“Swift to
its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys
grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and
decay in all around I see—
O Thou who
changest not, abide with me.
I fear no
foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no
weight, and tears no bitterness;
Where is
death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph
still, if Thou abide with me.”
The lines above are part of the verses of the famous hymn “Abide
with me…” written by Henry F. Lyte, in 1847. As I think about the life of Nabeel
Qureshi who went to be with the Lord on the 16th of September 2017
after fighting stomach cancer for a year plus, I cannot help but remember the
words of that hymn writer “Change and decay in all around I see”.
He served the Lord only for eleven years and died at the age
of thirty four. But those years were full of dedication and commitment to the
Lord Jesus. As Dr. Ravi Zacharias wrote in Christianity Today, a day after his death, “Nabeel came
like a streak of lightning, brightened the night sky, and has returned to the
One who gave the power to do what he did.” He commented during his funeral service
that Nabeel "… was like a racehorse. You couldn't stop him. Even in the
thickness of his illness,".
As a lover of the works of Dr. Ravi, I got to know about
Nabeel Qureshi through RZIM, since he worked with RZIM. I began to watch his
programs and debates including his famous
debate with the Islamic Scholar Dr. Shabir Ally on "Who Is The Real
God? Allah or the Trinity?". I could not help but thanked God who I felt had
given us one of the people to help in the work Dr. Ravi Zacharias is doing. How
wrong I was. Apologetics is a side of the ministry that needs men in our time.
We cannot query God on why He has to take His child home but
we indeed mourn.
We thank God for Nabeel’s testimony and believe that God
will use it to touch more people, especially Muslims, to commit their lives to
the Lord Jesus Christ. May the scales that fell off Nabeel’s eyes continue to
fall off the eyes of the spiritually blind in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Please pray
for the family he left behind, Michelle and their daughter.
You can watch the whole eulogy here.
God bless you all.
