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From The Bible To The Quran
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Channel: Yusha Evans
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© No part of this transcript may be copied or referenced or transmitted in any way whatsoever. Transcripts are auto-generated and thus will be be inaccurate. We are working on a system to allow volunteers to edit transcripts in a controlled system.
Salam Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu Bismillah from the law, you know, when I was growing up, I was born and raised as a Methodist Christian, which is very traditional type of Christianity. I was raised by my grandparents who were very conservative, religious, Southern Methodist. And you know, I was raised to be in tune with the church I was raised to be upright and righteous, so on and so forth. And the only things that really knew about Christianity growing up was what I learned in Sunday school, you know, the stories of the Bible like Noah, Moses, and the Pharaoh and the children of Israel and the bondage in Egypt. I knew about David and Goliath and Abraham and his two sons, and
that I know about the stories of Jesus and feeding the multitude with the fish and loaves of bread and the Sermon on the Mount, the view of tides, the trial, crucifixion, death, resurrection story, etc. It wasn't really until I came to the age of 14, I started going to youth services that I really kind of more or less to Christianity as a religion by heart more than just by upbringing. And I went over to more of an evangelical Pentecostal sort of fire and brimstone type of Christianity. And my intent realistically was to, at some point in my life, to become a minister within the church to become ordained to go to Bob Jones college, which is a well known Christian Academy. It is known all
over the world amongst Christian academia, for its biblical scholarship, and my in it's right in my hometown. So I had enrolled in in my sophomore year in high school, to go to Bob Jones after I graduated, I want to play baseball, as a profession, etc. So I thought I had my life pretty much planned out, until the summer of 96. In the summer of 96, my friend who was the youth pastor of my church, he asked me to read the Bible cover to cover as sort of a study through through the Word of God. And it was that reading of the Bible from cover to cover, that allowed me to see so many things that I would have never have imagined to be in a book called The Word of God, you know, all of the
detrimental stories that are attributed to the prophets, which you know, are almost not for the sake of repeating other than for the purpose of learning, such as the story of Noah becoming drunk in Genesis to the point of being naked, such as the story of lat, and him sleeping with his two daughters, and also the stories of Solomon and David and Kate first king and Second Kings where Solomon worships idols and builds temples to worship idols, David commits adultery with a woman Nimbus Sheba, and then kills her husband, Uriah in order to cover it up. You know, these things really made me take another glimpse at this book called The Bible. And then I started to get into
the New Testament and realize that the teachings of Jesus peace be upon him. Were not the teachings that Christianity follow as a mass today, you know, the teachings of Jesus were exactly the same as the teachings of the God of the Old Testament that God was one uniquely one, that God was worthy of all worship. He did not like to have his worship associated with anything, especially any creation, that he wanted to be obeyed, that he had a law that he wanted to be followed. And these were the exact same things that we find Jesus peace be upon him teaching in the New Testament, without a doubt, and we don't find anything conclusive. Explicit, that Jesus says that he is God that is more
than a human being that he is to be gotten only be gotten of God, Son of God, etc, you find him teaching that he is a prophet and messenger, a man. He was teaching people to worship god alone. He was teaching people to follow the commandments. He was teaching people to worship none but God alone. Even in Matthew 1518, we see Jesus say, in vain do you worship Me and teaches doctrine, the commandments of men, it is really not until we see the teachings of Paul come into play that we find what is now known as modern Christianity, which came about we as we know, in the third century, after what is known as the year of our Lord, what they call a D, but we refer to it as the Christian
