Lewisham Islamic Centre - Why I left Christianity (Part 1) Yusha Evans

[Music] [Music] I said on my Assam assalamualaikum warahmatullah iberica tomb house everyone hamdulillah I'm glad the affair the believe is always good so under ela in al hamdulillah al hamdulillah no matter who when estoy you know who wanna stop through who on all doable a human sure all reinforce in everyone in society i'm melina may the love element onobu woman you little fella hadiyyah-lah when i should do an island of oahu Ladykiller where shadow and the muhammadan abduhu wa rasuluhu am event i want to get in straightway to the story in charlotte Ayala because it's somewhat long and I'm have to be back I guess I think in a full ham by Margaret so in Charlotte Islands you to get the whole story so I'm just going to get directly into it as the brother introduced me in Charlotte either maybe a little too too praiseworthy or Hanina may Allah make me better than people think I am my name is Usha Evans my birth name is Joshua Evans so when I came into Islam I did not change my name yuusha is just the Arabic equivalent after the Prophet you shall be known and this is what my mother named me after a prophet Joshua from the Bible so it's a good name or hamdulillah so I kept it I was born and raised in Greenville South Carolina and I was raised by my grandparents and my grandparents were very conservative southern Christians in that in the South Carolina is the deep south it's in definitely in the South right bordering Georgia and North Carolina and then you have Mississippi so you're talking about the d south my grandparents weren't very political but if they were you could consider them right-wing conservative my grandfather's full-blooded Native American Indian from Cherokee tribe and my grandmother was Irish and my mother's parents were German German immigrants so this is somewhat of my background and we are very religious and we were very religious in the sense that we went to church on Sundays when the church Sunday evenings and with church on Wednesdays and the pastor used to be at my house of our church many times when my grandparents were ill he used to visit us all the time so we were extremely involved in the church I was involved in the church just through Sunday school as a kid that's all I knew was going to Sunday school and you learned about you know Noah and the flood and we learned about Moses and splitting the Red Sea and you know we learned about Moses in the children of Israel and Pharaoh and wandering in the desert and all this and that we know the story of David and Goliath you know the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 with the fish and the loaves of bread and this was the crux of everything there are no bar my religion going up was what I learned in Sunday school because the regular church service which you went to after Sunday school was the most boring thing I had ever been to in my entire life because in Methodists denomination of Christianity United Methodists it's not like televangelism like you see jumping and shouting and screaming and no there's none of that you listen to the pastor and then you stand up and you sing a song you sit down you listen you stand up you sing a song you sound you listen you stand up and sing the song that's that's how it went so this was my upbringing very conservative my grandparent my grandfather was like the patriarch of the family he had extreme conservative values and he didn't play games he told he's the kind of person I was raised with the ideology that I when you're told wants to do something that's your only chance the second time you learned you learned the hard way you don't repeat mistakes more than twice usually so I had this type of conservative you know tough upbringing all of this began to change as far as my religion in etc when I was 14 years old when I was 14 I was invited by my neighbor across the street who was the youth pastor at the church and I became 14 I was able to go to the youth serve youth service on Saturday evenings you had to be 14 and above so when I started to go to the Saturday evening youth services we volleyball we play basketball we played dodgeball we played everything you think of and we hate we ate pizza and cake and all that stuff that you know kids like and at the end the youth pastor would give us a 30-minute sermon or lecture on religion God being close to God you know etc etc etc you know abstinence and staying away from all the evils that young people fall into and this I liked I enjoyed this not only did I enjoy because I was able to be around my peers and my friends and my circle of friends but also my friend Benjamin who was the youth pastor was very good on talking to us in our language you know he was a at that time he was a junior in high school he was able to talk to us in our language relate to us but yet he was very strong in his biblical principles he would always be coming from the Bible with what he talked about so that to me was very influential upon me so at this point when I became more interested when I started high school at the age of 15 I started to write to school with Benjamin who at that time was a senior which is a prestigious thing for a senior to ride the freshman to ride to school with a senior period but not on that he was the class president and he was very well-respected in the school and when I started becoming more friends with him our friendship started to build he had started to invited me to invite me not only to the Saturday night youth services but also a lot of other services that were going on throughout the Upstate of South Carolina in the Piedmont area of North Carolina which is a organization called young life young life is a