Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus

always be ready to share a reason for the hope that lies within you and the first time I met a Christian who was ready with that was in college so I've already decimated the faith of a lot of people going up to college and I get to college very confident in myself and I meet a friend now this friend and I were out on a public speaking and debate tournament and we were sharing a room together and I saw him one night reading the Bible and I thought okay this will be fun let's take down another Christian it's be amusing and so I look at my friend whose name was David I said David do you realize that book you're reading is not trustworthy it's been corrupted over time and he's reading his Bible and he closes it and he says go on which should have been a sign for me that this wasn't gonna go my way but I kept going and I said David Jesus spoke Aramaic did he not and in the earliest church was in Palestine I was in Jerusalem it was it was in Israel so they must have spoke in Hebrew but by the time the New Testament is written it's written in Greek so you have a translation of a translation of Jesus words before it's ever written down and then the New Testament that lasted the longest period of time in the church was not actually in Greek it was in Latin so you have another translation then it's in Latin for a thousand years before it comes into German and from German that goes into English and that's where we get the KJV it's a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation which is why you have the KJV the NIV the ESV the NASB the who-knows-what v you got so many versions of the Bible how can I know which one is actually the Word of God now that had worked on many Christians and I was ready for him to crumple under the weight of my argumentation but David looked at me and he said Nabil let me ask you a question just a few minutes ago I heard you speaking to your mom on the phone was that in English I said no he said but when you told me what she said you told me in English was that a corrupted translation No it's a Nabeel when you are multilingual you can take a message that's given in one language and accurately translate that message into another language and you've preserved the message and that's exactly what the disciples did they're able to listen to Jesus whatever language Jesus spoke and write it in Greek and of that Greek New Testament manuscript we have in our possession over 6,000 copies today and he said Nabil if we didn't have any one of those copies we have in our possession over 10,000 Latin Coptic and Syriac translations of the early Greek New Testament manuscripts he said if we didn't have any of those translations we have over 30,000 quotations of the New Testament from the early church fathers with which we can reconstruct virtually the entire New Testament many times over again nabil we know with certainty the message of the original New Testament and I looked at him and I said David you're making this up I said I've talked to dozens of Christians no one have told me this before he said you think I'm making this up said yeah I think you're making this up he said well you didn't you better bring it I'm like it's been brought let's go and so from that point on David and I start arguing about these things but we do it in a pursuit of truth in fact we start arguing so much that we decide to start signing up for classes together so he can sit in the back and argue with each other the whole time we go to each other's houses and study and just argue some more and over the course of time because we spent so much time together in pursuit of truth we became best friends I ended up being one of the groomsmen at his wedding I was there when his first child was born all of this time I spent with and becoming closer to him and in that I knew that David would take a bullet for me and when you can trust someone and they share the gospel with you it makes a huge impact if you don't know you can trust someone and they tell you to lay down your life and pick up the cross why would you listen to them but if you have someone who's trying to tear down your worldview and you know that they love you then you will engage with them and you'll listen to them so that friendship was absolutely in order for me to begin to hear the gospel and it took a long time this wasn't an overnight event but after about a year I came to the conclusion all right the New Testament manuscripts are reliable I didn't believe in the gospel or anything like that it was just the New Testament manuscripts it took me a year but I realized the way that the New Testament manuscripts proliferated the way they were written down and sent throughout the early church there was no one who's able to control these manuscripts and edit them in such a way that a change would not be detected simply no way to do that so after about a year I came to the conclusion that there is no way for the New Testament to have been uniformly and undetectably altered not possible and so I went back to David I said alright David I see that the New Testament is reliable but I don't see Jesus claiming to be God anywhere in the New Testament now keep in mind this is the biggest sticking point for Muslims because like I said earlier Muslims believe that Jesus is the Messiah Muslims believe that Jesus was the most miraculous man who ever lived some Muslims believe he's the only sinless prophet truly sinless prophet who ever walked this earth but the moment you say Jesus is God in the Muslims eyes