era. So when I realized all of these things, you know, I had some serious questions about my faith that were not answered in in any form that would have given me any type of
solace amongst my preachers, pastors, friends, etc, you know, the basics, the basis of Christianity is faith, and that faith is based upon faith itself. It's faith based upon faith. And I didn't really want something that was only faith based upon faith, in light of evidence to the contrary, I mean, this is just not rational. It's not. It's not according to the rational thought process that God gave human beings. If I see a table, I know it's a table, you know, you can't teach me that. Just to
believe that this is a horse, just because you want me to believe it, oh, it just believe it, it will be what it is. No, it is what it is. And that's what logic and reasoning, the intellect that God gave us will lead me to deduce. So when looking at things with not only the evidence that is there with the logic and reason and rationale that God gave me, the faith goes away. So I eventually ended up leaving Christianity because number one, I realized that the Bible was not a perfect word. And God Himself is perfect. This is something no one would dare challenge. God is perfect. Therefore everything coming from God should be perfect. If God has a religion, it would be perfect. If God has
a book, it would be perfect if God sent messengers, they would be perfect in the sense of messenger ship. And none of this you find within Christianity is a faith beyond reason. And I was looking for faith, along with reason, faith along with intellect, faith along with evidence, so I left Christianity and started to look for you know, religion and other places. Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Wiccan, Bushido, whatever you could find, but I wanted that tangible proof. I wanted that faith based upon evidence, faith based upon reason, faith based upon intellect. So my sincere question to every religion was, you know, show me your proof, give me the proof. If
your religion is truthful, then give me something tangible to prove it. And the tangible proofs that the other religions had, you know, such as the the Torah, from the Jews, the Vedas, from the Hindus, the writings of Buddha, the writings of Teo the teachings of Confucius, the book of the Bushido are the, what is known as the hagakure, a,
also the Wiccan book of spells, all of these different, tangible evidences, they stood up to the same test that the Bible did is that they had good teachings in them here and there. But most of it was something that you had to believe, beyond reason, without reason without intellect, you just had to believe faith based upon faith. So I left religion alone at the age of 17. And really made the streets my religion, I fell very heavily into the street life into the hip hop culture, you know, into partying into girls and alcohol and you know, the all of the things that come with that type of lifestyle, all of the evils that are associated with it, I took them wholeheartedly, because I had
nothing else and I wanted something you know, really to give me that fulfillment in life because the human soul automatically has a hole in it, when when it is not worshiping God correctly. So you you try to fill that hole with many things. And that lifestyle was leading me down a very, you know, terrible road, it was leading me to all kinds of problems I was getting in trouble in school, I was getting in fights, getting you know, arrested, you know, getting kicked out of school, etc, I was going down a very bad road very quickly, you know, it's almost as if I had turned on a self destruct button and was dead set on, you know, ending everything in a in a ball of fire, as they say, you
know, and you know, or according to, you know, the way to park coined at thug life, you know, we ride or die and it to the end, and there was no really living for tomorrow I was living for today, whatever it came today came, and if there was no tomorrow, then well, I'm going to enjoy today. And that's a very frivolous way to live your life, it's a very meaningless way to live your life. So, you know,
I was going that road very quickly, until a couple of things happen, a couple of incidents took place in my life that kind of stopped me in my tracks, you know, and I see this as more or less the, you know, the, the Word of God in my life that he really wanted something more from me, some for some reason. Number one, I got into a car accident on my way home from a party at Clemson University, which is a university not far from my hometown.