conglomerate of youth who organize events who organize services who organize camping events etc etc etc for Christians and it's all run and organized by the youth and the people who were pastoring through young life or all people who were in our age range they were all people who were very motivated they spoke very eloquently based on what I thought at the time was strong biblical principles and they weren't like the Methodists boring services that I went to growing up these were more Angelico holiness Pentecostal type of services where there was you know a lot of raising of the voice a lot of screaming a lot of you know this straight up if you don't believe in Jesus you gonna burn in hell believing in the Trinity that you know Jesus God God is God the Holy Spirit is God the only way to be saved is to believe in that and for the Holy Spirit to live inside of you et cetera speaking in tongues laying on hands and healing people you know I mean this was the real deal you know real deal here and that was very interesting to me because it's I mean it was action you know I mean when you're 15 years old you know I mean that's as action especially you know being the fact that it was based on biblical principles this is how I was being portrayed to me so at this moment in my life I became emotionally attached to Christianity and I I like to describe it as emotionally detached because this is at the beginnings of going astray of all human beings is their emotions I became emotionally attached to Christianity so much that later on some of the things that I should have seen before I saw them I did not see because of my emotions emotions someone can be so emotionally attached to something that they can blind themselves to all the negative aspects of that that thing this is why people ask me how can Christians read the Bible see all of these things that you see read all of these things that you have read but they don't see what you see I said because they're emotionally attached and when you're so emotionally attached to something it blinds you it will blind you to everything and that's the same with any negative thing if you can emotionally attach yourself to something you blind yourself to everything else for instance a boy who gets involved in a illicit relationship with a girl once he becomes emotionally attached he's gone and you know most of the times you're gone you don't care how bad that relationship may be for you you don't care how sinful it may be you don't care how bad this woman may be in and of herself or the woman for the man flipside when you become emotionally attached you you don't see that you don't see that until the emotions are gone and then you're left with the reality the same way with a drug addict someone who was addicted to drugs they're so emotionally detached and dependent upon these drugs that they don't see the negative effects even though they know the negative effects it does not affect them because their emotions will override that your emotions when you let them get too far gone will override your thinking every day of the week every day of the week if you don't keep your emotions in check they will override you so I was emotionally involved and of course I this is something I know now for a fact because I am a student of psychology and have been for about the past seven years so I was emotionally attached at this time and I fell in love with my religion and I knew what I wanted to do I started to understand what I wanted to be in my life because I was looking up to these young men they're all going off to Bible College some of them were you know going off the Moody Institute and in Chicago some of them were even going off to Princeton ximena seminary school and my friend Benjamin who was my you know my I guess you can say my role model you know he was someone I looked up to I was his apprentice I wanted to be like him when he graduated I became a sophomore he graduated he started to attend Bob Jones University in in my hometown now my hometown is not that big but Bob Jones University is a University there's no nationwide and worldwide to Christians Bob Jones is one of the most ultra conservative biblical based universities in the United States of America it's so conservative even when it comes to gender relations there are men and women don't sit with each other in class the dormitories on the other side of the campus you don't get caught with a woman that's not your wife alone at night and theno etc etc etc it was very very very very conservative and his major was textual criticism this is what he wanted to focus on along with his other theological studies he wanted to major in textual criticism now textual criticism would take another lecturer that would keep a sum up just to explain to you what textual criticism is but to give you the kind of nutshell a textual critic takes all of the documents that we have left of what is now known as the Bible and his focus was in the New Testament so a textual critic has to take all of the documents of what we no as the Bible and try to decipher those documents to obtain the most original form of what have may existed of the book and this is difficult for many reasons the first reason is that all of these documents are written in languages that some of them don't really even exist anymore and they're in that form and the ones that do exist don't exist in that form you got to learn the textual critic especially dealing with the New Testament first of all has to learn ancient Greek which is not exactly the same as the Greek that is spoken now it's it's similar but syntax is quite different there's a lot of things that are different he also has to learn Aramaic which is a language that very few people