Yusha Evans – How the Bible Led Me to Islam – 2of2

Yusha Evans

How the Bible Led Me to Islam – The Story of Ex-Christian Joshua Evans – 2of2

Share Page

AI: Summary ©

The speaker discusses their church's history, including their religious beliefs and the use of churchgoings as sermons. They read a study on the Bible and discuss their interest in studying it. They also talk about their experiences with addiction and the importance of finding the right door to see the light. They eventually found their suspect and eventually ended up in a garage where they eventually found the suspect. They also discuss a woman who was forgiven by a sermon and was eventually killed by a man who claimed to be a Muslim president.

AI: Summary ©

00:00:03 --> 00:00:07
			As the brother introduced me, my name is usually Evans or do some people know me as Joshua and
		
00:00:09 --> 00:00:18
			I was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina in a very, very strict religious Methodist
upbringing. I was raised by my grandparents, who,
		
00:00:19 --> 00:00:35
			as they say old fashioned. We were very thankful that we went to church every Sunday. We went to
church, Sunday evenings, and sometimes on Wednesdays, and then Wednesdays became more regular as I
got older, that was considered in the south, very religious, you're considered a very good
		
00:00:37 --> 00:01:09
			patient of the church, if you went Sunday, Sunday, Wednesday. And that was not very difficult
considering the fact that the church from my home was separated by two houses, you walk out of my
house to the right investment house, you pass another house and you walk straight into the wall in
church. So it was not very difficult for me to go to church that often. And that was how I was
raised. You know, we went to church. Before we ate, we prayed before going to sleep. I pray every
time my grandmother had any, you know, any commotion happened to how she prayed. The Bible was
always open. We always read the Bible, my grandfather was always teaching me about, you know,
		
00:01:09 --> 00:01:23
			knowing Moses, and you know, the Jesus and you know, all these things. So this was just the
environment that was brought up in my father, my mother had stepped out of the picture. My father
was working two jobs, which was the reason I was being raised by my grandparents.
		
00:01:25 --> 00:01:31
			And this continued on till about 13 or 14 years of age. At about 13 or 14.
		
00:01:32 --> 00:02:01
			I decided to start attending the youth services on Saturday evenings at my church, Youth Service go
Saturday evening were quite different from a normal method is Sunday service. Methodist services are
very formal, you don't talk you sit down and listen to the service. You get up, you go outside of
the church, and then you talk to each other each other in the home. On Saturday, evenings are quite
different. They were held in the gym, and there was music and you know, there was games and play
basketball, we played all types of different games.
		
00:02:02 --> 00:02:44
			And then we ate a pizza or we you know, hamburgers, or whatever they did on Saturday evenings, in
the in views minister give a lot of 30 minutes sermon on whatever the topic was the he decided to
give it to him. And the youth minister was a 19 year old friend of mine. We as I started going to
the youth services, we became very good friends. And he was attending a university in a rainbow
called Bob Jones University. Anybody familiar with the South and the Bible colleges will ring the
bell very much. It's a very, it's considered one of the most conservative Christian colleges in the
country. I wanted to attend Bob Jones as well. And he was attending Bob Jones and his major was
		
00:02:44 --> 00:02:56
			textual criticism. If you hear who might be a major religion or anything of that nature might
understand what textual criticism is Textual Criticism to try to make a huge field very visible.
It's
		
00:02:57 --> 00:03:37
			it's a study that takes all many manuscripts, any type of manuscript when it comes to Christian
textual criticism of the Bible. It takes manuscripts of the Bible, which we know just of the old the
New Testament, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and 1000s of copies of the
New Testament. And none of these copies are exactly the same. Not one single is exactly the same to
the letter. So what textual print does is he sourced Rowling's he learns ancient Greek, ancient
Hebrew and Aramaic. And he tries to find out the date on these texts. And then which ones are the
oldest, and not only ones the oldest, which ones are the most original.
		
00:03:39 --> 00:04:02
			So as I befriended him, I became a layman or textual critic because I, as he was studying, I was
studying I was a study partner, I was personally, you know, he shot ideas off of I read his papers,
you know, things of this nature. And I always textbooks I would listen, you know, even record some
of the lectures, and I've listened to them. So I already wrote about Townsend already decided my
major, including sexual criticism.
		