And I got into a car accident with my friend who was driving, we both fell asleep at the wheel because we were highly intoxicated, we destroyed the car completely. And both of us walked away from the accident. without harm, I had a cut on my arm, he had a broken ankle. But both of us walked away from the incident. And the state trooper who came to the scene told us that God had a purpose for our life. Because if not, we would not be walking away from this accident. But you know, I really didn't take that to heat very quickly. You know, I figured that, you know, if God had a purpose for me, he had a very funny way of showing it. A couple of months later, I went to New York City with
this same friend, and I got robbed at an ATM, took money out of an ATM turned around there was a guy with a gun in my face. And he pulled the trigger. his intent was basically to blow this kid's head off and take whatever money he had and run. When he pulled the trigger. The gun didn't go off for whatever reason, have you you know, bad bullets. You know, he didn't have the gun loaded. He was just trying to terrify me whatever other ally and it was really the the will of a lot is the will of the creators always done in your life anyway, but I ended up getting into a fight with him getting away from him. And I ran back to South Carolina and drove 17 hours that same day. It was after this
The day that I kind of realized, you know, I need to, I need to figure out my life because living like this is not, is not doing anybody any good. And I'm miserable. Even though I was trying to fill my life with all kinds of things during the day, when I went to bed at night, I was not a happy individual. And I didn't wake up happy, I had to go through the day trying to fulfill that happiness through all kinds of methods. So I decided to try to be a better person. And doing that is not the easiest of things, someone coming out of a life of, of evil, someone who is involved in the hip hop lifestyle involved in, you know, the street life, it's not like you can just flip the switch one day
and be a better person, it is a struggle, it's a daily struggle to get out of that lifestyle. And it was my struggles to get out of that lifestyle that led me to meet a Muslim one day. And this Muslim I had known for some period of time. And little did I ever know that this guy was a Muslim. But, you know, we will continue on shortly I will tell you the story about this, this Muslim whom I met, who, finally after searching and searching for many years, led me to the tangible truth that I was looking for, which happened to be in the religion of Islam, which I would have never thought in a million years. So you know, we will finish that in sha Allah shortly. But it was similar hamdulillah
you know, we left off
when I, you know, finally met a Muslim after all of this struggling going through, you know, religion to streets, and then trying to get back to some type of goodness, you know, I happened to run into a Muslim one day, and I know the Muslim for a while. So it's very odd the way it happened. Because I had known this guy for a couple of years. Actually, I used to go to his house after school when I was in high school.
And I didn't I never know who's a Muslim, because when I heard about the religion of Islam, all I knew about the religion of Islam, that Muslims or Arabs who worship the moon God, that lived in a box in the desert in Saudi Arabia, and that, you know, they they did these crazy rituals, and they beat women and they killed non Muslims. I mean, this is all I know about Islam was the media hype about Islam. And the only Muslims I'd ever heard of, and, you know, this is in 1998, was, you know, Ramzi Yousef in the 93 world trade center bombings, and he looked like the most scary individual you would ever want to meet. And that was it. That's all I knew about Islam. So I would have never
thought this guy was a Muslim. No one because he was African American from New York. He was his name was Musa, but we call him blunt. Because he was the local marijuana salesman of my hometown. He was the guy who does cannabis. And one day, we were at his home, and we were discussing, you know, the, the issue of religion came up, and he came out and asked me, you know, have you ever heard about a snap? And I was like, yeah, broad all about Islam. You know, it's craziest, most backwoods religion I've ever heard in my life. He told me said, Well, I'm a Muslim, you know, and I laughed at him. I said, you know, I'm not talking about Farah Khan. You know, I'm not talking about the nation. I'm
not talking about five percenters. You know, five percenters? who think they are Allah, you know, I'm talking about you know, that real Islam, you know, that they've been led and type of Islam is like, Hey, I'm a real Muslim. I was like, dude, you can't be Muslim, because you're black, number one. And he was like, you know, you don't think I know that, you know, this doesn't wash off. I said, you know, he asked me, What do you know about Islam? So I told him, I knew about Islam, and we almost got into a fight. He was so offended, you know, that realistically, I thought we were coming to come to blows. So I told him, I said, Okay, why don't you tell me about Islam, then if you're
Muslim? He said, I can't. And I was like, why is it some type of secret society? You know, some Freemason type of stuff? He said, No, I'm not the best Muslim. He said, I do my best to you know, pray my five prayers a day fast during Ramadan. He's like, but you see what I do you see the lifestyle that I live, you know, I'm not the, the best one to be telling you about Islam. He said, But come with me on Friday to the, to the mosque for Juma. And I said, Okay, you know, I don't I didn't understand anything but Friday. He said, you know, the mosque is like a church, for Muslims. And Juma is like Sunday service, except it's on Friday, and there's no chairs, you sit on the floor.
