the evangelist has only one message.

Christopher Alam (25:41):
His message is Christ. That’s the only prejudice he preaches Christ crucified, right? That’s his only message. He just, this one message. He’s not called to do anything else, but preach this one message Christ crucified. Now, isn’t it amazing that this one message of Jesus Christ crucified must be so important in the eyes of God, that God would designate one of the five ministry gifts to preach only that and nothing else. Just think of how precious you know, that’s why I do with the fresh policies, the glorious gospel of Christ, which was, and custard to me. So the message we have, it’s, it’s a message of God’s glory. It is it just, you know, when people talk, well, the Gloria, they talk about something out there, but the glory of God, isn’t something floating around the glory of God is in the message of the cross that does the Laureus gospel.

Christopher Alam (26:47):
And this message, the, the salvation of the entire human race depends upon the preaching of this message. This one message, nothing else, all the other things that are important, they have their own place, but this messenger price is, is a message. The, that God has put the testimony, the terminal, the destiny, the salvation of the entire human race in this message. That’s the first thing. Secondly, God has promised to confirm this message with science falling. So miracles are an integral part of the gospel. So I have pastors asking me why don’t we see miracles in America? Like you didn’t advertise it. Well, the reason is there’s many reasons, but the main reasons, because you guys go preach the gospel, you don’t preach the cross. You know, and then the fact which I began with that this message is so important to God that God has designated one of the five ministry gift just to breach this one message. So this is something we must think what a privilege, what an honor it is to be an evangelist and to preach this one message. And it’ll be an entire power of the Holy spirit, the forces of heaven, get behind this message. And when we preach it, it convicts the hearts of sinners. They just feel, they said, what must I do to be saved? And then miracles began to happen. So what a glorious gospel God has entrusted.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:22):
Amen. I am thankful that I am an evangelist. It is a good job to have, and I only have one message, but I just keep preaching it over and over again. So thank you brother, Christopher, for being on the evangelism podcast. God bless

Christopher Alam (28:39):
You. Keep in touch.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:41):
Thank you. Thank you so much for listening today. This was a powerful interview with brother Christopher Alam. Would you do me a favor? Go find the evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and give us a review and also subscribe your review. We’ll make it so other people who are excited about evangelism can find this podcast. Thank you so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (29:10):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit King ministries.com. Again, that’s King ministries.com.