00:04:03 --> 00:04:34
			And since that was the case, me and him together, decided to take up a study of the Bible. we said
to ourselves, and he told me that he said that if you know, this is our book, this is what we call
the idea. He This is the basic instructions before leaving Earth. Therefore, this is the book, this
is the Bible, we need to study we should know, because this is what is going to get us from heaven.
So we began studying the Bible. And we started from Genesis one one, and we decided we're going to
read through it from beginning to end.
		
00:04:36 --> 00:04:48
			The Bible is a pretty big book, I will give it that it's a pretty, it's a pretty long, and as I read
the Bible, this is where I guess you can say the beginning of the end of the beginning.
		
00:04:50 --> 00:04:51
			If that makes any sense.
		
00:04:54 --> 00:04:59
			As I started reading through the Bible, I began I said I'm gonna read this individually
		
00:05:00 --> 00:05:40
			I'm going to read this as a book, I'm going to take away from it, all of my preconceived notions of
it, because that's what textual critic has to do. I started reading the Bible. And as I got through
the books, the Bible started reading the stories of no one. And I read it. And I knew that I was a
puppet and all this and I started reading in the Bible that the Bible says that Noah was a drunkard,
as it puts it. And this now is referred to on a number of occasions in the Bible. And immediately
something did not sit right with me, because this was a story computed here Sunday school, you heard
that, nor Luke er, he saved humanity. He took too in tune with all the animals and all this, but
		
00:05:40 --> 00:06:15
			they didn't take the part about the Bible says that he was a drunkard. He was an alcoholic. So this
caught me off guard, I, you know, I said, Where did this come from? You know, so I started reading
and then I said, Okay, this what the Bible says, so that I will sit back and say, Okay, how did that
sit with me knowing what I know about Christianity, my faith has listened to me. And to be honest,
in a nutshell quite well, because I said to myself, and I had a picture in my mind, of the prophets,
being the leaders of humanity, the problems of the people chosen to be the leaders of humanity,
therefore, I pictured in my mind that therefore they would be the best of humanity. It just seems to
		
00:06:15 --> 00:06:15
			make sense to me.
		
00:06:17 --> 00:06:28
			And alcoholic, alcoholism is a disease. And most alcoholics can barely hold on to a job at
McDonald's, much less build an ark.
		
00:06:30 --> 00:06:39
			This never happens. I said, so something didn't fit, right. I said, Okay, maybe it's just, you know,
maybe this is something wrong with me. So I need to keep going.
		
00:06:40 --> 00:06:45
			So I kept going, and I got to the story of luck. But then when he talks about what what was
		
00:06:46 --> 00:06:48
			his daughter's getting drunk and stuff.
		
00:06:49 --> 00:06:52
			This is not something I heard in Sunday school. And
		
00:06:53 --> 00:06:54
			so
		
00:06:56 --> 00:07:29
			these things, one after another after another, really started really starting to play with my
emotions. And I was trying to read this analytically, just as a book, but I could not separate it
with myself as from what I've always learned, and always been taught. So I started taking these
things to the scholars at Bob Jones. You know, I told my friend, he said, Okay, let me take you to
the people who can answer the vetting. First, I took them to my pastor, the church, and the pastor
of my church told me, he said, he put his hand on my shoulder. He said, Brother Joshua, you know,
don't let a little bit of knowledge wreck your faith, is exactly what he told me. Don't let a little
		
00:07:29 --> 00:07:47
			bit of knowledge wreck your faith. He said, Because faith is what leads to salvation, not knowledge.
He said, faith is what is going to take you to paradise not now that he said, We are justified by
faith, and he was quoting Paul, we are justified by faith, not by works. So I said, I said, Okay.
		
00:07:49 --> 00:07:58
			But it didn't it. It was an answer that my mind understood, but my heart would not accept. So I went
to the scholars at Bob Jones, and started asking him about these things.
		
