To Peace And Paradise

Bismillah Alhamdulillah Salaam Alaikum. Peace be unto you. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the deen show. He's back again Dr. Bilal Philips. To help clear that way. There's some confusion out there. There are many ways calling people saying that the correct way. So how does one differentiate the true way of life? The true religion?

the true way to be successful from all these 1000s hundreds of ways, saying that they're the way so when he comes out, we're gonna try to answer this very crucial question here on the dean show. You don't want to go nowhere. We'll be right back. He

is His Messenger.

Only

Jesus was his messenger.

No, I did that. Maybe, maybe it's just to break the ice.

So I'll Aiko

back again on the Dean's show. My pleasure to be back. All right. Thank you very much. My pleasure. People can read about you at the deen show calm you have your own private section. Is that right? That's right, has your picture there. And they click on the picture. And your bio is there. And the show that we did purpose of life as a crucial question. But another question is people are like, you know, what religions are all the same. They're manmade, I'll just do my own thing. How does one differentiate the true way of life if one has already acknowledged what's in his very nature, that there's a crater? But now, you have all these different isms, these different ways? How do you

differentiate what is the true way, the true way to success, happiness, peace, and the pleasure of the Creator of the heavens and earth? Talk to us please? Well, if we're to find the true way,

we have to believe, of course, that this true way must have come from God.

So if it's coming from God, it must have what we call a scriptural basis, there should be a scripture there. And then that scripture should be one in which there is no doubt, no doubt, no doubt about the authenticity of its text, its origin, the

protection of that text from any change or modification, so that we know what is in our hands was what was revealed,

then we know we have a religion whose basis whose foundation is solid. Otherwise, if the document that is claimed to be the origin, is something which they've got so many different manuscripts of, and no two manuscripts agree with each other. Like the Gospels, for example, over 5000 manuscripts. No two manuscripts agree with all details with each other. And at present, we have something like 5500 manuscripts in Greek of the New Testament, which is a lot for an ancient book, it's far more than any other ancient book. The problem is, most of these copies are hundreds and hundreds of years after the originals. And all of them have differences in them. So that the scribes who were copying

these manuscripts changed the text that they were copying. Sometimes by accident, I mean, sometimes they just made mistakes, they were sleepy or incompetent, or whatever. But sometimes, it looks like scribes actually thought the text should say something other than it did. And then they said they would change the text. So then which ones right how do you figure it out? Yeah, you know, are the Gita or the, you know, scriptures of the Hindus and others, you know, when they were written, they have no idea bits and pieces here and there. You know, it's of uncertain origin who wrote they don't know.

clouded, clouded in in confusion and uncertainty. Yeah. So when you have text like that, I mean, even the Old Testament, which may be a little more accurate and more solid than the New Testament writings, were even that the scholars, scriptural crypts criticism have shown contradictions that exist. In some places, it looks like it's a manipulation of the text where, where the author wants to change where the scribe wants to change what the author said. I mean, in many cases, it may be that the scribe thought, This is what the author really meant. And so he changed it, but but sometimes the text gets changed to say just the opposite of what it originally said. And so that's,

that can that can be a little bit troubling. Yeah, different documents should be new stories, which are being repeated in different ways and all kinds of doubts there. Yeah, no doubt. So we can distinguish when we just have to put the basic scriptures on the table and say like which one we can be 100% sure about and that's the

The evidence is there speaks for itself. So it can't that is external. Yeah, that's from an external perspective. Yeah. Then internally, what does that text contain? No, is that text if it's from God, it should contain accurate information. It shouldn't have fallacies and, you know, contradictions with modern science and these kinds of things.

When you pick up the other texts you read in there, maybe you might find some interesting things here and there, but there's a lot of old wives tales, which don't agree with what we know about science today. Yeah. Whereas when you go in the Quran, you go from chapter to chapter when you look at scientific things, which are talked about in the Quran, they match modern scientific theory, so much so that when the verses were shown to Dr. Keith Moore, who wrote the book on embryology, yeah, right, the book used in all of the medical colleges around the world. They showed him these verses from the Quran, which described the development of the fetus at the time when it's not visible to

the naked eye.

