Archive: Bishop Ayo Ladigbolu

By The Right Rev. Ayo Ladigbolu

This Muslim Nigerian prince traded his kingdom for Christ

I happen to belong to the family of the Alafi of Ayoc. (He was known as the king of kings and ruler of rulers in Nigeria.) The royal family embraced the religion of Islam when it first spread to the southern parts of our country, so I was not only born into a ruling family but into a Muslim one.

I was the first male child on my father’s side of the family, so I was given the best available education. I became somewhat well-versed in the Koran and in the religion of Islam, and I quickly rose to become an assistant to one of the prominent Muslim evangelists in the land.

God Is a Ferocious Judge

I went everywhere with him, and that not only enhanced the people’s respect for me as a prince, but it endeared me to many of them as someone who was fighting the cause of the religion they held very, very dear.

My master and I did a lot of open-air preaching; the Christian missionaries also preached, and they gained some converts. Some of the Christian leaders would come to debate with us, and I was always assigned to read passages that attacked Christianity. Whenever the Christians proved difficult it was no problem for us to gather enough of a crowd to stone or shout them away.

Because of my involvement in these happenings, many people looked forward to the day the old ruler would pass away. “There’s a bright future for you,” they said. “The way things are going we know you will be our ruler in the course of time.” But that was not to be.

As a Muslim I knew God as benevolent, but I also knew Him as a ferocious judge who kept track of every little thing I did and would one day bring me to judgment. There was always the quiet fear inside me, “If this God is the ferocious judge I understand Him to be, and if my eternal fate will be determined when God puts my bad works on one scale and my good works on another, and whichever one weighs the heavier, which I know will be the bad, then He will have no option but to throw me into hell fire.” I just could not see any way to become fit to serve this God.

But I went along doing all that I was taught I fasted during the Ramadan, gave the little alms I could and did all the good works I knew to do. But everything I did was inadequate to appease this God; I lived in constant, minute-to-minute fear of death.

Then two Jehovah’s Witnesses approached me; they were the first Christian people ever to come to me. They knew that I could get them arrested, beaten up or imprisoned if I desired, but they came anyway. They wanted me to read the Bible with them, so we read Old Testament stories. It was fun because most of the stories in the Koran are adulterations of Old Testament stories. These people kept coming for about a year, and as I went from the Old Testament to reading stories in the New Testament I found there were questions I needed to ask—particularly about Jesus, the Son of Mary.

The Koran says that Jesus was not actually crucified, that God substituted someone else because He never would have allowed His servant to be treated so poorly. Another part of the Koran says God gave Jesus the power to escape, and He went on to Pakistan; He’s coming back to preach Islam to the whole world. But the New Testament says that Jesus was actually, truly crucified. It was difficult for me to understand what the New Testament says about Jesus because it is so different from what I had been taught, and my Jehovah’s Witnesses were not able to help much.

Some time later I went to teach amidst friends with a young man, a member of the Methodist Church, who had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, and he was able to share what he knew about Jesus with me. He said, “You know, Jesus is the mediator between man and God, and all the sins that we have committed God has laid upon Jesus. If we are willing to confess our sins and put them upon Jesus, God will overlook them.”

That’s what I had been groping for in all the good deeds I did as a Muslim young man. I kept thinking, “Is it possible that Jesus can take care of my sins and help me to relate to God? And this God will not be my ferocious judge, but He will become my father? And I can talk to Him, and He will talk to me?” It was too much for me to comprehend.

Cold Water from Heaven

But as I saw the radiance of this young man’s Christian life, I began to want that kind of life. So I asked my friend, “If I want to believe in this Jesus, how do I do it?” And he said, “It’s very simple. You don’t have to give any money; you don’t have to give away anything. Just go to Jesus as you are and say, ‘Look, I’m tired of who I am and what I am. I want to believe in Jesus, and I want to take care of my sins.’ Confess those sins you can recall, and just leave those you can’t remember to Him. He knows all about them anyway, and He’ll take care of them.” Right there in his room I asked Jesus to come into my heart, to cleanse it of all sin and to make me a child of God.

I did not feel my heart strangely warmed as did John Wesley, but I felt as if cold water were dripping from heaven through my head and into the rest of my body. It was the very best day of my life.

My friend told a Methodist minister about my experience with Christ, and this minister invited me to a Methodist church. I felt a strong urge to go, so I went. Right away people went back to my father saying they’d seen me go into a church. When I returned home my family was waiting. My father said, “Welcome back from church. What in the world took you into a church?”

I broke out in a cold sweat and for a moment became almost blind with fear, but I managed to say to him, “You’ve given me my education and prepared me for life the best you knew, and I’ve been attacking Christians. But all my life I have felt in my heart a fear of death because the god you introduced to me is a different one than the One I’ve come to know in Jesus Christ. I now know my sins are forgiven. Now I can talk to God, and He talks to me. I want to be with Christians because it’s when I’m with them I feel right.”