in the world still speak I was even watching today there's a city I think it's called mal de mal della or something like that in Syria it's one of the very few places where this language is still existing in the world he has to learn ancient hebrew semitic hebrew which is not the same as you see spoken Hebrew today this is the Hebrew the shoes in the synagogues also Latin old Latin it has to be learned as well because this is where you find some of these documents most of these documents in and then after he learns those languages he has the task of sorting through thousands and thousands and tens and tens and tens of thousands of documents of the same book and trying and the problem with that is that 95% of them do not agree with each other the majority of the documents that we have left of the New Testament do not agree with each other they say different things not only that but there's no originals to check there are no originals left for us to check and see okay where was the original book what did the original originally say there's not even any really second copies or third copies or fourth copies most most of the time we the best thing we have is something that traces a few hundred years after the original was wrote so you have you know some substantial gap here and these books are all written in different languages some of the oldest existing books that we have of a certain let's say Matthew so you have the book of Matthew there might be 8,000 different variations of the book of Matthew that we have now and they're in there in all different languages and it might be that the oldest one we have not even written in Greek might not even be written in the original language that Matthew May or whoever wrote Matthew which was not Matthew would have spoken it might be in Latin so this is what a textual critic has to do he has to decipher all of this craziness to try to piece together not what the original book said because you cannot do that if there's no original you never know but they tried to find out what was the author originally trying to convey and the message there of the book to the room and that's very difficult that's why when you look at the Bible today has so many problems because of this methodology that was going through to bring these books about so this was his field of study and as being his apprentice as being his understudy I guess you can stay you say um I'm in my sophomore year of high school I decided to enroll in Bob Jones University it's a long waiting list small school and I wanted to be at Texel Creek this is what I wanted to do I wanted to study textual criticism at the age of 16 if you were to ask me what do you want to do the rest of your life what do you want to be when you grow up you know they always ask you that in school do you want to be when you grow up I said well there's a few things I wanted to be a pastor ordained minister in the in the church I wanted to be a missionary I want it to be a Bible scholar because I wanted to be someone who preached the gospel of Jesus Christ not only from from rhetoric but I wanted to know what I was talking about when I told you a verse in the Bible I wanted to break it down to you on the most minuscule of levels so that I knew what I was talking about I want to be rooted and grounded in my faith so this was my life goal was to work for the gospel to work in the church this is what I was going to do with my life figured out and probably probably played baseball in college because I had been playing baseball all of my life and you know I guess I was given a natural talent at baseball because in my sophomore year I was promised that if I graduated with a 3.0 I had a full four-year scholarship to Clemson University which I was going to go play baseball for them and still the 10 Bob Jones I was going to work it out you know as they say with God all things are possible in the Bible whatever all of this change in the summer of 1996 in the summer of 1996 my friend Benjamin came to me and he asked me a simple question that that that led to a not so simple thought process for me he asked me have you ever read the Bible I'm like man why you even that's I'm you know kind of silly question oh and I've left out right before this point that at the age of 16 my friend Benjamin was very involved in his studies so he went from being the full-time youth minister our church to kind of part-time and I started becoming the youth minister our church doing the Saturday evening services and I also started filling in for him at a lot of young life services and I guess you know they say some people are blessed with the gift of the gab as they say you know they got a good talk or whatever people liked what I said so they started inviting me to other things so I became very involved in doing some preaching already he came and asked me have you ever read the Bible I'm like kind of silly question is that you know I'm doing your job if I don't room if I if I recall right now I'm picking up your slack and doing your job and you're asking me if I've read the Bible kind of silly question into that and I'm like what do you mean have I read the Bible he said you know what I mean I'm like no I don't he said if I ask you if you've ever read Stephen King's new novel have you read Stephen King's latest novel you know what I mean you you have read the book from beginning to end you know how it begins you know how it ends you know the storyline you know the primary characters you know the major incidences that happen and you know the plot and you know the purpose you know what the author was thinking when he wrote the book with Stephen King that might be a trick because half of us never know what Stephen King is thinking when