Yusha Evans - How i came to Islam

said Mr I take on whatever the law and alhamdulillah alhamdulillah here of Mira enemy was that was ceramic artists who leader Wilder Ali he was happy he ajma'in women will Aurelio Medina when ashhadu an la illaha illallah wahdahu la sharika lah whatcha doin muhammadan abduhu wa rasuluhu waka turbine Naveen warahmatullah enemy with the I am in low Bobby McGee was Terrigen muneerah I'm Abed disapper hired for all of your attendance you surprised me that we get so many people in such a small space with hamdulillah and as a disclaimer if it takes my thoughts a little while to process and I yawn frequently no that's because it's 5:10 a.m. for me and so I would just be waking up so in the quibble it have been up all night but a hundred of that I was born and raised in South Carolina in the United States and I was raised by my grandparents I was raised by my grandparents who were very conservative Christian my grandfather was Native American Indian full-blooded and my grandmother was an Irish that shows us the daughter of an Irish immigrants so I was raised by my grandparents who took me to church every single Sunday went to church on Wednesdays it was a tradition our house that we prayed before we went to bed my grandma made sure we prayed we prayed before we eat and in the Christian faith that's considered strictly religious there was no music allowed in my home other than music that my grandparents approved of there was no girls allowed in my home there was no I did not go to parties I was not allowed to go to school dances and all of these things as a child and this was my upbringing and the only thing that I really knew about religion other than the fact that I did what I was told to do was what I learned in Sunday school this was my religious upbringing as a child was Sunday school and in Sunday school we learned the beautiful stories about the Bible Francis we learned about Noah and how he preached for a thousand years and very few people listened to his message and God destroyed the world with the flood and we learned about Moses and the tune of Israel in the bondage of Egypt and him splitting the Red Sea and Pharaoh and all of these things we learned about David and Goliath the story where David killed Goliath we learned about Solomon building the Great Temple we learned about Jesus feeding the 5,000 with the fish in the loaves of bread and the Sermon on the Mount and the crucifixion and the resurrection and this this is all got to do about Christianity but that was supposedly as good as we needed to know as a child and then after that my grandparents would come and drag me out of Sunday school into the regular service which was very boring we went to a Methodist Church and Methodist Church is not like the televangelism that you see on TV there was no drums and guitars and singing and shouting and there was none of that in the Methodist Church you listen to the preacher talk you stunk you stood up and you sung a hymn you sat down you listened you stood up your song you said on your listen you stood up your song and then you left that's pretty much it and that was how I grew up and all of that changed when I was 14 it's the only thing that keeps me going something I have to keep it going at the age of 14 my grandparents took me to Saturday evening youth services for the first time and they were held at the gym at our church and the Saturday evening you sir this is quite different because we got the plane volleyball basketball dodgeball we ate pizza and cake and candy but then at the end our youth pastor who lived across the street from me would sit us down and give us a 30-minute sermon or lecture about religion and something having to do with youth and being closer to God and etc and this I liked because this was a like normal Church and when I turned 15 I started high school and I had not yet acquired my license so and my grandmother was ill she was battling cancer on and off most most of my teenage years she convinced my the youth pastor through his mother to give me a ride to school every day and to me that was pretty prestigious because not only was he a youth pastor that I looked up to he was the class president of my high school he was a senior and he drove a really nice car was a rebuilt 67 Mustang so it was a very auspicious thing for me to be able to go to school with him so we became friends neighbors say even though he was three years prior that ahead of me and it was four grades ahead of me but he started to take me to other youth christian fellowship services throughout the Upstate of South Carolina what is known as the Piedmont area of North Carolina and the the northern east corner of Georgia and it was called young life young life Fellowship Ministries he started to take me to these meetings and these meetings were more like what you see on TV there was get ours and drums and there was singing and shouting and people speaking in languages that I couldn't even understand and people falling on the floor and it was all this kind of you know and in the preaching was not like our pastor who just sat and read from the Bible the preaching was screaming and yelling and in-your-face and it was entertainment at his best and I would say that at this point in my life I began to become Christian out of choice and I fell in love with my religion and I gained an emotional attachment to my faith which is what kept me for as long as it didn't keep he was his emotional attachment and I keep that out just as a side note I wanted to mention emotional attachment just as a side note that a lot of people ask me doing dour workshops and things that nature how is it that people can have a faith that we look at it and see it as so backwards but yeah they can look at it and draw a logic out of it at the same time and that is because of that emotional attachment that I just mentioned people can become emotionally attached to something and not see the realities of it or not see the negative effects of it even though they may be blatant to everyone else and that happens that's why people are able to live these crazy lifestyles that's why a drug addict doesn't see the damage that they are doing to themselves and their family or an alcoholic because of their emotional attachment to their wrong this is why a lot of marriages end up in divorce and even now this is becoming ramped in the Muslim community because relationships begin on infatuations which is a heavy emotional attachment to someone and then what happens when you get married and the emotional attachment wears off it realizes that you or they don't like each other anymore and you get divorced and this is starting to happen in the Muslim community because a lot of marriages are beginning on a basis that's not correct you have men and women now boys and girls starting to gain an emotional attachments to each other improperly which we know is by the Shaitaan and then they get married and Shaitaan loves to break up marriages so he removes himself from the situation the emotional infatuation goes away and then the marriage falls apart this is a lesson for our youth but when those two people get married according to the Quran and the Sunnah based on the pleasure of Allah subhana wa ta'ala then they allow creates love and affection between them and those marriages last but that's a whole nother issue let's keep going with the story for I get off on a tangent but I emotionally attach myself to Christianity at this time and my friend Benjamin graduated and I went on to be a sophomore and he started to attend a Bible College in my town which is very famous in the United States and it is somewhat world-famous amongst learned conservative Christians it's called Bob Jones University it's like a neo ultra conservative Christian biblical college in Greenville South Carolina and his field of study other than theology and all of these other things his focus was on textual criticism and if I were to tell you what textual criticism is we would be here for another two hours which which we don't want to be but a textual critic the easiest way for me to describe it is like someone who is specializes in textual criticism is like a Mohandas of the Bible in a sense because just like the Mohandas has to have knowledge --is and Sciences of hadith they have to know the chains of narrations they have to know the narrators they have to know the the the text and be able to weigh it against other relevant texts and all of these different Sciences a textual critic of the Bible has to do the same thing with the existing documents that we have left of the Bible which are scattered or found from scattered all over the world they're in different languages they don't agree with each other in most cases they disagree with each other so a textual critic has the job of sifting through all of these documents which at last tally was almost 7,000 variant documents of wooden is now known as the Bible and they have to try to find out which one is the most correct which one since we have no originals and we don't know what they original ever said then the the textual critic scholar has to find out what is the closest to what the author originally penned down or their original thoughts and it's very difficult when you have no originals and most cases you have no chain of transmission it's the chain is broken somewhere always there's no such thing as a text of the Bible with the train of transmission back to the author but anyway that was his field of study and being that I was his best friend he was my role model I was as a print every means I in turn wanted to be like him I wanted to become a youth minister I wanted to become a Bible scholar so I enrolled into Bob Jones University in my sophomore year because it's a long waiting list it's a small college I wanted to become a missionary at the age of 16 I knew what I wanted to do with my life I wanted to be a missionary I wanted to be a Bible scholar when I preached the gospel of Jesus Christ I wanted to preach it from knowledge I wanted to do be ordained in the ministry I wanted to do all of these things because I guess it's a flaw in a sense and it's part of my system is that I am a perfectionist it's just part of my wife says I have an OCD and over compulsive disorder I don't know if I want to take it that far but I have to do things to perfection it's just the way I am I don't accept really much less than that and it drives my family absolutely insane because things have to be a certain way and if they're not a certain way I go crazy and they and I don't rest until it's done that way for instance when I was going to be a Christian I was gonna be all of those things best I could be when I was I started taking martial arts at 14 that wasn't enough so I got one black belt that wasn't enough so I got two black belts in another martial art that wasn't enough so I got another black bone another martial art that wasn't enough so I started fighting Krav Maga that wasn't enough so opened up three of martial arts schools I just don't stop until there's nothing left to do I try to meet everyone at what it is that I'm trying to do it not that can drive me crazy after a while but so I wanted to be like