Why Joshal Evans Chose Islampart 2

Salam Alaikum peace be unto you. Welcome to the deen Show. Today on the deen show we got Joshua Evans. We're going into part two. He's a former Christian youth minister who accepted Islam years back. And today he's on a D show continuing, letting us know his story, his road to Islam, being one who went from studying the Bible in depth

to questioning it, to leaving Christianity to becoming a Muslim one who submits and surrenders to one God alone without any partners. Let's bring him on out to continue on. If you haven't seen part one. It's on the deen show. COMM website.

You can go there. Check out the first part. Today we're calling on part two. Why Joshua Evans accepted Islam. We'll be right back.

Never be too cautious.

Hey, man, I'm really sorry. Can I get you another drink? Hey, man, just got it all wear my pants in my shoes, man. Man. I'm really sorry. But let me get to another cup, man. I don't want to cook. Yeah, watch with your walk.

Man. I'm sorry. I don't want any problems. I'm gonna get out of here. Okay.

We're gonna go, man, please get your hands off me. What you're gonna do about it?

I got you melons. I've had enough. No.

One can never be too cautious.

Hey, man, what did you learn that? I said, you got time? I'll show you. Come on.

Come and see what everyone's talking.

All right, let's continue on with your story.

The left off talking about questioning. And the Bible finding out certain things that didn't make sense. Some of the greatest messengers that God has sent to humanity, their character, one Noah in particular being called a drunk, lot. being molested by his daughters are what are what? Well, yeah, yeah, mommy. And most things that didn't make sense. Because these are supposed to be our examples people were supposed to follow and emulate. So it didn't make sense to questioning the Trinity. And all the things in the Bible going to your higher ups. Let's continue on from here.

Yeah, basically, you know, I based on reading the Bible and seeing all these stories that didn't make sense to me that not only that, but the textual contradictions of the Bible. You know, there's 1000s of them, you know, and if you read the Hebrew, you can very clearly see when you look at the the layout of the of the Hebrew text, there's parts where this sounds so beautiful, you know, where you could tell this comes from a higher power, you know, that this person who's speaking here is someone not human. And then you'll get to a point, two apart, this sounds like a fourth grader speaking, you know, a broken Hebrew, like slang, Hebrew. So you know, it goes back to the AC, all

these things that make sense to me. So, you know, in the, in the contradiction between what Jesus taught, and Paul taught, so I left Christianity

and decided that I was going to take a search and find out the right religion, I knew there had to be one, God had to have a direction, that he wanted me to live my life. I mean, he did not just place me on this earth, but I never lost my faith in God, for sure. Because I could just look at the world around me, and know that there was a god, this stuff didn't just happen, you know, I never believed in the Darwinian theory, all that coming up is I that stuff may not I was way, way, way not believing in that. So I started studying every religion studied Buddhism, and I went back two days in first to see if they got it, right. But then I realized what Jesus said about them, that they

were too caught up in the law, that there was two factions of Judaism, ones that were so caught up in the law, they left no room for spirituality, there was no room for the spirit to grow. Then there was so those that were so caught up in spirituality, that they left no, you know, they would cross all bounds. So there was no you know, common ground between them. So I went on to study Buddhism and because I was studying g kundo, and kung fu the time and you know, started studying some

tail wisdom Confucianism all the Eastern religions than I then I studied Hinduism and

even studied some Wiccan

for those who may be familiar with Wicca and it's like you know, witchcraft type of religion you know, is all over the place at everything I could get my hands on Mormonism. You know, I if I could if I could read if it was in Islam or religion, or I would read it so it's kind of odd because today, many people are caught up into material

You were searching for a deeper spiritual connection at this point in life. Yeah. At this point in life, and I don't want to rule this lamb out, I don't want to rule Islam out because I did get a book about Islam in the public library. And this book was written by an orientalist. I know now, at the time I didn't know orientalist meaning meaning the the the the eastern scholars, you know, like of Europe that wrote books against this very derogatory about Assam, they gain knowledge of Islam, they got degrees in Islam in order to use that to bash Islam.

So they sound like they know what they're talking about. And but then they throw in their own, you know, mix of it. And this books, books so bad about Muslims said that they worship the moon God and some box in the desert. And that, you know, that that Allah was some weird God and that and Muslims, basically, were people who are so backwards, they were barbarians. And oh, yeah, the other thing that they kill everyone that's not Muslim, anytime, anyplace, anywhere they can find them. So needless to say, I closed that book, put it back, Thanks, but no things across Islam off the list.