he writes anything but you understand what I'm getting at I was like you know I don't know anyone I have never met anyone who has read the Bible like this and can do this breakdown a summary for you maybe our pastor could but I didn't want to put him on the spot because I didn't think there was many people read the Bible because the Bible is unlike the Quran the Quran is is is a very fluid read and you know it's very easy it's more of an easy read the Bible because of its how its came together and it's all this mumbo-jumbo it's a difficult read you know sometimes it is just a read that will put you to sleep and it's a big book you know you're talking about a huge book so I've never read it in that way in it it's very very difficult to read it beginning to end like that so he told me how is it that we can run around telling people were preaching them the gospel we're teaching them the good news we're telling them that the Bible is the acronyms bi ble meaning basic instructions before leaving Earth and yet we don't know the book like that we can't tell what how it begins and how it ends in the middle and all the characters and the plot in the storyline etc etc what would you know what would good are we I said you're right he said so let's take the summer of 1996 and read the Bible beginning to end open at Genesis 1:1 and read it to Revelation and he said let us see what God says to us forget about everything else forget about all the stuff that you know and see what God says to you because we both believe that we had the Holy Spirit living inside of us which was part of the Trinity well we had part of God living inside of us or the b-line but this is the belief so therefore God's Word should be able to speak to us through the Holy Spirit which he got has given us as a gift for believing in Jesus Christ I said that's to me I took the challenge because that was an amazing challenge to me being that this is what I want to do with my life so this seemed like a good place to begin to be able to say that when I was 16 years old you know as a young lad I went through the whole Bible and did this kind of study this high began my ministry seemed like a very good place to start so I took up the challenge and I started to read the Bible beginning to end there's a lot of things that happened too much for me to um too many things for me to give you all of them in the time that we have for those you want to have all of them they're going to be some materials outside where you can see all of the stuff that I went through I'll just give you the major points the biggest thing for me the biggest hang-up for me in the Old Testament I'm gonna have to split the Bible because the Bible split into Old and New Testament the Old Testament the biggest problem with me and the thing that began my dissension from Christianity and ascension to Islam was the stories of the prophets this was my hand go because all of my life I had this vision of my mind when I thought about Noah when I thought about when I thought about David when I thought about Solomon when I thought about all these prophets was that these were amazing people these were people who were the best people they were the best of creation they had to be they're God's prophets they were the people who guided us to how to live a rightly life before God and they were the best human beings that ever lived amazing people this is this is my thought process not only from what I learned in Sunday school but this is just a default process when you think prophets as I began to read the Bible I began to see that this is not really the way it is in the Bible one of the first stories that I got to was the story of Noah or na LAN and the Bible it says the Noah preached for nine over a thousand almost a thousand years nine hundred plus fifty over almost a thousand years Noah preached to come back to God the oneness of God and we know that this is one of the the first patriarchal messengers was not was Noah because between the time of Adam alayhi Salam as a Muslim we know this now it's not clear in the Bible from the time of Adam and I said I'm a time of know they were just Muslims there was no people with the first ones to create deviations and begin to do shirk shirk came up with the people of know so Noah wrangled with these people for now a thousand years and God decided that it was time to wipe away this creation that he created and begin it again except for those who believe the Noah they would be saved because he commanded Noah to build a boat a big boat and to save what is good of humanity in this boat and he was going to destroy everything else this is this totally agrees with this lamb all of these points there's another story about Noah that's not so prestigious that's not so praiseworthy that's not really even worth anything and the Old English in the Old English which is what I was reading from the King James Version that was it that was there that was the standard version I was reading from the King James Version which is written in Old English from the anglo-saxon it says that Noah was a drunkard this is the word that is used and I think that word is still used here in the UK and we used and estates anymore we use alcoholic but Noah was a drunkard no was an alcoholic as a description in the old testament of Noah that he was someone who was given to alcohol he would be passed out sometimes in the Old Testament and and in it would be passed out and God was somewhat have to kind of shake him to wake him up like Noah look man you think I'm playing games you're laying here drunk I'm about to destroy everything you know you need to get on this art you know of course there's my emphasis added but that caught my attention because I thought