I said, you know, no problem for me, because chairs are the worst part about church, you know, the those wooden pews. I said, How are we going to get to the mosque because there's not one in Greenville. I know for sure I grew up here. He said, Yeah, there's one on white Hampton Boulevard. I was like, dude, I live in West Hampton Boulevard. I've lived here my whole life. There's no mosque in Greenville. He said, yeah, it's on the corner of white Hampton and Lee road. I was like, bro, look here. I live on the road. The only thing on the road is two churches, one on each side of the road, one on both ends. And one of them I go to and one of them. They train train you how to become
a missionary. He said, you know, the one that trains how to become a missionary. I said, Yeah. He said, you know, that little brick building that shares the same parking lot with it. And they almost touch each other, just enough space so someone could walk through it. And it has that little gold thing on top. I say yeah, that's the gym. He's like, No, no, no, that's the mask. And I said do you gotta be joking? I've lived here all my life and I never knew there was a mosque at the end of my rope right across the street. He said, Yep, that's the mosque. So Nevertheless, I ended up going on Friday. But Moosa never showed up. That was because he got raided on Friday morning by the DEA and
he went to jail for drug trafficking. So he's not coming here.
I never saw him again, for the for the rest of my life he made. So basically I went there on Friday and I was sitting outside the mosque. And I was watching who went in the masjid. And to my surprise, we're not really To my surprise, it was nothing but atoms that went in one hour after another after another atom could have been, you know, Pakistanis Bengalis. But at that time, they all look the same to me. And I didn't see the woman going. So eventually, the man parked in front of me. And he, you know, he came to me and he was asking me, what are you doing? I said, I was invited by Musa to watch your, your, your Joomla service, he was so happy to get me to come in. And at first, I was a
little bit skeptical that this guy was a little bit too excited to get me to come inside the building being I was the only American in there. So he took me and put me in a chair in the back. And I realized that, you know, the only way out of here is to these group of guys. And then there's a curtain behind me. And behind the curtain, I realized there was women chattering, but I didn't see the woman come in. So I'm wondering, number one, where did the women come from? And number two, why do they gotta be behind the curtain? You know, I the only thing I could comprehend in this is a 17 year old mind at work 18 year old mind at work, you know, is it because of all the beatings they
probably keep them locked here, you know, they do whatever they want to with him. And you know, they go like that they serve him here. So I'm sitting here thinking to myself, you know, why did he not come? Why? Why would he invited me and then he not show up. And I started to think about it, you know, this guy's not really trustworthy. You know, even though I've known him for a while he's not somebody I would trust very well. And he's always talking about, you know, going to New York and getting out of money, you know, doing business dealings or items, Monday laundering, drug trafficking, all this other things. So, you know, my mind conceived, you know, it's quite plausible
that this guy moves in and sold you to these atoms, you know, to do their little whatever, they're going to do it after drama, they're gonna do their little Jihad on you, they're gonna, you know, get the virgins and go to heaven. You know, you've become the sacrificial lamb here today. You know, so I decided, you know, I'm no punk. I'm not, you know, I'm not going on like that. So I decided to get up and leave. When I get up to leave, everybody gets quiet. So I sit back down. And I realized that the guy who had invited me in is standing up on some stairs at the front. I said, Okay, let me let him get started with this whole little thing. And then I'll just leave while he's talking. Because I
figured, you know, he's gonna start talking, and I'm gonna get out of here, you know, and realistically, it would have never came to my attention that the first words that come out of his mouth was, you know, let's kill this American guy, and so on and so forth. So he gets up on them and body starts this whole sermon in minute hadn't been their mother who witnessed the you know, who witnessed the little who, and I'm like, Oh, my God, you know, this is it's over. This guy's talking about me. He's telling me to kill him. Because he's screaming in Arabic. He's pounding on the little thing he's pointing in my direction. The only translation in my head I can think of you notice
killed this dirty American and get our virgins and all this and that so I'm really freaking out right now. While he's screaming, I'm trying to think of the the oldest guy I can hit and, you know, not come down and find my way out of the building. Because I live on the street, you know, I mean, I'm not gonna get killed on my own street seriously. I'm trying to plan my way out before I can get up to hit anybody. Thankfully, he stopped screaming in Arabic and started to translated in English.