him and as he began to become more involved in his studies he was not able to be as involved in our church so he passed over the youth pastoring to me temporarily because I was pretty much too young at that time 15 to be a youth minister but I had already begun giving sermons at young life in different places like this and people said that I have a had a gift for speaking so my pastor started letting me do some youth pastoring and when he liked what it is that he saw from me and people were very much happy with me he decided to just to leave me as the youth pastor as long as I wanted to be even though I wasn't really old enough to be ordained as use pastor but so and as my friend Benjamin was studying textual criticism guess who else was studying textual criticism I was everything he was studying I would study with him when he would learn he would pass it on to me because as again as a perfectionist I wanted to be so far ahead of everyone else when I started my freshman year at Bob Jones I wanted to graduate in two and a half to three years I wanted to be done so I wanted to get as far ahead as I could so everything was going fine and dandy at this point until the summer of 1996 the summer of 1996 my friend Benjamin came to me and he asked me a question which caught my caught me off-guard he came and he asked me he said have you ever read the Bible and I'm like what are you talking about I've ever read the Bible I'm running around doing your job as the youth pastor and you're asking me if I've ever read the Bible I was like what do you mean he's like you know what I mean like if I ask you have you read Stephen King's latest novel you know what I mean you've read it from cover to cover you know what it's about you know the major players in the story you know the plot you can tell me some of the major incidents that happens you can tell me how it begins and how it ends this is what I mean have you read the Bible and I told them I have I've never at the Bible like that and I did not know anyone who had read the Bible cover-to-cover Genesis to Revelation who could tell you how it ended or how it began how it ended who were all the players what happens here in the middle in between that's that's a rare Jim defined in even even in pastors even if they say they've read the Bible cover-to-cover it's probably they said yeah we've read it cover-to-cover over a period of 10-15 years and we've doubled here and devil there's and it's not like that so he asked me he said well how can it be that we want to preach the Bible we want to teach God's Word which is the acronyms bi ble meaning the basic instructions before leaving Earth and we have not read it like that we don't know it like that how can we even claim that we are preaching God's Word when if we don't know it intimately I said okay what do you what do you suggest he said let's take this summer it was almost summertime and let's read the Bible beginning to end spend these next three months and just covered cover to cover don't touch any of the books let's just read it Genesis 1:1 to end of Revelation he said because and this was my belief and I've had plenty of people challenge me and said I was never a Christian which is very funny but this is my belief that God was God he was also Jesus as man and there was also a third personage of God being the Holy Spirit and that part of God lived inside of me therefore if God lived inside of me or stuck for the law then I should be able to read his word and he should speak to me it should tell me what God wants from me so he said let us read the Bible and let the Holy Spirit speak to us I said okay let's do that so I started Genesis one morning and if I told you all of the things I saw we would be here forever I have I have tried to put a lot of them together in some of my videos like the true history of Christianity and etc but I think it would take a couple of DVD series for me to put them all together all the things I saw like the like the contradictions and language that my friend Benjamin was pointing out to me which are very interesting by themselves if you read the Hebrew text of even the tour I go get the one from from from the who the Jews you'll see and even their own scholars I've approached them with this there they won't admit it other than their assignments that there are places in the Torah where the language is so beautiful in the Hebrew that it cannot be the language prose by human beings because human beings don't speak this way and then you'll find many other places which is actually more than not you'll find places where you can tell the language is a different person speaking it's a lot more remedial Hebrew it's like second third grade maybe fifth grade Hebrew but not very proficient that the grammar doesn't even really match up and there's a lot of you can tell that it is different people who are speaking is different people who are writing these things down it's not coming from the same author but that really Benjamin was pointing that out to me but I was like yeah okay whatever what call what I wanted to read was the content the context and what caught my attention more than anything was not all the contradictions which there are hundreds of thousands of them what caught my attention more than anything was the stories of the prophets in the bio this is where I began my end of Christianity for instance I start in Genesis with the story of Noah and he said n-no in the Bible that says Noah preached for a thousand years not very many people listened to him but he kept going and then God finally got tired of all of the disobedience of him because these were the first people ever to dis will be big God were the people of Noah we believe this is a Muslim as well the first people you were the people of know so God decided to destroy the earth with a flood he told no one I build the ark and we know the story there's another story about Noah that's not so prestigious it says that after the flood Noah learned that there was a such a thing called alcohol that if you let wines if you like grapes ferments they make this wonderful drink that makes you intoxicated and it says that no one this is a direct quote from Genesis Noah became so intoxicated with alcohol one day that he was passed out in his home naked so apparently somebody saw this because Noah didn't write he was passed out naked so apparently Noah was laid out in front of people passed out naked in his home intoxicated now it nowhere refers to him as being an alcoholic in a sense but when you do someone that drinks enough to be passed out in their home but naked they're an alcoholic I don't care anyway you try to put it around this person is an issue with alcohol because I know a lot of alcoholics and I've never seen one of them laying in their house naked so Noah had an issue with alcohol and so I caught myself and I said wait a minute God's prophet God's prophet that is kept hitting in my head God the Prophet I thought they were the you know in my mind God's prophets with best human beings there was no one like them and this is the reason God chose them for this purpose is that they led people to God's Way by their their speech in their actions so I thought to myself God's prophet passed out in his home drunk naked there's a problem with this for me somewhere and then to kind of play it off because it was a shot from me I said to myself now I know why nobody listened to Noah he was an alcoholic who people found out was laying in his house naked nobody listens to those people if you go to the city center and I'm sure in every city center in the world there's bombs who get drunk every day and pass out the streets and beg for money right not sure that the Australia is no different now let's say that same bum you see every day passed out urinating on himself and all other kinds of things one day all of a sudden he jumps up on the park bench and says you know what God chose me to be a prophet sent me with a message to tell you that if you don't follow me I'm going to build this huge boat in in Sydney Olympic Park and if you get on it you'll be saved if not God is going to destroy all of you how many of you are going to be following this guy and go get on this boat even if he can build it that's what I thought so I said to myself now I know why no one listened to no way except his family and even then his son didn't listen to him so I was like wow but that's really weird it's an issue for me but I kept reading I was like okay let's just go the point is to read the book from beginning there and I can't get stuck in Genesis so I kept reading and I got to the story of lot look at a.m. there is differences of opinion about from biblical scholars whether or not Lott was a prophet and I've even had some preachers debate me a lot wasn't a prophet I said who cares or not whether or not you believe is a prophet God saw it fit that this man was important enough to put in his book so he there's reason to talk about him he's in your book for a reason so the story of hood on SLM is the story of Mott in solid Sodom and Gomorrah the cities that were overrun with homosexuality and God decided to destroy that city due to their sins and he sent lots of them to warn them now there's another story about lot that's really really really really not as prestigious and because we have young children here I have to water the story down because if I give it to you uncut it's not gee it's not even pg-13 you would need to show ID to be able to tell you to the story in full detail and I'm just very serious there are plenty of stories in the Bible that you need identification to prove year of age it would be in one of those little stores with the blacked-out windows I'm not we have those over here but if the story is of Lawton his two daughters lot had two daughters and no sons he had no one to pass on his lineage as a male child and his daughters were worried about this because he was getting old so his daughters decided to fix it the problem and the way they decided to fix the problem was the oldest daughter got not intoxicated here we go with the alcohol again it seems like it's a overwhelming message in the Bible lot's daughter oldest daughter got lot intoxicated one evening and then slept with him and became pregnant by him so that she could possibly have a son and just to make sure that there was a 50/50 chance the youngest daughter did the same thing the next night and they both became pregnant by their father so now I'm really have an issue because now we have two drunk prophets and one of them is sleeping with his daughters so this is starting to become a bad thing to me so now I'm really interested in the stories of the prophets so I'm reading all of it but I'm really kind of quickly through because there's a lot of parts of the Bible that really you would wonder like what in the world is this even doing in this book it has nothing to do with anything there's an entire book called Ruth in the Bible that never even mentions God it's a love story it's like a romance novel you're like what you finish it you're like okay what is it whatever there's nothing if it came out of that but so I kept reading and there were a couple of other stories but I don't