Amazing Dream That Transformed A Denominational Pastor, Missionary, Evangelist Christian To Islam

bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim alhamdulillah robbed al-amin ar-rahman ar-rahim maliki yawmi Deen but what does it actually mean to be a Muslim what does it mean to take your life and submit it to the will of God because this is what we are saying when we say it so today inshallah I'd like to tell you of my voyage from missionary to Muslim now missionary and Muslim seemed these days to always be at loggerheads with each other so what was a missionary doing looking at Islam in the first place well to tell you the truth I wasn't looking for Islam Islam found me and so to try and explain how I transitioned from to Islam or my transition from Christianity to Islam took place or I need to perhaps do a bit of a background let's go back in time and have a look what what happened in the early stages of my life now some of you may have heard my story before and know how embrace Islam but often when we we tell our stories or many people who tell these stories and how they be embraced Islam because of time restraint they never really get to tell you this to the full story so inshallah today and this series will deal with my transition to Islam and in this series we'll look at not only how I became a Muslim but some of the deceit and deception that is used amongst the missionaries today to bring Muslims to Christianity now there's a statistic and whether the statistic is accurate or not it's still one that needs to be looked at and according to an Al Jazeera television broadcaster some years ago that over 6 million people from Africa revert from Islam to Christianity now this might be a shocking statistic and you might think that this is impossible to happen but if we have a look around us we see that all the time we see people leaving different faiths to go and join other faiths but the good news is that Islam is growing a 2.8 percent so what we see is each year a 2.8 percent we are growing faster than any of the other religions in the world again this is a statistic this probably will change by the time you watch this and so we have to continuously look and see what new information has been brought up but we do see that Islam is definitely growing now while our six million people leaving Islam for Christianity every year in Africa well there are a number of reasons one can be because they are getting relief and help from Christian organizations and the help is only given if you convert or revert to Christianity the second reason that people may be converting and such a large number is because the teachings are not there in other words we as Muslims are not doing our job properly which means we need to make sure that we have classes we have educational facilities available not just to teach the basics of them but also to encourage Muslims to say stronger faith because no one would want to trade down in order one to go backwards they would want to progress and so anyone who is a Muslim wants to go backwards it would be the same as speaking to a Christian and saying to a Christian would you like to become a Jew of course the Christian would not like to become a Jew he sees Judaism as the first stone well the first stone in the stepping stone to success and the next step that a Christian needs to take is to realize that Jesus had come and so for Christians it's very simple to know that they're no longer under the Abrahamic covenant but not only the Covenant of Jesus so peace be upon the Prophet ISA peace be upon him Christians would understand it quite simple it's quite a simple step they see there they go from Judaism to Christianity now from Christianity the next logical step is Islam so someone who is a Muslim wouldn't really want to go backwards it wouldn't make any sense but there are people doing it and the only reason they can be doing it is for one or two all the third reason would be the reason that they are receiving pressure from the community they are living in whatever the reason might be we might never know and Allah knows best but whatever the reason is we can as Muslims make sure that we look after the people that are Muslims and make sure that they are practicing Muslims make sure they understand why they have committed themselves to Islam in the first place but let's get back to the topic on hand today and the topic on hand is my transition from missionary to Muslim so I was born with many many light years ago for many of the younger viewers that are watching I was born in 1967 in 1967 lots of interesting things were going on in history I was born in the 13th of July which makes it probably for some people an unlucky day but for me I think it was a lucky day Allah had ordained this day for me to be born and so I knew that there has to be a special day because this is the day that I had chosen for me incidentally one of the people that was instrumental in me becoming a Muslim was born on the 1st of July and so I suppose being born in the same month as him was was quite a privilege for me now in July of 1967 many things were going on in the world and in Palestine the whole issue of division of land was coming to a loggerhead there's lots of farting going on in America the first interracial marriages were permitted and throughout the world there was great upheaval because people were starting to look for themselves and trying to find themselves the hippie era was at its highest peak drugs rock rock'n'roll sex was at its highest peak people were doing illicit things people were taking drugs trying to find peace and harmony in the world so the world was in one way people were trying to find meaning another way there was just it was a very very destructive time to be alive so I was born into this time where everybody was worried about what was going to happen do they have a future when would somebody push the button it would send off an atom bomb and kill everybody in the world so there's a lot of terror and fear in the world at that time now when I was born I was born into a family that were pretty liberal minded which means they allowed us to make our own decisions of life pretty young from a very young age unfortunately was the last one in the family to be born and so for being the last one I suppose I got away the lot more than anyone else in my family did but one of the things that I did enjoy was where I went to school and my early school years I used to go to school on the horse every day now we lived in quite a rural area quite a backward area and so I used to take a horse and I used to go to preschool every day on the back of a horse so I learned to horse ride a very very young age loved horse riding I already had a an affinity of feeling it now this is a beautiful animal and enjoyed was riding and even today I still do a lot of horse riding so it's one of my hobbies or sports and so as I we used to go to school I used to pass by people and the motor cars or walking and I would feel so grand because I'd be on my horse and when I went to the preschool I had issues that I didn't really understand one of the problems they had right on was that we had to do a play at school and one of these plays that we had to do at school show that we had to do at school was a story of Adam and Eve and my partner in this play was I had to be Adam and so I met the eve that I was going to be acting next to and we had all these shepherds and all the other people that had to be in this play and one of the problems had as I happen to ask one of the teachers did Adam have a belly button and of course she looks at me and said we don't ask questions like that and I said why not and she said well this is this just act don't worry don't ask questions like that you'll know when you get older one of the funny things is I never ever got that answer to that question you see from a young age I started to look at things theological I want you to know the reason for things did Adam have a bellybutton or not and if you didn't have a bellybutton that means you didn't have an umbilical cord which means he was created so one all the pictures that we see with that I saw later in Christendom did Adam have an umbilical cord marking or a belly button so these were this was the beginning of my theological inquiry and so many of you might think this is a funny thing to ask questions about but a belly button is an interesting thing I mean why is it there why do we have one many people have given me an explanation some people will say that it's day where you put your salt in while you sitting in bed watching a film and you eat celery so I don't know if it's supposed to be something that you put salt in I don't know if it's a place that you rest your book on what it's there for but all I decided it was something that we needed to have and of course if you understand medicine it's so important because this is how we get nutrition and food but back then I needed a theological answer I wanted an answer from the Bible and I was what four or five years old when I asked this question and I needed an answer so this was something that I needed an answer for so I never really received one and so I left alone because I realized I wasn't going to get an answer from anyone in preschool days or my nursery school days so I left this question unanswered so as I went through preschool I learned that many things that I didn't have answers for wasn't going to get and I thought well maybe they there's too many young people or too many children around and an adults thought that this is not a question that they should answer such a young boy about you know many people kept lots of secrets about many things I thought okay this is something that I maybe find out as I got older in life so I left the belly button thing behind me now my parents thought it would be a good idea for me to be the only child in the whole family that went to a Catholic school now any of you who know anything about Catholic schools know that Catholic schools have their own way of doing things and one of the ways of doing things is beating the children they believe that you spare the rod and you will definitely spoil the child and so the nuns or the ladies who looked after us in convent were very very strict on us now I remember the first day of going to school I was very excited had my uniform on everything was prim and proper and I couldn't wait to go to school and the first day as I got to school there was a Catholic nun named and her name was Rita how was her name and when I got to a classroom to the front of the classroom door she put her she looked at me very sternly frowned at me and she said sister Rita and I looked to the Lord whoa she's got a deep voice for a woman so I didn't worry too much about and I looked to do and she said it again I looked her and said no sister Beverly he said no sister Rita said no sister Beverly so we had an argument so I looked at her I was very confused I said no I have a sister my sister's name is Beverly and she said no I'm not your sister says that I'm your sister I was confused already I didn't know what to think how can I have a sister that I didn't know of and now I've only been introduced to her and she explained to me quite clearly that there's two different types of sisters there's a sister that is your God made sister and there's a sister that is your biological sister okay I got it no problem you're my sister that God made for me and my sister at home is another one that God made for me but we can't explained in the same way so I was lost I had a big theological issue number two I had a sister that I didn't know if it was created by God not the same way as my other sister who was created by God was made so I had a problem so I went into the classroom I thought ok let me not rock the boat and he not have any problems this is already going to be a troubled you as it is as we sat in the class a few hours later a man walked in and he said my name is father Bona zdenka now was shocked now I really was about to fall off my chair now I had a sister that I never knew of and I have a father I don't know of and so when this man said he is my father said but I have a father and he said no I am your father's didn't know you not I have a father at home and so the argument went on and and eventually explained I am a father given to you by God like you have a father that you have at home but he's different very confused very confusing for a young boy and so I got more and more confused and ask more and more questions they didn't have answers for it when we get back from the short break I will continue telling you of more of the confusion in the first years of school now I was saying in the last part is that I was introduced to a sister there was my sister and it wasn't my father but I was told by the church that these were my father and my sister because God had made them my father and my sister it was very confused because my parents had told me that God had made my sister and my mother and my father for me so we came very confusing so eventually somebody during the play time one of the the rest periods in the school somebody came to me and said during the break you know this is not really your sister not really your father these