So, after not being able to find the truth, at 17, I became very frustrated, you know, I became angry at God. And at 17 this was just the right age and all my friends were getting into the parties in high school, you know, I was a junior in high school, getting into the parties, I went into the party scene and, you know, got in, got into the,

the life, the street life, as they say, and I was the type of person that I'm a perfectionist at heart, whatever I try to do, I try to do it better than anybody else. When I was a Christian, I was going to be the best Christian I could be, you know, when I started studying these other religions, if I if I wanted to become a Buddhist, I was gonna become the best Buddhist I could be. So if I decided that I wanted to live the street life, for sure I was nobody was gonna beat me at that, you know, so I went very headlong into it, getting in fights, you know, every other night, you know, going out three, four in the morning, getting kicked out of school, you know, my grandma's flipping

out, she's like, you know, not understanding what happened, you know, I like 180 return here.

And

all of this stuff, led me down a very bad road, you know,

I wasn't happy with my life, but I didn't have anything else. You know, when people would ask me, you know, why you doing? I'm like, What else? You know, show me something else. What else is there? Because you couldn't that I was of the opinion? What are you going to bring me, I've already started everything. There's nothing, there's nothing out there that makes any sense. You, you felt like you really had no purpose. You have to create your own purpose. I had to make my own purpose, I was going to create my own way in life. And if that means doing whatever I felt like doing whenever I felt like doing it, then that's what I was gonna do. So now you started to live according to your

desires, my desires that was I became my own God has a sense of the only person I cared about pleasing was me, which many people that's how they're living today. Yeah. And I even I would even have times when I would feel bad, in in anger, you know, to God, you know, look, you made me like this. I looked for you, I can find you. And my grandma, the whole time was telling me you know, that God is there, you know, he's there, you just haven't looked in the right place. You know, my grandmother was a person of great wisdom.

So she was telling me that God is there, you just haven't looked in the right place yet. So

as I was getting in this trouble, there were two incidences living this life that that made me turn around and say, Look, you need to do some more research in this thing. The first incident was

I got into a car accident.

With a friend of mine, we're on the way back from a party at Clemson University in South Carolina. And just so happens I decided to put my seatbelt on which was something I never did, you know, because I was only opinion if I'm gonna die I'm gonna die in like when you waste your time, your time, so I didn't wear a seatbelt. So we got in the car for some I was tired. We you know, we both had a little too much to drink. I said, let's put on a seatbelt, man, you know, you're tired. You're driving. I don't trust you. I don't trust me to drive. So we were doing about

about 6070 miles an hour on Interstate

and I was asleep. And I remember a mood adjusting motional waking up to seeing the concrete cover my face in glass smashing and then also, you know, flipping and Bumble commotion, need to say we flipped the car six and a half, seven and a half times, you know, who's counting and not like anybody was really counting. But the car was broken in half. You know, one side of the car ended up on one side of the road on the highway and other half ended up on the other side of the highway.

And I was okay, I was conscious and I was the only injury I had was I had a piece of glass stuck in Milan. And my friend had two broken legs. So I pulled my friend out of the car because I'm thinking to myself, this car road flit you watch movies gonna blow so let's get out of the car. I put them on the car driving the side of the road. It just so happens that a state trooper was going the opposite way and saw the car just exploding.

In the street,

he came back and saw me standing. And he came up to me running to me. And I guess he didn't notice that I didn't have a car like parking. So he thought I was a bystander. He came in random, he said, Did you see what happened? You know, is it did you? Did you see? Did you see the car? Do you see what happened? Another time? I was like, Yeah, I was in the car look, and you don't have blood on the arm. And you know how they say you like see the blood drained from somebody's face. I saw it like literally his. He turned pale white. He looked at me and he said,

You gotta be kidding me. He said, because I've already called not only the response team, but the corner. From what I saw of this wreck. I've already called the coroner, just in case you know, because there's a wreck people don't live from. He said, he took me and showed me the car. The next day after they bought the car, the impound lady, he took us, he came to our house, the next day took us, he looked at us because he was a man of God.

He said, boys, you need to realize God has a purpose for your life. You don't live through stuff like this without God's hand, being involved in it. You know, God has a purpose for you, too.

So and I blew it off, and his men always talking about man, you know, God does not care about me. You know, if you did already, you would have helped me a long time ago. So the second in app, I went out of town with a friend of mine, and we were out of town.

