As I sat eating my bowl of morning oatmeal and strawberries, I read a quick bit of scripture to my wife from Acts chapter eight. After a prayer together, I headed out the door for a day of language learning.

It was a boring day of drilling verb conjugations and suffixes. Adult language learning is slow and tedious. I can clearly see why God bestowed the gift of tongues at Pentecost instead of giving the apostles grammar books and cassette tapes!

I had traveled about 20 miles across our city to sit and study in the otherwise lonely office of an Adventist believer who daily works by himself to secretly produce radio programs for broadcast in Turkish. Praise the Lord for his faithful labor!

The batteries in my electronic dictionary began to fatigue, so I decided to go out and buy some replacements. Out in the late afternoon sunlight, I discovered a gooey mess on my coat sleeve and realized I had been targeted by a bird! (See our May 2006 article.) “Hmm,” I smiled as I reflected on the Turkish superstition that being hit by bird excrement is good luck. “Perhaps some wonderful surprise awaits me!”

As I was walking through the dirty alley just below my friend’s radio office, I passed a small shop window. My head turned for only a moment as I walked by, but in that split second I took in a scene of two middle-aged men, one holding a well-worn book and seemingly trying to convince the other of something from it.

“Must be the Koran,” I thought. “They are having some sort of spiritual conversation in there.” I immediately set my missionary mind to scheming a method to meddle myself into the middle of their meeting. I stopped at the corner and looked back. The store had a sign out front: “Keymaker.” I could invent a reason to step into that tiny key-copying shop, and it would cost less than a dollar. I pulled out my apartment keys, said a quick prayer, and stepped inside.

The shop was no bigger than a walk-in closet. Cold concrete, peeling paint, buckets full of old locks. A worn worktable held a small anvil, a file, and a hammer. The floor was covered with metal filings. Hundreds of keys hung on nails on the wall.

The man behind the workbench set the worn book on the table. To my surprise, its pages were full of yellow, red, green, and purple underlining. I had never seen a Koran that someone had written in. The man continued speaking and then closed the book. I looked at the cover, and I struggled to read the pencil marks on the large sticker there. It was divided into four columns of text—Yaratalis, Cikis, . . . Genesis, Exodus . . . it was a Bible!

I didn’t say anything about the Bible immediately. I asked the key maker if he would make me a key. After I paid him, my curiosity about his faith got the best of me. Laying my hand on the Bible, I whispered, “This is a wonderful Book. Keep reading it.”

The man’s face lit up like a lighthouse. “That is my book. I have been reading it now for 15 years!” Love for its pages and message radiated from his eyes. At that moment, though we were strangers, we were brothers. I knew we could trust one another.

His customer said, “I am not like you fellows. I love philosophy. Nietzsche and Marx.”

I looked at the man, raised my hand and said, “Look at this, brother.” I then wiggled my fingers. “How can I do that?” Spying a paper cup full of screws and springs, I poured it out on the workbench. “This mess is an accident,” I said. Wiggling my fingers again, I continued, “These, however, are designed.”

The key maker immediately began preaching to his customer. Over the next 15 minutes, he gave the man a full Turkish sermon on creation!
Then the key maker turned to me again and asked, “Are you Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical? What are you?”

“I am a Seventh-day Adventist,” I said.

To my surprise he replied, “I have read about Adventists. Do you have any Adventist books in Turkish?”

I promised I would bring him one. The man told me his name is Arayan. Later, I looked up his name in a dictionary and was astonished to discover that it means seeker! Seeker had been reading the Bible for 15 years. He has never attended a church, but he is saturated with the holy word! He quotes scripture chapter and verse with ease.
As I stepped out into the twilight, I felt like I was walking on clouds.

As I related the story to Esther that night, we suddenly realized that our prayer stemming from Acts 8 had been answered.  We had read, “The Lord’s angel said to Philip, ‘Go south along the desert road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ So Philip left. An important Ethiopian official . . . had gone to Jerusalem to worship and was now on his way home. He was sitting in his chariot, reading the book of the prophet Isaiah. The Spirit told Philip to catch up with the chariot. Philip ran up close and heard the man reading aloud from the book of Isaiah. Philip asked him, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ The official answered, ‘How can I understand unless someone helps me?’ He then invited Philip to come up and sit beside him.” (Acts 8:26-31). Yes, we had prayed for God to give us just such a seeking man!

A few days later, I brought Arayan a Turkish Patriarchs and Prophets and a Turkish abridged The Great Controversy.

“I want doctrine,” Arayan said. “Doctrine is so important. People today don’t want doctrine, but doctrine is everything. What is your doctrine? Doctrine is the difference between truth and fables.”
As we began to talk together, it became evident to me that Arayan had a great love for Bible prophecy. I felt like I had happened upon William Miller just before he received his calling to preach! Arayan said to me, “The 2,300 days have ended, and Jesus is coming very soon!” Aryan surprised me by asking if I knew who William Miller was! “William Miller believed that the earth was the ‘sanctuary that would be cleansed,’” he said. “I have come to believe that ‘Jesus is ‘the Angel of the Lord’ in the Old Testament. He was the pillar of cloud, and He was the pillar of fire. He is the one to rescue from trouble. I know He is very soon to come and rescue us from our trouble as well.”

Here in this secular Muslim country, where 99.8 percent avidly disavow Christ as Savior, I can see that the Holy Spirit has His people! Though Arayan has come to some beliefs that are different from mine, the man has pursued the word with thoroughness and diligence. What is also remarkable to me is that this student of Jesus has been working in the very shadow of the apartment building where my Adventist friend has been preparing his radio programs, and neither had any knowledge of the other! Alleluia!

Who else in this country of 70 million is silently studying? At the right time, God willing, I will meet them, too! Please pray for the anonymous scattered remnant that the Lord is preparing! Pray for Arayan as he is now making decisions about his doctrinal and life course. Please pray for our Turkey team to be like Philip—always ready to go with the Spirit! 

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