are just priests and nuns and they are there to to guard us and show us and I said but why do we call them sister and father of course they didn't have a valid reason for it they just said well that's the way it is and don't ask questions and so once I had discovered that I was now going to have an extended family of sisters and fathers all over the world I thought well this may be will be a good idea I and have like lots of brothers and sisters and fathers and and all the rest of it so after the break I when we finished our recess period in school and I went back into the classroom asked the sister if I have any brothers because I've got sisters and I've got a father don't I have any more brothers and mothers and of course I got a hit on the back of the head and told not to be insolent so this was the beginning of my search into theology every time I asked the question that made sense or a question that they didn't have answers for I got hits on the back of the head so this is something I learned very quickly don't ask too many questions you're going to get into trouble about two or three weeks later in the first year of school we were taken to church for the first time and showed how the church runs what we must do when you walk into the church now the first thing that we needed to do when you walked into the church was do the following we need to dip our hands into a little bowl of water and make the sign of the Cross against our body and this was going to protect us this was a form of ablution that would be done every time we went into the church now first of all I didn't know what was so special about that water that there there there was in the front of the church because they said if you didn't do it the service wouldn't be blessed so I went along with it and there was no explanation no explanation why what happens of what we're doing while we're doing it so I went in this like a robot without thinking and without having any knowledge of what I was doing the next thing that came along was that we were sitting in the chairs in the pews in the church and we're looking at the front of the church and in the front of the church there were two boxes a box on the left and a box on the right with two doors no quite dark little rooms and what the priest told us when we're sitting there in front of inside the in the church all the children were sitting there and the priest would explain to us what happens at different parts of the church and he pointed towards these boxes and he said this is where I'll go I'll go into the left side of the box and on the right side of the box is where you'll go and when you commit a sin or you do anything wrong you'll come to confession and your confess your sin to me and I will forgive you your sin and your sins will be forgiven so I raised my hand which I know I shouldn't have done and I asked the priest why am i confessing to you because you're not God and of course you knew what happened then I got hit on the back of the head don't ask questions just listen so I listened the priest went on to tell us that every time we commit a sin and we do not confess that son to the priest and if we die we will go to a burning living hell where we'll torture where we tortured and suffer for all eternity with no hope of reprieve no hope of salvation will be lost forever so the next thing I did is raise my hand again and I said when can I come and confess and of course the priest looked at me and said you're too young to confess you first have to do your Holy Communion it means you have to go way to a certain period of time where you could learn about the Church's teachings and the church's doctrines and once you've done your first Holy Communion when you get to a certain age then only can you go and do your First Holy Communion and then only can you go to from confession so now it's really worried because what happens if I died tomorrow does that mean I haven't had a chance to confess my sins to the priest and I'm going to burn in this living hell forever and ever and ever and so I was very anxious and I went to the priest and said please can I go to confession he said no you have to first to your Holy Communion and when I asked him what would happen to me he didn't have an answer because there is no answer so you can see I had lots and lots of confusion right from the beginning before things that even started so confession was a big problem for me but the confession box became my new home you see what happened when the teachers got tired of beating me and hitting me and pulling my hair and smacking me for asking theological questions they had no answers for my new home became the confession box in the church so what they do is they send me to the confession box I'd locked the door and they'd leave me then another confession box is a dark place there's no light or anything so every time I did something wrong was badly behaved this became my new home so I spent a lot of time in this confession box and it became like I had timeshare there I had frequent flyer miles the confession box and so while it's certain the confession box I think about questions how to think about things that that I needed answers for I think about for example one day the priest told us that there is a bottle of wine that he takes and he pours it into a jug a silver jug and he puts the silver jug on the altar and there's a bag of bread that he opens and he puts the bread into a silver bowl and it takes these two things and he holds them up in the course of the church service and this is called communion and the wine that we saw in the bottle that was bought from a shop suddenly turns into the real blood of Jesus and the bread daddy bought from a shop turns into the real body of Jesus so the bread suddenly somehow changed into flesh and this water or this one it was mixed with vinegar somehow turned into real blood and so for me this was terrifying and I just think how would people want to go to a church where they're going to learn to be vampires and and cannibals they're going to be cannibalistic and we're going to be eating human flesh living in a drinking blood of a human this just scared me and terrified me so when I was asked later in as I grew older and I did my first holy communion or I was ready now to take communion for the first time and go to confession for the first time I made sure I was nowhere to be seen I ran for the hills ad and one not to run to drink human blood and I definitely didn't want to eat human flesh even though they told me this is spiritual blood and spiritual flesh there was Jesus's blood and Jesus's flesh I still didn't want any part of it I wasn't going to buy into eating raw meat and eating in someone's blood in stool today and tell you what when I eat meat it has to be well well well done I don't want to see any blood so one thing the Catholic Church that really well for me is teach me to eat my meat well cooked and by the way I don't eat much meat meat is not good for you can eat it but eat it in moderation so as the years went by the priests realized that I was going to be a problem child and they realized that this child is not going to get it he's going to ask question he's going to be rebellious his whole life when it comes to theological issues and so what happened is what did the priest said I've got an idea for this child he's going to become an altar boy now an altar boy means I serve in the church as a baby priest in a way so what I do is I help her whenever there's a church service I help prepare the altar and pour the wine into the the silver chalice I take the bread out of the packet and put it into the silver plate put that on the altar sometimes during the service you'd have to ring a bell you'd be you'd be basically helping the priest and whatever he needs to be done during the service and so this was my new job I became like a little mini priest mini me and so I have a special outfit which looked strangely and a very similar to this but it was a gray one used to have a big rosary around my neck and I would go and I lack the rituals but I didn't like what was being preached I like the idea that you needed to be committed that you need to do things at a certain time in a certain way every single week I didn't like what was being taught because I just found there was no evidence word no one was explaining anything to me they were just saying this is the way it's done and this is the way it will continue to be done so for years I continued as an altar boy in the church I really believed in what I was following and I thought this is definitely you know something that I enjoy doing something definitely I would like to learn more about but I had a problem with the doctrines or the lessons that were being taught now in around about seven or eight years old a headless dream and in this dream it was a reoccurring dream because I had it many times over and over and over and our sciences have done a study on people who have reoccurring dreams and we find that many people have reoccurring dreams they say that people who wake up just be before REM sleep or after REM sleep when you go into your next sleep cycle these are the people who are most likely to have reoccurring dreams whatever the scientific purpose might be or the scientific reason might be for free recurring dreams I'm not sure but in this dream that I had this reoccurring dream that had many many times as a young boy I used to have this dream that I was being I was floating and many people have dreams of flying or floating and have that experience you know what it feels like a very strange feeling but in this dream I dreamt that I was floating up through different layers of heavens and to me I know there were heavens because they were beautiful and was nothing like I'd ever seen here some people say there are different levels or different layers of clouds whatever but to me I knew very very clearly from a young age that there were seven heavens and as I went through these seven heavens I could hear people singing and they're singing in a language all chanting in the language that never heard before and or dressed in white robes and all everyone looked so happy and so serene and they were chanting the same thing over and over and over again and I didn't know what it meant so I went to my priest the next day and I said to the priest of my church what is this dream about seven heavens undischarged and of course the reaction was boof on the back of the head we do not believe in seven heavens is only one heaven and so the whole way through life I had this idea that there were seven heavens and I had an idea that this chanting that I heard had some type of meaning so I asked a couple of other people from other denominations of course say they said the same thing within Christendom there's only one heaven and I try to find out what the meaning was I spoke to a woman who knew Latin in much and I said - what does this lalalalala mean and she said well she has no idea but it might be lesson or it might be Aramaic or it might be Greek she doesn't know what it is but I mustn't worry too much about that it's just the dream and leave it as a dream so I continue to live through my life and not worry about it and so I want you to find it in a way I want to define what this meant but I didn't worry too much about it I left it so this discharging the story and this layers of heaven I really wanted it really bothered me I really want you to have an answer for it but not to the extent where I gave up everything else to in search of the answer for this so it always it remainder that back of my mind now as I got older and I went to school left that left the Catholic school and went to into a normal secular school with normal secular teaching I found for the first time that I understood what was going on in the world and so I started to look at politics now I come from South Africa and so politics is a very important part of our lives and a very important part of our upbringing now I never knew there was any difference to me to anybody else because of the color of my skin or pigmentation was only as I got older and I remember one day sitting at the bottom of my garden and I watched the ants moving from one nest to the other and I saw little red ants and the black hands they were fighting with each other and I think it was because they were fighting over food or maybe they're raiding each other's nests or whatever the reason I don't know and the lady who looked after me the lady who care was my caretaker and looked after me my parents weren't around she was an African woman a Zulu speaking woman from country and she pointed at these ants and she said to me this is what's happening in our country and I looked at her quite vaguely like what do you mean about this he said the black hands and the red ants like the black people and the white people in this country and there's a Warren is a fat going and I was shocked and I said but why are they fighting and she said to me because of the color of the skin and I couldn't get in I didn't understand I thought how can people fight because of the color of their skin now I'm going to go into more depth about my political understandings and how politics had such a role to play in my reversion