Yusha Evans – DawahTraining
AI: Summary ©
The importance of Easter and holiday celebrations in Christian culture is discussed, including the festival of Is, Christmas tree depiction, and the origin of Santa Claus. The holiday celebrations involve various events, including the birth of Valentine's Day, the birth of Christmas, and Valentine's Day. The discussion also touches on the controversy surrounding the holy Spirit's actions during the period and the importance of acceptance of Christian faith in society and religion.
AI: Summary ©
Sunday Mass Devotion of the Virgin Mary and
the Saints the veneration of relics and places
associated with the Holy Figures Eastern Orthodoxy holds
an especially distinguished position by the role of
the central role of icons or any images
of Christ and the Saints that are believed
to provide a Connection to the spiritual world
the most important Christian holiday.
You might know what it is What's the
most important Christian holiday?
No Easter Easter Easter and we'll talk about
Easter really quick, but and I forgot about
this at the very beginning Our imam during
Salatul Isha tonight during the first of Raqqa
in the beginning of the first of Raqqa
He recited a verse that is very near
and dear to Da'wah very near and
dear to our concept as Muslims Did I
know what that verse was?
Ashabul Nadi wa Ashabul Jannati Humul Fa'izun
Allah says in the Qur'an Surah al
-Hadith says that Those who believe and those
who not the people of hellfire and the
people of Jannah.
They're not the same.
They're not the same They're not equal.
They're not like each other the people of
hellfire and the people of Jannah are not
Similar the people of Jannah are the people
who will be successful That is our goal
in Da'wah to try to explain this
to people that only the people of Jannah
are the successful people and After this life
that Allah says there's only two types Ashabul
Nadi wa Ashabul Jannati There's only types of
people you will have the people of the
fire and the people of Jannah the people
of Jannah are the successful Ones and we
know that the people of Jannah are the
people of La ilaha illallah.
That's it.
There is no other way There's no other
entry point.
Your good deeds can't get you there.
You're your charity.
You're none of that's going to matter What's
going to matter was did you have La
ilaha illallah.
Did you have Tawheed?
Without that there is no entry into paradise
So Allah says this very beautifully in Surah
Al-Ahid La yastawee Ashabul Nadi wa Ashabul
Jannah They're not the same.
Ashabul Jannati Humul Fa'izun Now the festival
of Easter that the Christians celebrate It is
supposed to most Christians and this is what
they believe Most Christians believe that the festival
of Easter is to do with the resurrection
of Jesus Christ That's why they have what
is known as Good Friday for Easter Good
Friday is supposed to symbolize the day He
was crucified right and then three days later
on Sunday morning he rose from the dead.
So this is why Easter is celebrated now
Easter Did not happen when it happens now
And it didn't happen like that for actually
a long time Easter comes from a pagan
festival known as the festival of Ishtar The
festival Ishtar they just ended up calling it
Easter But the festival Ishtar was about another
pagan God who died and rose from the
dead so when the Roman Catholic Church started
to take over a lot of Pagan Rome
and a pagan Europe.
They realized that it practices festival of Ishtar
We have something we call Easter which was
actually a festival that they celebrated much later
on in the year But they said we
can just make it during this time of
the year Call it Easter and it makes
it very easy for the people.
That's why I said there was no Afida
in Christianity the Afida was very Maneuverable based
on time and circumstance just like Christmas Christmas
Used to be done in the summer Because
Jesus was born in the summer if you
study the New Testament, he was born in
the warm months but and They used to
have a celebration called Christ mass.
That was what they did They celebrated and
Catholics still do this Catholics actually celebrate Christmas
at midnight on December the 25th.
They said about I know that I've seen
him do it They'll put out a little
Like a nativity scene and they'll cover up
the baby Jesus with the cloth, right?
And as soon as the clock strikes midnight,
they'll take the cover off and celebrate it
as Jesus birth But it was called Christ
mass and then it became Christmas But Christmas
being celebrated during the winter solstice on December
the 25th came from another pagan Holiday called
Saturnalia Saturnalia was celebrated at the winter solstice
and We're in the masjid.