It seemed like my eyes opened, and I saw that everyone was looking at me, and no one was talking. They sat staring at me, and my mother burst into tears. A lot of them were wailing. But I was able to say, “A young man shared with me about Christ, and I found it to be real. When I said to Jesus, ‘Come into my heart,’ I felt Him come! I knew He was there.” My mother laid prostrate in front of me and said, “You are throwing away everything. You are putting my life in jeopardy. You are putting your life at risk. Don’t you see the future ahead of you? Don’t you see all the possibilities? Don’t you wonder what will happen to me?” And I could not control my tears because she was weeping as she was saying these things to me. But I could not go back from following Christ.

My mother went to all the Muslim scholars and medicine men hoping they would make medicine that would charm me so that if I’d been bewitched the spell would be removed. But I knew I wasn’t bewitched.

In a week the family told me, “You’ve had time to think about this. If you do what you are doing now it will spoil your name. The people will stop respecting you, and they will hate you. You will put the name of this family in disrepute.”

But the Lord made my heart so strong at that moment I was able to say, “I’ve found joy and assurance in belonging to God and believing in Jesus, and I know my sins are forgiven. And that’s where I will stay.”

My dad said, “If that’s your choice then we will regard you as dead, and you may as well be dead.”

My Life Was in Danger

The following day I knew I might be poisoned because the news had spread everywhere, and everyone was talking about me. I went to the pastor of the Methodist church and told him everything. He was very sorry. I said, “You did what was right and good for me, and I am most grateful. Now my life is in danger. I cannot stay anywhere nearby. What shall I do?”

That holy man of God gave me a note to take to the United Missionary Society in another town. That’s where I went, and that’s where I lived for four years. Of course I missed my family back home, but the people of the Missionary Society became my father, mother, sisters and brothers. I lacked nothing that I needed in those four years of exile.

A Message from My Father

In the course of living with them, I felt the call to be a preacher, to go all around Nigeria talking to people about Jesus, so my new family enrolled me in their training course. I studied the Bible, and I learned a lot about what God can do if our lives are surrendered to Him.

At the conclusion of that training, I received the message that my father wanted to see me. My friends at the Mission Society said, “Go. You’ve never received such a message. This might be an answer to prayer.” So I went.

When I got home there was another gathering of my family and the elders, and they said, “We’ve had the news that you’ve been married, and you’ve had a baby.” (I had met my wife during my exile, and we had our first baby.) My father said, “I’ve heard many good things about you, and I’m very happy with what I have heard. You may not know it, but I followed you everywhere you went. I now believe this faith you have embraced is good for you. If you would like to return to this family, you are welcome anytime.” I could not control my tears; everyone was crying tears of joy. I wanted to introduce my wife and little daughter to them. My father said, “Go ahead, bring them.”

I brought my wife and our baby home. My family accepted my wife; they would not normally have accepted her because she’s from a tribe against which my own tribe is prejudiced.

Then the Methodist Church invited me to do frontier missionary work, and during that time we had our second child, also a girl. After we’d named her and done everything the Christian way we brought her home, and my parents put the family marks on her and said, “This is our child because the one you had before is your own.” That marked our official acceptance back into the family.

Many in my homeland never forgave me for embracing Christ. When it came time to elect a new king my uncle was chosen. I didn’t mind because a number of my brothers and half-brothers and sisters and cousins had become Christians. I had become a Christian and, along the way, an ordained minister. I was later surprised to find I had been elected bishop. I would not even consider becoming a king in my homeland, because I’ve found a kingdom that is splendid and glorious, a kingdom which I would not trade for any tribal kingdom.

My family and I had to leave home. For my mother the move meant the loss of a lot of property. She was left with four, maybe six acres. If I had remained who I was and eventually had become king the whole land and people would have been ours. But my Bible says, “What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” And with Christ I have not lost anything.

These Are the Lord’s Doing

I would like to deal with a few issues related to all I’ve said. For the gospel-sharer it is not sufficient to speak the Word. We must live it out. What happened to me is not ideal and is not unusual. It is simply an act of God.

It is possible for a Muslim to become a Christian. It is difficult, alright, but it is possible. If anybody could claim to be a Muslim I could, just as Paul claimed to be a Jew of the Jews. But when it came time for Christ to reach out to me He did, and He used people who knew Him to get hold of me.

Christians should not be afraid to befriend Muslims. Most Muslims will not respond to Christians; they may even be hostile toward them. Some Muslims still regard Christians as infidels who believe in more than one God. But it was through the friendship of a young Christian man who shared his faith with me that I came to know the Lord. God found me, and by grace I am what I am. That can happen to any Muslim.

When I look back on my life, my upbringing and what I am today, I ask myself, “How come?” And the answer I get each time is, “These things should be marvelous in your eyes, because they are the Lord’s doing.”

Christ is real to me. Is He real to you? Do you just know about Him, or do you know Him? He could become real to you if you would simply say, “Lord, come into my heart. Stay there and take care of all my sins, and make me fit to be a child of God.” He’s willing to do it even now. It won’t cost you anything because it costed God everything to make it possible. He can become real to you, and I’m saying that because I know.

Ayo Ladigbolu is a Methodist bishop serving in Nigeria.