He said,

it could not have known these facts about human development in the seventh century, because most of them were not discovered until the 20th century, that God transmitted through Mohammed bits of his knowledge that we have only discovered for ourselves in recent times.

1400 years ago, when the world was immersed in darkness, the Quran was revealed, which brought light to a beleaguered world. And whereas the earlier books came with many scientific mistakes, due to the hand of man having delved into them, the Quran had none of these contradictions. The world thought there could be no reconciliation between religion and science. But the Quran mentioned many scientific facts in great detail, like how a human being developed in the mother's womb, and described other scientific facts which Amaze The world's renowned scientists, and scientific community. This could not have come from Muhammad.

So they said, Then where did it come from?

It must have come from God. No doubt, not possible to describe what is there when the microscope wasn't developed until

many centuries after him? Yeah, this is the evidence. These are concrete bits and pieces of evidence at internal, you have external and you have internal. And then the overall message which is being taught.

I mean, it's not a whole bunch of fairy tales, wild fantastic tales. But things which seem to match the realities of this life, you read the Quran, this is God talking to you directly. So now, so a person doesn't have to go deep into let's say, Buddhism, Christianity, or any kind of Hindu religion or all Sikhism now at the face of it. So they're looking for contradictions, mistakes, things that aren't rational, what are they actually looking for? These are some of the things that you mentioned that it has to be the message has to be lucid clear, something that is basically not flawed by man. And then if it is, leave it alone, go to the next visit, Islamic courage that you look at these

different ways. And you'll come to realization if you're sincere, and you're asking the creator to guide you that you'll eventually end up back to this way, the way of all the prophets, Islam. If a person is sincere, God is going to guide them. Yeah, that's for sure. If they're sincere, but they have to be ready to act then on the knowledge that they get from this problem is that a lot of people may come and realize, yes, the truth is there with Islam. Yeah. But to take that on what is involved in becoming a Muslim creates such problems and families, you know, how parents are going to react to the wife and the kids and in our the husband and the kids? How are they going to react? How

am I going to deal with all of this? To say, hey, too much faster? I like what you have. Yeah, it makes sense. It's very good. But I'm just not ready to deal with the consequences, consequences. And that's sad. Because one cannot afford once you seek the truth, you know, as it's mentioned in the bible of the truth is gonna set you free, set you free from ignorance,

bring you to the realization of the true God. So once you're there for you to turn aside and say, well, because of people, I can't deal with this. That's a big mistake. That is the most serious possible mistake that you can make in your life, to have known the truth in its clarity.

with certainty and turned away,

what can we say after that? Yeah. So does it seem like these other religions ways are just things because the inside of a person is searching yearning for something. So this is convenient. Now the other religions, you can just modify them to your way it can just, you can put it in and it doesn't have to inconvenience you or something, but it's not easy. Yeah. You know, it doesn't require that much commitment. You know, you can do it once a week or, you know, when you feel like, you know, it's, it's, it's it's a, this a fast food, fast food, you know. So it's not it's not a real change where to become a Muslim requires

major change. It requires taking on a commitment 24 724 seven, there's no part time Muslim. I mean, of course, there are people who might

do Islam part time, but that's not real Islam. real Islam requires 24 seven commitment. There's no time when you take a vacation from Islam.