00:08:00 --> 00:08:25
			And I started getting the same, it was almost like this, this was a recorded message from you know,
from from some of these people, because they would tell me the same thing, you know, brother,
Joshua, don't let a little bit of knowledge, wreck your faith, you know, the devil will give you 99%
of the truth, to get you to believe the 1% of falsehood. So I said, Okay, and I went back and
continued my research of the Bible, I said, I'm not gonna let this
		
00:08:26 --> 00:08:28
			I'm not gonna let this discourage me or ruin me.
		
00:08:29 --> 00:08:50
			So all these things began to came into conflict with me, this set off a whirlwind of conflict with
me. So, I was in a frenzy, and I started telling my friend and he realized that I was in a Christian
crisis as to say, you know, I was in real crisis. So he took me to,
		
00:08:51 --> 00:09:03
			back to the the scholars at Bob Jones. And he also got me in touch with some some Bible scholars at
the moody Institute in Chicago, which is one of the biggest evangelical schools in this in this
country, the moody Institute,
		
00:09:05 --> 00:09:21
			which is where I plan to perhaps do my graduate studies after Bob Jones. And they came together and
they had you know, an intervention has to say, you know, they tried putting, they began to think
because I started to believe that this book cannot be from God.
		
00:09:23 --> 00:09:59
			Not only that, I noticed, changes in the text, but changes in the way the language was spoken,
because you can tell in in, in Hebrew, when God is speaking, because it is an extremely eloquent
speech, a speech that is not unlike that is not like any type of human speech, you can tell the
difference. And then you can see when it automatically changes to almost like slang, it changes to
like an educated speech. I ended up talking to one guy, one guy, Bob Jones University, and I don't
want to give out his name because he will probably not be very happy with me saying that he is the
person who recommended
		
00:10:00 --> 00:10:00
			Christianity,
		
00:10:02 --> 00:10:15
			and he will not be very pleased if I were to give his name and a credit that to him because he's
probably still a a professor Bob Jones. But he sat me down, he said, You know what, brother Joshua,
		
00:10:16 --> 00:10:52
			you've seen all these things that are happening, you know, mistakes, things that don't make sense,
you know, things don't look right. And he said, you're gonna see it, you're gonna continue to see
it, if you continue to read this book. He said, because this book was written by man's hands. And
anything that has been touched by man's hands will have fingerprints still left on it, he said, so
what happened was, when all these things you see wrong is that somebody probably just made a
mistake. He said that the copy of the copy of the copy described will copy this person who person
this, this, this, this, this, so on and so forth. Probably one of them made a mistake, and somebody
		
00:10:52 --> 00:11:05
			copies mistake and made his own mistake. And then that person compounded the other person's mistake.
And maybe somebody came back and corrected one person mistake and then added his own. He said, so
that's probably what happened. And you have the final product of all of that.
		
00:11:06 --> 00:11:23
			And that just had to sit down and actually take that for a second. Because I was fighting inside
myself to try to keep this book at the status that it has always been in my home, the inerrant Word
of God, this is how to talk in Arabic word of God, Word of God without error, I left Christianity
altogether, I decided that
		
00:11:24 --> 00:12:05
			I knew God existed for that was for sure I could look around me until God existed. That was a no
brainer. I knew God existed. I knew he had a purpose for my life, I knew that there were prophets, I
knew all these people were not remembered so well in history, and they did nothing. So I knew there
was something behind all of this, I just wanted to find it. So I started studying every religion, I
could find, I knew that God's true religion would be balanced, for sure. Because life is balanced in
order for life to exist. in harmony, it must be balanced. And in every one of them, I would see
glimpses of the truth, I would see glimpses, and I don't want to discredit Islam, I don't want to
		
00:12:05 --> 00:12:23
			discourage them, because I went to the public library and pull out a book on Islam. And this book,
said that the Muslims worship the moon God, and they bow their heads five times a day to a box in
the desert. And they and you know, they, they, they can have as many women as they want. And, you
know,
		
00:12:24 --> 00:12:55
			they're all Arab, and you know, things of this nature. And what else did they say? Oh, yeah, they
can kill non Muslims anytime, anyplace in any way they wish without scrutiny, and that they would
get 70 virgins in heaven and all this other stuff. So needless to say, I made it about four chapters
in the book, I put the book back, thank you very much. I took a big my big one of the big fat magic
markers and raised Islam off and said, You know, I'm moving on, you know, and I said to myself, that
if I convert any other religion, Islam will not be the one for sure.
		