want to keep you here to the fudger and the two that really caught my attention the most after after the one about lot was the story of Solomon and David Suleiman alehissalaam and they end on a cm in the story of Solomon is that he was one of the greatest kings of Israel in the Bible he established the temple which is now the Temple Mount which is what the Jews are trying to destroy master locks at the rebuild thinking that the Messiah is going to come which is just going to be the Dajjal so I don't know what they're in hurry for but there's another story about Solomon in the Bible where it says that Solomon once became so weak in his faith that he worshiped idols he committed shirk shirk being the greatest shirk and I'm like okay God's prophet is now worshiping other gods so what if people followed him would they be right or would they be wrong who's the God's prophet something like yeah that's a that's that's a serious problem and now I get to the story of David and this is where I had to say okay enough is enough how many of you know the story of the worldwide unit that would watch it David a Goliath where David killed Goliath should all know the story if not you need to go pick up a Costas of an via trauma there's another story about David it's again not so great it's a story of a David and a woman named Bathsheba in the Bible Bathsheba is known as a very beautiful woman in the Bible she was very gorgeous and David saw her sunbathing one day on her porch and he decided that this woman was so beautiful he had to have her so he went he slept with her the only problem is she's married and she's married to one of the commanders of his army named Uriah and so David committed adultery a sin punishable by death according to his own law now Davida has to figure out how to solve the problem he feels bad about what he did so he says okay let me fix the problem do you think he fixes the problem by repenting and becoming a better person and you know admitting his sin no he sends a letter to his army saying when the battle is fierce because they were fighting and Philistine at the time he said when the battle is fierce I want everyone to abandon Uriah so they dies so they did that Uriah was killed and now David is able to have Beth Sheba and nobody can say a thing so he committed adultery and then covered it up by committing murder or conspiracy to commit murder so now I'm like wait a minute enough is enough man you know I mean this is getting way out of control why don't you want to go any farther than this this is just seriously out of control I thought God's prophets were the best human beings on earth now we have prophets you're alcoholics passed out in their home naked we have prophets who are sleeping with their daughters we have prophets who are committing idolatry committing adultery and murder these are like the first five capital sins these are the firt breaking the first five commandments see these are seriously the first five commandments have no other God before me covered not thy neighbor's wife all of these did you broke them all and I'm like these are not the best people not only are they're not the best people these are some of the people who you would see on America's Most Wanted in the in states you know that guy ja wohl for the leather coat he'll be looking for these guys if I see these guys I'm calling the police if I I would not leave my four-year-old son alone with date with David or Noah and if lot got anywhere near my daughter I'm gonna kill him myself and these are God's prophets so there's an issue here for me there's a big issue for me so I started to commit the biggest sin in Christianity and Christians challenged this but the ones who've left Christianity they know I'm telling the truth the biggest sin in Christianity was I started asking way too many questions I started asking way too many questions that I had no business asking so say whatever they want to say that's the biggest standing Christianity and when I started to ask all these questions I got to ask my pastor and youth pastor a couple of their pastors I even got to ask one of the greatest televangelists in the world his name is Benny Hinn how many of you ever heard of Benny Hinn he's one of our favorites right he loves us right we love Him he doesn't like us where would we like him they all told me the same thing it was kind of like a pre-recorded message they would tell me brother Joshua don't let a little bit of knowledge wreck your faith because we are not justified by knowledge we are justified by faith this is Paul's teaching by the way we are justified by our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and his shedding of his blood for the redemptions of sins this is a direct quotation from Paul he said so it is your faith alone that gives you justification unto salvation not knowledge so basically you don't need to know nothing you just need to believe it and he told me my pastor told me that real faith is belief beyond the capability to understand that's real faith is faith beyond the capacity of reasons faith beyond the ability to understand it that's real faith so in the back of my mind I'm like you know what that sounds like I'm being run game on you know like I don't know if you guys use that term over here run game but you know a lot of the Shabaab like to try to run game on everybody including their parents and I know and I said I know what I'm trying to be sold snake oil you know I know like you're trying to sell and Eskimo and igloo I see so this doesn't really sound good to me I said but and then he told me my pastor told me but why are you even meddling around in the Old Testament the Old Testament is the Old Covenant it is for the children of Israel it is their direct relationship and they had with God that is now passed over into the new covenant of Jesus Christ therefore we have the New Testament so why don't you go read the New Testament why don't you read the life of Jesus Christ and you will find something completely different and then he tried to tell me about you know that the prophets were they were prophets yet they were human beings so they had natural flaws and they tried to show us how you can have natural flaws of the human being yet still be used as God's best wasn't really buying it but I didn't want to argue at that time because I didn't want to lose my faith you have to understand that I had my whole life ahead of me I had already founded my life on this religion and doing this work and I wanted to seal up the cracks quick so I started to go to the New Testament but before I did I finished the Old Testament and there were some things about the Old Testament that were clear even the things there were so many things were unclear there were things from the Old Testament that were extremely clear and the number one thing that was clear from the Old Testament was that God was one this was without a doubt God was one and the most unique of senses and there's so many verses that say they speak of God's oneness in the Old Testament that it's not even we don't have the capacity to relate them all in this time sitting like for instance hero is you're the Lord your God is one hear o Israel the Lord your I am the Lord your God and there is none else here o Israel I am the Lord your God and there is none like me here o Israel the first commandment was what thou the the way they translated in the King James is thou shalt have no other God before me which is not really the correct interpretation of the word because that that kind of says okay you have any other God before me but I've had one person I even had a a I even had a Hindu tell me okay yes in the first cup it is you should have no other God before me but God didn't say anything about beside me or behind me so it's not for the good translation the correct terminology of that verse is God says in the first commandment you shall have no other God along with me or you should not have any other God that you make is an equal to me meaning what God said in the first commandment was that you do not make anything as an equal with me you do not give anything that which rightly belongs to me your worship is for me alone your sacrifices are to me alone this is what is meant by this commandment so this was very clear without a doubt and number two God was very jealous he was extremely jealous and the only time he would really flip out on the children of Israel was when they would worship something else other than that they were he would flip out on them and ring in and make their lifestyle more and more and more strict that's why you think the Sharia is strict you've not seen anything like the Hasidic Jewish law the Hasidic Jewish law is so strict just because of the fact that this is the adapt of Allah that he has placed on them that if they want to continue to follow that law a broken law it's very Street it's really really strict there's so many things they can't do it makes absolutely no sense it's kind of like being in prison and that is a reason for that there's a reason Allah did that because prison is for what reason is to contain criminals yes but also prison has a lot of things that are psychological for instance like all of the bars any of you've ever because I used to do a lot of prison work been inside of prison you know there's too many there's more bars than necessary they're bright colors they make you wear silly jumpsuits yeah the food is completely nasty all of these things are not only to punish you but also to remind you every single day that you wake up you in jail and you here for a reason and don't come back this is the point of a lot of things in prison and this was the point of a laws restriction children Israel to remind them that I am Allah you don't disobey me I make the rules not you you want to disobey me I'll just make it tougher and another thing I realized from the Old Testament was that salvation that means that if you wanted to go to heaven in the Old Testament there was one two ways to do it to only to you worship God alone and you obey Him this was it that was it you worship God and you obey Him and you go to heaven that's it and the last statement of the Old Testament and if you know what the last statement of the Old Testament is it's a very profound statement the last statement of the Old Testament in Malachi which is the last book of the Old Testament God says to the children of Israel I do not change I do not change therefore the sons of Jacob are not consumed he says I don't change that's why I have not destroyed you it's basically his last message in the Old Testament is that I don't change my mind basically Allah is saying I don't change that's the reason I have not destroyed you because I made a covenant with you and I don't break it because I don't change my mind and we know this from the quran Boyle was offended with dialysis that the son of Allah does not change the way a lot deals with his creation does not change so I began to read the New Testament the life of Jesus Christ and if I went into all the problems of the Old Testament all of the textual problems all the historical problems all the contradictions of the message and the themes and man it's a headache trust me if