or conversion from Christianity and inshallah in the next episode we'll continue to look at my reversion and hard-to-place and looking more in-depth at how I can apply to maybe even you so you can think about how you can be a better Muslim insha Allah but I'll give you a quick recap grew up in a family that allowed me to go to Catholic school to start with and probably was a good idea because it gave me some basic routing and Islam and helped me to understand that there's only one God even though the Christian Church was trying to tell me there was a Trinity or more than one God I knew from a young age there can only be one God so one good thing that came from seeing me to a Christian school is that I started to see truth from error so even though they were teaching me doctrines it were the church head I already understood from a very young age that there was only one God but anyway that didn't stop me asking very difficult questions to the people around me at that time like did Adam head of a bellybutton why is it that we follow the the teachings of the church and poor people priests and nuns or priests and sisters when they're not really our biological sisters or biological fathers so many questions that came up remember our wells I spoke about having a dream about the seven heavens with this chanting that sounded like lalalalala and no one could give me any answers for them at that time and then also spoke a little bit about how I started to see what was going on politically in the world at that time now growing up in South Africa I understood for the first time there was a difference between the pigmentation of people skin and I couldn't understand why I was like that so from a very young age I became an activist if you want and I try to fight for the rights of the people of all people regardless of what color your skin was and so at a very young age about 12 13 years old I started getting involved in the underground movements in my country and the underground movement I'm talking about is the African National Congress or ANC I became a member of the South African Communist Party at a very young age even though I was a Christian and began to see that there was a need for people to do something about what was happening in our country and so from a very young age I was labeled as a leftist and I was people used to say you know you forgot your own culture you don't know what your culture is and isolate people but if my culture goes against the beliefs that I believe then in my culture has to lose out so then my culture has to lose art and so wherever there's a conflict between what my beliefs were and what my culture said my culture had to give away for the truth of the belief and so I found their truth even till today but we'll keep that for a later stage but what is important that I learned to this young age is that every human being was created by God and God does not make mistakes so if God wanted me to be born into a Greek family I would have been born into a Greek family if he wanted me to be born into a Jewish family I'd have been born into a Jewish family if he wanted me to be born into a Italian family I've been born into Italian family so I understood this world this is the second lesson I learned very very young was that everything is in the control and in the hands of God God has everything everything is preordained everything is predestined and many people are afraid of this word predestined but all that means is that there is a great plan and master plan for your life it doesn't mean that you because you were born a Hindu that you remained a Hindu your whole life this is where you started this is your starting block this is what was given to you however you need to progress you need to move further one of the greatest lessons and love is to know that you need to search for the truth and that the truth will set you free where you look for the truth maybe the problem you see some of us look for truth in the wrong places but let me get back to the topic at hand and I'll bring that in inshallah later in the series so politically I started to have a look at what was going on in because I saw what was going on politically in my country and the atrocities and the unbalance and the injustice I started to find a problem the same thing happening within the churches for example the church I went to was only for white people and only white people were permitted to enter the church and so I saw how can you be preached from the Bible it says that everybody is one brother and we all created from one God and then had prejudice or racism because of somebody's pigmentation of their skin and so I felt willing to try and find a right way of teaching people what the Bible said and so I started reading more about the Bible but at this point I wouldn't call myself a practicing Christian all I would say at this point in my life is I found religion interesting and I found it that I enjoyed the rituals and the activities that were involved in the church but not to an extent that I would call myself actually a Christian I wasn't a person who really followed the Bible I just found it interesting so what happened in by the time I was 13 years old I was away on holiday at one of the coastal towns in my country which is beautiful we have a beautiful coastline and I learned to surf from a very very young age so I one of those guys with the with the surfboard under his arm in there running along the beach looking for a perfect wave if that was me and so at the age of 13 I used to hand a lot of time in the water and one of my very close friends hem and I used to go down surfing in the afternoons and one day we finished up very late so we finished up at about 3 or 4 or maybe even 5 o'clock in the evening from surfing and when we came onto the shore we heard these people playing guitars and singing and they were sitting in a circle so he went up in me like what are you guys doing and they said no they one family that had come down to the coast and there were Christians and they were just singing some praises to God now this was very interesting to me because I'd never heard anyone say used the word praises to God in a sentence I see in the church I came from we were very very strict and very very traditional and so I listened to these people and they said well you can come sit with us they're having having a barbecue on the beach a bride's we call it in our country and they're cooking meat and they gave us some food to eat and they gave us something to drink and we were talking and discussing things and they said you know what you need in your life and we said what they said you need to become a Christian you need to have Jesus in your life so I said somebody but I do have Jesus in my life and they said no no you need to make a commitment you have to say these few words and if you say these few words then you'll be guaranteed a ticket into heaven no matter what you do in the future no matter what you've done in the past no matter what you done in the present it will make no difference because if you say these few words you'll have a ticket that would guarantee you citizenship in heaven one day now thought wow the church that I come from the Catholic Church if I died without saying a confession to the priest I'm going to go to hell because that's what the priest told me here I've got a nice easy way out all I have to do is say these few words and I'm guaranteed no matter what I do in the past no matter what I do in the present no matter what I do in the future my sins are forgiven and I have absolutely no problem I have a guaranteed place in heaven so the while this is cool so I said yeah yeah sign me up I'll give me the pen I got my opinion let's sign the contract and I'm quite happy to go and so I did so when I went back to my family and I said to him guess what happened I've just been guaranteed a place in heaven what do you think their reaction was the reaction was what you've been speaking to these insane born-again Christian people and they were very upset about my parents were upset my father was upset my mother was upset in fact the whole family were in tears when I'm sure if we were in America at the time they probably would have had tortures and they would have had picket picks and I'd be running down to set these people on fire but in South Africa so we don't do things as extreme as that and so when we when they eventually found these people on the beach they said how can you do this to our child and put these nonsense ideas into his head and you know what do you think you're doing and so they they apologized and they said well they're just doing what they believed they were told to do but there was something about this that really attracted me and so when I went back to to our city where we came from I lost my parents if I could go on a spiritual journey I said to him I wanted to have a look at other religions because the first time I come across any other religion outside of the Catholic Church and so I started my spiritual journey but my parents said there was one condition I had to take a chaperone with me somebody had to come with me to make sure that wasn't brainwashed like I had been the first time with these these guys on on the on the beach playing their guitars so the first church I went to was a very interesting church and this was the total opposite to the Catholic Church when I walked into this church as I started coming into the entrance to the door I could hear people singing and playing music and it was electric guitars playing and drums playing and organs playing and pianos playing and people with tambourines and girls singing and men singing all together oh wow this is like a Christian discotheque although this is going to be fun they're going to have all sorts of fun in this place when you walked in that's all these people swaying backwards and forwards and jumping around and speaking in languages which is later found out to be tongues which is supposedly a spiritual language that only certain people in the world can receive and so I thought while this is very interesting but I didn't really get attracted by the music strange enough I didn't really get attracted by the sounds of all the different instruments playing but I did get attracted by who was standing on the stage whoa there on the stage with these girls all these young girls half-naked girls you know these shorts on in these open tops a little while this is a church you can hear you go to church and you get all these these things to see and I mean I didn't realize at that time that this was actually a distraction this would actually pull you away from what you should be doing and so I went to the church other while this is a good reason to go to church if this is what I'm going to see in the church and strangely somewhere along the line I think al our new that my intention was wrong and so he put this inside of me to stay away from this church and so I never went back to that church again and my brother asked me who was a was five years older me why don't you want to go back to the church and I said I don't know something inside me tells me not to go back there and I think it was the distractions the distractions from all these young girls and the mixing of all the people together so I continued going each week to a different church from one church to the next other this one was too conservative or the other Church there was too much happening or this one had too much music or this one had too many people scantily dressed whatever the reason was I went from church to church and this went on for a good part of the year so after this voyage that I went on and I'm looking for a places to find a home in somewhere that I'd say well this is going to be my new spiritual haven this is going to be my church I came across a group of people that were going to go on a camp soon somebody through my school said listen that church is going to have a camp and they're going away for two weeks in the December holidays now in South Africa are longer school holidays are in December because that's our summer and in December's our summer and it's really really hot so they give us off like almost a month or maybe a month and a half we have all form school so he went on this church camp and on this church camp they had little courses and you could learn to the abseiling you could do whitewater rafting you could do all sorts of activities but it also had lessons and every night you had to go to this Chapel the chapel was open or this church was open from about three o'clock in the afternoon and you were there until about Hoppus 5:00 and they had or teaching and the one day I was sitting in this church and this church was beautiful it was made of the whole church was made of glass so you could see everything that was happening on the outside and in the front of the church were the priesthood it was a backdrop of a beautiful river flowing and I had these willow trees that hung over the river and you could see in the late afternoon by 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon the swallows would fly down and swoop down and pick up a little insects it were any other the waters edge and so this was a beautiful setting it was the most romantic