to myself wow no one was an alcoholic huh and I know from experience I have seen the effects of alcohol how it's destroyed someone's life that is very close to me and I've seen it but it's not something I just read I have seen firsthand in my life and even at that time how alcohol can destroy utterly destroy someone's life and now I know for sure as a psychologist or trying to be a psychologist I ever can get out of college but I was traveling around the world my field of focus is mental illness and I know for sure that alcoholism is a mental illness and a mental defect even though it's not classified as one because someone is doing it willingly you cannot be classified as a defect according to the law but according to reality it is a mental defect and is a mental disease someone given to alcohol an alcoholic can barely hold down a proper social life they can barely live a normal functional life they cannot hold down a job alcoholism is actually one of the major routes of do all the illnesses that the social societies of the world suffer from believe it or not alcoholism leads to homelessness alcoholism leads to disease alcoholism leads to suicide alcoholism leads to broken families it leads for spouses to abuse each other for children to get abused alcoholism leads to um gambling and all other types of illnesses can be traced their route back to alcohol so I knew that alcohol was a very very bad thing and here we have one of God's prophets one of his early prophets is an alcoholic it's not good to me that's not good and I thought to myself and kind of a way to relieve myself of the shock of what I was seeing I said to myself you know what now I know why no one listened to Noah Noah was an alcoholic he was a drunken we appealed on this in the drunkards if you see a guy out he in in the city center and he's drinking all day and urinating on himself in the night and he goes running around asking people for money on you know the alcoholics I don't have to describe him in the next day you see him he's standing on the same bench telling you that God has chosen as a prophet and he's going to destroy humanity and the only way you're going to be saved is that if you come I'm gonna build this big boat in a London Stadium and if you get on this boat then you'll be saved if not you're gonna be destroyed how many of you getting on the boat nobody come on realistically nobody's they're gonna be like my you need some help who says you need to put that bottle down you know nobody's gonna listen to this man you know so I said maybe this is why no one listened to Noah was an alcoholic you know maybe for you to put down the bottle more people to listen but this this really caught my attention because this is not good I was having trouble wrangling the two that no it could be a prophet an alcoholic so I continued to read while this was in the back of my mind and I got to the story of a lot or look I sat in all of us should know look not I am and the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah where he destroyed the cities of Sodom Gomorrah for the homosexuality and the abuse of the prophets and and this is in the Bible this stories in the Bible there's another story about lot it's not so prestigious and honestly for the sake that we have young children I have to find a way to tone it down because it's not even pg-13 seriously isn't I would say you need an ID to listen to the story and it's full full context you need to show me some ID it says that lot was an old man and he had no son he had no sons so he had no one to continue his lineage his two daughters worried about this his two daughters were worried that their father was going to die without a seed without a someone to carry on his lineage so they decided to fix the problem themselves and the way they decided to fix the problem was they got him intoxicated one night they got him intoxicated and the oldest daughter slept with him so that she could become pregnant by him the next night they got him intoxicated and the youngest daughter slept with him so that she could become pregnant so that there would be a chance one of them would have a son to continue his lineage and now I'm like wow you know this is getting out of hand you know I mean now we have a prophet who's an alcoholic and now you have another prophet who's committing incest with his daughters sleeping with his daughters I would be left it's getting worse by the Prophet you know I mean this is what I'm looking at it's getting worse by the Prophet but this now not only is it perplexing me and it's starting to affect me inside it's intriguing me I want to know more now I want to start reading more prophets mmm what else did these prophets do so I'm reading I'm reading I'm reading there's more things for time sake I'm gonna get to the two major ones the ones that you can say you know broke the straw that broke the camel's back the first one was I got the story of Solomon also lame in LA he said n Suleiman and in the Bible is known as the greatest one of the greatest kings of Israel he's the one who established the temple mount's to establish the temple Solomon which is what the Jews are trying to destroy the master doxa for now to rebuild that very same temple and Solomon did major things he's the one who built the temple and established the Ark of the Covenant in there that was a hell the commandments and the staff of Moses stuff like that that's what they say they're looking for while they're trying to dig messy laksa from under but the parallel story about Noah I mean about Solomon is quite quite quite quite quite less prestigious Solomon is attributed in the Old Testament to having fallen back from his faith and worshipped idols committed shirk worship