00:12:57 --> 00:13:28
			Thank you very much. I'm done with that one. And so, being 17 years old, and having been searching
for the truth for about a year and a half, two with us, about a year and a half, they'll give a good
credit, about a year and a half, really hard searching, I became very frustrated, I became very
angry with it a sense that, you know, I'm looking for you, and you're not doing any effort here. You
know, I know, that was my prayer, you know, I'm looking for you. And I don't, I'm not seeing any,
any reverse effort on this. And, you know, I felt as though
		
00:13:29 --> 00:14:03
			I was in a room with all the lights off. In every doorway, there was about 50,000 doors in the room,
and I knew one of them took me out of here, but the lights were off. And the only way I was gonna
know is be able to read the signs on the door, you know, and I was trying to feel my way through
this foolishness to find the right door, and I really got frustrated, you know, and I'm asking God,
why don't you just turn the light for me, please, you know, just let me out of this, this this
foolishness. And I'm a perfectionist at heart. Anything I do, I want to be the best at it. If I was
a Christian, I wanted to be the best if I wanted to be a Bible scholar, I was determined to be the
		
00:14:03 --> 00:14:07
			best. So when I decided to get into the street life, for sure, no one was gonna outdo me.
		
00:14:08 --> 00:14:26
			So I became, I went from one way too extremely other way really quick. I was getting into trouble
getting kicked out of school, I got expelled, you know, I had to go to night school. I was getting
arrested. You know, all these things were happening to me at the age of 17. You know, and my
grandmother was, she was
		
00:14:27 --> 00:14:29
			bewildered at all of this. She had no idea what had happened to me.
		
00:14:30 --> 00:14:32
			There was two incidents that changed all that.
		
00:14:33 --> 00:14:39
			The first incident, I got into a car accident, we were on our way back from Clemson from a party.
		
00:14:40 --> 00:14:59
			And it just so happened that night that we were really tired. And I never wore my seatbelt. There
was just something I didn't do. And then I just happened to tell my friend You know, we're tired.
You know, I'm going to sleep. I don't know if you're going to go to sleep. So let's proceed. But on.
You know, if we run off into the ravine, at least we have a seatbelt on. So we did that and we did
run off
		
00:15:00 --> 00:15:00
			To the ravine.
		
00:15:01 --> 00:15:07
			Needless to say, we flip the car about six and a half, seven times, they say, you know, like who's
counting?
		
00:15:08 --> 00:15:12
			You know, it was slipped quite a bit of times. And at the end,
		
00:15:14 --> 00:15:19
			one half of the car, the back end of the car was on one side of the street and the other half of the
of the car broke completely in half.
		
00:15:20 --> 00:15:53
			And I was awoken by the accident. So I got out of the car. And I pulled my friend out. And he had
two broken ankles, not really broken English, I had a broken leg and a broken ankle. And I had a
piece of glass sticking out of my arm, which I still have a scar to prove it in. It just so happened
at that time, there was a police officer traveling the other way he saw the accident, turn around,
came back, the officer pulled over and got out of the car. I guess you didn't notice that I was not
there was not another car parked on the side of the road. But he got out and he asked me he said,
Did you see the accident? You know, he came up, he said, you see the accident? Did you see what
		
00:15:53 --> 00:15:55
			happened? Do you know where the people?
		
00:15:56 --> 00:16:14
			And I looked at him, you know, and I said, I was in the accident? You know, that's that's my
friend's car. And when I said that, it was almost you know how they you know, people talk about, you
know, seeing the blood red on somebody's face, I saw blood drain. I saw him go from regular color to
white.
		
00:16:15 --> 00:16:16
			And he looked at me.
		
00:16:18 --> 00:16:19
			And he said that,
		
00:16:20 --> 00:16:26
			after seeing that wreck, because he saw the whole racket happened in front of him coming towards him
and I went across the road in front of him.
		