you want to know more you can you can if you want to know all of those you can go to my website and I have a lecture series called the truth of the history of Christianity on there talks all about the New Testament but what I wanted to see was Jesus what was his message who was he what did he teach what did he preach what was his life like so I started to study Matthew Mark Luke and John but I studied it differently than any other Christian whatever and this is why they don't see what I saw so clearly is because the way they look at it this is why I love the the study of textual criticism I even apply that to my Islamic studies because it gives me a much deeper knowledge like you have Matthew you have martya mu and you have John and they're all stories about Jesus and the way most Christians read them is they read them Matthew to the end mark to the end Luke today and John to the end and what they think they're reading is four of the same story told by different people just a different perspective but the way if you read it the right way and you read linearly instead of and you read like this across rather than down you see something completely different the way you do that as I read the first chapter of Matthew which has a certain amount of set of stories then I would read the first chapter of Mark then I'll read the first chapter of Luke that are we the first head of John they go to two two two three three because then you're seeing the same stories by all four people at the same time and you realize as I could this was really something wrong here there's really a issue here because it's not the same story of not by the same people they don't mean the same thing but what I did see from the New Testament was that this is what Jesus taught he taught that God was one they without a doubt he taught that God is one he even says it he quotes Deuteronomy here o Israel the Lord your God is one in John 17 verse 3 he says this is life eternal that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent he teaches equipment many times that God was greater than him he said I the father is greater than I he says that God is greater than I when somebody asked him said called him good master he said why do you call me good master for there is none that is good and actually that's the real connotation of the Greek which is not a language Jesus spoke so it's hard to even know that that's what he said because it's by language a man didn't speak but in the Greek is it says Jesus said that all good comes from God everything that is good comes from God he said why are you calling me good for there is nothing there's none that is a source of good except one and that's God this this is Jesus message that God has won so what did Jesus teach about salvation then because I was thinking to myself I thought Jesus was God but he couldn't be God because he's saying that God is one but wait a minute it is one because He is God at the same time no he can't be God because Jesus when somebody asked him when was the day of judgment he said no man knoweth hour not even the Sun meaning himself only the father meaning God in heaven knows the hour so he can't be God he didn't even know that their judgement was going to be when he taught people to pray he taught them to pray our Father who art in heaven hallowed be that name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth it is in heaven praising God and then he asked God give us their daily bread that so the the the the Lord's Prayer is separated into two parts which is very interesting to me now as a Muslim the first part of the lowest prayer is praising God and the second part of the world's prayer is asking for redemption and deliverance onto the right path which is very interesting but something he can't be God because God is not all-knowing and knowing God is not someone who doesn't need anything which is the god of the Old Testament he needed nothing and he needs things the God's nature and Jesus nature are not one of the same so I said okay - and then how do we go to heaven if Jesus is not God maybe he was just the son of God maybe was just got of the flesh but then I read on and a man once named Lazarus once came to Jesus of Richmond once came to Jesus in the asked him old good master how do I an inherit eternal life how do I go to heaven how do I get salvation now Jesus didn't reply saying I'm going to down the cross resurrect myself on the third day etc etc etc he said follow the commandments he said obey God obey God's law and the man said I've done that I've done that this is a lot of Christians they misinterpret these things because of their emotional attachment we conceived notions he said I've done that and Jesus told him he said okay if you've done that that means you're perfect then what you need to do is you need to go to your house sell everything you have and you need to come work for me you need to come to what I'm doing if you're so perfect I need some help you need to come work with me and the man realized at that point he was not perfect in God's eyes so he left crying but this was Jesus message to the man keep the commandments follow God's law you want to go to heaven follow God's law I'm like what happened to the crucifixion and I'm start so I started looking for anywhere Jesus says that he's going to die on a cross on the third day of his resurrection for the sins of humanity in that language and what I find out is it's not there the only places you can find that is in what is the word I'm looking for implicit terminology meaning he said something that you can take to mean that if you already think that's what it means but if you didn't know anything about the crucifixion you would not necessarily deduce those things so I'm like wait but God's message is clear God's message the Old Testament is clear I'm one worship me go to heaven and this is the same thing that Jesus teaching God is one worship him go to heaven so now I'm like okay what about the crucifixion and I promise you were getting close to the end so I'm like I have to now find out what the crucifixion is all about because it's in all four books of the New Testament what is it about why did they try to crucify Jesus why was the crucifixion even necessary if Jesus is teaching their salvation leiden following the law and Jesus is saying that he is a fulfillment of the law he didn't come to abolish it but to fulfill it and he told people to follow the law make it as a Christian we don't follow the law we're told by Paul that the law is cursed Paul writes that the law is not a way to salvation and here's Jesus saying the law is salvation I'm confused I'm conflicted Jesus saying the law lead you to salvation and Paul is saying that the law was only our schoolmaster to lead us to Christ once we have Christ were no more need of the schoolmaster which is and that the law is cursed even starts out his book of Galatians and this is where I caught it when I started to read Galatians when I read Galatians Paul teaches and he starts it out by saying oh you foolish Galatians why are you still following this cursed law and Paul says that the law was a curse and he says that Jesus Christ was cursed on behalf of the law in order to remove us from the curse of the law for it is written and he quoted an Old Testament passage everything that hangeth on a tree is cursed and I stopped right there because that caught me I said why why did Paul say this there has to be a reason Paul made this statement that Christ was crucified and cursed according to the law in order to remove us from the curse of all what is written everything hanging on the tree is cursed so I go back to the Old Testament I start to read that passage that Paul quoted and it is in Deuteronomy and I start to realize that crucifixion was the worst capital punishment that you go to receive according to the law of Moses and it says in Deuteronomy that whenever you hang someone on a tree with crucifixion to take them down that same day don't let them hang on the tree overnight because everything that you hang on a tree crucify is cursed by God so you're saying taking them down bear him that same day because they're cursed people don't leave them hanging overnight and all of a sudden it clicks to me I know now why they wanted to crucify Jesus and I know now why Jesus was not crucified and I know now why his crucifixion was not a means of salvation and why Jesus emphasized the law so much and I know now why Jesus did not want to be crucified because all of that used to plague my mind it made no sense that Jesus whole mission is to come and die on the cross but yet when they come and tell him they're going to crucify you he runs to the Garden of Gethsemane falls on his face prays to God saying God if it be please let this cup as for me I don't want to go to the cross he's begging God crying so hard that his sweat becomes as if some blood asking God don't let them crucify me I'm like wait a minute this makes absolutely no sense it all clicked together and rather than going through the whole line of it I'm just going to tell you why so we can get to the end there's one reason they wanted to crucify Jesus number one Jesus was a man who came to a people who had completely lost God's message to the children of Israel and there was a group of people amongst them who were called the Sadducees and the Pharisees these were the whole amount of the time but the odenma were very corrupt the scholars were very corrupt they were using God's law and God's religion to subjugate the people and to get rich off the people and to get wealthy and have status and prestige they were using God's religion to make themselves better than everyone else and they were keeping the people ignorant they were keeping the people poor and all of this other things Jesus came to put a check on that basically he came to put things back at a level playing field this is why he did some of the weird things they didn't see when he walked through the corn fields on the Sabbath day and all of this he was trying to let the tune of visitor know that God's law is meant for God to help you not for you to hurt one another with it and he came and said I have been sent to what an Innova an adulterous and murderous nation meaning these Pharisees and Sadducees talking to them one of the first things he did when he entered Jerusalem or the last thing depending on which book of the New Testament you read he went into the temple in what he saw there were people changing money inside the the message of a law he came and he flipped the table he said this is not the place for that so he came to put things back together and this was his biggest crime his biggest crime was not his message they knew his message was good they knew his message was right they knew he was the Messiah the problem was that Jesus was not the Messiah they envisioned he was not someone who came and sat on the King on the king's throne in the Temple of Solomon and ruled the world with an iron fist this was what they were looking for this what they were expecting why because they had become so attached to this world as dunya had consumed them so much that they thought the only salvation was to control this world and they