setting that you could imagine was beautiful it made me feel clean it made me feel comfortable it made me feel at ease and so at this time I was about 14 or 15 years old already and so this was a beautiful setting and I thought wow this is so amazing and I remember seeing the mist starting to come up off the water and how everything was just absolutely serene and perfect and I sat there and I felt as calmness come over me a priest walked in and he stood in the front and he started to talk and the words that he started to speak really seem to get through to me now when we have the short break when we get back I'll tell you what he said Wow bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim assalam alaykum wa rahmatullah wa barakatu welcome back and I was talking the earlier part on how our aversion to all my conversion to Christianity took place and I was saying how this I was in this church it was made of glass how everything was perfect the scenery was perfect the willow trees were hanging over the river the river was running bar the birds were swooping that was absolutely beautiful the Sun was on its way down so that everything looked as perfectly red color was absolutely the most perfect scene I've ever seen and then came this priest and he stood in front of everybody and he started to talk and everything he said I hang on every word he said and he said if you were to die today and he was talking to everybody that was there if you had to die today and God were to say to you why should I let you into a my heaven what would you say and so I thought about what I would say and the priest turned to me and he said to me what would you say boy what would you say and I said well I would say that I try to do good and I try to do what is right and I hope that all my good actions overwork my bad actions or all the bad things that I did and he said there wouldn't be enough no guarantee you would get into heaven even if you did all the good deeds in the world even if you never send once in your life if you died without saying these magic words that I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior you're going to hell and all the while that's a bit rough and he said no that's the way it is anyway I was caught up in the motion and it's caught up in the feeling I thought well you know this is probably the right thing to do and so what I did is I stood up there and I said yes I want to become a Christian because I didn't want to go to hell I knew from the beginning from a little boy I didn't want to go to hell and I knew I wanted to go to heaven that I knew from day one so I became a Christian in that day I became a born-again Christian and so there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted this I no doubt in my mind that I want you to be a Christian and so what happened is the priest said to me listen you need to read this book and he gave me a Bible and I started to read this book and it was fascinating I started in the book of Genesis and I couldn't put it down I just keep reading more and more and more really interesting book you know what was fascinating about the Bible to me it was the one of the nicest theory books I've ever read and that's why I can see why it's such a best-seller you see because a good story book should have a good introduction it should have a good body and it should have a good ending now this book was there to captivate you to hold you and maybe there was problems that I had many right in the beginning I found there were inconsistencies and there were errors and there were problems but there's a story book very very good fantastic stories stories about battles stories about fathers and sons turning on each other and killing each other how mother and daughter turned on each other how father slept with daughter all these strange thing it was like watching Days of Our Lives or or one of these soap operas that you watch on television or I read this book and it was loud was fascinating was like an adventure story but yes the morals were a bit dubious and yes the stories were a bit strange but it did captivate me and I did read it and then very soon I became the chairman of the student Christian Association and I used to start teaching people and lecture people about how to be a stronger Christian how to be a better Christian I became an evangelist which meant I used to stand on street corners giving out books about how to become a Christian I really believed in Christianity I was totally committed I was involved with the African National Congress ANC and I was a Christian and I was very involved in the Christian munity in the African National Congress and as I started practicing my Christianity more and was involved in politics more I had a problem with the separation of the races and so I started a church when I still had me I was in a past or anything I was little schoolgirl we're trying to bring different denominations and different races together so we could have groups to discussions together and see what problems they were with say the black race to the Indian race to the white race one day a friend of mine asked me to come to his church and I went to this church and was the seventh-day Adventist Church now the difference between the seventh-day Adventist Church and the Baptist Church is this the Baptist Church believed that the only way to get to heaven is by saying these magic words that I accept Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior sym day Adventist Church believed that you need to keep the Ten Commandments as well as say those words now there was a problem because I leaned more towards obeying the law and knowing that there has to be some type of consequence for your actions so I became a dual citizenship person I had citizenship in the Baptist Church and I had citizenship in the seventh-day Adventist Church nice thing about this is actually didn't have any problems with it with my with my day to day life because seventh-day adventists went to church on a Saturday and the Baptist Church we went to church on a Sunday so I could go Saturday and Sunday so this shows my commitment I really was committed to the Bible recommitted to the understanding as much as possible about Christianity I did every course I did Master laugh I did the ee3 these those who are Christians will know exactly what I'm talking about when I talk about these programs this is why I was still at school I got involved in outreach work at admission rework on the holidays I was really committed to Christendom I loved God I love God with all my heart and I really believed that God was the one and only and only only one who could control my life and and lead my life in a way that would be successful for me and so as the years went by I decided that the logical thing for me to do was to go and study theology when I finished school and so I had jobs and I worked in and I would go and study for a few years and then come back and work again and study for a few years because I paid my own way as I went along and I studied to different universities and different colleges and different facilities and wherever I could I study it as much as possible for about a 12 year period I studied Christian theology during this time I came across many Muslims and some of the Muslims I came across were people that I thought were oppressed in other words I meet woman I'd say you know you don't have to be pressed anymore you can be free you don't have to wear those clothes you don't have to be downtrodden you don't have to let your husband control Ian obviously I had no idea what I was talking about and then I'd meet young boys and especially act 12 11 12 years old now Satan you need to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you need to become a Christian so I go stand outside mosque so I'd stand at the entrance where children were going to mosque and try and preach them so I was very determined to bring Muslims to Christianity obviously I never had any results but I tried I'd go to the Hindu temples and I do the same things at Hindu temples I go everywhere and I'd preach to people and try bring people to Christianity now this time I was a pastor and I had a church that I was involved with ours a minister of notes and the Methodist Church which means I would go talk at different places I'd be sent out anywhere I went wherever they wanted me to go and I go in and preach there I was also a lay pastor and youth pastor and the Baptist Church in the town that I grew up in and I was a deacon in the Dutch Reformed Church in here CAC as we call it in our country and I was a missionary so I was involved you can see in many different ways I did sermons I did lessons I did teaching and a number of places and a number of our facilities as you go to work at schools I'd go talk at all sorts of places wherever it was the time came where I had to go do my national service in my country I refused to do national service I was a religious objected and believed and killing people they especially because there was a racist regime that was in control of my country and I wasn't going to shoot somebody or kill somebody because my government told me to because I didn't believe in the government that I had then but anyway eventually I was forced to go do my two years national service and I took my two years national service and during my two years national service I served in the military as a chaplain which means I was a spiritual guard or spiritual helper as a pastor or a priest in the military so I would help people in need so I was a Christian chaplain in the military and I would help people they were in need or had any advice that they needed especially those who are under stress and those who were sick or had been hurt and confrontation or military operations so I was deeply committed there was no doubt none of our people would have doubted that I was a Christian I was deeply committed to Christianity a deeply believed in everything however I began to see cracks and the cracks started to show from the day I became a Christian because I found verses in the Bible that just didn't seem to make sense to me verses that seem to jump out at you and so show me clearly that Jesus could not be who we claimed them to be that the ten commandments are only meant for people of the Old Testament but they were also meant for the people of the New Testament and that the Prophet said was spoken about all came with exactly the same message and so as I started reading more and more of the Bible I found myself becoming more and more conservative I found that I wanted a more traditional form of Christianity another Christianity that just said once saved always saved I believe for example that what was the points of Jesus's death on the cross that Jesus's death on the cross actually do anything you see for me it meant that anything that meant is that I wouldn't have to go to a temple and make a sacrifice of an animal but I was still responsible for my sin I still had to confess my sin I still had to make restitution for what I've done wrong so what was the point of Jesus's death on the cross so the more I started looking into the Bible law problems I started to find that why would Jesus need to die on the cross what was the purpose there was no purpose you see when you commit a sin you're guilty of that sin so no matter how much blood Jesus died for your sins fall you're still guilty for that sin somebody still has to pay the price now the Christian will say the price was paid by Christ and so as I started looking deeper and deeper into the Bible the more I discovered that many of these doctrines adoptions that could not possibly be one day as I got further and further into my studies and became more and more dubious or doubted more and more what I found in the Bible I was asked to do a sermon and the sermon that I was given was on the topic of male-female relations this was to be the sermon that would change my life forever because in preparation of the sermon I was to find out what it really means to be a Christian and what it really means to be somebody who searches for the truth and let's the truth set them free you see for me as I prepared this talk and as I started to prepare the sermon it was going to change me and shake me at to the very very core now today we have come to the end of this program and we don't have enough time to go into the next part but inshallah in the next part of the series we're going to look at what was it that I had to delay this talk on and what was that that shook me to my core of my foundation what was it that changed me that made me realize that I had to change it made me realize that there was a need to find truth and also the truth not the truth it could be changed as the weeks and the days went by by the truth that would hold true for years to come they would be so strong they would prevent me from going to the left of the right by keeping on the straight path the middle path the path of truth the part of Islam so inshallah when we meet again we'll get to the crucial part of this too bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim assalam alaykum wa rahmatullah wa barakato lila illallah muhammadur rasulullah I declare that there is no other God worthy of worship other