you are committing the worst blasphemy you could ever possibly commit the Quran says very clearly chapter 4 verse 171 as well as chapter 5 verse 72 that if you believe Jesus is God you will go to hell there's no arguing with that in the Muslim world view chapter 5 verse 116 shows Jesus having a conversation with the law and alas Jesus did you ever tell people to worship you and he said by no means do I have the rights to tell them to do something like that and so the idea that Jesus is God is blasphemy in Islam and they're trying to defend God when they say there's no way Jesus is God so the question for me now that I came to the point of realization that the New Testament was reliable I said okay fine but jesus never claims to be God in that and now I began to study with a little bit more depth I began to try to look at things my friend David first handed me the Gospel of John he said here read this and as I read the Gospel of John John chapter one verse one says that Jesus is God don't have to go too far in the beginning was the word with God in the Word was God well what is the word you go down to verse 14 the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory I'm looking at these sets of verses and I'm trying to find a way around this because again from childhood I've been told Jesus couldn't be God and now that I believe New Testaments reliable how could it possibly say this so the way I defended that was by saying well Jesus isn't saying he's God here this is John the author I want to see Jesus say he's God then as you go through the Gospel of John you see things that Jesus says like in John chapter 8 verse 58 some Jews asked him they said you're not even fifty years old yet you claim to have seen Abraham and Jesus responses ahmein Amane before Abraham was born I am now you know when you're Muslim you haven't heard the term I am before you don't know what that means but when someone points you to Exodus chapter 3 verse 14 where God tells Moses that his name is I Know Who I am that now it begins to make sense what Jesus is saying someone asked him you're not even 50 years old Jesus response is I am I eternally exist even before Abraham was born yes because he's taking the name of the god of Moses it's pretty clear by the way if there any muslims listening and thinking that's not convincing enough go to John 20:28 or someone calls Jesus God and Jesus responses basically finally took you long enough so then my response to that was well forget the Gospel of John it was written too late that's not reliable I want to go to the first gospel I want to see where it was written early on did Jesus claim to be God fortunately I don't have all the time to go into the details here but I will tell you this the culmination of Mark's Gospel the very first gospel ever written is mark 14 62 and in this one verse Jesus makes two if not three references to the Old Testament saying I am the god of Moses I am the God of Daniel I am the God of David and he does it so clearly that the high priest immediately tear their robes and say you have heard the blasphemy what shall we do and that's the reason why they decided to crucify him and they would have been right to crucify him if he were God so Jesus claims to be God now imagine what this is doing to my mind because I as a Muslim have now come to the conclusion that the New Testament is reliable and in that New Testament I'm seeing Jesus claim to be God this makes everything I've ever been taught about Islam false because we're supposed to Revere Jesus but here's evidence he claimed to be God how can I do that and this cognitive dissonance began to drive me nuts up until this point I was just arguing with my friend David but now I come to the realization that this investigation may very well determine the course of my life and so I start praying fervently and in the middle of these prayers I go back to my friend David and I say well I need to have a case I need to have good solid reasoning for what would make Christianity true because Christians believe all kinds of things there's different denominations some Christians believe this some Christians believe that what is the thing that would make the core of Christianity true and I found it in Romans chapter 10 verse 9 Paul says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved you didn't know there's gonna be a pop quiz involved confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved Jesus has to be God he has to die on the cross and then rise from the dead for Christianity to be true now this is actually a very interesting case by the time I was wrestling with some of these things I was in medical school as a fourth year medical student I spent a lot of time in the psychiatry ward spend a lot of time working in the psychiatry ward and while I was there I used to see people come up and say to me in delusions of grandeur nabil I am God and my response to them would be well we have a room for you come on in but to claim to be God is pathological and in the first century if someone claims to be God it's the same response you are crazy but if that man then says no wait watch I will be killed and on the third day I will rise from the dead and that's my proof for you that I am God now we have something to watch now we have something to see the resurrection is the vindication of Jesus claimed to be God anybody can claim to be God but if someone claims to be God and then proves it by rising from the dead then there's someone to believe so the question is is there evidence that Jesus rose from the dead again