00:16:27 --> 00:16:54
			He said I've already called the corner just in case. He said these are rakes. When we come to we
immediately call the corner just in case. Because these people don't live to that type of rank. You
know, we said what do you said, you see this one part of the car. See, I see it I was in. He's in he
looked at me. And he must have been a very religious man, because he looked at me. He said, before
you are asked, I want you to remember this. He said, I want you to remember that God is real. And
that you're here for a reason.
		
00:16:55 --> 00:17:08
			said you're here for a reason. And you better realize what that reason is. He said, I don't know it,
but you better figure it out. Because God doesn't keep people around like this unless they have a
purpose later on in life. So he said you have a reason you need to figure it out.
		
00:17:09 --> 00:17:20
			needs to say that in that that wasn't the only thing that woke me up because I continued on doing
what I was doing. About a month after that I traveled to New York with a friend of mine, and I'm
drawing quite closely into my story, I hope.
		
00:17:22 --> 00:17:32
			I traveled to New York with a friend of mine. And I left the hotel room happened to be the same
friend and I into the friends I left the hotel room to go to the ATM.
		
00:17:33 --> 00:17:40
			So I went in and I withdrew my little $60. And I was always walking out a guy came in behind me. And
apparently
		
00:17:43 --> 00:18:00
			he was so in need of his money. He was so strong out or whatever on drugs and that he was not
willing to take the chance of me not giving him that money. Because he pulled the gun pointed in my
face and pulled the trigger. He didn't say a word you didn't ask him anything. He didn't say
anything.
		
00:18:01 --> 00:18:38
			And then I remember him, his eyes getting big, because nothing happened. Nothing happens. I don't
know if there was not a bullet where he was so drugged up that you didn't know the gun was not
loaded, or there was a bad bullet. But after that, he started trying to pull the trigger again. And
and before I even even had a chance to do that I had because of my martial arts experience. 100 100
Thanks to God. So immediately, I don't rush them in smash them against the glass and why I cracked
all the glass that was at the door and shoved them through the door, you know, in in rain, you know,
I ran and ran back to the hotel room.
		
00:18:39 --> 00:18:41
			But needless to say, I went back to the hotel room
		
00:18:43 --> 00:19:00
			and started thinking to myself that you know that I gotta get it together. You know, this is this is
crazy. I gotta get it together. So I went back home, and I sat down until my grandmother What
happened? And she looked at me and you know, she told me, she said the police officer, right when he
told you, you know that you have a purpose. And she said
		
00:19:01 --> 00:19:02
			she told me that, um,
		
00:19:03 --> 00:19:10
			this is God's mercy to you, that he's sending these events in your life, to make you realize he
loves you.
		
00:19:12 --> 00:19:24
			He says because he didn't love you, he let you die. But he wants you to know him. And he's allowing
your life to be extended as a mercy till you know him. So she said go look for him.
		
00:19:27 --> 00:19:28
			So
		
00:19:29 --> 00:19:45
			I went and renewed my search for God, needless to say, and I used to pray every day, many times a
day bowing and prostrating on the floor because this is how the Bible taught. This as the Bible
taught the prophets prayed. And then one day I was having a debate about religion with a friend of
mine.
		
00:19:47 --> 00:19:47
			And
		
00:19:48 --> 00:19:51
			a mutual friend of ours whom we knew through his business
		
00:19:53 --> 00:20:00
			happened to show up at that time, and, you know, told me that he was Muslim at that point, he just
decided to reveal
		
00:20:00 --> 00:20:39
			He was Muslim and asked me to come to Juma things didn't. They didn't. From the book I read, I
didn't think that that was part of the job description. So, and he was African American and I
thought, Muslims were adamant. And he said, You need to come to Juma. He's like, I'm not a good
enough Muslim to tell you about this man. You know, because I don't live it, apparently. And he
said, What if you come to the mosque, there'll be people there who can help you. You know? So I
said, Okay, I said, What is Juma? He said, It's Friday service, just like church on Sunday, there's
just no chairs. I said, no problem. So I have myself up to go to this Juma because all I knew about
		
00:20:39 --> 00:20:52
			Muslims was this thing I read in the book. So number one, I was very scared to not see that there
were not many windows in the mosque. That was the first thing this gave me. The second thing that
scared me was and this might be shocking to you that I lived across the street from this mosque on
my life.
		
