Yusha Evans – Why I Left Christianity

			Why did I leave Christianity? It's a very good question. I have talked about my story of converting
to Islam in in quite detailed length on a couple of other videos. One of them's here on my YouTube
channel, called Why am a Muslim? And the other one you can find? If you search on YouTube how the
Bible led me to slammed by you Chevron's? You'll find that I think there's one that has nearly 4
million views that's more popular, well known one if you want to go through the entire detail of it.
But I wanted to keep this more sweet and simple and short. And to the point and succinct about why I
left Christianity in this is to give a call out there to Christians worldwide to look into your
		

			faith and for my Muslim brothers and sisters, you know, maybe a little help of understanding why,
you know, I had problems within Christianity and what ended up causing me to leave, I was born and
raised in South Carolina, want to raise a Methodist, became in my teenage years, more evangelical,
Pentecostal, Baptist, whatever you want to call that, and believing in the Trinity, believing the
Bible, the inerrant Word of God. And I left Christianity when I was 17 years old. And I accepted
Islam when I was 18 years old, a little bit over a year later. And this was in 1998. And I have been
a Muslim for the past 24 years.
		

			My major problems with Christianity i are two. And this is what caused me to leave. There are many
other things that I found which if you want those details, watch those longer videos. But these two
problems I'm going to talk about today are the reason for me leaving Christianity. Number one, they
revolve around the percentage of Jesus Christ, peace be upon him himself, and the Trinity, and him
being God. And then also the veracity or the validity of the Bible as the inerrant Word of God.
		

			When it comes to the person of Jesus, I've always been a person who has reason likes to use their
brain like think like, for things to make sense. And you know, my whole life, I was raised, being
taught in the Trinity, that God is one, but in three unique percentages, that is God the Father,
God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit, and these three are all God, and they're all the same person.
And this is also part of the apostolic creed is that the you have God the Father, God, the Son, and
God, the Holy Spirit in God, the Father is the Son, God, the Son is the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit
is God the Father, but God the Father is not the son. Nor is the Son, the Holy Spirit knows the Holy
		

			Spirit, the Father, if that makes sense, would you just not. But this is the understanding is that
God is One in three unique percentages. And for most Trinitarian Christians out there, they make no
distinction between them. They're all equally God. And they will say about Jesus, that Jesus was
fully God and fully man. And this is where the problem comes in for me, because as I started reading
more into the Bible, in my teenage years, when I was like 16 years old, I wanted to be a minister, I
wanted to be a pastor, I wanted to specifically be a youth minister, I wanted to go out and preach
the gospel. So I decided to spend a lot of time you know, reading the gospels, spending time in
		

			them, looking at them reading about the life of Jesus, etc. And what I came to find, was in
contradiction to what I was taught to believe, because if you believe that Jesus is God, you believe
that he was fully God and fully man as this the Trinitarian belief and if you believe the Bible is
inerrant Word of God, then you're going to have a lot of trouble with various verses of the New
Testament as well as you know, proving the validity of the Bible from a historical analytical
perspective.
		

			For instance, one of my problems is to say that Jesus is God in the flesh, and that he and God are
one in the same that Jesus was fully God and fully man. It goes against some of the things Jesus
himself says in the New Testament in the New Testament, and I could go verse after verse after verse
after verse after verse, but this would make this quite long. This is something I implore you to do.
If you're watching this video, and you believe that Jesus is God, then go and look at what Jesus
says about himself in the Bible. Go read the New Testament, if you don't have a red letter edition,
go and get a red letter edition. And don't read anything except the red letters and which are, you
		

			know, reportedly to be the words of Jesus Christ Himself, peace be upon him, and see what Jesus is
saying, you know,
		

			throughout the entirety of the Old Testament, I read, that God is one I shot in the Hebrew language
that God is 1111 uniquely one, I am the Lord your God and there is none else. Here is the Lord your
God is Russia is one. I am a jealous God. Part of the 10 commandments, you know, have no other gods
before for me or make nothing else equal unto me. God is 1111111
		

			When one and then even Jesus taught, when he was asked, you know what, what is the greatest
commandment he said, I can't tell you the greatest commandment without telling you the first
commandment. And the first commandment is Hear, O Israel, the LORD your God is one, he used the same
word I shot one uniquely one, and to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind
with all your strength and love your neighbor as you love yourself. He said all of the law that
prophets hang upon these two principles.
		