clung to it very heavily and this is what Allah tells us in the Quran that you will find them the most arduous of people after this life that if you were to give them a life of a thousand years it would not be enough for them and Allah even challenges them with that if that tell them if you're God's chosen people wish for death they would never do it so I began to see this in the old test in the New Testament that this was the problem of the children Israel this the only way they would accept Jesus the Messiah as if he ruled with it with a iron fist over the whole world but Jesus was trying to tell them was I did not come to bring you the kingdom of this world I came to bring you the kingdom of God the kingdom of heaven the kingdom of the year after that's what God is wanting for you that Hira not this this means nothing Jesus spent his whole life trying to show them that this world is nothing what I've come to bring you is the year after and this is the message of all the prophets all of the prophets said they came to take us to the kingdom of the hereafter this world is really nothing but they were trying to hear that not only that but then he went even further than that they might have be unable to let that go they might have just said he's just an idiot the biggest sin of Jesus was that he challenged the authority he challenged the authority in the ruling elite the people who were subjugating themselves or where everyone else he challenged their prestige and he showed them for who they were to the people so of course anytime I don't care what your messages I don't care how good your messages I don't care help you your way of life is the lonely you become a threat to the status of the ruling elites the moment yours your way of system that you're trying to bring becomes a direct threat to the system that is set up to subjugate human beings you will become public enemy number one and they will exhaust no efforts to silence you and get rid of you that's that's what happened to Jesus which happened to every the profit that came along and this is what what has I've been Alfa told iris also glory said Linda he already knew how many you remember that story when he went to war awful work I said I wish that I was a year strong young man so that I could stand beside you with my sword when the day your people will throw you out and he said they'll throw me out he said no one has come with when you came with accept that their people threw them up so this is what Jesus made himself a threat to so what did they do they had to get rid of him Jesus has to go he's got to go so they had to find a way to get rid of this man but not only did they want to get rid of him because Jesus wasn't like any other prophet they realized that this Jesus came blazing with miracles he was what Allah sent him with with miracles like had never been seen they said not only do we need to get rid of him because they could have killed him Jesus had no tribe he had no lineage he had no father so they could have just killed him and dumped him in a ditch nobody would have done anything about it but what they wanted to do was to discredit him this is what they needed to do they needed to discredit who he was they needed to make him look so stupid that no one would ever believe in his message again and they realized they were very smart they said there's one way we can get rid of him he's coming saying he's bringing the law of God he's the fulfillment of the law of God because they tried other things if you read the New Testament they tried to trick him many times they even tried to get him to speak against Caesar if you if any of you read the New Testament they came and asked Jesus one time they tried to trick him they said do you think we should pay taxes to Caesar had Jesus said no oh that's it that's that's that's a capital crime they would have killed him on the spot he said he tricked them he said give to God what belongs to God and give the Caesar what belongs to Caesar and leave me alone so they asked him many things trying to trick him um so they couldn't figure out any of that so what they decided to do was they decided to start calling him that he was saying that he was the kingdom Jews in a direct challenge to Caesars Empire they started calling the king of the Jews and that's actually believe it or not what he was crucified for not for calling himself God because they even nailed above the cross that they were supposedly whoever was crucified on here lies the king of the Jews but they started saying that he was calling himself divine by some of the things that he said like the father and I are one but they were misinterpreting the things he said which Christians do today the same thing they took that and started to say that he was a direct challenge to the seed of season so they were taking him to Pontius Pilate and said you need to crucify this man you need to kill him he sees the direct threat when Pontius questioned Jesus What did he say said I find no fault in this man take him but eventually they they convinced Pontius to try to crucify him and there's one reason they wanted to have Jesus crucified because Jean they Pontius asked what are you going to do with him he said crucified is that crucified he's crucified was one reason why because of that Old Testament statement that everything that hangs on a tree is cursed they realize if we can crucify Jesus he cannot be the Messiah because you cannot crucify God's Messiah and curse him according to the very law that he is saying he's coming to fulfill what an idiot he would look like if we can crucify him and no one would ever believe in him this is also why paul said that the crucifixion was the stumbling block of the jews they were laughing in the christians you believe in a crucified Messiah are you serious there's no such thing as a crucified Messiah it can't happen they knew this so this is why they wanted to crucify him and when Jesus realized that that's why he went to the Garden of Gethsemane that's why he fell on his face and prayed to Allah so hard saying Ya Allah do not let them crucify me because he understood if they crucify me they'll never believe in me I've wasted my mission all this work is for nothing if they crucify me and we know that Allah subhana WA Ta'ala answer this I realize this now as a Muslim and as a side note which I'm going to get to the end and promise you but I hope I'm not boring anyone to death as a side note we know that our Rasul saw Parvati who seldom said that every prophet was given a dog in their lifetime that Allah promised to answer yes or no every prophet was given one free ticket by Allah ask whatever you like I'll give it to you Allah who Adam but this may have been Jesus is Dharma he may have pulled that out at this time and whipped out that get out of whatever free card and said y'all I need this Duan now and some scholars adduced that this may be what happened because quoting the Gospel of Barnabas which don't use it as a direct evidence because the Gospel of Barnabas has his issues as far as textual relativity but in the cording the Gospel of Barnabas Jesus made this dua and then all of a sudden angels came and took him and this was the answer but Allah Allah mama saved him from this so I realized to myself Jesus could not have been crucified I realized that no matter I don't care because when I started to read the crucifixion story again I started to focus on it even in the New Testament I realize wait a minute it was not Jesus there was crucified is there's a different this different stories about what's happening here there's different stories about what happens during the crucifixion there's different stories about what happens after the crucifixion even in the resurrection because I started the question that crucifixion and the guy told me no look even do we even have witnesses at the Gospel of Thomas what tom has said that he went to Jesus and there's another book that's not in the Bible he said he went to Jesus and Jesus said to me old Tom is why do you doubt that I was crucified look into my hands and see the marks I said to myself wait a minute crucifixion is not through the hands this was told to me by a rabbi when he was laughing at the crucifixion story he said you think you're because people have you ever heard of the Christians getting the stigmata you ever heard of the stigmata where's the stigmata you people these peoples so you see with these miracles in their hands it is physically impossible to crucify somebody through the hands you you nail somebody through the hand and you hang them on a pole see how long they're going to stay up there their body weight is not even gonna let and be up there so I laugh at this this is your miracle a stigmata through the hand Christ could not even crucify through the hands crucifixion would have been through the arm and through the the shin bones so you got some issues but anyway so I realized Jesus could not have been crucified so I started asking now these questions and of course I was quickly removed is the use pastor no longer was I able to even speak in public anymore which I didn't want to anyway because I could not continue to preach a message that I did not believe in and finally my friend Benjamin when I told him what I was saying he smiled and he said come with me he took me to his textual critic professor and his textual critic professor told me Joshua the book you have in your hand the Bible is a book written by the hands of men and women over thousands of years and it's been passed down by hand written for thousands of years and people made lots of mistakes in their copying sometimes the mistakes were accidental sometimes they were purposely changed for many various reasons he said but but what you have in your hands now is a product of the hands of men's and women and they left their fingerprints on it so it's not without air it's not perfect no it's not he said but the people who believe in it believe in it by faith and it is that faith which takes them to justification and salvation it is that faith which leads them to have salvation because true faith is what believed beyond the capability to understand belief beyond the capability of reason even belief in the in the face of Blades of evidence and so I said to him I said let me tell you something I said would you tell me as a bunch of garbage I said because God is perfect yeah he said yes I said therefore God's book should be perfect therefore God's prophets should be perfect God's message should be perfect and everything that comes from him is perfect his universe that he created is perfect you're telling me God is perfect the world he created is perfect the system he said it was perfect being the develop is perfect but now of a sudden when it comes to his message to human beings to live their life now the sudden it's completely imperfect his profits are worse than more people I've ever met my entire life his book is rubbish has no authority no whatsoever the religion is so stupid that the only way you can believe in is if you turn off your logic that God gave you as a sense to understand the world around you and that's the only way I can be saved is that yep I said well this is not the