sticks and rocks and stones and statues he worshipped idols this is the Prophet Solomon in the Bible now allah subhanho wa taala does make mention of this in the quran where he fries and clear Solomon of discharge where does the diet we know where's Allah subhana WA Ta'ala says it was not Suleiman who disbelieved but it was the shayateen who did disbelieve so allah clears that right away but this is the disarmament of the old testament that he did but he came back and repented and got straight but for a while he was committing idolatry he was committing shirk the unforgivable sin this is a big problem man you know we have this is getting out of hand and then right after that you have the story that really did it for me was the story of David or the story of delay he said in how many of you know the story that would want to loot government everybody hands there the story of David watch it would David and Goliath one of the most beautiful stories in the Bible but why it's a beautiful story if you eat huh this some say that but even if you look at the story in the Bible the discourse that happens between David and Goliath is so beautiful men David just shuts him down you know I mean you should go read it I wouldn't say read all the Bible if you want to read a story this is the story you know when when wins when Goliath is laughing at David and David it really tells him what's for and then kills him and this is when David was a young boy as a teenager little kid but there is a parallel story about David in the Bible that is not as prestigious it is nowhere near as prestigious as the story of David and Goliath and that is the story of David and Bathsheba David and Bathsheba Bathsheba was a woman who was known for her beauty at this time she was well known as one of the most beautiful women of her age and David saw her one day on her porch and decided that this woman was so beautiful he could not resist himself and he had to have her and he had to sleep with her and he did he slept with her that day the only problem with this is that she's married she's married to a man named Uriah who happens to be one of the commanders of his army so David has just committed adultery a sin worthy of death in Judaic law and David decides not to repent to God and seek forgiveness and no he decides to fix the problem how does he fix the problem he writes a letter and sends it to his army and the letter says that whenever the battle becomes fierce because the armies are fighting the children of Israel fighting the armies of Philistine at this time in Philistine he said whenever the battle becomes fierce abandoned Uriah leave him by himself why so he killed so they left Uriah he was killed now David is able to have Bathsheba and nobody can say a word about it so David just committed adultery followed by conspiracy to commit murder and in Islam it's just it's murder there's no such thing as conspirators committed murder in Islam you plan the murder you're guilty you you're the one who did the murder you're guilty this is all murder so now we have prophets and this is why I said enough is enough this is quite enough because now the prophets that I thought all my life were the best of people are now the worst of people I thought they were the guidance for Humanity and come to find out they're alcoholics they commit incest with their daughters they commit idol worship they commit adultery and they commit murder these are the worst of the worst of people these are people who you would see on you know the show here cops or criminals or a Night Watch crime you know crime Night Watch or whatever the show is this is where you see these kind of individuals or in the state's America's Most Wanted you know John Walsh will be after these these dudes right here you know they would have rewards out for them or they will be in jail for the rest of their lives for these incidences so how now can I look at these people and think that they are prophets when now they have lost all of their credibility they have no credibility to tell me anything about God you are some of the worst criminals against God's law not only that but they are so trustworthy I would not leave my children alone with him I would not let David babysitting my son I would not for sure let lot anywhere near my daughter he came around my daughter I'm beating him down the street I'm gonna put him in the hospital man seriously these are the people that you have in the Old Testament as prophets so I'm saying to myself there has to be a problem here with something either there's a problem and and I'm I knew when I thought this to myself I was heading down a bad road because I said either there's something wrong with these prophets there's something wrong with this book or there's something wrong with God's judgment all the Bellaire but I said it has to be one of these three things because if these stories are true then how does God pick his prophets if these stories are false then what's up with this book that I have all my life believed was the inerrant Word of God which means the Word of God without error so I I began to commit the cardinal sin in Christianity and I started to ask too many questions this is sin number one Christianity did you can believe whatever you want to believe just don't ask too many questions so I began to ask questions I asked my pastors I asked some youth pastors I asked a couple more people I even got the chance to ask one of our best friends in the States the evangelist Benny Hinn how many of you know Benny Hinn well-loved by the Muslims and we love him no that's that's sarcasm we don't like him he doesn't like us you don't guess no no Benny Hinn Minh the televangelists from from from Ramallah who speaks the