So I'm not going to go too deep
into what the festival of Saturnalia is all
about but it is very paganistic very satanic
if you look deep into it just go
Google Saturnalia and Then see how Saturnalia which
was celebrated that time They turned it into
Christmas basically where all of the Santa Claus
came from The reindeer the Christmas tree the
lights all of this is from the festival
Saturnalia the Bible actually prohibits the Christmas tree
altogether It actually is a commandment in the
book of Jeremiah where it says do not
go into the forest and chop down an
evergreen tree Bring them to your home and
decorate it with tinsel and silk Because what
they would do is they would do this
in Spirit to bring about the new season
that Spring would come they think they thought
if they didn't do this if they didn't
worship this Saturnalia and this gods of Saturnalia
that winter would be perpetual winter would be
perpetual and Santa Claus Santa Claus the whole
nother thing Santa Claus as you see him
today Right, you guys know what Santa Claus
would say, right?
You can't go in the Home Depot now
without seeing was like ten foot There's like
a ten-foot one in my set in
my own people that I go in Do
you know who invented him?
Who invented the jolly man in the red
coat?
Coca-cola company Yeah Coca-cola company that
that Santa Claus that you know, it's nothing
to do with Christianity presented But admitted by
the Coca-cola company because before that Santa
Claus was a very scary looking figure was
a very scary looking figure He was an
old I had don't go and look deeper
into this he was a he was a
very scary looking old man Hagrid man with
a stake who rode on some beasts like
not like reindeer like we know them now
and this came from the the the the
Norse God of Woden and Odin Woden and
Odin were the origins of Santa Claus They
were the origins of Santa Claus if you
go deep down and dig into it But
there was a man who was known as
st.
Nicholas.
He was known as Nicholas.
He was very charitable.
He's very honorable He's very giving he became
a saint after his death, etc Then they
started giving out gifts in terms of st.
Nicholas, but it was they had to figure
out how do we reconcile all these?
Different holidays who were celebrating so they smashed
it all together turned Saturnalia Christmas into Christmas
But for a while the Coca-cola company
when they wanted to find a way to
promote Santa Claus during the holiday, they knew
they could not use the man that was
depicted For hundreds and hundreds of years because
he would scare the living daylights out of
children So they hired an artist to come
up with somebody who is jolly fat and
had the cocoa colors red and white So
that's where your your traditional your new Santa
Claus is in it by Coca-cola He's
a corporation, but nevertheless if you go look
into a lot of these holidays, they trace
their origins back to paganism They were not
practiced in the early days of Christianity.
They were not celebrated they became celebrated when
Roman Catholicism took over and spread into parts
of pagan Europe and they had to find
a way to Keep these people in the
fold without having them rebel or to accept
Christianity in a much more easy way And
Allah says this in the Quran when he
talks about how they compromise the religion that
they take their priests and rabbis as gods
Right, like whatever they say is holy order.
Whatever the Pope says was holy order Whatever
the archbishop said was holy order like you
weren't allowed to vote against it This is
what Allah means, but they distort religions by
taking the rabbis as lords Easter is immediately
preceded by the holy week which includes Palm
Sunday Monday Thursday and Good Friday the 40
days prior to Easter form what is known
the lint season some some Christians still They
still celebrate lint and they'll have lint calendars
like they fast and they're only allowed to
eat a certain type of food during these
Days, they basically go on It's almost like
a Ramadan type of scenario for them and
it ends with Easter Sundays the lint season
Another holiday that came to be culturally important
Christmas, which commensurates the birth of Jesus December
25th Saints They are also important some of
these such as st.
Patrick's Day Was also a Christian holiday for
a while now.
It's turned into a holiday of basically the
Irish are drinking That's really all they do
on that day and st.
Valentine's Day, which Valentine's is another paganistic holiday
if you go deep deep deep into Valentine's
Day was a pagan ritual, but they decided
since it was being practiced We're going to
now use it to honor a saint known
as st.
Valentine and he is the saint of love
so it's became a whole nother thing a
Vast number of intriguing people have helped shape
Christianity over the centuries They include early church
fathers like Athanasius in Augustine These are important
church fathers from the like the first and
second century before the councils of Nicaea The
glorious heteric heretics such as Arius Arius was
a very well-known Deist within within Christianity.
He did not believe Jesus to be gone
He did not believe Jesus to even be
like part God kind of God deity in
no way shape or whatsoever He did write
about him being the begotten son of God
because he was born of a virgin But
he did not believe that gave him deification
at all Anyway shape form of fashion areas
is one of the big detractors to the
Trinity theology so was Pelagius Pelagius is also
a detractor to the the the doctrine of
the Trinity that happened at the Council of
Nicaea and Then you have during the Reformation
you have Reformers such as Martin Luther and
John Wycliffe.