religion for me and I left I left Christianity completely said this is garbage and I started to look for other religions I studying Hinduism that's like a soap opera of gods seriously it's like a soap opera one God gives birth to another God within turns and kills his mother and they sleeps with his sister in and oh by the way this week another God we found wonder you know there's another one that this and this is just craziness who did I studied Buddhism I don't know how that's a religion Buddha Buddha never mentions God he never even alludes that God exists so don't know how that's a religion I studied Taoism some very good teachings but still a lot of rubbish I studied Wiccan which is the dispels magic witchcraft all that good stuff I studied Buddhist art Bushido which is the samurai code of conduct very good code of conduct they set for the whole fallen on your sword thing not really down for that but I studied every religion that I could get my hands on and I had one person tell me a pastor he let and and he was very arrogant the way he said it you just proved yourself a liar telling me the you study the world's major religions in less than a year and a half you're such an idiot I said you're right I'm such an idiot that I would take a glass of dirty water which is the world's religions and I would drink a sip of it realize how dirty it is oh but let me keep drinking it until I finish the whole glass and home Bassitt is good one that would be the that's the world religions when I took one sip and saw how dirty it was I spit it out and I put the cup down that's what I did when I study the religion far enough to realize it's garbage it's garbage what what what what digging in that if you go in the dumpster and realize there's only garbage what do you want to find at the bottom more garbage so I left it alone so and I also read a book about it slam I got a book from the public library about its name I don't remember the name of it but it said that Muslims in os LEM which is a very derogatory word it means someone who oppresses someone else coming from the world Valen Muslim Muslim means one who commits volume which is oppression or wrong Armour evil it's a very slight of the tongue said that Muslims worship a moon-god called allah who lives in a box in the desert of Saudi Arabia that all all Muslims were Adams and they had many wives and they meet them all day long and that the greatest deed of a Muslim was to kill a non-muslim at any time at any place without discretion and then they would give virgins when they went to heaven so I put that book back on the shelf and I mark to slam off the list like this and I said to myself if I ever set another religion it never be Islam and if I ever see a Muslim I'm going to Bruce Lee him on the streets and I'm going to call the FBI I said but I've never seen a Muslim I live in South Carolina never seen a Muslim in my life so hello somehow I'm good so I left religion alone completely at 17 and I said you know what God you don't want to help me out I help myself you don't want to show me the right way I'll make up my own way and I promise you I'll show you how much better I can do at doing my thing so I started to drink and party and get it all you know all of the things that you can get into as a youth 17 years old lost angry of God angry religion there's a lot of trouble you can get into and like I said I'm a perfectionist if I was going to be a Buddhist they would have been orange robe and bald head and sandals if I was going to be a Wiccan it would have been spells on everybody I would say if I was going to be a samurai out up and running around in the dress and sword and katana and all that mix it up that's just the way I am so when I went after the streets I wanted to be a proper gangster you know proper thug I wanted to know the whole Tupac thug life movement was heavy at that point to pocket just got killed and Biggie and all that stuff I was I was in it and my biggest problem is my anger issue I was getting into fights got kicked out of school I had to go to night school and finish and get my secondary degree I had to I got arrested one night for a fight that a young man didn't want to get off the phone so I made him get off the phone and payphone and it didn't really help because I broke the phone and it turned out that he was the son of a judge that if that it really didn't work out for me but I had a I was just angry and I thought that you know I had a black belt at that time so I thought I was Bruce Lee reincarnated from Hinduism picked up with that from Hinduism so I thought that if I was Bruce Lee reincarnated you know anytime somebody got in my way I was going to you know kung fu connection right there on the streets and I didn't really need a reason I would try to find a reason you know to get my anger out so I got made a lot of trouble but there were two things that changed that the first one was I was on oh by the way I've played baseball all of my life baseball has been in my blood I lived breathing even slept it that was even more than martial arts I had a natural talent at it and my sophomore year of high school I was promised that if I graduated with a C average I had a guaranteed four-year scholarship to one of the best baseball schools in the country Clemson University I lost that when I beat up the young man at the payphone so I decided that if I couldn't go to Clemson I was going to party there so I went to I was coming back from a party at Clemson with a friend of mine and we were both highly intoxicated and we flipped the car over they say on their poor 7 1/2 times but I don't really know who did the counting because the car broke in half one half of the car was in them in the in the ditch the other half was in the Milton Road and this the funny thing about it was we destroyed the car and we were both unharmed he had a broken ankle which for that type a break was nothing and I had a cut right here in my arm that I still have a scar to today that was it we walked away from the accident and the police also they came told us he told me he said that God has a purpose for you to youngman's life because people don't live through things like this he said I've been to too many accidents much less than this and I people don't walk away from this he said that God has a purpose for your life you need to figure out what it is and I laughed at him not in his face and back in my head because I wasn't going to jail and I didn't want to push it my friend was and I said that if God has a purpose for me he his chance and I looked at my friend and said God must have a purpose for you that must be why we're both here so I appreciate it and a couple months like a month or two after that a few weeks I didn't learn my lesson so I decided to go to New York City with my friend my dad was living in New York at the time so I went to New York and me and this friend were at the hotel and I said I need to go to the ATM so I went to the ATM to take some money out of my grandmother's account she spoiled me way too much and in New York they the ATMs are in glass rooms I don't know if you guys have that over here but you slide your card in the end that you go into the ATM and it locks behind you with little magnets so that nobody the only one person goes in is private but the thieves are pretty pretty intelligent a pretty ingenuity they're pretty ingenious they would stick rocks at the corner of the door so that when the door closes the magnets don't really touch but it looks like the doors closed and then you go in you take out your money a guy comes behind you with a gun or knife what are you gonna do you're stuck in a glass room what a guy with a gun you're gonna give up money so I pulled out my money I turned around there was a guy with a gun in my face directly in my face and it was a revolver I'll never forget it to this day I don't know what kind of revolver it was but when it's in your face it looks like one of those Dirty Harry you know moments like in Batman you know or you haven't pulled it out like this that's what it looked like in my face like a cannon and he must have really needed this money I'll never forget his face I never forget the gun what it looks like but he looked me directly nice he didn't say a word to me and say put your hands up I didn't say give me the money he looked in my face he pulled the trigger and I remember that distinct to this day how the revolver makes this distinct turning noise and then this click this this sound I can hear it to this day like it happened 10 minutes ago and the gun didn't golf in my face and you can tell at that time both of our eyes got big my eyes got big because I didn't he didn't blow my head off his eyes got big because he didn't blow my head off and we're both looking at each other like this and neither one of us know what to do because you when stuff like that happens you into what is called fight or flight syndrome your bodily just just drops adrenaline inside of you and one or two things happen the freezes you and mobilizes you or you can use that adrenaline for something like you've ever heard about mothers picking up cars with their babies is that that can happen physically that adrenaline dumps in you like that you can do the craziest things so we're both stuck like that and all sudden I realize in my head wait a minute if you don't go this guy is gonna kill you don't you you you know it's like a low guy running around in my head like ringing a bell like are you an idiot you know I mean like if you don't move it's not gonna happen twice so I rushed him and I attack with him and the gun would fly and he would flying the money went flying and then I jump now I'm flying and I told my friend we have to go so I went back drove back South Carolina that night 18 hours and I told I didn't tell anybody because I knew if I told my grandmother what happened who would tell my father that I went to New York after I had almost killed myself in the cracks and I almost got shot in the face my father would just finish it and just kill me himself so I didn't say anything until I started to have bad nightmares about these two incidences and these nightmares turned into night terrors and I don't know if any of you ever had a night terror but it's your worst nightmare in HD it's your worst nightmare and High Definition you smell it you sense it in everything it's just totally sensit Ori dreams and these two dreams are about these these incidences about the gun and the car accident and normally you don't relate bad dreams to anyone but for the purpose of the story I put this one in these dreams ended with my death and in this thing and usually you don't die in dreams it's very rare that you die in dreams usually you wake up at that point why we don't know but that you wake up at that point but in these dreams I would die in the moment after I died there were two things that would happen immediately I would have a smell of strong sulfur and I remember that to this day strong sulfur smell and there would be something that would be waiting for me on the other side like I don't explaining you in from what existence to another and whatever it was that was waiting to greet me on the other side Stephen