And

we were out of town and I was left the hotel to go into an ATM and ATM at that time. So they were in those rooms, you know, you walk into the classroom with his ATM in there, which is a super trap where people want to rob you because I went in, people would wait, you know, coming right behind you, Rob, you can go anywhere you stuck in the classroom. So I went in, I pulled my $60 out of the ATM. There's a guy came in right behind me. Apparently he was strung out on drugs, whatever it was, he was so wanting this $60 he was not willing to take the chance that I wouldn't give it to him, or that I would get away or draw attention. Because he pulled a gun look like a like a 357 or 30 it was

a very big revolver, put it in my face, pull the trigger. didn't ask for anything. Insane, anything. Then nothing. pointed the gun directly my face. Probably about five, six inches away. And I remember to this day, I can see it when I call I can see it. I can hear the kick. I can hear that sound. Because I thought that was it. That was I mean, in my mind this is it. This is the last thing I'm ever gonna see. He pulled the trigger nothing happened. I don't know there was a you know, there was an empty gun is trying to scare me it was a bad bullet there was not a bullet in that chamber whatever what happened when not

automatically after freezing for a second I you know, I froze I my something my head said go run do something you know. So I smashed him through the door like I barely, you know been rushed and football tackled him smashed through the door. You know, everything went flying, the money went flying. You know, I just took off running and went back to the hotel. I didn't call the police or anything because I actually was not supposed to be out of town. You know, I took my grandma's car without permission. I wasn't trying to call the police.

So that made me realize something, you know, and a little bit later I told my grandmother what happened, you know? And she looked at me and she said, you know,

Josh, God has a reason for your life. He has a purpose for your life.

And he's looking for you, you know, he's knocking on the door waiting for you. So you better figure it out now. So I decided I'm going to read new my search for God and I became an agnostic, because I didn't find the right religion. So I became an agnostic, I'm gonna worship God no exists, I'm gonna pray. You know, that's it, you know, I'm not gonna read, you know, I'm not gonna read the Bible or anything. I'm just gonna try to draw on what I can from God.

So in this error, I ran into a friend of a friend who happened to be a Muslim. I had met him on a few occasions, but did not realize that he was a Muslim. Because I wasn't able to put the two and two together with his part time job job as a drug dealer. And him being Muslim. You notice these things, it makes sense to me. Plus, he was African American. And you know, and I thought all Muslims were atoms. So when he told me, he was Muslim, my number one thought was like, get a far away from this guys. You can either like kill us and blow something up.

So when he you know, he told me he was like, man, he's a fool. So you know, as all This is nuts and crazy. He was like, I'm not a good enough Muslim to tell you about Islam. But if you're really searching for God, because me and my friend were talking about religion when he was, you know, a third party to discussion. He said, Why don't you come to Juma? And I said, What is Juma? He said, he's just like church with no chairs. So I said, Okay, I can do that church, no chairs, no big deal.

He said, Come on Friday at one. I said, Okay, where's the mosque?

He told me is on Wade Hampton Boulevard. I said where I live in West Hampton Boulevard. Right on the right right on the side of nearly road. He said it's right across the street from the road. I said where he said next to the to the holiness redemption church. I said what this was the church that I attended. This is this is a church that I used to go to

Not the one right near my house. But there was another one that taught you how to be an evangelist in a missionary. So I went to the mosque, it just so happens that the mosque in the mosque or the church in the mosque, you could touch like this, two hands, one hand here, one hand here. And the interest is to both face each other in the same parking lot. I saw the building before I just didn't know what it was, I thought it was a gym or something from the other church.

So I went in on Friday on Juma and sat down in the back, you know, they gave me a chair, even though he told me some new chairs because I was not Muslim, they gave me a chair to sit in,

you know, in, in the guy who gives the sermon on Friday got up. And he got up and he started, you know, in a little hungry learner is speaking in Arabic, you know, and the first thing I thought was, Oh, my God, you know, like, hearing, you know, like, what is this guy talking about? and think, like, you probably talking about me, you know, like, they're probably plotting to get me after this thing. Because I'm the only American looking guy in here, you know, guys not Muslim. And then he got to the part about the English part of the translation of what he said, you know, barely All praise belongs to God, we worship him and him alone, you know, and all these things. It was, Oh, wow. You

know, okay. And that's, that makes some sense. That sounds good.

And I remember the sermon today as if it was today, Friday, as if it was just the sermon, we came from listening today.