00:20:54 --> 00:21:03
			When they told me what the mosque was, it was next door to the church that I used to go to, to learn
how to become a missionary. And you could touch the two buildings like this.
		
00:21:04 --> 00:21:09
			So I didn't I didn't know that, um, that was scary to know that all these Muslims lived across the
street from me
		
00:21:10 --> 00:21:19
			all my life. So I went to Juma and sat down. And if I'm getting long winded, somebody, please stop
me. I'm almost at the end, maybe 510 minutes.
		
00:21:21 --> 00:21:27
			I sat down, you know, and the person who gives the sermon got up. He's called a hottie even Arabic,
which means, you know, just a talker.
		
00:21:29 --> 00:21:32
			And he started his sermon sermon was ended.
		
00:21:34 --> 00:21:37
			And I said, Oh, my God.
		
00:21:39 --> 00:21:41
			I said, He's talking about me.
		
00:21:43 --> 00:21:50
			Because I was only non Muslim, there was only nonnamous in there. And I was the only person sitting
away from everyone else.
		
00:21:52 --> 00:21:58
			He's talking about me, I'm in big trouble. You know, I said, this, this guy and this drug dealer guy
and set me up.
		
00:22:01 --> 00:22:02
			Cuz I didn't see him.
		
00:22:04 --> 00:22:13
			He wasn't, he wasn't there. You know, I said he must be, you know, he must be the messenger to bring
the non Muslims. So
		
00:22:14 --> 00:22:34
			for the Americans, I thought about it. Because there wasn't many Americans there either. It was
mostly an Egyptian and Syrian and Jordanian you know, mosques. So they were all here, most of the
mayors, and the ones that weren't, you know, they were fair skins. I didn't know the difference. So,
you know, you know, I started shaking, I said, You know, I said, Okay, you're a martial artist, you
can take a couple of them.
		
00:22:36 --> 00:22:37
			Take a couple of them, you find exit.
		
00:22:39 --> 00:23:02
			So, it only lasted about 30 seconds, he made it English, you know, and then he started translating
what he recited in Arabic, you know, and the translation was, you know, All praise belongs to God,
you know, alone, you know, we praise Him worship, we seek his help, and we ask for his forgiveness.
And that began to ease my heart a little bit, you know, I said, I said, Okay, you know, I, you know,
Okay, calm down just a little bit. You okay, so I started to ease down in my seat a little bit,
		
00:23:03 --> 00:23:22
			or my position on the floor. So, you know, then, you know, he, you know, he would make it through
some. And then every time like, every five minutes, he would go back to Arabic, and then I would get
scared again, thinking, you know, now he's talking about me, but then he would translate and it
would be so beautiful, you know, what he was saying would be so beautiful words like I've never
heard before ever.
		
00:23:23 --> 00:23:52
			And after that, and I remember to this day, what the sermon was about, because as an agnostic, and
what I had believed through reading the Bible, that was, salvation comes from God alone. This was my
conclusion that the Bible says this, Jesus says, this, nature tells you this reasoning tells you
this logic tells you this, that God created me. Therefore, he's the only one who can forgive me. And
this is what I would say to those who I was debating with, at the end of my stage of Christianity
was that
		
00:23:53 --> 00:24:19
			God did not question Jesus, when he created me. He did not ask his permission. He made me and put me
in a way, my mother. Therefore, why do I need to ask anyone to worship him? Why do I need to ask
anyone? Or in anybody's name to forgive me? I didn't. It didn't make sense to me. It didn't. And I'm
not here to bash anyone's faith. I'm just trying to give you my story, how I got where I'm at how I
got from there to here. That's it.
		
00:24:20 --> 00:24:38
			And I remember that he told me, the sermon was that the forgiveness, don't despair in the mercy of
God, that the door of mercy is always open to anyone at any time. And he said, as long as you have
that die in and the day of judgment has not come, that you can always fall in your face in front of
God
		
00:24:39 --> 00:24:46
			and ask Him for His forgiveness and he can forgive you and he's the only one who could grant you
paradise him and him alone. No one else.
		