King and his most crazy thoughts could not dream up something like this whatever this thing was that was waiting for me and in the year after if that is one millionth one small millionth of how bad what is waiting for the disbelievers on the data in the next life I don't want any of it because it's the most frightening thing I've ever seen in my life and I would wake up screaming and after I woke up screaming a couple nights my grandmother asked me what was going on so I told her what was happening the gun and the guy was killing me in the dreams my grandmother told me God has a definite purpose for your life and if you don't see that you're the biggest idiot I've ever seen and I did not raise an idiot God really really really wants something from you and if you don't figure it out you're going to hell this is this what she told me kitchen table breakfast and I haven't even finished my eggs - this time I'm going to hell so I tell her okay what should I do she tell me you need to get back together and find God I said I looked for him and I didn't find him she didn't tell me to go back to church my grandfather had already passed away this this time four years ago she said God didn't go anywhere you just haven't found him yet but you need to keep looking so I became a deist a deist is someone who believes in God just has no religion so I started to pray how I had seen the prophets of God in every religion in every religious book praying I started to pray on my hands and knees on the ground and I think this is what happened to me when I changed is I stop trying to chase God down and I got on my hands and knees one day and I said God if you want me to know you then you need to guide me you need to show me the right way I can't do it by myself I need your help and I need you to the right way so I started to you know delve into these religions again a little bit but there was one condition I had for taking another religion one condition and this was it this is why no other religion met my satisfaction I did not want to hear what I should believe anymore I wanted to see it how did I want to see it I wanted some tangible proof I wanted someone to give me something in my hands that prove to me the validity of their religion so the Bible didn't do it the Torah didn't do it the bhagavad-gita didn't do it the Vedas you couldn't go through in a lifetime did it do it the scrolls of tail in doing the books of Buddha didn't do it the bushido code didn't do it the wicked book of spells didn't do it they all were fraud so I didn't find anything one day I was sitting at a friend's house who was a Muslim I didn't know I know him for free for a couple years and I never know he was a Muslim we're at his house and talking about religion and my friend--my were debating about religion and we and I didn't know this guy was a Muslim for two reasons number one he was an African American and I didn't I thought Muslims were Arabs and number two I didn't know that Muslims along with their worshipping their moon God in the box and killing non-muslims and beating their wives I didn't know they could sell drugs that's what this guy did as a profession he sold marijuana for living and so I was at his house me and another friend we're debating about religion he walked in the room his name was blunt but his name was Musa but we caught him blunt he was from New York and I should have known it because he's always talking about get that era of money and dealing with the Arabs and New York and things like anyway he came in the room and he said have you ever heard about his land I'm like yeah man I heard all about his land he was like well I'm a Muslim I was like I was like I knew you were a comedian do when you needed to stand up with that act he was like and I was like Webber really you should not really run around telling I'm we cool I know you like that you should not be telling anybody like that I mean you have the FBI up in this place you already got enough drugs here to go to jail forever now you want to run telling me you're Muslim he's like no no serious I'm a Muslim I'm like you're black man you know he's anything I don't know that I was like you can't be a Muslim they're Arabs he's a what were you talking about so I told him what I knew about his land he was like man what in the world whatever you read is the biggest garbage I've ever seen he said his name is complete opposite of that so I told him I was like all right tell me about his land he said I can't because I'm not the best Muslim so I can't he said I barely pray five times a day like I'm supposed to III I don't do the best that I should he said but I do know where you can go to find out about Islam I was like where he's I come with me on Friday to the mosque for Juma I'm like okay the only thing I understood out of that sentence was Friday that's it something on Friday he said the mosque is like Church for Muslims and Joma is like Sunday service it just died a happy change I'm like cool Church ah no chance good that's the worst part about church was those benches so I said okay how are we gonna get into the mosque cuz neither I'm not driving that far cuz that my thoughts were the mosque had to be somewhere in another state I've never seen one he's like it's our wedding in the boulevard nothing man now I know you're kidding I live over in the boulevard there's no mosque there's no mosque in Greenville I've been all over this city he said yes you know where Lee Road intersects what happened I was like all right now really quick Jones I live only room there's no my student he's like no you know that missionary training facility on the corner I said look here buddy I used to take missionary classes to become a missionary to probably go to Muslim countries and convert Muslims I used to take missionary courses there there's no mosque there man let me tell you he said you know that brick building in the same parking lot as the church with the gold thing on top I'm like yeah the gym is like nope that's the mosque so I'm like oh my god not surprised like wow I was like oh my god these crazy Muslims live in the end of my Road they live within a much three and I didn't know so I said okay I'll meet you there on Friday so I went told my grandmother did you know these crazy Muslims lived in the road and she's like yeah they don't bother anybody and I'm like well I'm going there on Friday for their Prius she's like okay just be careful wait on Friday but I didn't just walk up in the mosque you think I'm an idiot you know I mean I have some street smarts I have a little bit of Street education and I know better I seen there's only one way to get in this building I'm not going in it because that's only way to get out I'm gonna sit on the church steps and watch I want to see them goes into this this thing this mosque guess who goes into Adams Adams Adams may be some Pakistanis but at that time you all look the same to me so there's nobody there's a few Africans but african-americans they are real-deal Africans so I'm looking at there's not one single American into this building so what do I say to myself check number one all most of the atoms except for maybe a few Africans and I start paging Musa because he's not here if I start painting a blunt he's nervous because the cell phones weren't a big thing back then so I start page him and he's not responding to me I'm like what is this dude not here you know I mean he's the one invited me and he's not here and then all sudden some guy pulls up in front of me he gets out short with robe on and he's like can I help you and it was very soft-spoken very short maybe 5 foot 2 5 4 3 I said yeah Musa invited me to come watch your prayer services and he's like yeah we know Musa he just doesn't really come here that much he said but come in and I'll take care of you this and he was very nice I thought he seemed a little too excited to get me in the building but I did not see anybody go in the building that I didn't think I couldn't handle 2 or 300 so I went in I didn't see any was all men that went in I drilled I know the women came from the other side I went in they gave me a chair at the back of the machine I'm sitting on this chair like this this is big group of atoms in front of me and all and there's this curtain that's right here behind me and there's women talking back there I can hear them chitter-chatter I'm like what are the women doing back then how they get back there so why are they bothering curtain I said it's probably because of all the bruises and they probably like live in the basement or something you know the men and picking them like flowers and take them home and beat them and bring them back so I'm sitting here looking at this app like what is the craziest thing I've ever seen you know and at that point I have kids as you can tell my my spider-sense started going off how many of you know who spider-man is but spider-man's around danger he has his tingling sensation yeah I started tingling right then and I thought to myself you've been set up before because I've been set up to get jumped on when you beat a lot when you fight a lot of people somebody's going to get you back and I thought you know what kind of felt like this you had the same feeling that night and you were right and I started thinking why is Muhsin I here and I started thinking about all the times he talked about doing these shady deals where atoms and getting that a ver have money and I said this guy Musa works for these atoms to bring Americans to the mosque for Friday so they can do their job after jewel and get their virgins I said I'm like I've been set up I have been set up I am the sacrificial lamb here today that's why they got me sitting in the back in this chair why didn't why they sent me so far away from the door no way over there there's no way for me to get out so I start thinking myself how many old Arab men I could knock out to get on the way out I started thinking to myself should you go through the curtain you know but then I'm like there's too many women back there and I already know with good sense you don't deal with a mob of women and then I thought maybe that's why they keep the swords and the weapons I might not want to go back there and then also the Eman gets up on the stairs it gets up on these steps and I'm like okay maybe I'll leave after he while he's talking you know I mean everybody's paying attention to him but I didn't think he was just gonna stand up and you know tell everybody to kill me anyway I was like I don't he was very sweet so I didn't see that man jumping up on the podium and telling people to kill me so he gets up on the podium and he says n-ned allah honda dealer not matter who when i start up Siddal won or old to be there yeah I'm like oh my he's telling them to kill me because he's screaming he's screaming in Arabic he's pounding on the thing he's pointing in my direction and he's smiling I've never seen somebody sound so angry inspired so I'm like that's it I'm done it's all over with I said I got to go now you know I mean I was this close to flipping out and just going Jackie Chan in the building I say if I'm not going without a fight I mean I'm not going out like that I start looking at the