Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. (1 John 4:1)
A Muslim father in Jos, a former soldier who had fought in the Second World War, named his newborn son Isa. It is the Arabic name of Jesus. He could not have known what he was saying over the boy. Two decades later that son, by his own account a practising Islamic occultist, watched a Christian film about hell, was shown what he describes as the reality of hell and heaven, and surrendered to Jesus Christ in tears. Today Prophet Isa El-Buba leads one of the best-known prayer ministries in northern Nigeria and is one of the country's most outspoken Christian voices.
In the video featured below, El-Buba tells part of that story. The clip was posted by the channel ibelievemedia under the title "I saw a prophet of Islam in hell fire: former Muslim, Prophet El-Buba reveals". It is his testimony, told in his own words, and we present it as that: a man's account of what he says God showed him, to be weighed as Scripture tells us to weigh every claim.
Watch: Prophet El-Buba's testimony
Video: ibelievemedia on YouTube. If it does not play here, watch it on YouTube.
Who is Prophet Isa El-Buba?
Prophet Dr Isa El-Buba Sadiq, known to his followers as "the Prophet on the Plateau", is the founder and General Overseer of Evangelical Bible Outreach Ministries International (EBOMI), headquartered in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria. The ministry describes itself as "a radical, prophetic, and authoritative ministry committed to spreading the Gospel and transforming lives globally", with the vision of "raising a people of integrity, a militant people fighting for the peace of nations through prayers". Its members call themselves Ebonites.
He was born on 1 January in the early 1960s at what was then the Benue-Plateau General Hospital in Jos, according to a biography published by New Man Media. His family is of Kanuri and Fulani stock from Borno State; his father, Sadiq Buba, was a strict Muslim and a disciplinarian who had served as a soldier in the Second World War. The family lived in the prison quarters in Jos, beside the high wall of the prison.
El-Buba describes his early life as that of "a former Islamic occultist who inherited the practice from birth". He was, his biographers say, as radical in Islam as he would later become in Christ, "a strong member of his former faith" who was "passionate about justice". They compare him to Saul of Tarsus, zealous for his religion until the Lord stopped him on the road.
23 March 1982: the film, the visions and the surrender
By his own account, the turning came in stages. "Before his salvation, the Lord gave him series of revelations of the reality of hell," the New Man Media biography says. Then, on 23 March 1982, he "came across, and reluctantly watched, a Christian film titled Burning Hell". What followed he describes as being shown heaven. "Isa melted in his heart, and in tears, surrendered to the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ."
The following year he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and, he says, the call of God into ministry.
That is the claim at the centre of the video above: that a Muslim who had never wanted anything to do with Christianity was shown hell and heaven and could not go back. It is a pattern that runs through the stories of many former Muslims who now follow Christ, in Nigeria and across the Muslim world: a dream, a vision, a verse, a film, and then the Person behind them.
The cost of following Jesus
Conversion from Islam in northern Nigeria has a price. El-Buba's biographers record that "his life was placed on his head by several Islamic groups for assassination", that he fled into the bush between Maiduguri and Jere and hid for a time in the Biu mountains, and that his wife counts nine attempts on his life. One story from those years has him, on the fourth day of a dry fast, ploughing a farm in torrential rain for 1,500 naira, about ten dollars, and giving all of it to the church.
In 1994 he married Mwapu Simon Bami, one of his early disciples, and renamed her Choice. Pastor Choice Isa El-Buba now ministers beside him, and the couple have four children: Nissi, Deborah, Precious and Jeremiah.
Prophet, pastor and a voice on Nigeria's security
El-Buba is also a deliverance minister and says he carries "a special burden to reach the Muslim world through publications so that they might understand the true God". He has prayed with and counselled governors, ministers and heads of state, and he does not keep quiet about the state of the nation.
In 2018 Nigerian media reported that the Department of State Services laid siege to his church in Jos after he condemned the government's inaction over killings by armed herdsmen. In recent years he has told President Bola Tinubu to solve the country's insecurity or resign, warned that "without security, credible elections cannot hold", and insisted, after a cleric's remarks about Christians, that "Nigeria belongs to all". Ahead of the 2027 election he has backed a presidential candidate publicly and set out to mobilise Christians to vote. Whatever one makes of his politics, nobody doubts his courage.