Arabic and tries to you know debate with the Muslims from our from the Arabic you can say the Quranic quote and all this and then man lies which I'll either guide him or destroy him but they all told me the same thing and they they all kind of told me the same thing that don't let a little bit of knowledge break your faith don't let a little bit of knowledge that you've now gained wreck your faith because we are not justified in Christianity by knowledge you are justified by faith and this is the teaching of Paul the apostle that it is faith in Jesus Christ which justifies us unto salvation this is justification and this is actually Paul's whole mission in his life is to prove that justification came through faith and not the law that knowledge and following the law and all this other stuff does not bring one unto justification what brings one unto justification and salvation is your faith in Jesus Christ so do not let a little bit of knowledge wreck your faith that wasn't really an answer that's more of a diversion which if you will ever noticed if you debate with Christians they have a lot of diversions they don't really give you answers they give you diversions this is their this is their trick this is how they do it this is how they're taught they give you diversions you ask one thing they answer another thing so I said to him yeah but this still does not make sense this is not making sense to me he says since does not lead you to justification again your reason because and then he quoted me proverbs lean not on thine own understanding so he told me that number two you're dealing with the Old Testament who is God's which is God's covenant with the children of Israel and he had a special covenant that he dealt with them they had their own issues they were crazy they were rebellious so it was different how God dealt with them if you want to know about the reality of God in his nature and Christ and justification and salvation you need to go to the New Testament because we have now passed over from the Old Covenant and God's way of dealing with people has now entered into the New Covenant and has entered into the new way of dealing with things so I asked him so you mean that the method is changed from the way God dealt with people in the Old Testament and the way he deals with people now he said yes I told him I said but this is against God's own teachings of himself his nature he doesn't change the god of the Old Testament does not change actually and I told him actually this way got man actually I said the final book of the Old Testament Malachi because I finished all Old Testament before I started asking these questions which was not far beyond where I was at Malachi the book of Malachi which is the departing book of the Old Testament one of the last verses of the book of Malachi says and this is supposed to be God speaking it says I do not change therefore the sons of Jacob are not consumed basically layman's terms God says because I made a club covenant with you that I would not destroy you and I don't change my mind I'm not someone who changes from day to day I do not change and that is the reason you have not destroyed you basically he's warning the children of Israel that you better be lucky with all of your rebellious nassif I could destroy anyone it would be you if I could change my mind on anything it would be you and I would destroy you he said but because I do not change this is the reason the sons of Jacob not consumed he may curse them but he did not destroy them and wipe them off the earth so I told him God doesn't change he said look you're going down a road that's going to lead you to destruction you need to go and focus on the New Testament if you want to focus on somebody focus on Jesus David can't lead you to salvation Moses Abraham lots all these people you're telling me about they cannot lead you to salvation only Jesus Christ can lead you to salvation I was like they didn't know Jesus but I didn't say that I was like if only Jesus can what happened all those people they didn't know Jesus anyway so I decided to go read the New Testament I decided to do what he said because I did not want to lose my faith in Christianity this is all I knew you're talking about a boy who has his whole life figured out and now there are cracks in the foundation the cracks are starting to show in the foundation and the water is starting to leak through at this point so I wanted to fix them up and patch them up so I began to read the New Testament but before I did there were things from the Old Testament that I did know without a shadow of a doubt these were clear even those things I didn't understand these were clear the number one overwhelming fact of the Old Testament that is reiterated more times than can be counted is that God is one this is very clear in the Old Testament God is one in the most unique of senses he is one number two God is unseen this is the belief of the Old Testament this is the descriptions of God about himself that you cannot see me you cannot understand me you cannot compare me to anything you cannot know me except for that which I let you know about me this is it even when Moses wanted to know God he said who are you God he said just know that I am that I am that's it I am gone that's all you need to know and whatever else I will give you and we know the story about when Moses asked to see got an Old Testament which is also in the Quran but also very clear from the Old Testament that salvation justification whatever you want to call it if you wanted to go to heaven it was only by one wing worshiping God and following his law that's it you worship God and you follow his law and then when you make a mistake you become remorseful