And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. (Joel 2:28)
Something is happening inside Islam that its leaders do not want discussed and the Western press rarely reports: Muslims are leaving, every day, in numbers nobody can count because in most of the Muslim world the counting itself would be a confession. David Wood, the founder of Acts 17 Apologetics who has spent twenty years debating Islam's best-known defenders, calls it "an avalanche of apostasy". "You have no clue how many Muslims are leaving Islam," he posted on X last October, and the video below, from the Towards Jesus channel, lays out his case under the title "nearly 2 million Muslims leaving Islam every year".
Watch it, and then read on, because the numbers are only the surface of a story that is, for the Church, the best news of our generation.
Video: "David Wood EXPOSES Nearly 2 MILLION MUSLIMS Leaving ISLAM EVERY YEAR", Towards Jesus on YouTube, from David Wood's Apologetics Roadshow material. Both channels are now in our Apologetics section.
What David Wood sees from his inbox
Wood's vantage point is unusual. For two decades his debates and videos on Muhammad, the Quran and the hadith have been watched in every Muslim country, and the people who watch write to him. During one month, he has said, between one and three people a day messaged to tell him they had left Islam after watching his material. Those are only the ones who wrote, from only one channel.
His explanation is the internet. For fourteen centuries a Muslim who doubted had nowhere to take the doubt: the imam, the family and the law all stood between him and the sources. Now a young man in Cairo or Kano can read the hadith on his phone, watch a debate in which the sheikh does not win, and hear an ex-Muslim tell his story, all before breakfast and without anyone knowing. The questions that could not be asked are a search away. "Nearly 2 million a year" is the headline the clip channel put on his argument; Wood's point is that the real figure is unknowable and larger than anyone admits.
Iran: the church that grew in the dark
Nowhere is the exodus plainer than Iran, where leaving Islam can carry a death sentence and the state says 99 per cent of the population is Muslim. In June 2020 the Netherlands-based research group GAMAAN asked about 50,000 Iranians anonymously online what they believed, because no Iranian will tell a government pollster the truth. Only a third said they were Shia Muslims. Twenty-two per cent said they had no religion, 9 per cent said they were atheists, and 1.5 per cent said they were Christians, which the researchers put at between 750,000 and 950,000 people, nearly all converts from Muslim homes. Nearly half said they had moved from being religious to having no religion in their own lifetime.
Open Doors calls the Iranian church the fastest-growing in the world. It meets in living rooms, its pastors serve prison terms for "acting against national security", and it keeps growing, fed by satellite television, Farsi Bibles and, over and over in the testimonies, dreams of a man in white who says He is Jesus. The regime that hanged converts in the 1990s has not stopped one of them in 2026.
The Arab world is losing its religion
It is not only Iran. In 2019 Arab Barometer, the region's largest independent survey, found that the share of Arabs describing themselves as "not religious" had risen from 8 to 13 per cent in six years, and to about a third in Tunisia. The change was sharpest among the under-30s. The BBC's headline asked whether the Arab world was "turning its back on religion". In Algeria's Kabylie mountains, whole villages have churches now; in Egypt, the Coptic Church baptises converts it cannot name; in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, ex-Muslim networks organise online under false names because the real ones would get them killed.
Among Muslims in the West, where answering honestly costs nothing, Pew Research finds that roughly one in four Americans raised Muslim no longer identifies as Muslim. That is the honest figure where honesty is free.
Africa: "six million a year"
In December 2000 a Libyan cleric, Sheikh Ahmad al-Qataani, went on Al Jazeera and lamented that six million African Muslims were becoming Christians every year, "every hour 667 Muslims convert". Nobody has ever verified his figure, and Christians should not pretend to. But it is a Muslim cleric's own alarm, and the twenty-five years since have given him little comfort: sub-Saharan Africa is now the heartland of world Christianity, the Pentecostal churches of Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya send missionaries north, and across the Sahel men and women raised in Islam quietly join them, at a cost. Our own report on Prophet Isa El-Buba, a former Muslim and occultist from Plateau State, is one such story among thousands. In northern Nigeria the convert's first question is not which church to join but who will shelter him when his family finds out.