00:24:47 --> 00:25:00
			And he even said it. Your good deeds, your actions alone cannot even get you there. If you do good
all your life, he said you cannot go to Paradise just married it on that alone because the price for
paradise
		
00:25:00 --> 00:25:00
			is too high,
		
00:25:01 --> 00:25:29
			the exchange rate would be nil. All your deeds would just fall away as dust at the price of
Paradise, he said, What don't get you there is God's mercy, and that alone, and how you obtain God's
mercy, obeying His commandments and asking for his forgiveness. That's it. He said, that's the step
manual. That's how that's the process to get there. These will not do it. So, this to me was like,
		
00:25:31 --> 00:25:51
			there's someone like, you see, someone agrees with me, somebody I had to come to this must to find
someone who agreed with me, these people who worship the moon God and boundary bumps in the desert,
at least they got this, right. So after this, they make prayer on Fridays. And so the Muslim started
lining up in lines just like you see it.
		
00:25:53 --> 00:26:28
			And this really scared me because it looks, you know, almost kind of like military lines. And I
said, Now they're coming to get me, you know, they've gotten their little thing out of the way. And
now it's time to get the goodies, you know, go get the American guy. So, and but, you know, the guy
told me he came to me I guess he saw my my apprehension, he came he said, No, we're gonna pray. You
know, we're facing this way because this is the facing towards Mecca. And he explained to me really
quickly that the Kaaba is not what we worshipping. But it's a symbol of our unity. It's a symbol of
the unity of God, it was the first house of God built by Abraham. I mean, it's what Muslims still
		
00:26:28 --> 00:26:44
			bound to all over the world. And we're battling for God, we just facing that direction. I said,
Okay, you know, make sense. Okay, I'll take that. And when they started to make prayer, number one,
the recitation of the Quran was the most beautiful melodic tone I have ever heard in my life. And I
was a lover of music.
		
00:26:45 --> 00:27:19
			Number two is when they started bowing and prostrating on the floor. The versus the Bible rang in my
head, that this was the way the prophets prayed. This is the way the people of God prayed. So to
speed it up to get there in two minutes, I got a copy of the Quran, because I asked him about the
brief. You know, what is your religion about? They told me God is one, you know, we need the
prophets. They started naming names like Moses, David, Jesus, and I said, Wait a minute, where'd you
get those names? They're in the Koran. I said, Okay, you have a good one, Can I have one? Because I
believed that a religion was justified by His book. If your religion is true, it must be justified
		
00:27:19 --> 00:27:40
			by its book, it must be there must be something concrete, not just what you say or what this person
does, or what this person says, There must be something concrete, that I can have passed down to me
that I can pass it on to someone else. That validity is this religion that validates it? So I asked
him for a Koran. And when I started reading the Quran
		
00:27:41 --> 00:27:53
			in the first two chapters, I started getting two names that I remembered. I started reading the
story of Moses, the story of David, the story of Jesus, the story of Haroon of Abraham.
		
00:27:54 --> 00:28:15
			And what I realized that these stories were different than any story I've ever seen in the Bible.
These thought that these people were at the highest echelon of the society, they were at the highest
peak of morality. They were the people to be followed. They were the guiding example, not only do
they command the people to do good, they were the living example of it.
		
00:28:16 --> 00:28:35
			And this to me, was what made sense. This was what I was looking for. This was the people that I
could follow. These were prophets. This was what I could call a prophet. So needless to say, I kept
reading through the Quran. But I had given my heart to this book after the second or third chapter.
		
00:28:36 --> 00:28:42
			I sent myself I don't care what this religion is. But if this is the judge,
		
00:28:43 --> 00:28:54
			I want to be whatever these people are. And I want to be whatever this book tells me I need to be.
And I would read in the book that it said that Allah has called us Muslims. So I said, I'm a Muslim,
all alone in my room.
		
00:28:55 --> 00:28:56
			I said, Muslim.
		
00:28:58 --> 00:28:59
			And
		
00:29:00 --> 00:29:05
			I went back to the mosque. The next day. Three days later, I read the Quran beginning in three days.
		