than Allah and that the Prophet Muhammad is the final Messenger of Allah so we've been talking in the last two episodes and this is the third one in the series of my transition from missionary to Muslim and if you haven't been able to see the first two perhaps you can go to peace TV online and have a look in you may be able to see some of the previous episodes there but if you have been watching then you'll know where we are but did give you a quick recap I grew up in a Christian family went to Christian school became a born-again Christian got very very involved in the church from a very young age 12 years of my life has been studying the Bible and studying and different books of the Bible setting different doctrines within the Bible was involved in many missionary organizations missionary work charity work and so I was really really deeply committed to the church but the catalyst came when I was asked to do a talk for a group of youth and the group of youth was about I would say about 3,000 people they were expected at this youth conference and the youth conference was held and the subject matter that was given to me was male-female relations how far should we go so what they actually wanted me to do is to go and have a look to the Bible and find out how FAR's should boys and girls go when they date each other you see in Christendom boys and girls are loud today to get to know each other hold hands shall they be allowed to be hold hands kiss hug touch each other what will half are there to go or maybe they need a whole little pinky fingers together what is it that they are allowed to do what is it that they're not allowed to do when it comes to dating and so as I prepared my talk and I started doing it I took a piece of paper and I started to write down the topic and I wrote on a piece of paper I wrote their male-female relations and I picked up my Bible and I started reading through it try to find a verse that said anything about male-female relations several hours went past and my bank piece of paper that was in front of me was still blank I found no way that it said male and female relations in other words dating getting to know each other engagements was permitted in the way that we understand it in the church today so the world let me have a look what other religions have to say so I took out another book called the bhagavad-gita which is a Hindu scripture which is more commonly used amongst the hare Krishna movement or International Society of Krishna consciousness they use it more and I read through it and found the same problem and one of the problems that I found it was because one minute one of the gods was a male in the next minute one of the gods was a female the same God so though well this book is not going to be able to use to me I put it down then I went to the Book of Mormon which is the Mormon buck and I went through more mini books and eventually I found that I had whole stack of books in very few or if any had anything to do with male-female relations but behind me at the back of me was a bookcase and on this bookcase at the bottom left hand bottom right hand corner of the bookcase was a white book quite a thick white book and this white book was still wrapped in plastic which means I never opened it on the side of it I had written the Holy Quran and so I thought well let me have a look what this book says so I picked up this book and I opened it I don't know what I'm gonna be able to find in this book because I don't know my way around it so I looked at the index another well let me look at relationships and there was no such thing under relationships so then I looked the under the other section looked at mail and I started reading all the verses they had to do with mail now I looked at the word female looked at all the verses that had to do with female and what I found was actually quite amazing first thing I must be terribly honest when I talk about Quran will not open this book this is basically the exactly the same book that I have here now the only difference it had a white cover on this one has a green cover when I opened this book something fascinating took place I didn't understand anything in it now you might be surprised for me to say that but you see what I said to you in series 1 in the series of this series that I'm doing the episode 1 of the series that I'm doing I said in episode 1 that what I liked about the barbers when you open it was like a typical story book it had a nice beginning a nice middle and a nice end the Quran doesn't have that the Quran is a straightforward book it tells you exactly how to get from point A to B the fastest way possible you see the Bible when you pick up the Bible it says for example if I had to tell you how to get to the shop or how to go to a restaurant in your town I will tell you this would be the Bible way I would say to you you go about 15 kilometres along the road in a southeasterly direction and you'll see a shop on your left-hand side which has a sign it says they open 24 hours a day on the left-hand side you'll see a woman selling books don't worry about you keep going about and so it will give you a long long story on how to get there with lots of distractions along the way however when it comes to the Quran it gives you that direct route it will say go northeast 125 kilometres you'll see a sign saying open that's where we are and so what are what was very difficult for me to understand when reading the Quran was how blatant and how straightforward it was without any holding any punches it wasn't trying to give a softy approach it was giving that direct approach and so it was extremely difficult for me to read because it was so blatant it was like being punched in the face every single time I read a line someone who felt like I was up against a heavyweight boxer when I read the Bible it was like being against some child throwing a feather at me it wasn't hitting me it was just very very entertaining so when I read the Quran it was blatant it hit me it was straight into the face it directly hit me and I was scared of this book and so I put it down after I just said okay well I'm gonna look at his the male-female relationships and I'm not interested in he further this book is is actually quite scary I remember recently somebody asked me he said I would take the Quran but it hasn't got a lot to do with hell and punishment in it and I couldn't lie to the person and say some more a dozen so I said to them well it has a lot more do's and dont's in it and I don't know if that makes any sense to you but next time you read the Quran see how many dudes it has it has a lot more do's then don'ts and if you spend your time doing the do's you won't have time to do the don'ts so you have to say that's for something for you to join that's going off the subject again but one of the things that happened when I read the Quran is it had very very interesting information to tell me about male-female relations and so I started writing these things done then it also got me thinking about how things are in different Christian countries in the world for example let's look at Christian countries complaints in Muslim countries and so I started writing notes about this as well so the day came where I had to stand up before these three thousand odd boys and girls and they're all sitting in front of me some of them were talking some of them were treating gum something between gum some of them were reading books some of them were drawing some of them were fighting with each other you know our young people are and I looked at this crowd and looked down in the first row there were all these boys and girls sitting in front of me and something came over me something that I don't understand to this day something that I can't fully explain but I said something strange to this group of people and I said to them I want all the girls to move to the back and all the boys to sit in the front now remember I knew nothing about Islam I had never visited a mosque I don't know any of the traditions or the customs of Islam this was purely what happened to me I cannot explain why it happened it just happened and so I separated the two sexes now I didn't separate the two sexes because I thought the girls were lesser than the men and the men were more important I suddenly for the first time saw what I saw I actually saw what my eyes were seeing and while I was seeing was distractions and so I remember all the times that I had been a priest or preached as a pastor in the church or I had preached to groups of people how when I was preaching I look in the front row and there's these girls with their little skirts on or these woman with their little skirts on and how my mind would start wandering off about other things things that I shouldn't be thinking about how was thinking about last full thoughts and I thought to myself but I've been doing this while I've been preaching while I've been trying to teach the Word of God if the people in the audience only knew what was in my mind what I was thinking about how they would be disappointed with me and so for the first time when I stood in front of all these people and I separated them I realized that I was separating people for my own purity you yes it might be selfish yes people might think I'm being sexist yes it might people might think that that I'm a bad person by doing this but what am i doing it for I'm doing it to protect my own mind I'm doing it to protect myself from what from what would lead me naturally into sin because if you can stand there today well if you can sit at home today and say that you can sit in front of a group of people that are mixed mixed sexes together and not have those thoughts and not be tempted to look at the person sitting next to you that's the opposite sex or standard the pulpit and look down and not have temptation then there's two things are they wrong with you one is that you did or - you need to go see a psychiatrist because there's something seriously wrong with you because we all have that temptation and if you don't have this temptation you need to go see a doctor because there's something wrong with you all of us have these natural feelings and we need to make sure we don't put ourselves in these temptations so from this Thomas well the first time separated the sexes and so I put the men in front and the woman we have younger boys on the front and the younger girls behind and as I started teaching and I stood up on the pulpit and I was about to speak what came out of our mouths is Islam has everything to offer Christianity but Christianity has nothing to offer Islam when I have made that statement I realized what I had said and I suddenly realized that for the first time I had spoken a truth that even I didn't fully comprehend and so a stuck what I'd said I'd really made the statement I already said that it christianity has nothing to offer Islam and Islam has everything off to offer Christianity what do I mean by that and it shocked me to my core that I had said something that I had not prepared nothing that I had thoughts of saying you see intentionally I thought what is Christianity to offer Islam but when I stood up there I realized we have nothing to offer Islam the Christianity has nothing to offer Islam and that Islam is everything what is Islam have to offer Christianity and I started to talk to the byung people and I said to them look at the way the male and female relations are in Islam compared to Christianity we date we meet we sleep around and we use the person and we move on to the next one and eight I mean meets and you sleep around and we move on to the next person the first time a Muslim boy and a Muslim girl meet each other is when they meet each other to decide if they're going to get married or not and this was done with perón the chaperone will leave them alone for a while and but he'll sit in earshot so you can hear then you'll come back and then the decision will be made whether to be married or not this marriage is now consecrated it's protected by God God is now the one who is in control and protects this marriage so if the marriage is to agree to go through then the marriage will take place it is blessed it's not getting to know each other there's no sleeping around or anything like that this is a beautiful marriage blessed by Allah blessed by God and I said look at crime and punishment in our country crime and punishment you just get a tap on the hand for if you do something and in Islamic state there's a very high penalty so those penalty is is there to prevent people from doing the crumbs so there is none of this crime around what about how we treat our parents and our families how do we look after the society the retirement villages and so I went off the point off the point subject after subject topic off the topic showing how Islam and Christianity comparing the two and how everything was different how Islam was so much better than Christianity and yet we want to go to Muslims and say here take Christianity this is what we want to give you and what we have is use second hand no good stuff yet Islam comes with the best the nicest offers it to Christianity so how do we possibly think that Christians can offer Islam anything what Christianity offers