if some people want to ask questions about this or if it wants to come up in the Q&A then we can discuss it a little bit more but as I investigated the evidence surrounding Jesus death I came to the conclusion that the evidence pointed uniformly to the fact that Jesus rose from the dead now there's something very profound in that because as a Muslim the Quran doesn't even let you believe that Jesus died on the cross the Koran says in surah an-nisa which is chapter 4 verse 157 while I'm Agatha Liu who I'm a solid blue while I can shabiha l'homme he was not killed nor was he crucified but so it appeared to them so the Quran denies that Jesus was killed by crucifixion but if you study the history of Jesus life I'm not talking about Christians studying the history of Jesus life I'm talking about atheist skeptical agnostic scholars like Paula Frederickson like Marcus Borg like Bart Ehrman none of whom are Christians all of them say if we can know anything about Jesus life it's that he died by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate the death of Jesus is the most solid fact regarding his life historically speaking and that alone challenges the truth of the Quran and as a Muslim I had to really wrestle with that and then I have all this evidence that he actually rose from the dead if you want some of that evidence I would suggest you read a book called the case for the resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Michael okona so I'm seeing this evidence and I'm seeing a case for Jesus deity and for Christianity being built up so by the way this has taken three years of friendship with David to get to this point not an overnight quest so David and I are going home from a very manly place we were at a smoothie bar on the way back David asks me he says Nabil we've been looking into this for quite a while where do you think the case for Christianity Falls from 0 to 100 if zero was absolutely not true and 100 was absolutely true where do you think the case for Christianity stands I investigate I just thought about each criterion there well it's 99 percent sure Jesus died on the cross about 90 percent sure he claimed to be God 90 percent sure he rose from the dead I'm putting it at 80 to 85 percent David and he about spits out the smoothie which is not cool because it was my car and he looks at me and he says Nabil why don't you accept the gospel then and I said David it's because I'm 100 percent sure in Islam even if I'm 80 to 85 percent believing in the case of Christianity that a case for Islam is stronger and he looked at me and he said Nabil you haven't even looked critically at the case for Islam and I said I know but I'm just that certain I've heard evidences of the Quran from childhood I've heard evidences of Muhammad from childhood I am certain that Islam is true and he says well put it to the test and here's the critical thing he says test it to the same degree you tested Christianity the same level of skiped skepticism apply the same historical criteria and then tell me what you end up with and I was very confident I said sure no problem and so I applied the same level of skepticism historically speaking I'm gonna have to be brief but here's what I found when it came to Jesus I was extremely skeptical of the Gospel of John for example because John's Gospel according to critical scholars now not according to Christians but according to critical scholars John's Gospel is written between sixty and maybe at the latest seventy years after Jesus death and so I was critical of John's Gospel the first time anyone wrote anything about Muhammad's life was a hundred and fifty years after his death and then the person who wrote it actually that book was lost and what we have is somebody else who saved portions of that book and said I only saved a portion of this book because the rest of it I felt was just unbelievable so the first piece of evidence we have on Muhammad's life comes much much later than the first evidence we have on Jesus life and it was claimed by the person who saved it to have been unreliable and I began doing the side-by-side comparison okay what's the history of the Quran compared to the Bible okay what's Muhammad's life look like now I had been taught from childhood that Muhammad was the most amazing man who ever existed I had been taught that Mohammed was a great statesman a great diplomat a great general a great leader I had been taught that he was a great husband and a defender of women's rights and a defender of the downtrodden that's how Muslims see Muhammad and so when you see Muslims revering Muhammad that's the man they're revering this legendary great man but when I studied the historical evidence not only was it late and not really reliable but when I actually looked at what it said that Muhammad in the pages of history it was very different from the Muhammad in the hearts of Muslims and I realized I had to pick one or the other and if I was going to be honest and I was gonna follow David's challenge and apply critical historical criteria this was the Muhammad I'd have to believe existed a violent one and so I said okay I can't rely on Muhammad then maybe I have to rely on the inspiration of the Quran cuz Muslims believe in the Shahada in order to become Muslim you have to believe in the Shahada which is la ilaha illallah muhammad rasool allah there is no god but allah and muhammad is his messenger so there's no god but allah and i try to defend that through the Quran and Muhammad is His Messenger I tried to defend that by investigating his life