Yeah, so that Islam that we're talking about, we're talking about that complete conscious decision that I'm going to surrender. I'm going to submit I'm going to be obedient to the one who created me. And it's is summed up with one word in Arabic Islam. Exactly. Yeah. So mission to the will of God. Some people get hung up now on the Arabic Now, they feel that possibly look this, this is an Arab thing. This is an Arabic thing. How do we have them look past this? Well, reality is that the followers of the prophet may God's peace and blessings be upon him, came from all parts of the world. We had them coming from Persia, coming from Abyssinia coming from all over, you know, from

right from his generation. Our reality is, is that the vast majority of Muslims in the world are not Arabs, Arabs only make up a fraction 15% of the whole of the Muslim nation, you know, 1.5 billion people, Arabs are only a fraction, the total number of of Muslims in India alone is more than the total number of Arabs. So it's not an Arabic religion becomes, but okay, Arabic is there. But this Arabic is a unifier. So that the nature of our prayer is such that no matter where you go, you can join in your brothers and sisters with them in prayer. Yeah, you know, I go to China, if you heard the event in Chinese, well, then you wouldn't even know what's going on the call to prayer. Yeah,

but when you hear it in Arabic, you know exactly wherever you are any Muslim here is that they know there's a mosque where you go in there, the guy's gonna lead the prayer. He does it in Chinese again, you're lost. What is he doing? What's he saying? We speaks in Arabic, everybody can fall in. And it's the unifying factor. And again, it is also the language of Revelation,

the language in which God revealed its final message. So you learn Arabic, not to be an Arab, but to be able to hear the Word of God as it was revealed. I mean, Jesus spoke Aramaic. The Gospel that he received was in Aramaic. But there are tribes in in Syria today that speak Aramaic, they didn't speak English, speak English. They didn't speak Latin, you know, from which the Greek from which these things were translated, he spoke Aramaic. So whereas this gospel, last not known,

was it now meant for a particular time a particular people, and now we don't have it? Because some people would argue that will did God make a mistake now, because this is supposed to be for for all of us until today. So now, how did this how do we lose it now the God make a mistake or wasn't meant to be saved? Well, there's no, there's no mistake here. Because the fact that Jesus's message was for, as you said, a particular people in a particular place for a particular period of time, a prophet was going to come after him, who would bring the final message which would be for all people in all places at all times. So all of the earlier prophets descriptions were not guarded and

preserved by God, as he guarded and preserved the Quran. Not because they were not scripture, yes, they're all Scripture. In that sense. They're all equal. They're all the Word of God conveyed to human beings. But the changes that took place by human hands to the earliest scriptures, God permitted, because those messages were not eternal messages. There are messages for particular people, particular places, particular time. Yes. So the final message, if it were to be the final message, it had to be preserved. And that's again, everything

of its truthfulness and finality. Do we still have the word of the Creator in what we have in the Bible today? We have bits and pieces, bits and pieces of bits and pieces here and there. And these are affirmed in the Quran many places which affirm texts from the Bible, but the totality of what's there is confusion. For a long time, I thought that the Bible was inspired and inerrant, that there were no mistakes in the Bible. But as I engaged in historical research on the Bible, as I was getting my PhD in New Testament studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, I started finding mistakes in the Bible. And this this cut away at my assumptions that the Bible was an errand. And

then I started questioning other parts of my faith is Jesus really divine is a really a trinity. It's confusion, when a person who reads it sincerely, from beginning to end,

he will be forced to accept the oneness of God, because that message is there, in spite of all the distortions and all the other things that are there, the oneness of God is there all of the earlier prophets, talking oneness of God and Jesus affirming? When they asked him, What is the command God's command? He said, Here, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God, one God is affirming the same thing that came before? So anybody who reads that says, Okay, well, where did the Trinity thing come from? Yeah, it definitely is not in the text. You know, this is something people added. And what is the text now, which is clear.