00:29:07 --> 00:29:09
			I went back to the mosque because I wanted to be Muslim.
		
00:29:19 --> 00:29:22
			Muslim, so I come to the mosque on Fridays in 1998, except on Fridays.
		
00:29:24 --> 00:29:28
			So the guy at the gas station told me he said if you're looking for the Muslims and be back on
Friday,
		
00:29:31 --> 00:29:41
			the handler now handler, they have five slots. They in the masjid in Jackson, I mean, in Greenville,
South Carolina, they have an Islamic school there.
		
00:29:43 --> 00:29:51
			And praise be to God. So I came back on Friday. And I took my Shahada. You know, I said a shadow, no
shadow.
		
00:29:53 --> 00:30:00
			I believe there's no God but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. Because I when I
learned about Mohammed, I see
		
00:30:00 --> 00:30:03
			myself that if God chose him to reveal this book,
		
00:30:04 --> 00:30:06
			and he's a prophet, he has to be
		
00:30:08 --> 00:30:23
			this book you don't you don't. You don't pour water through a dirty pipe and get clean water at the
end doesn't happen. You don't get this pure of a book through a man does not dispute one. So I
became a Muslim. And needless to say that the rest is history.
		
00:30:25 --> 00:30:29
			Muhammad peace be upon him is a man like you've never read about.
		
00:30:31 --> 00:30:32
			This is why
		
00:30:33 --> 00:30:34
			we get so angry.
		
00:30:36 --> 00:30:51
			And when when when they wrote these cartoons about him in Denmark, maybe a lot of us overreacted,
yes, we overreacted. But if someone insulted your mother, most of us probably would overreact, just
because we love them so much.
		
00:30:52 --> 00:30:54
			We love him so much.
		
00:30:55 --> 00:31:04
			Because he gave us this Pure religion, this great way of life. It has changed me from being somebody
that nobody wanted to be around
		
00:31:06 --> 00:31:14
			to somebody who now wants to be around everyone, because I want them to know where I've been and
what I've come through. And even though my grandmother passed away in 2002,
		
00:31:15 --> 00:31:24
			and my parents are not Muslim, yet, I'm working on them. They are very staunch, they're very strict
Christian still. But they love me to death. And they love the fact that I'm Muslim.
		
00:31:25 --> 00:31:39
			Because before he did not have any respect for me, even as a Christian, no respect for me. Now, as a
Muslim, he called me every day, when I'm sick, he drops everything to come see me across the
country. Why? Because his religion tells me as to
		
00:31:41 --> 00:31:43
			this is a way of life.
		
00:31:45 --> 00:31:46
			And I'm going to finish
		
00:31:47 --> 00:31:49
			Forgive me for not being a composer.
		
00:31:50 --> 00:31:56
			I'm going to finish with a statement of Bernard Shaw, who many of you may have read his works.
		
00:31:59 --> 00:32:03
			He said about Muhammad, and Islam, peace be upon
		
00:32:04 --> 00:32:16
			the if a man like Muhammad, or to assume leadership of the world today, he would solve every single
problem. He was solved every single one of his problems.
		
00:32:17 --> 00:32:19
			During his afternoon, afternoon cup of tea.
		
00:32:21 --> 00:32:22
			This was this man.
		
00:32:23 --> 00:32:25
			This was the religion the phone.
		
00:32:27 --> 00:32:38
			I can't remember his name off top my head man. It was just there wrote a book called The ranking
100. The most 100 influential people in history. I don't remember his name is on is one of those
things that I've known forever. And
		
00:32:40 --> 00:33:01
			Michael Hart, he chose him he's a Christian. He chose Mohammed is number one. I thank you for your
time and hope that I have been of benefit. I finished by saying that there is no god worthy of
worship except the one true God that created everything. His name is Allah in Arabic, which means
the God at the Mohammed is the last and final message for mankind, and that Islam is the truth.
Thank you very much.
		
00:34:12 --> 00:34:12
			Hey,
		
00:34:38 --> 00:34:38
			hey
		
00:34:51 --> 00:34:51
			hey,