Islam is nothing and compared to what Islam has to offer Christianity and so when I'd finish this talk you can imagine the reaction the first reaction was this guy is being possessed he's there's a demon that's taking over he needs to take some time off and so what happened is my church said to me the congregation said to me and many of my friends said to me you need to take some time off so we're going to take a short break and when we get back from a short break I will tell you what happened next working this creepy bismillah r-rahman r-rahim assalam alaykum wa rahmatullah wa barakatu welcome back and we were talking about my final days of Christendom so it came to a point where the church said I need to take some time off that maybe I was possessed maybe I was doubting my faith or whatever so I took a year off and during this year that I had taken off from from Christianity my brother and myself my step-brother well my brother in Islam is so he came with me and we went and we lived on the coast near a coaster a closed tool area and a close to town and while we were living in this coastal town I did a lot of soul-searching a lot of thinking right I do not pick up the crime I don't know why I said the things that I said but I just understood by what I understood by Islam Muslims what I'd seen in Muslims that's what I / - a board across not so much what I'd read in the chrome but its head in the back of my mind and I knew I didn't want to become a Muslim I thought no I'd already become a Muslim but they cannot go to Muslims and try and give them something which they've got better than we have that's what I understood as a Christian and so this during this year it bugged me alot and I thought about it and I thought well maybe I must just like not think about it memorize just ignore everything that I said and go back to Christianity can say yes I'm sorry what I said was wrong yes maybe they are living a better people maybe they have better rules maybe they have better regulations but they don't have Christ so maybe that's the way I should just go back and forget about it so during this year when I was thinking my brother used to be fascinated with animals and plants and birds and fish and our house used to be like a zoo we had every animal you can imagine we had cats all over the place we had birds we had fish everything and all of these things needed to be fed so what we did it we used to do a pilgrimage once every two weeks into the city and that was about 100 kilometers away it will add 7080 miles away so we would have to travel about an hour into the town and we used to go to the shop we would buy food for the animals now the shop that we went to was owned by this bar two sisters and we'd go into the shop memory bar whatever and every time we went into the shop this woman would say to me she said sir before you leave I just want to tell you one thing and I say what and she'd say there is only one God and so I'd look at her and idler okay whatever walk off every time I came into the shop the same thing sir before you leave I want to tell you one thing there's only one God again and again and again should tell you this was quite used upset me I think yeah this woman she's crazy in fact her nickname became one God so every time I take my brother through we'd go into the shop and I said Sam listen I'll be back just now come fetch at us now from one God and that was her nickname eventually one day around February of 2002 of this voyage backwards and forwards about a year of theirs shop I went into a shop and she said the same statement again said listen I want to tell you something I said yes I know there was only one god I said to listen what religion are you because I thought she must be a Christian or something maybe she's a job witness maybe she's a Mormon maybe she's a seven-day advances I don't know what religion she was and I thought she's trying to get me to come back on the straight path again and she looks at me and she said didn't you know I'm a Muslim I said what a Muslim he said yes I said ah that sums up no wonder you keep on with this one God one God thing the whole time so I walked out of a shop and I was quite upset a typical Muslim they just blown up a building now they want to convert people to Islam and so I bought you know September the 11th had to be the Muslims they did it had to be and now this woman wants to now convert me to a terrorist religion ha how she's crazy so I just thought oh I'm never going to speak to this woman again said to my brother we're never going back to that shop again this woman's crazy if you had told me I was going to a shop where they were supporting terrorism and never have gone to the shop so as I walked out of the shop we were going back to the client as we gains back to the class system I rather know there's somewhere else I would like to go to there's a man that I used to debates against when I was very young Christian stall and his name was Ahmed Deedat and he has an organization called the Islamic propagation centre I want to go to that place and I want to tell him what for I want to tell him what his religion stands where I want to tell him that his religion is a terrorist group tell him all the stuff and I want to go see him I want to go I haven't seen him for years I want to go speak to this man very arrogantly I walked off we were both marching down the road my brother like not knowing what was going on following behind me but he knew that whatever I said he sort of followed and he knew that like there must be some wisdom what I was going to go and do so as we walk down the road and we got closer and closer to this place to the Islamic propagation centre South Africa I was about to enter this building and push the button to go to the third floor or the fourth floor of this building I felt a calmness coming over me one day I couldn't really explain just a strange calmness coming over me each floor that we went up the next floor to the next floor to the next floor I fell to karma and karma and karma by the time we got to the fourth floor that anger that a head had subdued and I felt more logic coming into me so otherwise I'd have been very aggressive when I got there I felt there was much more logic inside my brain I was going to do it speak from a much calmer place so when we got to the fourth floor I went into the reception area and I said can I speak to ask mediate or a MIDI that is a column in South Africa and they said well he's not here at the moment okay when I got there they said the an idea that had been quite sick and hadn't been inand he's at home he's ill he's been taken ill so he's no longer our PCR but if you want to talk to somebody there's a man by the name of Ford Hendrix and he'll be quite happy to speak to you so my brother myself I went into the room where Ford Hendrix was and he began talking to us and I said to him like you know what you guys you claim to be a religion of peace but you go flower planes into buildings and so he explains to me and he said to me listen you know like in Christianity you had Jim Jones yeah David Koresh you had all these crazy people in Christianity that did all these atrocities you had elf Hitler was a Christian yet all these people that claimed to be Christians and murdered so many people we had Stalin and all these other crazy people in Christianity now we as Muslims don't believe that all Christians are like we know that only a small percentage of Christians did that we know that all Christians and agree with the Second World War we know that Christians didn't agree with the first world war but now you can't some paint the whole of Islam because of one or two or three or ten or twenty terrorists that have done these but even if there were a hundred thousand of them you can't blame the whole of Islam folders so the world this actually makes sense he sat and he showed me a story by story and how stories that make the news have been blown out of proportion he explained for example that if a Muslim man had to rob a person it would be on the news tomorrow it was a Muslim man Rob's person but if a Christian murders and kills and main somebody in in a city it says John Smith killed the person it doesn't say a Christian and he showed me how the media had purposely twisted everything to make Islam the new enemy how Islam had become the new KGB had become the new Russia and how before Russia it was the Germans and before there were Germans that had been somebody else always had to be a bad guy and at this point in time Islam was going to be the religion it is the bad guy until the next one came along and they would now be the bad guy so I understood that I thought okay well this makes sense then we went through verse and chapter of the crime where he started to show me the first chapter of the Quran and he picked up the first chapter of the Quran in he opened he said listen I want you to have a look the first chapter of the Quran says and so I opened the first chapter of the Quran and in the first chapter of the Quran it says in the name of Allah the most gracious the most merciful and I read another while that is that is amazing because what it actually says as it says I'm not introducing you to who this book is in the name of Allah the most gracious the most merciful I'm going to introduce you to the Creator so I said well this word Allah I've got a problem with this word Allah who is Allah why don't you just call him God and he said well God is Allah Allah and God are the same you see the name God and name Allah I mean the same thing they just translation so it's the Arabic word or the Arabic word for Lord or God and we say Allah and explains me how difficult the word God is in English for example you can have many gods you can have demigods you can have female gods you can have male gods you can have all different types of gods sometimes when we say god we actually don't know what somebody is saying when they say that they said where the word Allah it's only one name can have other only God's name can be Allah a little while that is amazing and he said to me the Quran is like a home page you know if you go on the internet and you open the Quran the first chapter of the Quran surah fatiha it's like the opening chapter of the Quran is like the home page if you busy browsing on the internet and you come across the home page you get that's the basic it tells you everything that you're going to find or you should tell you everything that you going to find and rest of the book and so I started reading off surah al-fatiha and I said you as well if this is what the first chapter is going to tell me about the rest of book this is going to be an interesting book this is the teaser this is the thing that gets you this is the eduard placement for the rest of the book and hold if a lie is that clear but if god is dead clever and that was to make sure that the first page is the page it's going to catch you and keep you it must be something to this book so it started getting me to think then we start looking at doctrines and so we argued for about 10 20 30 minutes 40 minutes 50 minutes backwards and forwards the Trinity does it exist doesn't it exist is Jesus God who isn't he God and he started showing me Paul and Charlotte showing me all these different writings and showed me the beauty of Islam now during this time my brother disappeared and I looked for my brother and I thought now where is he gone and then I looked for him he disappeared I went down the corridors trying to find him I came and I said to the guys like listen I know you guys are Muslims and we are Christians but did you by any chance throw my brother out the top story of the building sort of joking but sort of serious at the same time and they said no no no no he's probably in one of the rooms so I went around looked around and as I walked down one of the corridors I see him walking towards me and in his hand he has a yellow card like this and a big smile on his face and I said well where have you been have you been gone for like over a half an hour where have you been and he said I've got something to tell you I said what he said I've become a Muslim no how can you become a Muslim that they brainwashed you we came here to argue with these people now you come here with a yellow card in your hand and you say you're Muslim he said yeah I became a Muslim what those guys were saying what they said in that room what Ford Hendrix said to me it made sense and anything I could possibly do is take the Shahada and I said what is the Shahada so when we went back into the room where Ford Hendrix was with three of us sat there and he said to me the Shahada is when you say that there is no other god but God and that the Prophet Mohammed is the final Messenger of God I said well I personally I don't believe in this whole prophethood thing so I won't take that same pot but I agree with you in the first part in Ford Hendrix set me down he said let me explain to you the full details of what it is and he sat down and he explained to me step by step now immediately I did instead okay it's all clear to me now I'm going to become a Muslim it took a while longer because I wanted more information now I'm not going to give the secret away what was actually the key