this part didn't work so I then turned to the Quran and I started saying well the Quran must be the Word of God and I went to all the apologetic reasons that I had been given from childhood as to why the Quran is the word of God I've been told the Quran had never changed I had been told that the Quran had miracles inside it miraculous scientific knowledge I had been told that the Quran had prophecies of the future and as I began to investigate each and every single one of these claims again with the same critical eye that I used on Christianity it began to crumble and when you apply and I will say this now after having looked at many different worldviews when you apply the same level of skepticism to Christianity to any other worldview Christianity comes out on top every single time and I'm talking way on top I had a conversation just the other day with some friends at Oxford who were atheist and they're telling me Nabil I have issues with Christianity here here here and here and I said I see that but apply those same skeptical criticisms to atheism and all of a sudden a look of realization dawned upon them because they were beginning to compare and as guinness says someone who works with ravi zacharias International Ministries he says comparison contrast is the mother of clarity and when I compared Islam to Christianity I realised Christianity came way on top now this is when my world fell into crisis because I couldn't just all of a sudden accept the gospel if I were to do that then I would be bringing tremendous shame upon my family and Muslim families often come from honor shame background so to give you an idea everything my grandfather did everything my great-grandfather did in preaching Islam was to build honor and pride in the community and if their grandson if their great-grandson became Christian then it says if I leveled all the honor they ever gained in their entire lives and it's not just me who's gonna be looked at with shame from my family my family my mother and father who spent their whole lives pouring into me if I become a Christian I'm bringing shame to them and I drag their reputation through the mud and now their lives are destroyed because of my decision and so these kinds of considerations make it extremely difficult for a Muslim to consider becoming a Christian on top of that there is something called the law of apostasy in Islam traditionally speaking and to be a little bit more specific all four schools of traditional Sunni Islam and all three major schools of traditional Shia Islam teach that if you leave Islam you can be killed in various circumstances they disagree on the circumstances but they all agree that it can happen and so a Muslim has to think about maybe giving up his social life for sure and maybe even destroying his family's social life and then maybe even giving up your life itself because of the law of apostasy and then if you're wrong about all this the Quran says you're going to hell everything literally is balanced and it makes it extremely difficult for someone to leave Islam so at this point I fell to my knees and started asking God in the daily prayers outside of the daily prayers I'm asking God God I need you to reveal yourself to me I have looked and it looks like Islam is not true please forgive me for saying that and it looks like Christianity might be true please forgive me for saying that can you tell me who you are now to give you a little bit of understanding and insight into Islamic culture the veil is not torn down the way Christians believe according to Islam the veil is still up Muslims don't commune with God even the prophets didn't commune with God the prophets spoke to angels who spoke to God so Muslims aren't ready to just receive information from God they're not of that kind of status they don't think so anyway but there's one way that Muslims expect to hear directly from God anyone know dreams Muslims believe that they can receive dreams from God for guidance and so they asked God for dreams for guidance there's a special type of prayer called salat Estacada where Muslims specifically get on their knees and say God guided me through dreams my dad chose his jobs based on those my sister chose her husband based on dreams we decided when to move based on dreams and by the way some of these dreams became prophetically true for example my mother when she got married to my father she had a dream that she was planting four seeds in the ground and two of those seeds grew up into trees and two did not she goes to my aunt and she says I just had this dream and my aunt says to her blessed are you for God has already told you that you will be pregnant four times and you will have two children and two miscarriages fast forwards 17 years that's exactly what happened I've got some creepy stories I could to share with you but we don't have enough time this happens very regularly now why does it happen could be a variety of reasons is it God giving the dreams is something else giving the dreams it could be a variety of things that's not my point my point is that Muslims expect to hear from God based on dreams and on the face of it they have good reason to believe that and so I asked God for dreams and visions and I ultimately received one vision in three dreams I'll give you the second dream because that was the one that was most powerful for me I wanted something very clear and God gave me a very clear dream by the way at this point it's been about four years since David and I started discussing Christianity and Islam in this dream I'm standing