Why they come
Ask ex-Muslims why they left and three answers come back again and again. The first is reading Islam's own sources for themselves, Muhammad's life above all, which is why Wood's work matters. The second is the violence done in Islam's name, from the Islamic State's burnings to the killing of Christians in Nigeria, which drives thoughtful Muslims to ask what kind of God this is. The third, and the one that turns a doubter into a disciple, is Jesus Himself: a Bible given by a friend, a sentence in a debate, a Christian who did not hate them, and, in testimony after testimony from Tehran to Jos, a dream. Joel promised it: "your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions." The Lord is keeping that promise inside the house of Islam.
Nabeel Qureshi, who co-founded Acts 17 Apologetics with Wood after years of arguing with him as a devout Ahmadi Muslim, told that story in "Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus" before he died in 2017, and his book has carried more Muslims across than any statistic.
Who David Wood is
David Wood is an American apologist with degrees in biology and philosophy. He was converted in prison in 1996, after a violent and lawless youth, when a fellow inmate explained the gospel to him, and has debated Muslim scholars from Shabir Ally to Mohammed Hijab ever since. His Apologetics Roadshow channel, and the Towards Jesus channel that reposts his debates and testimonies for Muslim audiences, are now both in our Apologetics section.
What the Church should do with the harvest
The numbers are not the point; people are. The Towards Jesus channel's own description puts it well: "Not millions. One person. With a name. With a story." Four things follow.
First, pray, and pray specifically. "The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest" (Matthew 9:37-38). Pray for Iran's house churches, for the ex-Muslim in Kano who has told no one, for the Fulani herdsman who has seen the man in white, and for the apologists, Muslim-background believers above all, who speak at real risk.
Second, be ready. "Always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:15). Debates open doors; gentleness walks people through them. Learn the questions a Muslim neighbour will ask about the Trinity, the Bible and the cross, and answer as Paul did on Mars Hill, starting from what they already believe (Acts 17:22-31).
Third, expect it. Isaiah saw a day when "Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands" would worship with Israel (Isaiah 19:25), and John saw the multitude "from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" before the throne (Revelation 7:9). Every Muslim who comes to Christ is a down payment on that vision. Share the testimonies; the next one may be watching.
Fourth, receive them. Every convert who finds a church needs a family that will stand with them when their own disowns them. "There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all" (1 Timothy 2:5-6). For all includes the Muslim next door, and he is closer to the door than you think.
For more, see our Apologetics section, which now carries David Wood's Apologetics Roadshow and Towards Jesus alongside GodLogic Apologetics, Mike Winger, Cliffe Knechtle and Living Waters.
Questions this article answers
Are Muslims really leaving Islam?
Yes, every day, in every Muslim country, though exact numbers are impossible because leaving Islam is a crime in much of the Muslim world. David Wood estimates the exodus in the millions a year. An anonymous 2020 survey found only a third of Iranians still calling themselves Shia Muslims, and about one in four Americans raised Muslim has left.
How many Iranians have become Christians?
GAMAAN's June 2020 survey of about 50,000 Iranians found 1.5 per cent identifying as Christians, which it estimated at 750,000 to 950,000 converts, and Open Doors calls Iran's underground church the fastest-growing in the world.
Why are Muslims leaving Islam?
Ex-Muslims most often cite reading Islam's own sources for themselves, violence committed in Islam's name, and a personal encounter with Jesus, often through a dream, a Bible or a Christian friend. The internet has made all three far more common.
What does David Wood say about Muslims leaving Islam?
That the exodus is far larger than Muslim leaders or Western media admit, that the internet has made Islam's problems impossible to hide, and that he hears from people who have left Islam every day. His video is embedded above.
Do Muslims dream about Jesus?
Dreams and visions of Jesus are among the most common reasons former Muslims give for seeking Him, reported from Iran to Nigeria, and Scripture promises exactly that in Joel 2:28.
How should Christians respond to Muslims leaving Islam?
Pray for the harvest (Matthew 9:37-38), be ready to answer questions with gentleness (1 Peter 3:15), expect the nations to come (Isaiah 19:25, Revelation 7:9), and receive converts as family, since many lose their own.
Sources: the featured video (Towards Jesus, 6 September 2026) and David Wood's post on X (17 October 2025), with The Stream's summary of his "avalanche of apostasy" video and his Maybe God podcast interview; GAMAAN, "Iranians' Attitudes Toward Religion" (August 2020) via Christianity Today, Iran International and Article 18; Open Doors on Iran; Arab Barometer 2019 via the BBC; Pew Research Center on religious switching in the United States (2018 and 2025); Sheikh Ahmad al-Qataani's Al Jazeera interview (December 2000) as widely reported; Nabeel Qureshi, "Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus" (2014).