that turned me to accepting Islam in the next episode we're going to look what it was that actually turned the key and opened paradise the hope the way to me to realize that there is a way to paradise remember the right key fitting into the right lock will open the gates to paradise the most important thing in life is that you seek for the truth and if you seek for the truth the truth will set you free it's where you seek the truth that is important so seeker truth wired may be found so I was saying one of the difficult things for me is when you see what happened my brother had just embraced Islam and so when he embraced Islam he came towards me and he said to me listen I have become a Muslim and I was shocked I said how can you become a Muslim and he said to me you know you must think about what these words are important are said I understand them I understand the first part I've got no problem with that but the second part I have a problem with because I don't know who this person is who this Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him is that you people are talking about and so he went back into the office because now remember I've been in office those who following the last three episodes will know what's happening now but I was in offices of the Islamic propagation centre in South Africa and I was sitting in the office of Ford Hendricks and he was telling us about Islam and so while I was there my brother disappeared went to another room and he took the Shahada he became a Muslim and so I was sitting there arguing and arguing and arguing my points and so when I came into the office and we all sat down all three of us sat down again and we spoke for the Hendricks were smiling was so happy that my brother become a Muslim and he looked at me and he said to me listen what else you what answers do you need and Athol well if you can answer ten of these questions then I'll become a Muslim and so I asked these ten questions and answer them I said well if you give us of these next ten questions then I'll become a Muslim and he answered those ten questions and now he said well I said well you can also another ten questions they don't become a Muslim and so I knew I was never going to become a Muslim I was trying to find excuses so what happened then is he said let me tell you something I know you you're not going to ever answer a thousand of your questions you're still going to give me another thousand questions let me tell you something rather I'm going to tell you something now I'm going to tell you about the life of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him and so he started explaining however years this revelation was given to him he didn't distort it I didn't put his own words and he showed me that in the Quran is this consistency of language from the beginning of the Quran to the end of the Quran now imagine this book has been put to get mention you writing a book over 23 years and it's your own words don't you think there's going to be textual changes there's going to be rhythm changes is going to be style changes and I said some yeah there would be because it depends on how my mood was how I was feeling and he explained to me that none of this text has been changed so if it was written by men so don't you think it would be like the Bible where it changes from one character to the next and you see one character fighting with another character Paul fighting with Timothy Timothy fighting with Barnabas Barnabas fighting with this one and so you see that incorporated into their writing said none of that is in the Quran and he said how the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him lived the laugh of righteousness high as to how the people hated him because of what he did how people tried to prevent him from doing what he did how they bribed him and tried to push him away from telling the truth and he refused he just stuck firmly and so the more he described this person the more I found while this is the character that we could actually all emulate this is something that we as normal human beings near-net Allah and Muslims should emulate we should try and copy and so I continue to arguing and I started questioning and I said but what about all the wives and all these things and as I was in the middle of my topic my brother pulled me on my shoulder tapped me on my shoulder and he said listen stop talking and start listening so I looked at him and look at the look back in a little boy what is he know and he said no stop talking and start listening and I thought well okay let me listen what these guys here say because you know sometimes when we talk to people about Islam or somebody talks to you about Islam what do you do you sit there with a whole list of questions that you have pre planned before the topic is even begins maybe you've been to a Muslim debate or maybe you're going to attend one and so what you do the night before or the week before your rights had all these clever questions you think of questions that might be able to trap the person for example you might write a question that says as a Muslim as you as a Muslim what do you say about worshiping those who have died in other words say maybe a Saint someone who is very very pious person he's lived a very pious life and he dies can you pray to that person now if I say and a platform no you're not allowed to worship a pious person half the Muslim community are no longer going to listen to me we're going to say ha look at this person he doesn't respect those who have come before he doesn't respect the sacrifice I've done and the other half of the community if I say no you shouldn't will respect me so if I say yes half of them won't respect me if I say no half of them won't respect me so Christians are clever they come with these questions and they write these down and so they want to divide you so that people will not listen to you in the future now when people ask me a question by the way on a question like that I'll ask them what is the first thing that you say when you become a Muslim you say la ilaha il-allah isn't that what we say at the first part there is no other God worthy of worship other than Allah so the answer is simple I cannot change it I cannot add any other extras I cannot start worshiping Jesus I cannot pray to the Prophet ISA peace be upon him I cannot ask Abraham to do anything for me peace be upon him I can only go through Allah there is no other God worthy of worship there is another one that I can pray to another one I can bow to no one else I can give sacrifice to no one else I can get luck from no one else I can get hope from no one else I can find safety in other than Allah so the answer is clear from the Shahada it's clear there is none of the worthy of worship other than Allah so for me that's a very easy answer but this is what Christians come they come up with these questions and any arathi is done and they come with clever questions and what they do they're there to divide the Muslim community they're there to pull us apart from each other and so when I came into meetings with with Muslims always ahead for some amount of what I wanted to say and not of what they actually sang so when my brother said stop talking and start listening guess what happened the very next words out of the mouth of Ford Hendrix was and there are seven heavens and in these seven heavens and I stopped and thought wow any of those who heard the first part of the series will remember that I spoke about when I was about seven or eight years old I had this dream about seven heavens and everybody I went to and asked them about these seven heavens they said there is no such thing as only one heaven and we're not asked them about these words it will be enchanted they said no maybe it's a lesson or maybe it's Hebrew nobody knew what these words meant that I dreamt about and this was a dream that had many years over and over and over again so when I was young I had these dreams about these seven heavens which I had over and over and over again and here is this man out of the blue after my brother has said to me keep quiet and listen to what this man has to say stop talking and listen what does he say the very next words out of this man's mouth are there are seven heavens and he carried on talking about the seven heavens and I said wait wait just go back you said there are seven heavens and he said yeah there are seven heavens didn't you notice I said no and he told me about the layers of Heaven and Hell how they there are different rewards and punishments for people and I suddenly realized this makes sense not only had I dreamt about it but it makes sense how can Hitler if five minutes before he killed himself has to suddenly say I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior suddenly being exactly the same heaven as somebody who sacrificed the entire life who strived who lived in and did everything 24 hours a day to live a good righteous life a good pure life a good pious life and suddenly he will be in exactly the same reward exactly the same heaven this is impossible how can somebody who lived a pious life and but made one mistake at the end of his life suddenly go to the same hell as anyone else and so it didn't make sense me but here this man is telling me about the seven heavens I said some you know I had a dream about this a dream that I had over and over again and all the people who know me all the people in my family all my friends all know about this dream because they used to tell him about it and they all used to think I was crazy because of this dream that I used to tell them about and then I said to him I had there said to this world Hendrix I said then there was this other thing that happened in the stream and in this dream the sky was that sounded like something like this there were these people chanting they're all wearing white robes and they were saying la la la la la and he said oh you mean la ilaha illallah muhammadur rasulullah and I was shocked I was white I was pale I'm white now but as whiter than this and I was pale and I couldn't believe it and I said that is exactly what they said and I see my brother had come to me and he said he took a Shahada and he said he declared there is no other god but God and that the Prophet Muhammad is the final Messenger of God but he told me it in English I hadn't heard it in Arabic yet and when I heard this I said this is exactly what I heard when I was a child I had this dream over and over and over again of these people going through these different layers of heaven and they were charging the same thing lillah illallah muhammadur rasulullah now I know you're going to think straight away that this is a person who sits and goes to mosque and spins in circles no I'm not I don't believe in dreams and visions as being the answer to everything because they must be backed up with the Quran if you have a dream you have a vision or whatever it is the hadith the authentic hadith and the Quran must back it up you can't just go and now override everything is a I'm just going to listen to my dreams now when I explained that these dreams that I had remember I spoken the earlier besides in the series I said that scientists have now proved that REM after people go into deep REM rapid eye movement sleep that they have repetition dreams that's something that happens it seem that cannot explain it scientists cannot explain it but there's another type of dream that you have when you're outside of rim when you're outside of your rapid eye movement dream where people have dreams which are normally repetitive dreams they take place during the cycle and this time that this happens there's normally around the time of one o'clock in the morning two o'clock in the morning three o'clock in the morning now this is coincidental because this is the time that we are told is Muslims to wake up to pray our extra prayer and not another one of the five times prayer but an extra prayer and this is when we pray when we want Allah to show us something we want us to explain something we need to understand maybe something important maybe you want to get married or whatever and I as a child used to wake up many many times around that hour just wake up for an unknown reason and I used to pray and I used to say God if you there show me how can find you show me if I can find the right path because I don't want to walk the way I'm walking I want to find the truth I want to find a way that I can find how to be a proper Christian because I I saw what was going on the church as a Catholic I saw what was going on I thought this can't be this can't be the way all these strange things that we are doing all these strange sacrifices so I used to wake up in the middle of night and I'd say God if you're they show me the truth so insha'Allah when we come back from the break I'll continue talking about this working in this way be gazing ah bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim assalam alaykum wa rahmatullah wa barakatu welcome back to the second pot and before the break I spoke to her I realized as a young child did I needed to understand who God was and I used to wake up in the early hours of the morning and I used to pray that God would reveal himself to me and I was a