window and I thought to myself I wonder if that shatterproof I can go out of that thing so I start freaking out I'm flipping right now I'm like not daddy you serious I know not what I died today so he stops screaming in Arabic and he starts translating what he says all praise belongs to God the creator of all that exists we praise Him we seek his self we ask for his forgiveness we seek refuge with the Creator from this evil the lives now you know the translation so we started doing that translation and I thought to myself wow you know it caught my attention it really it caught me I was like that's what he said you know I've never heard he might say it like that I didn't know you had to scream and smile to say it so he I listen to the whole sermon in English and the Luba was that the forgiveness of Allah is open to anyone at any time at any place without discretion no matter what you've done in the only way you cannot be forgiven is three he said the only way you cannot be forgiven by God is if your soul has reached the throw meaning that death has come to you if you have worshipped something else other than the Creator knowingly or 3 if the Sun has risen from the West meaning the day the last days have started it's over I didn't understand the last one till now but and he quoted a long hadith of Prophet Muhammad sallallahu aleyhi wa salem and angel Gabriel I know I'm not going to narrate the hadith could you've already been here long enough but it's a story about where our souls are the self-managed real and angel trio told him to tell the Muslims that Allah has told them that if they steal that allow and forgive them so he would go tell the Muslims that also if you steal forgive you so they would ask autumn so I said I'm okay what about this other sin what about this other sin so he would keep having to go back to gibreel and ask him okay what about this other sin degree would go to Allah come back and say okay telomere forgive her that too till finally gibreel came and went back and he said look tell the Muslims that Allah has said this that tell them that Allah has said no matter what they have done no matter how great the amount of sins they have committed as long as they have not associated a partner with Allah he will forgive all of it and I was like wow I I never ever ever heard something like this and that the the way to become forgiven was to just repent go to Allah turn back to him repent seek forgiveness from him and do not do the actions again and Allah will forgive at all he is where he is the most forgiving the most merciful so I said to myself Wow you really really did a very bad thing by writing these people off of that one book let them change the tape so I said to myself you really need to do some more investigation into this Islam thing so he finished and the Muslims got up to start praying and I looked and I was like what zakat he doing you know they're lying of World War and somebody came and told me we're going to pray I said pray to who said to God I'm like which one he's like the only one creator of heaven the earth said ok so when I heard the Quran recited it meant nothing to me and this is a lesson for us and our dower events when we spend 15 minutes reciting the Quran in Arabic at the beginning of it it means nothing that people who don't understand it it only meant something that's a harbor because they understood what it meant the English translation is different but I didn't understand what the Quran meant when it was recited but when I saw the Muslims bow and prostrate on the ground I so many verses of the Bible rang in my head so many verses of other religious books that I have read and ringing in my head that this is the way of that God has ordered people to pray and then I knew I said wait a minute this is not prayer what they are doing is not praying they are worshipping God this is where sure it's not praying I know there's a difference so this is worship so after the prayer the email came to me you know how we do our Dawa the five pillars of Islam are this the six beliefs of that and I look buddy I don't mean to be me but there's nothing you can tell me that's going to make me believe in your religion because I've heard it all before I've heard everybody's little spiel about what their religion is about and I'm not going to nothing you could say can make me believe I was a little bit arrogant but I said but I want to ask you something do you have proof is there proof because my grandfather taught me when I was a kid and I've used this ever since then he said to me young man the truth always comes with proof therefore if somebody tells you they're telling you the truth ask them for some proof so I said do you have proof do you have something you can put right here in my hand to tell me what your religion is and he smiled he said come with me he took me to his office he reached on the shelf and he pulled off a book he put in my hands and I looked at it and it said the Holy Quran I said he said this is our book from God and he started telling me you know the Prophet Muhammad who was revealed this book said said look here you don't need to tell me anything if your book is what you say it'll say it all by itself so I took the Khurana home and I started reading it I started reading the civil to fatiha reminded me of the Lord's Prayer what caught my attention more than anything and what really really made me read the book was the second verse of the second chapter the second verse ii chapter told me that this is the book that has no doubt in it no discrepancies no close reading the noble with a little commentary no discrepancies no contradictions no distortions and it is a guidance for those who fear God I was like are you serious really you think so that was a challenge to me because I found out in every book I found contradictions in every book I found discrepancies in every book I said I'll find invisible so the reason I read the Quran initially was to find fault with it so I started reading him sort of a popular sort of al-e-imran sort and he said and I started to notice names like Abraham no lot Moses David Zachariah John the Baptist Jesus all of these names I started to read but there was a difference the stories in this book were of people who were at the highest level of morality they not only preached the message they lived in the message they were the most perfect human beings to walk the face of the planet there were people who you could look at and emulate them to live a life pleasing to God and the only thing I could say to myself was these are prophets these are God's prophets and then I kept saying in the book that if you're in doubt about this revelation then find contradiction in it if you're in doubt about it then make something like it and I'm saying to myself wow this is this is heavy this is the heavier stuff I've ever seen in any book and I'm starting to see over and over and finally I could not put the book down when I read the the Nativity story of how Jesus was born and Jesus life there were three chapters of the Quran surah al-e-imran sort of Easter and sort of to Miriam that answered every question I've ever had about Jesus by the time I put the book down Sunday three days I was addicted to this book by the time I turned chapter 114 of the Quran I was it was late at night in my room at home and I remember I was I was to use because the only thing I could say to myself was this is the book that has no doubt in it and is indeed is a guidance for those who fear God and I said to myself that day I want to be a Muslim I don't care what these people are all Katy I don't know anything else about them except this book if they follow this book then I want to be like them so on Monday I went back to the Masjid it was locked so I found the Imam somebody took me to his house and I told the Eman I want to be a Muslim and he was shocked feels like what said yes this book is what you say it is it is what you say it is that's enough for me he said so you believe there's only one God he's the only one that should be worship I said I've always believed that I've just never seen it like this he said but that I have to tell you a little bit about Mohammed because the second parts of Omaha you send him the second part that Shahada is to believe in Mohammed Manzano sent him I said those only I said there's only one thing you need to tell me about Mohammed he said what I said did he give us this book he said yes I said then he's a prophet this is his evidence I said because God is perfect this book is perfect therefore whoever came through there perfect saw said mohammed rasoolallah so that day that day December of 1998 I accepted Islam I said that this is it this is my way of life and I know I've kept you forever but I want to spend five minutes telling you why I tell my story because if I do it just for entertainment then what like I like I could have stayed at home I can save myself 15 hours of a plane seriously you could have put it on the screen and watched it on YouTube probably better than life the reason I tell my story is because I don't want to see anyone else struggle for the truth the way I had to struggle for the truth I don't want to see anyone else have to go through what I went through and there are so many people in the world that are where I was in ninety-eight they're lost and they want to know the right way but they want to know it with truth and proven evidence and there's so many people in Australia like that I know and I've never been there's so many people in Sydney just like that I know and I've never been here there's so many people in your neighborhood just like that and I know that that are lost and they want to know the truth so what are we doing we are the ones that happen why are the people having to chase us down why is it that I had to chase down the Muslims who lived across the street from me my entire life that's the question we need to ask ourselves tonight why are people having to chase us down why is it that out of every time I hear someone that is accepted Islam I always ask them how why is it that four out of five of them had to look for you to come to the truth about Islam this is the real thing we need to question ourselves about that we are allowing these people that we should be concerned about that Allah gave us as an Amana this Deen of Allah Islam and he has entrusted us with these people who are ignorant about Allah and about this Deen because they are a trust for us because we are considered in us in a sense of authority when you have the truth you as an authority upon you to pass it on so why is it there having to look for us why is it that we're not doing our job this is something that really really needs to change this is why I tell my story to let people know that this this should stop to listen to our download more Islamic lectures please visit

Channel: Islamic Media

Views: 270,097

Rating: 4.7944813 out of 5

Keywords: Yusha, Evans, How, came, to, Islam, Christianity, Christian, Muslim, sydney, muslim, association, lecture, Islamic, Awareness, Week, 2010, yusha, evans, islam, dawah, joshua

Id: qmd1CbkjZy8

Length: 91min 38sec (5498 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 26 2010