10-Year-Old Boy Sees Jesus Crucified in the Clouds

A cloud formation touches a young Muslim heart.

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

The 10-year-old boy approached his teacher, Anna Smirnova, after class.

“I’ve got a secret,” Murad whispered.

Smirnova, a longtime Seventh-day Adventist working in a restrictive Muslim country, looked at the boy quizzically. Murad had joined her class at the start of the school year several months earlier. He had never spoken that way to her before.

“I’ve got a secret to tell you,” Murad said quietly again.

“What is it?” Smirnova asked.

Murad said he had witnessed an unusual cloud formation when he had exited his home several years earlier. He had seen a cloud that resembled a man hanging on a cross.

“I didn’t know who it was until I heard you telling of Jesus,” Murad said. “When you spoke about Jesus, I remembered those clouds.”

Adventist Mission is not identifying Anna Smirnova or Murad by their real names to protect church members’ work in this Muslim country.

Smirnova said in an interview that Murad’s words cut to her heart.

“He cried when he told me his secret,” she said. “He didn’t know what to do with the information.”

Smirnova, who shares Bible stories about Jesus as she discusses good values with her students, acknowledged that she also did not know how to encourage Murad.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said, tears forming in her own eyes as she recalled the encounter. “He told me in secret. His parents forbid him from believing in Jesus.”

Adventist leaders said unusual phenomena such as cloud formations are among the many ways that they have heard of Muslims’ attention being drawn to Jesus in the 10/40 window, one of the most challenging regions in the world to share the gospel. 

A number of Muslims have spoken about seeing Jesus in dreams. In one closed Muslim country, a mother and her 21-year-old daughter were surprised earlier this year to discover during a telephone conversation that they had seen the same man in their dreams at night, Chanmin Chung, communication coordinator for the church’s Middle East and North Africa Union, wrote in the Adventist Review in September. Neither the mother or daughter recognized the man, but they spoke about him during their weekly calls. One day they abruptly realized that the unknown man was Jesus, and they accepted Him as their personal Savior.

Smirnova said she was convinced that Jesus is reaching out to Murad’s young heart through the cloud formation.

“The most important thing is God finishes the work that we start and cannot complete on our own,” she said.