very young person and I wanted this idea and I used to have these reoccurring dreams and I never understood that these reoccurring dreams were actually answers I had no idea I had no philosophy of Islam I had no theology of Islam I knew nothing about Islam so when this man told me for the Hedrick step the Shahada was lila lala mohammed ur rasoolallah and that there were seven layers of heaven this was confirmation to me without a shadow of that I had no doubts whatsoever I you nothing about the five pillars of Islam I did not know anything about the Quran I did not know anything about the teachings what was expected to be a Muslim what I was needed to sacrifice what I needed to give when he said to me there are seven heavens and he explained these words lyla illa Allah Muhammad Rasul Allah in Arabic not even English I said that's it I'm coming a Muslim right now and the guard looked at me and the men looked at me they were there my brother looks at everyone looks at me like but don't you want to know more I said no that is enough that is the confirmation I need because if it confirms what has been put in my mind from a child right through today it took 27 years 27 years from 7 years old 27 years later the words that were that I heard when our 7 years old were repeated to me and they're repeated me by humans there was no way I could argue there was no way I could say no that this is not possible and so that day I accepted that there is no other god but God and that the promise that the Prophet the promised prophet that was sent by God the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him is the final Messenger of God I accepted her later I hadn't explained why I had accepted that and so I looked at why we what is expected of you as a Muslim but one of the beautiful things I have discovered when I have looked into Islam when I started to look into the Quran is that many of us think that the Quran is full of don'ts and like I said before the crime is actually full of do's and if we spend more time doing the do's we won't have time to do the don'ts if we spend more time doing things that are Hollow we won't have time doing the things that are Haram now I have before me two books and then my country these two books are books said young people the study and these two books are books of how to do your driver's license and inside these books are different road maps they show you how you must drive what you Hamer's there are different traffic signs they have all different markings in here and they say listen when you come to a stop street you need to stop when you come to a Cal the stack yet there's no more turn if it says you must do a u-turn you must your u-turn if it says you must drive 100 kilometers are now 100 miles an hour you can only 500 miles an hour in my country and I'm sure it's like that in all the countries in the world we love these books because what does book guarantees is that if I learn and if I study these books and I follow all the guidelines and all the directions in here and I go write my test and I'll pass my test I get a little plastic card that says I have my driver's license and I can drive anyway and we want our independence we want to be free and the only way we can be free as we have these little plastic cards so for me I want you to be free and so by studying the Quran and be reverting to Islam I needed to do my driver's license you know what the past mark is in my country for driver's license you have to get 98 percent that means you have to know it that well that if you get in under 98 percent you cannot drive on our roads you have to have all these rules in your head but I noticed something about this book all the young people in my country can't wait to get this book when they're in high school they start studying this book already so they can get their driver's license they're not terrified of this book they're not scared of this book and they do not say to me I'm not going to follow this book because it's full of knows and don'ts but yet when I pick up this book and I say to somebody would you like to know about the crime they terrified of this book and they say I don't like the Quran it's too full of don'ts and it's too full of laws and regulations and it's going to take me so long to learn it yet when it comes to this book which gives you no hope no hope of salvation no hope for the future no hope for paradise people want to study that book so my challenge was to study this book and I started reading through this book and I found that the Quran was absolutely amazing it was a book that was so far more satisfying than a little plastic card that I could hold in my pocket that says I can drive on the roads this book showed me how to drive on the roads of life showed me how to take caution where I needed to take caution it showed me how I can be a true follower of God one of the things that I found as well when I speak to people about my conversion to Islam is that often say to them get a piece of paper and you can do it right now if you want take a pen and a piece of paper and draw a line down the piece of paper on one side right Islam and on the other side drive Christianity this is how easy it was for me to decide where the Islam was the road or Christianity was the road look at the person of Jesus Christ scrubbed in the Bible look at the Prophet ISA peace be upon him if we have a look at the Bible what does it say about this man it said that this man believed that there is only one God many times it says in the Bible says the following that Jesus said our Father which art in heaven he didn't say my father he didn't say your father he said our Father which means he believed he was one of the human grace he thought he was equal to humans in every possible way he didn't believe he was God so you can take a tick now and say do the Christians believe that or do the Muslims believe that the Muslims believe that Jesus said that he is just a prophet and that he wants to bring everyone to God so he put a tick on the on the Muslim side what did Jesus look like did he look like the modern-day Christians or does he look like the modern-day Muslims and without even thinking you know that he looked like a modern-day Muslims he will had a beard he wore the same type of clothes we did he didn't eat pork he didn't drink alcohol he was circumcised we know this all from the Bible so you can tick all those on the Muslim side and nice tool on the Christian side we have a blank column we look at what Jesus taught the Jesus of the Bible taught that we should give to the poor the sick the needy to help people that we need to pray that we need to prostrate ourselves and pray before Allah this is all the things that the Muslims do still we see the blank side of the Christian side and the Muslim side is full and as we go through more and more of the characteristics and the teachings and the behavior and the ethics and the morality of Jesus we see that they fill up all the side of the Muslims and we still do not have one side that is ticked on the Christian side why because Christians have moved so far away from the teachings of the Prophet ISA peace be upon him they move so far away from even the teachings of the Bible so when you come and you bring the Quran to people who haven't even followed their own book it is quite a difficult task for them to follow one of the other beautiful things that I found in the Quran and I'm sure you will find it beautiful as well is that 72 times in the Quran it says that Allah is oft-forgiving most-merciful that means if we come in true repentance that we ask for forgiveness from Allah he will forgive us you know that the string of words oft-forgiving most-merciful only found twice in the entire Bible only twice and entire to Bible do you find it and only once is that actually said by Jesus himself the other time it is said by somebody else so what we find is that the Quran 72 times it Allah is oft-forgiving most-merciful you know law and grace are the two things that keep Christians and Muslims apart you know many Christians say we are saved by grace and we Muslim say we are saved by Allah - obeying the law and now what happens if we put these two together we have the ultimate solution to humanity the ultimate solution to humanity is to say I need Allah the grace of Allah is given to you is giving you the right to obey the law the ultimate solution to humanity is simple to say la ilaha illallah muhammadur rasulullah it simply means there is no other God worthy of worship other than Allah and that the Prophet Muhammad is the final Messenger of Allah you see this is Grace this is the grace of Allah saying you call to me I will give you hope I will give you salvation I will give you a future I will give you paradise the keys to paradise now the keys to paradise depend on many things the keys to paradise depend on whether you prepare to commit yourself whether you prepared to surrender where you've repaired to stop saying I'm in charge and saying Allah be in charge I'll give you a brief story there are people that used to hunt summer in my father's country they used to hunt for ducks and what they used to do is they used to float pumpkins down the river and every time the duck saw these pumpkins they'd fly away because they thought these pumpkins were something dangerous but as time went by they eventually get used to these pumpkins floating down the river and the Ducks would go still on top of these pumpkins and so what the people would do eventually they'd hollow out the pumpkins and they'd put them on their heads and they'd walk down the river on the bottom of the water on the riverbank and they'd be totally covered by the water and they'd cut holes in the pumpkin where their eyes could see art and then what the way they do they go right near the ducks and the Ducks think Oh these are those pumpkins and the hunters would pull the Ducks and about the legs under the water and they'd break their necks and they'd pull and down today they are pumpkins floating down the rivers of life and they're bringing false religions and they're bringing false hope and they're bringing a false sense of security and when you're not looking they will pull you under the water and drown you and they'll break your neck and kill you you need to search for hope you need to search for truth and truth can only be found and seeking none other than Allah Tala I take the challenge today and pick up a run and open the cron with the very very first book of the Quran you don't have to be a PhD you don't have to be a great master to understand this book you don't even need anyone to explain this book to you you see the Bible the reason you have to do so many Bible studies and courses and studies of the Bible because we don't want you to see certain books this book you can start from the very beginning and you want to know how to become a Muslim get this part first it says in the name of Allah the most gracious the most merciful understand that two years so the first part of surah fatiha the very beginning says who Allah is the second world is why should you worship him because he all praise and thanks are to Allah the Lord and the make the and the Lord of of all he is the Lord of everything he's the lord of the seen and the unseen and he is the most gracious the most merciful remember that Allah is the Lord of everything is a lot of mankind is the Lord of of the journeys the Lord of the unseen so telling you who he is now why because he is the most gracious of the most merciful he is the owner of the Day of Resurrection in other words that I recommend when you're going to you're going to answer for everything that you have done so he is merciful and just so in the beginning of the Krong if you want to know how to become a Muslim you know what it means to be a Muslim read the first chapter of the Quran and inshallah you will know truth you'll find salvation true salvation not salvation it depends on some magic words salvation it depends on security salvation that depends on knowing why you are doing what you're doing lyla illallah muhammadur Azula is the key the padlock is following the leading following the teachings following the ways of being a Muslim you see for us it's different we have to actually practice what we preach it's not just saying we believe it's actually practicing on that belief is the first step in the step that will bring you to true salvation true hope so from me Arriba slum I look forward to speaking or seeing you one day in paradise so seek salvation what may be found make the Shahada from mihrab Islam until next time assalamu alaikum

Channel: Digital Mimbar

Views: 234,201

Rating: 4.8342223 out of 5

Keywords: Christianity (Religion), Preacher (Character Occupation), Amazing, Dream, Praise, Gospel, Pastor, Back, Youth, Ministry, Dreams, Lord, Holy, Gospel Music (Musical Genre), trinity, Ministries, Truth, Amazing Dream that Transformed A Christian Missionary Into A Preacher of Islam, peace TV, Evangelism (Religion), Preaching, Fellowship, Missionary (Profession), Muslim, Allah, Sunnah, Muhammad, Quran, Koran, Religious Denomination (Taxonomy Subject), Prophet

Id: p-RwjTTmB8E

Length: 91min 5sec (5465 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 28 2013