			This does not sound like a Triune God or God, Jesus trying to tell people he is God. Also in John
1414, and 28, Jesus said that the Father is greater than I. So if they are equal, if Jesus is fully
God, fully man, and these are three equal,
		

			gods in the Trinity, why is Jesus saying that the Father is greater than Him? So is Jesus? Who is
also God, less than God? Who is the Father? Or the equal? Or are they different? It makes no sense.
		

			Matthew 2436, Jesus was asked about the Day of Judgment, when is the hour he said, of that day
North, no man, not even the angels in heaven, nor the sun, only the Father who is in heaven knows
that day. So Jesus is fully God and fully man, you have to stick that principle if you believe in
that principle that Jesus is fully God, and fully man, you have to stick to that principle, then why
did Jesus not know or tell people he did not know when the day of judgment was going to be? Either
he knew when he lied, or he didn't know therefore, he does not have the same knowledge that God has,
therefore he is not equal unto God, therefore your Trinity concept is broken. So I started to see
		

			these things. When Jesus told Mary Magdalene before his, you know, ascension into the heavens, he
said, Don't touch me for have not yet ascended. Right, and I am going now. So I am ascending into my
Father and your Father, my God, and your God. So Jesus is God.
		

			But He has His own God, who is God the Father, so God the Father is the Jesus is God. Or is it it
started to really confuse me. When Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane when he was being hunted
		

			by by the Pharisees and Sadducees, for the crimes of calling himself the king of Jews. It wasn't
because he was calling himself God, he was calling himself the King of the Jews, that are they
accused him of calling himself the King of the Jews, because the Romans who ruled Jerusalem at the
time would not have cared if he was calling himself God, that they had they had a
		

			plethora of gods. The point was, he was calling himself the King of the Jews, which would rival the
king of the Romans would rival the Romans, and therefore it was a political issue. So this is why
they agreed to arrest him. And even when Pontius Pilate interrogated him, he didn't see any fault in
him, but to prevent an uprising from the Jewish population of Palestine of Jerusalem at the time,
because they said no, if you let him go, we're gonna we're gonna riot. Basically, they just kept
saying, kill him, kill him, kill him, Crucify Him, Crucify Him, Crucify Him. He did it, agreed to it
in order to settle down things, because Pontius Pilate, if he allowed this to happen in Jerusalem,
		

			his head was probably be on a stick himself.
		

			So this was problematic to me big time. And it has always remained problematic to me when it comes
to the Trinity that if you believe that God is One in three, then it always remains the same that
God the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit are equal. But Jesus himself so the father is
great in the I don't know the day of judgment, I ascended to my God and your God, when he went the
Garden of Gethsemane to pray, he said, Father, it'd be thy will let this cup pass from me. So number
one, he was praying to whom
		

			He is God. Who was he praying to? And why is he asking for this cup to be passed from him, meaning
that he did not want to be crucified. Because he knew that if he was crucified, I talked about this
in longer segments, which you know, in other videos, which we might get into detail in later videos.
But the point was that he knew if he was crucified, this would be a curse under the law, that he
said, He himself came to fulfill, which is the law of Deuteronomy, If any man hang up on a tree, he
is cursed, so he did not want to do this. But he said, nevertheless, whatever is your will let it be
done, meaning that he was subservient to the will of God, the Father, so if Jesus is God, he
		

			suburbian to God the Father, but I thought he was God. So is he suburbian to himself? And was he
praying to himself to ask himself to remove himself from this cup? And if he didn't, then he himself
would submit to His own will?
		

