As the Middle East endures continued conflict, a curious phenomena is taking place. Ministries are reporting that Muslims are increasingly turning to Christianity for answers.

This is particularly true among the Kurds. They are an ethnic group that originated in Iran. They number approximately 40 million. With no home state, they are spread throughout various nations in the Middle East.

Because of a desire for their own homeland, they are often perceived as a threat in nations with larger populations.

In an interview with CBN, Pastor Georges Houssney of Horizons International (HI) shared how Kurdish-Muslims are turning to Christ, often through dreams and visions.

These are genuine encounters, as it takes a supernatural event to convince Muslims to embrace Jesus. This is because they pay a heavy price for leaving Islam. At the very least, they are cut off from their families and friends. In more extreme cases, their lives can also be endangered.

It was just such a vision that led Pastor Nihad, who serves as HI’s Kurdish director, to leave Islam and become a Christian.

He was sitting in a Syrian prison after a politically motivated arrest when he encountered the risen Christ. He recognized that the Individual appearing in the vision was Jesus because of a book he received prior to entering prison written by Billy Graham.

“I could not move inside my cell, which was less than a meter wide,” Pastor Nihad told CBN. “My hands were numb, and my body was in so much pain. I remembered reading about Jesus healing the lame, so I told Him, ‘Jesus, if You are real, help me.’”

“I saw in a vision a person in white entering my prison cell carrying a bowl of olive oil. Every time He poured oil on my body, the pain went away,” Nihad said.

“During that time, I was deeply depressed because no one could help me get out of prison. I wanted to die. But the person in white told me, ‘You are My beloved, and I love you so much.’ Until now, those words continue to comfort me.”

When he was released six months later, Nihad began sharing his encounter with Jesus with fellow Kurds.

But dreams and visions are not just limited to people in the Middle East.

In an op-ed for the Christian Post, Mandy Owens writes that God desires to communicate with people. One of the way the Lord does this is through dreams and visions.

Of course, not every dream is from God, but she writes, “Throughout the Bible, God spoke to people such as Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Solomon, Peter, Paul, Ananias, Joseph (the husband of Mary), and many more through dreams and visions.”

“Yet many in the Western, intellectually sophisticated world (including some in the church) dismiss dreams entirely as either psychosomatic phenomena or eating bad pizza before going to sleep,” Mandy continues. “But that is not a biblical paradigm, as Scripture presupposes a supernatural worldview, of which dreams are a part.”

But more than that, the Bible states that dreams and visions will be associated with outpourings of the Holy Spirit.

When the Holy Spirit fell on the Day of Pentecost and people poured out into the streets of Jerusalem speaking in tongues, the Apostle Peter addressed the baffled crowd of Jews

He stated that what they were witnessing was prophesied in the Old Testament.

Quoting from the book of Joel, Peter said that God was going to pour out his Holy Spirit in the last days. One of the signs, that this was happening was a release of the gift of prophecy, dreams and visions (Acts 2:17).

Dreams and visions are simply an expression of the gift of prophecy, one of the nine spiritual gifts the Holy Spirit hands out to believers. it reveals God’s desires to communicate with people.