at the threshold of a narrow door this door is just wide enough to fit me just tall enough to fit me and there's some depth to it maybe five or seven feet it's made of brick an archway kind of as I look into that doorway there's a room set with a feast round tables people sitting at this feast the food is has been pulled out and people are in fine clothes it's like a wedding feast and they're about to start eating but they haven't started yet they're all looking that direction they're waiting for the owner or the speaker or whoever to come and start this feast and I want to get into that room because I know that that room is heaven but I can't because at the other end of the doorway is my friend David he's also sitting and waiting he's not looking at me but he's kind of blocking the way I can't get past him and so I say to him in the dream I thought we were going to eat together and he says you haven't responded in in the dream I knew that I had to respond to David's invitation in order to get into heaven but here's where he gets crazy when I woke up I called David and I asked him what do you think this dream means and it was the first time I heard someone's eyes roll over the phone he says Nabil this dream is so clear I don't need to interpret it for you just go to the Bible and I said what do you mean he says go to Luke chapter 13 now David knew his scriptures by the way and he had given me a Bible Study Bible and I turn to Luke chapter 13 it said in big bold letters the narrow door now the moment I saw that my heart skipped a beat because that was the most powerful symbol in my dream and I started reading I'm gonna paraphrase it for you and basically here's what it says Jesus was going through the towns and villages preaching the good news and the disciples asked him Lord are many going to be saved and he said make every effort to enter through that narrow door for many I tell you will try and few will be able and you will see people sitting inside at the wedding feast of heaven make every effort to enter before the owner comes and closes that door I had never read this section of the Bible before and I knew God had given me a dream where he placed me right into the middle of his parable and he told me where I stood so I looked up at God and I said god I need another dream don't judge me Christians so I asked for another dream God gave me another dream and then at the end of that summer I remember driving to school by this point I'm in my starting my second year of medical school the first conversation I had with David was my freshman year of college and so I'm starting my second year med school but at this point I've had three dreams I have all this evidence I have guidance from God yet I haven't converted and this is the reason why as I'm driving to school I say to God God I know what I need to do but I need time to mourn I need time to mourn by the way I'm just crying I'm just losing it in the car not a good state to go to school in so I go back to my apartment I don't know what I'm doing so I pull out the Quran in the Bible and I say God just give me comfort and I open up the Quran and I start reading it for the first time in my life I start reading the Quran not for liturgical reasons but for personal guidance and as I'm looking for comfort I realized there is not a single verse in the Quran designed to to comfort a hurting man not one and so I realized this book didn't even apply to my life and I put it away and I turn to the Bible I said I don't know where to start in the Bible I'd never gone to it for personal guidance either I just gone to it to try to tear it down and so I say fine I'll just start with the New Testament open it to Matthew chapter 1 saw a bunch of genealogies so I skipped them I had an excuse I was a Muslim I don't know what your excuses skip them it didn't take me long to get to Matthew chapter 5 where it says blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted and when I saw those words it was like electric on the page and it like jumped off the page and started my heart that's what it felt like as I'm reading these words I'm thinking jesus said that for me forget you guys he said that for me 2000 years ago and I started I honestly start reading this in every single verse I start reading I begin to feel like I'm having a conversation with the Bible I ask God a question like God how do I know you can hear my prayers and then I read the footnote on the Study Bible it says if you want to know God can hear your prayers go to 1st John 5 suite boom and so I'm reading the Bible going back and forth and I finally get to Matthew chapter 10 Matthew chapter 10 says he who proclaims me before the people of this world I will proclaim before my father in heaven and he who denies me before the people of this world I will deny before my father in heaven see I had all the evidence that I needed I had all the spiritual guidance I had asked for and now I had emotional comfort through the word knowing it was the Word of God but I hadn't proclaimed I looked at God and I said God if if I do this though I have to give up my family Matthew chapter tens next verses you want to know what they are he who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me as I read that I said God it's not just my parents though it's my whole life what the next verses say he who is not willing to pick up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me yeah God knows the cost the cost that Muslims have to pay today the cost that you might have to pay if you're listening to this is not a