for that mistake and you repent to God and there was different ways of repentance in the Old Testament you repented and then you also were you know people made altars and then did sacrifices you know to show themselves they were repentant to God we still hold that tradition of sacrifice but not in that sense the way the Jews had - this is how God made it for them he made things so strict for them that just if they wanted to make towel but they need to build this the altar thing get an animal sacrifice it you know burn it and you know that do all this crazy stuff just because this is way God made it for them because of their rebelliousness that this was salvation and actually if you read the first how many of you've heard of the Ten Commandments there all of you should are Ten Commandments men law of Moses anybody know what was the first commandment that's a worship no god but me there's different translations a lot of times you'll see that thou shalt have no other God before me or thou shalt have no other God beside me this is not really the correct connotation of the the phrase that is used here what is used here in the Old Testament is God is saying to the children of Israel that you should not make anything equal to me this is what he's saying you should not have any other God along with me meaning you don't make anything equal to me you do not give what is belonging to me meaning worship meaning sacrifice all of those things that you give to me you don't give it to anything else it belongs to me alone and this is what we say when we say hungry no here a belen mean and I hate Allah that there is nothing worthy of giving that Eve attitude except Allah this is the same phrase that is found in the first and greatest commandment of the law of Moses so I knew these things and I'm going to read the New Testament and now I want to see what does Jesus say what does Jesus do how does he live his life how does he go about doing the things that he does and without going into all the other issues of the New Testament that there's so many that you could do two years worth of college study on the problems that the New Testament has beginning with the fact that we don't know who wrote any of the four Gospels about Jesus Christ we have no idea who wrote them I don't care what people try to tell you know for sure without a doubt it can be verified be proven that we don't not know we do not know who wrote them and there are no originals exist and there's so many contradictions this is the biggest problem with Christians is how they read the book this is the biggest problem Christians have how they read the book because a Christian will tell you and some of you may have heard that Matthew Mark Luke and John are all the same story told from four different people there's just different versions of the same story you know somebody sees a little bit different instance and you know if you ask for it they'll tell you this if you ask for people to describe for you one thing they'll all tell you something a little bit different about it this was the Old Testament and wrong this is not this is not it when you study the New Testament the way it's supposed to be studied you come to the realization that it's four completely different stories told by four completely different people who saw and thought completely differently about Jesus and and many times those it's not only different with each other but sometimes are in direct contradiction with each other and that they all mean something different and little do Christians know I even try to tell Christians that you believe salvation lies and all this and that when the book of Luke the Book of Luke who also wrote the book of Acts does not even believe that Jesus is crucifixion meant salvation this is a quite interesting they'll be shocked not like you're crazy go read it that's all I tell them go read it just go read Luke by itself and then read Acts Jesus crucifixion was not a mean to salvation to the author of Luke and acts it was a means to repent to God and then obtain salvation from that God so um but anyway I started to study Jesus's life I didn't know all of this at that point I'm just studying Jesus life and what I come to find out was Jesus I wanted to know what did he teach about God what do you think Jesus in the New Testament teaches about God he teaches that God is one when he was asked about the commandments which commandment is the greatest commandment he said well the first commandment is to hear o Israel the Lord your God is one and the next commandment the greatest Commandments are two to love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your mind and with all your strength and then to love your neighbor as you love yourself the rest hang on these two so he said that the law lied in two basic principles God is one first and that the two principles were that you give God his rights you give him your worship you give him your heart you worship him sincerely that's his rights and then you give the rights to the creation which is our you treat them as you would want them to treat you this to any Muslim they should not be unfamiliar we have the rights of the creator and we have the rights of the creation and this as to everything else is is revolving around these two basic fundamental principles and so this is what Jesus taught

Channel: Lewisham Islamic Centre

Views: 79,131

Rating: 4.737052 out of 5

Keywords: yusha, evans, lewisham, islamic, centre, revert, convert, christianity, islam, bible, qur'an, jesus, isa, muhammad, prophet, companions, salah, prayer, guidance, journey, shahadah, stories, tales, London

Id: N0Vbm0-WOkE

Length: 45min 25sec (2725 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 05 2011