oneness of God is crystal clear. It's the Quran. Now, if we take what is meant for a people at that time, and people saying the Son of God, because many people believe that Jesus was God's Son of Gods a bunch of confusion here, they have to do a bunch of mental gymnastics to make it fit. But now, if you take this, what's meant? Is it that he was a righteous, upright person close to God. But if you take this out, and you take it out to let's say, the Greeks who are worshipping demigods, semi gods, this guy that guy can, can that be worse, a lot of the confusion came where now they take what is meant for that time, and is understood. And now you bring it over to another totally pagan society,

and they're already worshipping man, gods. And now we have what we have today, modern day, man worship, Jesus is the Son, Son of God. Oh, definitely. I mean, this is, uh, one of the explanations of the process of what took place. Yeah. I mean, of course, the message of Jesus was crystal clear, clear, it had to be crystal clear. Because if it's coming from God, that clarity is going to be there. And it remained clear. But what happened is that when it was taken out of the,

the, we could say, the east, and it came out into the West, then these changes took place, whether it was a question of interpreting or misinterpreting earlier texts, or really introducing ideas, which were never in the original texts, which I feel is probably more of that than actually misinterpretation, because interpretation sort of implies that the message wasn't that clear. Whereas I don't believe that it's the case. In fact, the message of Jesus was very clear. In fact, after Jesus left,

as they thought he was killed, or whatever, you know, but when Jesus went away, the one who came behind him, who became the head of the Jerusalem church, is none other than James was called, in the gospels, the brother of Jesus. And James is the head of the Jerusalem church,

taught that Jesus was a prophet of God. God was one.

He was a Unitarian. He wasn't the Trinitarian. So wasn't there for that, for those, that period of almost like 70 years after the time of Jesus. That was the main church, the Jerusalem church, was a Unitarian Church, preaching the message of the one God, and that Jesus was a human being. And a prophet of God was sent to convey this message. But with the dispersion of the the Jews, the breakup of the Temple of Solomon, Jews being dispersed from Jerusalem, and of course, the Muslims, or we could say, the Judeo Christians of that time, who are those who truly follow Jesus externally, they wouldn't look any different from the regular Jews when they disperse everybody out to disperse. So

the Jerusalem church which was the main method CORE Center, from which the teachings the true teachings of Jesus being

thought that was destroyed, and people had to flee. So when that was lost in the center in Antioch, which was headed by Paul Wright, Paul now took over the movement. And he started, he had already been doing it earlier. Now he was given a full, clear hand. James is assassinated, he has the full clear hand to change the message and preach the new religion, which he called Christianity, which, obviously, Jesus, his followers, they never taught, never taught, were opposed to took Paul to task, called him to Jerusalem and questioning why you're doing this, why you're doing that.

That's what's even recorded in the gospels today and the writings, the letters of Paul, let's talk about the uniqueness of this name, Islam compared to what the other religions are named after. Well, the other religions tend to be named after people, you know, the Jews.

Or they may be named after a particular person. Buddhists, Buddhism from Buddha, yeah. Or they're named after a place Hinduism, from the Indus Valley, you know, they're connected to people's persons, places, whereas Islam means submission to the will of God, the name of the religion is the central pillar, the basic concept, the essence of the religion, that's what it refers to. Muslim is not the name of a person. It's the name of one who does Islam, right. It's the, what they call the present participle. You know, one who does that act of Islam or submission is called a Muslim. So, the name of the religion is found in the text, the holy text, right? You cannot find Hinduism in the

Hindu texts, you cannot find Buddhism in the Buddhist texts, and I cannot find Christianity and the Christians out there, that the

Jesus called his followers Christians, no, this was Paul is the one who invented that name. So is it safe to say that Jesus peace pupae, if he was alive today? Did he ever hear this word, Christian? If Moses was alive today? Did he ever hear this term to be? Would he be labeled a Jew? Or will he be labeled a Christian? Or would he be labeled a Muslim, all of the prophets would have been labeled Muslims, because this essential message was the same message submission to the will of God beginning with Adam. What was the command that was given? The command he was given? was to submit to the will of God, don't eat from that tree? That's what that's the essence of all that. No, that was the

essence of the religion. You can eat for all of the other trees.

quite similar to the one but this one here, don't eat from it.

submission, will you submit?