new cost as the cost the disciples had to pay from the very beginning it's the cost we all must be ready to pay if we're gonna follow Jesus and so I got on my knees and I prayed something now when I told me about the sinner's prayer I prayed something that sounded very Muslim but I did say Lord I believe you are Jesus and I submit to you and I thank you for having taken my sins died on the cross and risen from the dead I want to follow you with my life and that moment I had intellectually assented to the gospel but I don't think I had really grasped the gospel quite yet that wasn't until a few days later when I saw my father cry for the first time in my life my father was a 24 year veteran of the u.s. Navy to me he was like my archetype of strength he was like my Superman and here's what he said to me and this is all he said nabil today I feel as if my backbone has been ripped out from inside me and my mother didn't say a word it was like there was a light that had been in her eyes up until that day and I just turned it off she hasn't been the same since and after that conversation with them I just fell on my knees and just started saying to God God why didn't you kill me why didn't you kill me God because before they found out I was a believer I was saved I would go to heaven if you killed me I'd be happy you'd be happy they'd be happy we'd all be happy if you just killed me before I had to tell them why didn't you kill me and in that moment you know how you get when sometimes you're crying you just start repeating stuff I'm just like why didn't you kill me why didn't you give a car kinds of stuff coming out of my face I got like saliva and tears and mucus and I'm just God why didn't you come in as I'm saying that repeating that why didn't you kill me why didn't you kill me I heard these words because this is not about you in that moment my life my theology my everything was just rebooted and I stood up from there and I worked outside by the way this is I had to crying all night so this is the next morning I walk outside and I know this sounds cliche but it's true everything looks different everything looked different it was the same apartment the same tree the same street but it all looked different and the one thing that looked the most different was when I saw someone walking across the street and I'd seen that millions of times before but for the first time I realized that's not just someone that's someone that God was willing to die for can you I mean think about this is a Muslim my whole life I believed that God sat on his throne and he would never enter into this world and he ruled us from above and he gave us a bunch of things to do and he would judge us at the end of time but this story is that God was willing to enter into this world in a filthy world and he was willing to to live as a carpenter blue-collar laborer and he's willing to live with people who would ultimately betray him and then he's willing to go to a cross and suffer and die for the sake of sinners our God who created the universe all the stars in the sky he just thought them into existence that God is willing to die and as he tells us that He loves us so much he's willing to die for us this is what he says as I have loved you so loved one another and if I'm willing to watch someone walk across the street and let them go about their day and I'm not willing to love them so much that I'm ready to die for them then how am I following Jesus what does it mean to follow Jesus if he's willing to die for people who sinned against him and I'm not how am i a follower of Jesus and in that moment I realized what the gospel was the gospel is not something that you just hear and believe if it doesn't change your life it hasn't hits you yet and in that moment I realized that this God is worth everything this story is worth sharing with our lives oh and our lives are in his hands and if we die today we're gonna be taken care of but there are millions in fact billions of people for whom that is not the case and if we lived every second of our lives for their sakes only that would we truly honor this God who is willing to live the life we should have lived to die the death that we should have died that's our God and that's my story so let's pray together thank God I know that there are people here in this room who are hearing some of this for the first time that we don't believe off of blind faith that's not what you've called us to do you've called us to have a reason for the hope that lies within us you've told us to be able to explain the truth gently God there are people here are beginning to hear what the Christian message is all about not believing in my God versus your God or not believing in all these crazy things but believing in a God who loves us so much he is willing to pay the penalty for us a God who loves us not based on performance but because he's our father and father's love their sons no matter what they do god I pray that you would just enter into people's hearts right now and I pray Lord as we finish out tonight as we go into Q&A God that you would be leading hearts and minds right now whether here in this room or across cyberspace God we need you this life is too short to live on our own we need you in this moment so god please be with us please prompt our hearts and please lead us for the rest of this night pray in your son Jesus name

Channel: CrossPoint Church

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Id: -aqGwE7ZFo0

Length: 35min 17sec (2117 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2019