They helped bring about the Reformation in Europe,
which broke away Protestantism and Lutherans from from
Catholicism etc, so on and so forth and
popular writers like CS Lewis reads which the
word the English word free comes from a
Latin word cradle, which means basically To believe
that's all it means to believe a belief
system Creed means a belief system just like
I'll feed them That would basically is another
you can change that Interchangeable for the word
creed, but the word creed in English comes
from that creator Which means I believe creed
are concise doctrinal statements or confessions usually of
a religious belief They began as a baptismal
formulae and were later expanded during the Christ
the Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth
centuries to become statements of meaning before The
fourth and fifth centuries these are before the
councils of Nicaea to come place and they
came up with the Apostles Creed, etc And
so forth these creeds were Something that you
just believed in and they vary from area
to area.
They varied from place to place There was
no codified Christian theology, right?
There was no codified similar to me if
you look at Islamic theology right Islamic tree
Or a feed that has always been the
same But the the codification of the Shari
'a did not happen until a couple hundred
years later When you have before Imams such
as Imam Malik, Imam Shafi'i, Imam Abu
Ahmed and Imam Abu Hanifa came and codified
codified the system of practice into what is
known as like the The principles of Asul
and the fifth and things of his nature
like it was codified Before that people just
had like general belief This is what all
Muslims believe but as the Islamic Empire expanded
these things need to be codified because what
started happening Is you started to see culture
start to seep into the religion and this
is why The great Imams of Fiqh wanted
to codify this because we see this even
today We see this even today my actually
one of my my upcoming podcasts going to
be about Culture and its influence on religion
and its influence on Islam and how it's
not allowed to have an influence on Islam
that culture is Fine, but it cannot influence
the religion.
It has to be the other way around
So this is why I was codified in
the fourth and fifth century during the Councils
of Nicaea Emperor Constantine basically and this now
is still practice what is known as the
conclave Right if a Pope dies, they lock
all the bishops in Rome in a room
and they literally do not let them out
until they decide on a new Pope, right?
I don't know if any of you ever
watched one of the Pope's died you literally
the people who sit there watching on favor
they'll make a vote and Then they'll send
up some smoke right and if it's it's
black smoke they didn't decide anything then they
vote again and they vote again and they
vote again until finally they come to a
consensus and Then you'll see white smoke come
out of the church in Rome and you
have a new Pope This came from the
Councils of Nicaea because Constantine did the same
thing He locked them all in a room
in conclave and said you're not leaving this
room Until you decide what we believe what
we believe and the majority vote takes win
So, you know how that goes, I don't
know if any of you have ever seen
some of the historical kind of Documentation or
they've been done docu-series now on how
popes were elected or not elected There was
a lot of politics involved.
There was a lot of money exchanged.
There were a lot of folks that were
bought there are a lot of people who
were Etc.
Like this is how folks came into power,
right?
This was exactly what happened during the Councils
of Nicaea It was basically Whoever had the
most power Was going to come out the
winner and it was the Roman Catholic Church
at the time because they had the backing
of Constantine They had the backing of the
Emperor and they pushed out a lot of
the other Beliefs a lot of the other
bishops who believe differently to them and they
were they were outvoted.
It's just kind of hot Many evangelical Protestants
reject creed as a definitive statement of faith
even while agreeing some or all of the
substance of the Baptists have been non-creedal
in that they have not sought to establish
a binding authoritative confession of faith on one
another so evangelicals believe in some of those
creeds like the Apostles Creed did it but
they don't believe that that's like a Make
or break for your faith.
They're not going to come and interrogate you
on creed Baptists they don't really care as
long as you believe is Jesus and Jesus
Christ and his sacrifice for your sins on
the cross Whatever you believe after that does
not matter.
That's that's the base of the way the
Baptists see it Whatever you believe about that.
He has no impact on you whatsoever.
As long as you have that faith and
Also rejecting creeds are groups with roots in
the restoration movement such as the Disciples of
Christ The Canadian in Kent the Canada and
in Canada and the Churches of Christ The
Disciples of Christ is a bigger church.
You see in Canada It's not really I
saw some of it, Minnesota when I lived
there because very close to Canada But you
don't see that many of them here in
the south.