You know, translating all praises due to the one true creative, all that exists, we praise him and him alone, we seek His help and his help alone, we ask for his forgiveness and his forgiveness alone. Whomsoever God guides to the truth, no one can be misguided from it. And whomsoever God leaves or stray from the truth, no one can be guided back to him except but God, and truly all pray are truly, I bear witness that nothing has the right to be worshipped, but one true God, and he is alone without a partner. And I bear witness that Muhammad is indeed His Messenger. It was rhetoric that I had never heard. But it was truly intriguing to me, it really grasped me the way the Reddit
was. And it just, it really struck a chord with me that this is, you know, dialogue that heard from God Himself, especially in the Old Testament. So I decided to finish listening to what the man had to say. And his entire sermon that day was about forgiveness,
that the forgiveness of the Creator is extended to any individual at any time at any place without discretion, and the only ways you cannot be forgiven. Or if you worship something other than God knowingly, if you come to death, when your death reaches you, after that, there's no forgiveness when the throat, soul reaches the throat, meaning that you're in the throes of death. And number three, when the major some of the major signs of the Day of Judgment appear, such as the sun rising from the west, the damned, which is known as the beast coming from the earth, other things like that, when the Day of Judgment is at hand. After that, there's no more forgiveness. He said, but
other than that God is ultimately forgiving. And God's mercy is an incomprehensible by the human mind. And he told me, he quoted something from the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him that really hit home with me. He said that the Prophet Muhammad told his followers, that no matter how many sins you have committed, no matter if your sins would fill the the earth and its entirety. If you were to meet your Creator, having worship nothing but him seeking pleasure and reward from him, that your Creator would meet you with a forgiveness that is like that which you have sinned.
So after the sermon, the Muslims got up and prayed. And when I saw them pray, I knew that this was the prayer of the prophets.
sprayed like this, Abraham prayed like this, David prayed like this, Jesus prayed like this. And I realized that this was worship. This was people who were worshiping God on the floor with their face on the ground in a most humble manner.
So after the prayer, I went and met the Imam, he tried to tell me about Islam. You know, Islam is built upon five pillars and six beliefs. I said, Look, here, there's nothing you're going to tell me out of your mouth, that's going to make me believe what you have to say. I want to see some tangible proof. Do you have some proof to prove that your religion is true? He smiled. He said, Come with me.
He took me to his office pulled the book off the shelf and handed it to me. It said the Noble Quran, it was one of those blue curtains that are published out of Saudi Arabia. And he said, this is our proof. I said, What is this? He said, it's the Word of God. I said, Yeah, I've heard that quite a few times. He started to try to tell me about the Quran. But I said, You know what, let me read this for myself, and it'll do its own job. So I took the Quran home, and I started reading it on Friday.
The thing that caught my attention was the challenges that came at the beginning of the book. In chapter two, verse two, the book is telling me this is the book that has no doubt in it. And it is a guidance for whosoever fears God. So my initial reading of the Quran was to disprove it, because I had found doubt in every other book. And this book is challenging me from the beginning to find the doubt. But realistically, through my entire reading of the Quran, I started to see the names Abraham, Noah, Moses, David Zechariah, john the baptist Jesus. And it said about these people that they were the best of us, that they were people who not only preached the message, but they lived
the message themselves. And I knew that if God had prophets, that this is how they would be. And the book continues to challenge me throughout the book that if you're in doubt about this book, that brings something like it, call your helpers to help you to bring something like it. And if you cannot bring something like it, which you never will be able to do, then you need to fear the fire that I created, whose fuel will be men and stones.