He said that, and this was a conclusion that I derived from the Bible, there was not a doctrine of Christianity. He said that, that forgiveness of your sins comes from God alone, that only God can forgive your sins. And the door to forgiveness is never closed, as long as you're alive and breathing, that the door to forgiveness is always open. And God will take you as you are and forgive your sins no matter what you have done. So I remember this to this day, and I decided I need to do some more research. So I got a quote on and I started reading the Quran. In before I made it to the third chapter, I had already given my heart to Islam, because it was talking about Moses, it talked

about David, it talked about Noah, it talked about lot, but it talked about them in a way that made them the peak of excellence of character. It made them a perfect character. These were perfect people in the Quran. The Quran said that these people are perfect, they live their life exactly how God told them to in order to live as an example to us. In the Quran, over and over again says God is one God is one you should have know that I am jealous word. You know, all of these things rang in my head of things that I have seen in the Bible. So I made it through the whole Quran and about three days, went to the mosque. It was locked, of course. So I had to come back on Friday, I went back on

Friday, took my Shahada because I said after reading the Quran, I said, I don't know what,

how to be a Muslim or what it means. But whatever this book, whatever these people are, that they believe in this book, this book is from God, this book is from God. And for sure, I remember the very first, I remember the very first statement of the second chapter, that this is the book that has no doubt in it, a guidance for those who fear God. That's what the Quran says. The Quran says in the first verse of the second chapter, this is the book where there is no doubt in it. What is it about Jesus, it says that Jesus was as the likeness of Adam, God said to him, Be and he was, you know, and these things, even now, I'm getting goosebumps repeating these things and reminiscing on

this time. Because it was as if it was as if being in a room where you knew there was a door to get out, but all the lights are off, and you're fumbling around in the dark, trying to find it. And all of a sudden, somebody comes and just flicks the light switch on. That's how clear it was, you know, there's the door, this is the way out. So and, you know, these are the things that I saw in the Koran and even that the Quran, God is so

sure about what he says that he even says in the Quran that if you're in doubt, then create something like if you're in doubt about this book, then bring me something like it. And you can't. And I promise you, you can't then fear the fire whose fuel is going to be men and stones, the idols that you worship. So all these things to me, I mean, it just, it was like, it was like, wow, you know, it's like drinking, muddy, dirty pond, filled scummy water, taking a sip of that and then turn around taking a sip of water.

Let's look at the technique that we applied earlier. We call it a shoulder lock. It's going to be where the aggressor is going to place his arm onto my shoulder. Okay, there's two variations of this self defense technique. One is if just like so the guy grabbed you by the shoulder, but you notice the elbows bent or loose. The second variation is going to be aware that he has my shoulder but his arm is stiff. Okay, this is going to be another variation that we will not cover today. The one that we're going over his shoulder grab bent arm. Okay, so how does he's going to place his hand on my shoulder. Now I'm going to use this

side that he's controlling. I'm going to use that arm to come up and above his elbow.

I come up and as soon as I get to this point, now I'm using his grip against him. Okay, his grip, his wrist is secured tightly under my armpit. I'm going to go palm to palm, and now making sure that his wrist is secure under my armpit, I'm going to start to raise his elbow up, applying the pressure onto his shoulder. Okay.

Let's take a look at that one more time.

Same side is attacking comes up and over the shoulder. At this point, I have to really focus on making his grip tight under my armpit. If the grip is loose, he's just going to pull his arm out. Okay, which gets rid of the grip that can be another way of just disengaging but we're going to try and take advantage of the situation. Okay? It comes up,

come under the elbow, I go palm to palm, I secure his grip. And now I start to raise elevate the elbow up, as I raised the elbow up, elbow up, traffic his wrist, that's where he starts to feel the pressure on the ligaments of his shoulder. Okay. And we saw one example of how to defuse the situation. With jujitsu. The beautiful thing about jujitsu is that you don't need to hurt, okay, punish the guy to defuse the situation. If I decided earlier to punch or to kick, the aggressor, I'm not defusing the situation, I'm just increasing the chances of that becoming an extreme situation a big headache. Okay, one more time.

Over and now I have the option. Maybe he's not in the best situation to now be an aggressor. I have him at my mercy at the moment, I can talk to him I can defuse the situation, God forbid, if I need to really defend my life, there is the possibility of putting the pressure on the shoulder to do some real damage, but it should not come to that. Okay, we can talk the future and I feel that the situation is diffused, can let it go. And situations done without harming the aggressor. That's it for today's episode of the self defense workshop. Until next time, guys, be safe and take care.

