Yeah, it's like all things are changeable in the plan of God and adaptable to the circumstances and belief of the people at that time. You know ?
Transcript preview
1,674 words
Yeah, it's like all things are changeable in the plan of God and adaptable to the circumstances and belief of the people at that time. You know ? So the only thing that, that we should really hold on to is the will and, uh, supremacy of God and the knowledge that accompanies that, that divine message. That's it. So Javed, we identified the way that people can know whether or not they're on the true path or not, and how they can find God or the messenger of God or not, and be able to tell if he's truly from God or not from God.
We explained the law of identifying the proof of God, which consists of the will or the letter of appointment, knowledge, and calling towards the supremacy of God, which is that only God can appoint the ruler or the king. Only God has the right to rule humanity. And we spoke about how you cannot identify the proof of God through his physical appearance. You cannot deny him because of health reasons, like in the case of Job, Alaihissalam. And we mentioned the story of the righteous servant and how y-a person cannot even disregard or, or judge whether or not a person is a proof of God or not a proof of God based on his apparent actions or behavior, morals and…
Read the full transcript
manners, or his, his implementation of the Sharia, because even Moses was not able to use that as a scale to judge the truthfulness of the righteous servant. So therefore, we're only left with the will and the law of knowing the proof of, of God or the messenger of God as a way to, to be saved and to remain upon the ark of salvation and to not be led astray. Once we find the proof, the person who fulfills this criteria, we have a divine obligation to stick with them no matter what.
And we can never doubt in that individual after that. And the proof of, of this comes in the stories of the prophets and the messengers. God is consistently warning us in their stories to never judge the prophet or the messenger by any other means other than the law. So in the story of Noah, Noah had fulfilled the criteria.
Noah was a prophet that was prophesized by Adam. Adam and the prophets leading up to Noah had spoken about the coming of a savior who would come at the time where God would destroy earth through a flood. And the believers were well aware of this character to be born, whose name was Noah. When Noah arrived, he claimed to be that promised savior, and he demonstrated knowledge, and he called towards the supremacy of God, and that people should accept the divinely appointed messenger, who was Noah, and reject the sons of Cain, who were controlling all of the earth at the time. Noah gathered believers. He started his dawah, and people began to believe in him.
Synchronized subtitles
This sermon has a downloadable VTT subtitle file (EN). Download it to use it in an external player or an accessibility project.
And one day, Noah, um, after suffering many years of oppression and violence, uh, him and his followers, uh, they were attacked consistently by the sons of Cain. Uh, narrations mention that at times they would be attacked with stones. Noah was several times knocked upside the head. Unconscious for several days, laying on the ground with blood flowing from his ears.
The believers needed a relief And they prayed to Noah to ask God for the hastening of the punishment. Well, finally, after Noah called on God, God sent Gabriel down to tell Noah to tell his followers that when he plants this palm tree seed and it grows to be a tree, the relief would happen.
And so he informs his believers, and the believers are ecstatic. They're filled with the spirit of faith, and they're excited. They are working night and day, extra hard, and they have full certitude in the promise of God that once this little plant becomes a palm tree, the relief is going to happen. On the day that the palm tree was a full-grown one, they waited and waited and waited, and nothing happened. And they looked towards each other. And then they finally mustered up enough courage to go and ask Noah, whose response to them was, "Actually, I don't know. I'm going to call upon God and find out." Noah calls upon God. Gabriel comes down and tells Noah, "Noah, take this new seed and plant it in the ground. And when it becomes a, a full-grown tree, that is when the relief will happen." So Noah goes back.
He tells his companions what Gabriel just told them, and they are utterly shocked and in a state of confusion. And instantly, his companions, his congregation breaks down into three groups. A group that disbelieves, and they say, "If Noah was a true prophet, if Noah was really speaking to God, then God's words are never changed. And the flood should have happened, and we should have been saved. But the fact that it didn't happen means that he's a false prophet." The second group of people are in a state of doubt, and the first group of people remained full of faith. They said, "You know what ? Even if God's promise changed, even if the flood was canceled altogether, it doesn't matter because we are with the companion of the Will. He's the one that was appointed by God." So those are the people that were saved. As for the ones that disbelieved, they went into hellfire because they fell in a test whereby they used a different method to evaluate whether or not Noah was truthful or untruthful. They disregarded the Will, they disregarded the knowledge, they disregarded the supremacy of, of God, and they focused on the promise. And it was there that they were tested and sifted, and it was there that they fell. And the moral of that lesson was that you cannot judge the messenger or the vice chair by anything other than the law of knowing or identifying the proof of God, even if the promise is not fulfilled in the way that you expect it to be fulfilled.
Imran was a prophet. He was the grandfather, grandfather of Jesus and the father of Mary. He was a prophet who had a congregation. He told his congregation that God inspired him, telling him that he was going to give birth to the Messiah, the promised savior of the Jews.
And he was ecstatic about it. And the Israelite believers in him were ecstatic about it. They thought the relief was near. They had certitude in Imran. The great prophet. And yet, when his wife gave birth, she gave birth to the surprise of everybody, to a baby girl.
Even Imran himself was And it was that baby girl whom he named Mary who would grow up and give birth to Jesus the Messiah. And so God's promise was fulfilled, but just not in the way that they expected. It was not in his son, but rather his grandson. And that's why the hadith from the Ahl al-Bayt says, if we say something about a man and it isn't in him, but rather it is in his son or his son's son, then don't deny it. God's promises can be fulfilled in ways other than the expectations of the people.
And so there was another lesson in the Quran which taught us that there is no other way to identify the proof of God except through the law. Then we come to the story of Jesus, which is one of the most difficult trials and tribulations and fitnahs that any group of believers had ever gone through.
And that is that Jesus comes forward with his ministry at the age of 30. He claims to be the Jewish Messiah. He performs all kinds of miracles. He demonstrates knowledge. He claims the will. He calls towards the supremacy of God. He's rebelling against the rulers and the scholars and the rabbis who were not appointed by God. And he calls towards the rulership of God, God's land, his state on earth.
The Jews had long expected and waited for this Messiah, whom the narrations of their prophets and the words of the prophets and the messengers and the vicegerents stated that he would rule from Jerusalem and spread peace and justice all over the world. And yet three years into the da'wah of Jesus, Jesus is arrested. His body is crucified.
He's killed in the apparent in front of all of his believers and in front of the Israelites. The Israelites took it as a sign that God was saying that Jesus was a false prophet because he did not fulfill anything from what they expected the Messiah to do of conquering and ruling. And so they took his death as a way of identifying whether or not Jesus was truthful or not truthful. They took his inability to rule and establish a divine just state as a sign of him being false and not being the Messiah.
And yet, as you and I know, and 2.2 billion Christians around the world and 1.8 billion Muslims, Jesus is the Messiah, was the Messiah, and remains the Messiah that was sent to the Jews. And so you see there how incredibly dangerous it is to judge the prophet or the messenger by our own expectations.
And how using anything, even the fulfillment of prophecies as a way of identifying whether the person was truthful or not truthful is a false way. Even all of Jesus' miracles that he performed was not sufficient as a way to make the people know whether or not he was truthful or not truthful.
And after knowing where the truth is, no matter how hard or scary the path comes, you know, becomes after that, it's irrelevant. As long as we just hold on tight to it, then we are saved.
You are reading the opening paragraphs; the rest unfolds above. The full text is what feeds the AI slideshow.