So throughout the entirety of the book, I got nothing but more affirmation after more affirmation after more affirmation, affirmation. And when I closed the book on Sunday, after three days, I was completely addicted to the book the whole weekend, I closed chapter 114 of the Quran. And the only thing I could say to myself, was, this is indeed the book that has no doubt in it is a guidance for whoever feels God. So I got down on my hands and knees. I told God, look here, I'd never thought in a million billion years that I would ever find you in a book that was given to me by a Muslim never would have never ever, but if this is what you want me to be, then here I am. So I went to the Imam
on the next day, and interrogated him. I said, Where did you get this book? He said, It's from God. I said, I can see that. I said, I want to be a Muslim. He said, Why? I said, because number one, this book is what you say it is. He said, to be a Muslim, you have to believe there is only one God, and that God is the only thing that is worthy of worship. I said, I've always believed that even though I may have had it twisted for some time, he said, you also have to believe in the Prophet Mohammed. So let me tell you about Muhammad peace be upon him. I said the only there's only one thing you have to tell me about Muhammad. He said, What is that? I said, Did he give us this book?
He said, Yes, I said, then he's a prophet. That's it. His evidence is very clear itself. God is perfect. The book is perfect, therefore the medium between God, and his book must be perfect. So accepted Islam in December of 1998, over 13 years ago, and every single day, this book has only affirmed itself over and over again every single day that it is indeed the true book of God, guidance from the Creator. There is no doubt in it. And anyone who has any doubt, should do their own due diligence to go pick up the book, read the book, read God's Word to yourself. And then it becomes a situation to where it's a personal relationship between you and your Creator. For for
anyone to come to Islam, it is a personal commitment. It is between you and God, God created you alone, you were born into this world, you will die and go into the ground alone. When you are raised again, and to death and to life and the Day of Resurrection, you'll be raised by yourself. When you go before your Creator, it will be by yourself. So the relationship that you must have of God in this world must be between you and him. And if anyone truly wants that guidance, they need only ask for it. God says in the Quran, Whosoever seeks our ways we will guide them into our path. So whoever truly wants guidance, they ask God for guidance, and God will not lead them astray.
I greet you all and say, you know, if anyone is watching this, and you are not yet a Muslim, I have one sincere advice for you. And this is the most sincere it's advice that I give to everyone that I encounter, that your relationship with your Creator, that you must realize that you were here for a purpose. Nothing in this existence is done without reason without purpose. You do not wake up in the morning without a reason. You don't go to bed without a reason you don't need to eat without reason you don't go to sleep without reason is all for purpose. Everything in life has some reason even amongst the chaos, the chaos that we see has reason to it. And when it comes to your reason for
being here it is to worship your one true creator sincerely and anyone who really wants to know this whole
reasoning behind life? This is the great question that everyone has tried to come up with, from the great philosopher Socrates and Plato and some of the great philosophers of our time. And of the past generations, they have tried to answer this one question, what is the purpose of life. And the purpose of life is summed up very simple in Islam, it is to worship god alone. And that worship of God alone is a personal relationship with you and God. So this is a challenge I have for any of you that if you sincerely want to know the truth, sincerely, then you only need to do one thing. Take some personal time alone, and call out to your Creator. Say, my Creator, if you exist, if your real,
and my existence in this life has a purpose, then show it to me. Sincerely show me my reason for being here on this earth, and sincerely guide me to the truth. If you ask that with sincerity and you are willing to allow your Creator to guide you and show you that way, and you're willing to go down that road, no matter where that road may lead you, I will assure you one thing, you will not be left blindly wondering, God will show you the truth, he will lead you down his road, because he says in his most noble book, The Quran, Whosoever seeks our way, we will guide them to our path. So that is assurance I can give to you because it is an assurance that the creator gives to us that if we
seek Him sincerely, we will find Him and you will find Him as He has created you one alone, wanting him to worship wanting you to worship Him, and him alone and to have obedience to Him. This is truly the purpose of life to worship God and to obey Him. If more human beings took this road, we would live in what could be called the utopia on earth because people would truly be worshiping God, they would be living their life sincerely for him, and they would be doing what he wanted. And when God designs things for human beings, he designs it imperfection, the creation of everything is designed within perfection and proportionate. And if human beings only took that way of life that was given
to them by the Creator, which means to submit to Him, which is truly the meaning of Islam, then all of us would have a better life in this life, and the next so that is my sincere advice to you, as you created a guide you thank you very much for your time.