			Was see if
		

			it could just go on and on this made no sense to me. So I'm like, Where does this trinity concept
come from? The more I dug in, the more I realized that this is a Pauline theology. Paul, the self
proclaim apostle who never met Jesus never walk with Jesus never talked with Jesus never sat with
him is the one who began spreading the doctrine of the Trinity. And this is why his writings make up
13 documents of the new or 13 writings of the New Testament because he's the one who
		

			went around teaching that without Christ crucified, our faith is in vain. He was the one that taught
this, this this trinity theology, because he understood that the rest of the world was worshipping a
pantheon of gods, therefore worshipping a Triune God, which many cultures already had would not be
that difficult with Jesus as the center of this whole realm. And it crucified God is something that
was also taught in many pagan religions. So it was very easy to accept. And then they just blended a
lot of paganism, especially in the pagan holidays of Easter, which is a star of Christmas, which was
Saturnalia. And they just blended all of these things together. And it made it very easy for the
		

			people to accept Christianity saw as more of a political move on on the part of Paul, the self
proclaimed apostle than anything else. So being that there was issues with me with the Trinity. I
started looking deeper into my second point, which is the validity of the Bible itself. I started
getting involved into the studies of textual criticism, which is the historical analytical study of
the documents that make up the Bible as we know it today.
		

			The more I did that, especially within the New Testament, and if anyone has any doubt about this,
please go and do your own research into the origins of the documents of what now makes up the New
Testament. There are plenty of great resources out there.
		

			Bart Ehrman, who is someone I studied much of his writings and much of his college work, not just
his books that he's written, which you can find all over Amazon, but even his college textbooks that
he teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, on textual criticism, and other authors
of textual criticism, that the more you do your research, the more you come to find out that the
Bible is not the inerrant Word of God that I was taught my entire life. But it is a collection of
documents that were found scattered all over the place. And there has always been long debate about
what is and what isn't factual. Even with the four gospels themselves, they are anonymous gospels,
		

			there is no
		

			concrete evidence of any sort of who wrote these gospels.
		

			These gospels are not the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John telling the same story.
They're four different stories about the life of Jesus told from four different perspectives, all of
them collected, many, many years after Jesus Christ peace be upon him was no longer on this earth.
There has been great debate about what was should be in there, what shouldn't be in things have been
put in things have been taken out, things have been altered, things have been rewritten. This is
clearly written throughout the historical documents of scribes having written older and if you go
and look at the older collections, historic, the Codex, Codex Codex and Atticus Codex phonetic as
		

			you'll see all of these things, if you just do a little digging, do a little research, you'll find
that many biblical scholars even said that there were certain parts of the New Testament that
clearly were not in the original documents. These were latter eight later added on in the Latin
Vulgate, etc. So what it came down to for me is that this book, even though it is isn't an attempt,
the best attempt that scholars can produce, to write a document about Jesus life, it is not an
accurate representation of what Jesus himself would have said in spoken
		

			logically, logically, I can tell you this for one reason, forget about going through all the in
depth research about textual criticism, etc. Do that if you would like to, but Jesus peace be upon
him spoke a language known as Aramaic Aramaic, which is a Semitic language. Jesus everyday would
have used Aramaic language, he would have known Hebrew in Koine. Greek, yes, but he's spoken
languages Aramaic, though, the word he would have used to call God in his own language would have
been Allah. And we as Muslims use the word Allah because it means the God one God,
		

			the only god, I shut alone. And
		

			there is no existing document in the Aramaic language that can date back to anywhere close to the
time of Jesus at all period, about what he said. So what we have the oldest existing documents are
Koine, Greek, so at best attempt, and then those are translated into English.
		