They're not really icon depicting Emperor Constantine and
the fathers of the first Council of Nicaea,
which was held in 325 AD as holding
the the Constapolean creed of 381 basically they
came up with this creed and this is
where we'll finish off with today now I'm
gonna try to dig into this creed a
little bit because it literally it hurts your
head It hurts it when you try to
make sense of it.
This is the this is what is known
as the Apostles Creed The Apostles Creed remains
the most popular statement of the articles of
Christian faith that are generally accepted to most
Christian denominations that are creed it is widely
used by a number of Christian denominations for
both liturgical and their their credence purposes most
visibly by The rhetorical churches of Western Christian
tradition including the Latin right the Catholic Orthodoxy
and also the Presbyterians Methodists and congregationists I
grew up as a Methodist.
That's how I know the Apostles Creed The
particular creed was adopted between the second and
ninth centuries Its central doctrine are those of
the Trinity and God the Creator each of
these doctrines is found in the creed can
be traced to statements current in the Apostolic
Period So what do you mean by the
Apostolic Period during the writings of Paul and
etc so and so forth because they consider
him to be An apostle even though never
met Jesus never talked to Jesus never walked
with him never never even a conversation with
him The creed was apparently used as a
summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in
the Church of Rome So if you wanted
to be baptized in the Church of Rome
You had to believe these things or if
you wanted your child to be baptized They
would question you about this creed if you
had to give correct answers about your belief
in this Apostolic Creed This is how it
goes.
I believe in God the Father Almighty Creator
of the heavens and the earth sounds good
so far would have just Right there.
Everything's all been then and in Jesus Christ
His only son our Lord ought to be
there who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
again nothing wrong with that one born of
the Virgin Mary we cool Suffered under Pontius
Pilate.
He's still good Was crucified died and buried.
We don't believe that one then descended into
* Then descended into * so God God
himself.
This is why I have these conversations with
Christians and I'm just like It makes my
head hurt.
So God went to * God went to
* on The third day he rose again
from the dead.
So apparently for three days God Created of
heaven and earth.
Hope holds everything is a hill preaching to
the inmates of * apparently, right?
Like that's what he's doing and he is
seated on the right hand of God the
Father Almighty.
So God Is sitting next to God?
Right, that's that's that if you try to
start you to start dissecting is what it
says God Sitting next to God Okay from
there he will become to judge the living
and the dead and I believe in the
Holy Spirit the Holy Father Church the communion
of Saints forgiveness of sins the resurrection of
the body and life everlasting Amen, that's the
the apostolic sleep the apostolate Creek.
There is also one known as the Nicene
Creed or the the the The prophetic cream
which they sometimes call it which we'll get
to We'll get to in a few in
a few one It was it was called
like this the Sheldon or Athanasian Creed but
I'm just gonna give you a glimpse into
it today because we have to break it
down because it's very very very very Confusing
basically and I'm gonna show you what it
looks like You see this you see this
little this little diagram here, right?
You have God in the center, right and
all these lines go around and You'll see
this symbol quite used a lot having Christianity.
Actually, this was the symbol that was used
for back to the future to for the
It basically God is in the middle right
and it says that God is the Father
God is the Son God is the Spirit.
That's what connects the three lines in the
middle, but if you go around the outside
The Spirit is not the Son.
The Son is not the Father and the
Father is not the Spirit So that that's
that's the cream that that God is the
Son He is the father he is the
Spirit, but the Spirit is not the Father.
The Father is not the Spirit The Spirit
is not the Son He is and he
is that's just what it is, right like
that's what it comes down to But we'll
dig deep into that with when we go
down through In Sha Allah hotel and when
I come back UK We're gonna start going
through because I believe it's very important to
go through these the councils of Nicaea We're
going to get into them in detail what
came out of the councils and I see
you.
What was an IC Creed?
How did it happen?
Who was there what what happened so on
and so forth because out of that you
start seeing?
the denomination start taking place and understand where
they came from and How the ones that
used to be there and all the things
that Christians used to believe is no longer
there like all of these things just got
Eradicated they got eradicated and pushed out because
they were considered Theoretical because we didn't believe
what came out of the councils of Nicaea
you were a heretic you would lose your
life over it They would burn your books.
They would cut out your tongue.
They had burned down your churches, etc So
on and so forth So there was a
lot of churches that a lot of Christianity
that had to go into actual hiding Which
we know I told you from the story
of some of the first like there was
not a lot of Christians that had true
Belief anymore and they dwindled into nothingness until
the time of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa
sallam said so we'll go into the council
I see you when I come back