Or not? And that's Islam, and Islam. So that's why we say Islam is the original religion. One cannot claim Christianity was religion of Adam, no way. Can we cannot claim Judaism or Buddhism or any other the isms. But we can claim, maybe you don't accept it. That's another issue. We can claim that Islam was the religion of Adam, and Eve. That was the religion which God revealed to them. They were commanded to submit to the will of God. And that is what Islam needs. So when, when the first met Adam, he disobeyed and he ate from this tree was this tree. Was it beautified for him, that he was lured into this? And then at when he did this, was he forgiven afterwards? Well, the reality as it

is recorded in the Quran, is that after Adam and Eve ate, and they sought forgiveness from God, because of course, for God to have put them in a situation like that, yeah, knowing full well that they were going to eat.

God knew ahead of time they're going to eat. So for him not to have given them a route and a way to remove the sin from themselves would have been unfair, unjust, unjust. So he gave them that knowledge, how to repent, if you sin. So when they realize that they had sinned, they repented, and so the sin was removed from them. That's why the process of repentance is in the hands of each and every individuals but a special priest caste class that they're the ones who do forgiveness, you have to go and sit in a booth and make confess your sins and then the the priest comes out and says Your sins are forgiven. That's not the way we know it doesn't work that way.

How your sins are forgiven when some of these priests are committing more sins and the people are confessing their sins. Yeah, you know as human being. So forgiveness belongs only to God. That's the essence of religion. And that God will accept that forgiveness from whomsoever turns to him sincerely, with a repentant heart. God will forgive them. No matter how great the sin is, he's the most Merciful, the most loving, all we got to do is turn to Him alone. Exactly. Simple, logical. That's the way the religion of God should be. It should be a simple, rational, logical religion. It shouldn't have, you know, as you said, mental gymnastics as a pillar for you to be a follower. You

got to be a mental gymnast. You know how to make three, one? And one, three? No, we just deal with One. One. That's a few more points before before we come to an end. So much to talk about so little time. Tell us now is the same concept that happened with Adam, I'm interested to know is that what was beautified or however, he went off and slip Today, many of the things that we're supposed to stay away from the fornication, the adultery, the alcohol and the drugs, it seems like that is just beautified today, well, exactly trick of the that's one of the methodologies of Satan. And in the Quran addresses that specifically, a saying that, you know, Satan, and actually even Satan makes

that open statement recorded in the Quran that I will beautify for them.

You know, that's what I'm, yeah, the I will beautify for them corruption, so that they would accept it. And that's exactly what he did with the tree. He came to Adam. And he told them that this tree is the Tree of Life of eternal life. Beautiful. Meaning before that Adam wasn't thinking about eternal life, short, live, etc. eternal life. I need someone

who doesn't want to be eternal? I need a piece of that. Yeah. So what he made it seem is that of all the trees in the, in the whole of the garden, this is the one tree he had to eat Trump. Yeah, because that's exactly what's happening. Now, media makes the corruption seem like these things are life is incomplete. If we have not experienced and tasted this thing, our life and our life is just not fulfilled unless we get to this thing. And these things that we are chasing after which have been beautified further corruption, things which are harmful to us as individuals harm to our societies without a shadow of a doubt. Has the truth, always from the beginning been opposed?

Because you'll see a stigma attached to this truth, where we claim is from the Creator of the heavens and the earth, as it always been the way during Moses time, Jesus's time, all the prophets, has there been opposing force force to try to lure people away from the correct way? Absolutely. It began with Adam, and Satan,

and will not end until the end of this world. And all that is living in it dies and is resurrected, to say tonic forces will always be there throughout this life, as long as this world is functioning, it will be there. It has been from the very beginning to remain there till the end. And this is a part of the challenge in the test. Will we submit our words to God? Or will we submit our wills to Satan and his forces, plays on our desires plays on our