			At best attempt, we have people who wrote down what they heard Jesus was saying, by word of mouth
that was passed on for a generation or two. I think Mark being the the oldest, we can go back, which
is like maybe 60 years after Jesus has already gone from this earth. So people were passing word of
mouth about Jesus after Paul had already been around preaching about the Trinity, etc. So that was
what was becoming prevalent. That was written down in the Koine Greek, so nobody knows anything what
Jesus truly said. They wrote down the things that were being said about him in Koine Greek and that
		

			became what was known as the New Testament. None of those things we can say what they need deniable
with any one any plausible.
		

			Without plausible deniability without saying that we know for sure there is no document of the New
Testament, not a single stitch of it, that we can trace back and say, we know for sure, and we can
prove through chain of evidence that this was said by Jesus Christ Himself. So therefore what you
have is based upon faith, and belief, that it's true, that's it, there's no documented documented
evidence behind it. And Trinitarian Christianity is based on the teachings of Paul the Apostle,
simple as that Jesus taught the same oneness of God, that was taught by God in the Old Testament. So
that was the the basically the linchpin or hinge point, which I decided to leave Christianity,
		

			because if the Bible is not the inerrant Word of God, that we don't know what God really wants from
us, God is perfect. Listen to me, guys.
		

			Men and women,
		

			brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, however you identify yourself.
		

			God is perfect. God is perfect with no doubt. I don't think that anyone who has faith and belief in
God, whether you be Christian, or Jew or Muslim, would that would would disagree with me in saying
that God is perfect. Therefore, if God is perfect, anything that comes from God will be perfect, by
its very nature. And the Bible is not a perfect book. Therefore, this Book is not from God. This was
my deduction, and it stayed by deduction for 24 years. And this is why I left Christianity. On top
of the fact that I knew that what Jesus taught and preached was different than what Paul taught and
preached and was different than what I heard my pastors teaching and preaching, and was different
		

			than what modern day Trinitarian Christianity teaches and preaches. He taught. Hiroyasu the Lord
your God is one, if loved the Lord, with all your heart, with all your mind with all your strength,
love your neighbor as you love yourself, and everything hangs upon these two principles.
		

			When I was introduced to Islam for the first time, I had a very ill opinion of Muslims. I had a very
ill opinion of Muslims, I thought that they would be the Antichrist and that they were, you know,
terrorists, etc. All of the things that a lot of you that might watch this video might have an
opinion upon Muslims. And you know, when I first went to the mosque in my local hometown, the Imam
tried to the preacher tried to tell me about Islam and I didn't want to hear it. I wanted to know do
you have some proof? Because after my whole debacle with the Bible, I wanted proof of the validity
of a religion and I was given a copy of the Quran. I was given a copy of the Quran I took the whole
		

			the Quran home and I read it and after reading it I accepted Islam. Now I know that was a knee jerk
reaction. Yes, I had not done any in depth detailed research on the Quran. But reading it its
message resonated with me that God is One Islams principles were very simple to me. And that is why
I have remained a Muslim for 24 years is that it's lamps principles are simple. believe in one God
alone, alone in Islam is called to feed. It's called oneness Rania oneness one, one God alone, like
God says, I hear you I, the Lord your God, and I should. In the Quran, he says, Paul, who Allah had
to say, I am God, the one, only one that's it. We don't worship anything other than the God who
		

			created the heavens, the earth universe, me, you, the fish, the animals, the star, the Sun, the
Moon, everything. That is the only God that we worship and we worship nothing else, but him. This is
pure, pure monotheism that was taught by God through all of the prophets, through all of the
messengers, through Moses, through Abraham, through David through Solomon, through Jesus peace be
upon him. And through the last and final messenger, Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him. We
worship one God alone, and the Quran has stood the test of time, 1400 years. Plus it has stood the
test of time as God's inerrant Word, we still have original manuscripts that were written down by
		

			people who memorized the entire Quran, from heart, word by word from the Prophet Muhammad peace be
upon him, and they wrote it down. Shortly after his death, shortly after his death, it was written
down and verified by all of the people who had memorized it. But even so without it being a book
that is written is written but without him being a book it was written, it is a miracle
		

			is a miraculous book, in that it has been memorized and it has been preserved through memorization.
Since it was revealed. There are people who learned it directly from the Prophet peace be upon the
heart by heart and they taught people and they taught people and they taught people. So it has
always been passed down as oral tradition. The scholar who's taught me the Quran, he can tell you
every single person whom he learned it from whom he learned it from whom he learned it from
		