How should Christians weigh a testimony like this?
Scripture gives us the tools. The apostle John tells us to test every spirit (1 John 4:1), and Luke praises the Bereans because they "examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true" (Acts 17:11). A testimony is not Scripture. It is a witness, and a witness is weighed by its fruit (Matthew 7:16) and by its agreement with the written Word.
By that standard, three things in El-Buba's account stand on solid ground.
Hell is real. Nobody in the Bible spoke about hell more than Jesus did. He called it the place "where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:48) and told of a rich man who, in torment, begged for someone to warn his brothers (Luke 16:27-28). A vision of hell that drives a man to repentance is doing what the doctrine of hell is meant to do.
God reaches zealots. Saul of Tarsus was "breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord" when Jesus met him (Acts 9:1). The Lord told Ananias that this persecutor was "a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings" (Acts 9:15). A radical Muslim becoming a radical Christian is not a strange story in the kingdom of God. It is the oldest one in the book of Acts.
The gospel is for Muslims. Jesus died for the Kanuri, the Fulani and the Hausa as surely as for anyone else. Paul says God "desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4). The right response to a story like El-Buba's is not to argue about Islam. It is to pray that more of his former brothers meet the Jesus whose name his father unknowingly gave him.
What the Bible does not do is ask us to build doctrine on anyone's vision. Let the testimony point you to the Word, and let the Word have the last say.
How to pray
- For Prophet Isa El-Buba and Pastor Choice: protection, humility, and wisdom in a dangerous country at a tense time.
- For EBOMI in Jos and its Ebonites, that they keep "fighting for the peace of nations through prayers".
- For Muslims in northern Nigeria, that dreams, films, friends and Scripture bring them to Christ, as they did Isa El-Buba.
- For converts counting the cost, hiding as he once hid, that the church would shelter them (Hebrews 13:3).
For more teaching on the Holy Spirit, see our Holy Spirit Connection series, and follow our Apologetics and Holy Spirit sections.
Questions this article answers
Who is Prophet Isa El-Buba?
Prophet Dr Isa El-Buba Sadiq is a Nigerian preacher, deliverance minister and prophetic voice, founder and General Overseer of Evangelical Bible Outreach Ministries International (EBOMI) in Jos, Plateau State. Born into a strict Muslim family of Kanuri and Fulani descent, he became a Christian in 1982.
Was Prophet Isa El-Buba a Muslim?
Yes. He was born to a Muslim father, a former soldier who named him Isa, the Arabic name of Jesus, and he describes himself as a former Islamic occultist who inherited the practice from birth and was zealous for Islam until his conversion.
How did Isa El-Buba become a Christian?
By his account, God gave him a series of revelations of hell, and on 23 March 1982 he reluctantly watched a Christian film called Burning Hell, was shown heaven, and surrendered to Jesus Christ in tears. He received the baptism of the Holy Spirit in 1983 and entered ministry.
What does El-Buba say he saw in hell?
The featured video, posted by ibelievemedia, is titled "I saw a prophet of Islam in hell fire" and carries his own account of the revelations that preceded his conversion. We present it as his testimony, to be tested against Scripture (1 John 4:1), not as doctrine.
What is EBOMI?
Evangelical Bible Outreach Ministries International, also called El-Buba Outreach Ministries International, is an inter-denominational prayer and outreach movement based in Jos, Nigeria, with branches elsewhere. Its stated mission is raising "a people of integrity, a militant people fighting for the peace of nations through prayers".
Should Christians believe visions of hell?
Weigh them. Jesus taught that hell is real (Mark 9:48; Luke 16:19-31), and God has used dreams and visions to reach people since Acts. But a testimony is a witness, not Scripture; test it by the Word and by its fruit (1 John 4:1; Acts 17:11; Matthew 7:16), and build your faith on the Bible.
Sources: New Man Media's biography of Prophet Isa El-Buba (thenewman.org.ng); the archived profile at isaelbuba.com; ebomi.org; reports in Church Times Nigeria, Legit.ng, Naija News, Arise TV and others on his public statements; the video by ibelievemedia on YouTube. Dates and details come from his own ministry's biographies and have not been independently verified.