our needs, you know, turns them into things which are alluring to us, but in fact harmful to us. So this process is a never ending process. We just have to be conscious of it. We have to open up and wake up to know what's really happening. We have only two minutes for those, there might have been a Muslim one who has consciously submitted to the Creator. Now he has a non Muslim sitting next to him. And you know what, now what you're saying is logic, logical, rational, and makes sense. And now all that person has to do what's already naturally in him. help give that encouragement for the person that's read about Islam, he knows is the truth. But you know what? The devil comes up and

says, You know what you're going to forsake the religion of your forefathers and all the other doubts tests are creeping them, how could we encourage them to do the right thing? And what are the benefits of doing the right thing submitting to God? Well, the benefits

are the eternal life that we all seeking.

Eternal Life

In a beautiful and a good in a pure sense, one in a state where we are at peace with God, God pleased with us and us with him. I mean, what better state can we be in? That is paradise. So that reward and that goal that we should all have, can only be achieved, achieved through submitting ourselves to the will of God, known as Islam. That is the bottom line. And without it, no matter what we accumulate of this world, it will be ultimately of no benefit. It won't last and we can't take it with us. None of it all stays behind. Yeah, others benefits Michael Jackson died, Bruce Lee died, will die to exactly the pharaohs died, you're still looking at their bodies and their wealth

didn't benefit them at all.

You have an Islamic website, you have a website where people can go and seek knowledge and learn, can you please tell the people about this wonderful site, before we come to an end? Well, we have a site known as Islamic online, university.com spell it all out Islamic online, university.com. There, there are free courses, and most of them are by me, but there are others, other scholars whose work is up there, and we're adding more and more material, you can go there and freely access basic information about Islam in a course and organized. And and, and we could say educationally sound, structured

system, you know, because oftentimes people try to learn you're learning, reading this book, that book, the other book, here, they're in all over the place. And when in the end, after one year, two years, three years, you look at what knowledge you have, and it just doesn't seem to come together, you know, because it's scattered. Whereas what we need is a structured program of learning and that's what the Islamic online university the IOU, you know, provides, and inshallah we're working on upgrading that to be a level courses at either minimum expense or completely free. I like to thank you may God Almighty, Allah, the Creator of the heavens and earth, we reward you for being

with us. It's always a pleasure. hamdulillah it's my pleasure to be with you and hope to see you many more times in the future. Yes, thank you. Thank you. And thank you very much for tuning into the deen show. We're here every week to help you understand the way of life of all the messengers nest that way, that way of submitting yourself, not to a man, not to a woman with the one who created man and woman, the Creator of the heavens and earth. The one Jesus prayed to the one Moses prayed to the one all the messengers of God submitted themselves to and the last and final messengers sent the mankind the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. If you want to accept this way.

If you want to do it now if you want to learn more, call the number on the screen, one 800 662 Islam. Come back here every week to the deen show. We'll see you next time God willing. A Salaam Alaikum peace be unto you. The DVDs for Dawa is Allah has said in the Quran in surah now 16 125 Voodoo Illa Sebelius bookable Hekmati, invite all to the way of your Lord with wisdom, beautiful preaching and reason with them in ways that are best. And this is a great opportunity for you to take up the obligation take up the call, as Allah has told you to do and share this beautiful message with the world Islam submission to the One God don't see what everyone's talking about. And

you find one contradiction, it can't be from God.

But the rational idea the rational explanation is you do your best to give up worshiping God is one I will never give up spreading this message. I hope that you take the necessary steps you don't know if you're gonna live till tomorrow.

So you got to find that urgency to do the right thing right now.

If you say that you do not believe in Jesus, you have stepped outside of Islam, you cannot be a Muslim as attended our faith to

eats comb, eats lay everybody asleep.

Arise and ask a lot of thinking may own law you see, oh law, you know, all the sins I do a turn to you to pick him

up

today

No one runs away. Oh Allah guide me