			Have a verified chain all the way back to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. And no matter
where you pick up a Quran anywhere in the world, whether it be in America, whether it be in Saudi
Arabia, whether it be in Australia, whether it be New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, it is going
to be the exact same book because it has been preserved through this oral tradition. If you were to
destroy every single copy of the Quran today, every single one of them was disappeared today,
Muslims could rewrite that book and have millions back in production within a week. And it would be
exactly the same way that it was. This is the miraculous nature of the Quran, and has been preserved
		

			through oral
		

			tradition as well as we have documented history of how it was compiled directly after the death of
the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. So this is why it has Christianity, because it was against
the teachings of God. God is always taught that he's one, Jesus always taught that he was one, and
that the father was greater than him, and that he that it was his God, and
		

			the Prophet Muhammad peace of mind, I'm taught the same thing. The only difference we find in this
whole link of chain is Paul the Apostle, and the people who are around him. Now, that to me, shows
me that if you truly want to follow Jesus, and that's what it means to be Christian, and Christian
means to be Christ. Like, if you truly want to follow Jesus, then you would follow the way of
believing in God alone, with oneness with oneness. And that is the way of Islam that is the way of
the religion, followed by nearly 2 billion Muslims on the planet Earth today. So those of you
watching this, do your research. You don't have to take my word for anything, go and look it up for
		

			yourself. Go and read a read aloud, read lettered edition of the Bible and see what Jesus said
himself. And you will find that he taught the same thing, that I'm teaching you now that God is one
the same thing that Prophet Muhammad taught the same thing to Adam. I mean, excuse me, Adam, the
same thing that Abraham the same thing that Moses the same thing to David the same thing. They all
taught the same thing. God is one and you worship Him alone. And his inerrant Word today is the
Bible. The reason I mean, not the Bible, the Quran, the reason why the Bible isn't the inerrant Word
of God is because it wasn't meant for us it was meant for the gospel was meant for the children of
		

			Israel. Even Jesus Himself said, I was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, so
that that book was meant for them. It wasn't meant to be preserved for you and I. But the last and
final revelation of the Quran was meant for all mankind. It is universal book, it is universal
message. Islam has always been a universal message since since the beginning of time, Worship God
alone, and obey Him. Simple as that. That is what we as Muslims, teach, Worship God alone, do what
he wants you to do. Try to live a righteous life when you make a mistake, because this is where the
big linchpin comes in salvation through Christianity, salvation comes through the blood of Christ or
		

			God dying for our sins, God dying, God does. God cannot die. God cannot die. If God can die, we're
all in trouble. God cannot die. In Islam, salvation comes through repenting for your sins, and
holding yourself accountable for yourself in this life. And through repentance, we find cleansing of
our sins through that repentance to God, because our sins are against God. We repent to God, if we
make sins against human beings, we try to make amends to them, but we turn to God and God alone is
going to decide our face on the day that we meet him. So I hope this has been some help to you. If
not, and you don't like it, that's fine. I'm just here to deliver a message. I am just a messenger,
		

			a person delivering a message. I'm just a parcel deliver. And just like the postman, I'm just
delivering you a message. And if it helps you I'm grateful for that. And I look forward to
continuing this series on some other topics related around Christianity and Islam etc. But until the
next one, take care of yourself and to my brothers and sisters out there watching a Saddam widecombe
Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh. May the peace blessings and mercy of God be upon you