You know, it's like drinking, muddy, dirty pond, filled scummy water, taking a sip of that and then turn around and taking a sip of water. Now when you go back and you look at certain verses that you read from the Bible. And for instance, the verse that in our first show, you talked about where God Almighty says in the in the Bible, this is attributed to God that you should not worship anything in the heavens or the earth. any graven images, or any of these things like this, it says yes. Now reading the same thing it says in the Quran, right? Absolutely. And you mentioned that Noah Moses, Jesus was mentioned in the Bible was also mentioned in the crime. Absolutely. Right. So can you say

that the Quran was some sort of a

criteria to see what was true from the Bible. It completed the, the the puzzle sort to say completed was the missing link. It was as if somebody had poured the Bible into like a Brita water filter. And what came out at the bottom was the Quran. Yeah, you know, I mean, filter out all that foolishness and gave you the good stuff. Because what we're trying to say is that one needs to question like you did not just swallow something blindly, without thinking about it. You would do that. Exactly. So you see that Christian scholars today are telling us that Muslim scholars, okay, Christian scholars are telling those people who know the Bible that there are contradictions in there, correct?

Absolutely. And and this is not any attempt on me just to bash anyone's religion. This is not my purpose. I know. All I'm doing is explaining my story. This is my journey. If someone totally believes this Christianity, data in anything I tell them doesn't convince them. More power to them. You know, I'm not here to bash anyone's religion. I'm here to tell them that whatever you believe in, verify it. Verify in this is in the Bible, this in the Bible, verify the truth. verify it, you know, it says that the Bible says in the Bible, you know, study to show thyself approved. And that's what you did is what I did was in Proverbs, study to show thyself approved as a workman before God.

So you went through this whole journey, and by the grace of God Almighty, you accepted submission and surrender to one God. Allah said I submitted. This is exactly what a Muslim does and this is what I did I after reading the Quran, I gave myself to Islam I submitted I said, and I even said this on the I got done on my hands and knees I didn't know how to pray and

I would make a law whatever Muslim prayer but I got my hands and knees I said, God, I submit this, this is it. That's how powerful this Quran was. That's how I mean this is the Quran just to Quran I hadn't read anything else, which is the verbatim verbatim Word of God. And I was reading just the English which is not even the Koran. The English is just some a man's interpretation of what he thinks the Arabic is saying. When now that I've learned Arabic And I've read the Quran, in its original language, it's the English doesn't even do it justice because we have the Quran as it was revealed for days it was in its original form in its original change untampered with untampered with

you cannot say that about the Bible can't say that about any other bony existence. No, no book in existence, any scripture, it's been tampered with. It's not it's an original, even if even if people want to say okay, you saying tampered? Is your opinion, no one has their original books anymore. No one can stand and say, we know for 100%, you are this the original of our book, you can know it no one, no one will be foolish enough to say it. So you went through your journey, come to Islam. Now share with our viewing audience. What do you live? What did you believe before? And what do you believe now?

Before I believed, as a Christian believed, you know, I believe that Jesus Christ was God incarnate. This is what I was indoctrinated with. This is the doctrine of Christianity that I'm indoctrinated with, that Jesus Christ was God made flesh. He was God. Yeah, he was Jesus. He was the Holy Spirit, he died. He died on a cross for my sins. And the only way to get forgiveness and entered to Heaven is to accept that ransom and sacrifice for myself. Now, what do you believe now? I believe now that the way to forgiveness is following the commandments, worshiping God alone,

associating nothing with him and his worship, and obeying the prophets, which is the same thing that the Bible has taught from the beginning, the same thing that Jesus taught the same thing that Muhammad peace be upon him came with, and that is now a tenant. This is a part of an Islamic belief that you must believe this in order to be Muslim, that there is only one God and is in Arabic is Allah, which is a very beautiful way to say, God, it's not some other God, it's a way to say that, the only God, the Creator of the heavens in the earth, and I worship Him alone, and I submit to Him as a Muslim. And you find all these teachings in a book that is most read today in the world, which

is the Quran, the Quran, it's the most read book continuously in the world. It's the most, most read book in the world, the most memorize a book of any book in history. So you believe in one God, you repented as God, if you make a mistake, you call upon him and you worship Him alone. He's the Creator of the heavens and earth, the one who created Adam, Noah, Moses, Jesus Christ, and you still have a connection with Jesus Christ, not as God is not as God, I just God because God created me. God gave me life. He's gonna take my life. He's gonna resurrect me and judge me, that told us we're almost out of time, please tell are any closing comments for our audience, just for everyone that

know what you believe. Take time research, because this is the most important thing of anyone's life. They want to live in this earth for a short time. But then the next world, they're going to live forever. So that one they should pay more attention to than anything that you could do in this world. You have to get this little bit of time, right? Because this is what determines how the rest is going to go. Thank you very much for being with us again on the show anytime.

I'd like to thank everybody for tuning in. I hope you got to benefit from another show on the Dean's show, and we'll see you again next week. Thank you for tuning in. Salaam Alaikum. Peace be unto you