Signs of Imam Mahdi's Arrival (Part 5)

Ashhadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullah, I bear witness that there's no God but God, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.

The first thing that I want to say is that if you are a messenger of God, if you pray five times a day, if you fast in the month of Ramadan, if you give charity, zakat, every year, and if you made pilgrimage to Mecca, you made Hajj, but you don't know the Imam of your time, all of that's in vain.

And you're going to go to hellfire. Because whoever dies and doesn't know the Imam of his time, dies in the same state as the people before the message of Islam. The people who die and they had rejected Islam. And it known that whoever dies like the people in Jahiliyyah goes to hellfire. Like an idol worshipper. So the Prophet Muhammad (God's prayers and peace be upon him) made this condition That you had to know the Imam of your time.

That you had to pledge allegiance to an Imam of the time. So how do we know what is the Imam of the time ? Who is the Imam of the time ? That's the duty that is upon every single believer and that is what we say true religion is really about.

About finding the live messenger of the time. We're saying that the Prophet Muhammad (God's prayers and peace be upon him) in this hadith said that there is an Imam in every time. The Quran is a pre-condition of faith that a believer finds first and foremost this man.

Because it is this man, the Imam of the time, who is going to put to rest all of the matters that the people differ upon and show the people the true religion. The Muslims know this hadith but they don't know, and they differ on what it is that, and this is where people go astray.

They differ on what it means. They all agree that the Prophet Muhammad (God's prayers and peace be upon him) said it. The Sunnis, they say that the Imam of the time is the Caliph of the Muslims. The Shia say that it is a member of the Ahlul Bayt.

For the Ismailis, the Imam of the time is the Aga Khan. But they all agree that you have to find this man. Interestingly enough, this same Hadith is present in the Gospels. It's present in the Bible. On the tongue of Jesus (peace be upon him), we have the same idea.

Jesus in the Bible says, "I am the light of this world." Jesus (peace be upon him) in the Bible says, "I am the way and I am the truth and I am life. Nobody gets to the Father except through me." So Jesus (peace be upon him) is saying that he's the light and at the same time he's saying that nobody will die upon the truth and get into heaven except if they believe in him, this light.

Christians tend to understand that for all times. If you don't believe in Jesus, then-- and you don't accept Jesus, then you're going to go to hellfire and certainly that is true. But Jesus says in another place in the Bible, he says something very important.

He says, "While I am in this world, I am the light of this world." So Jesus is effectively saying, "While I am alive, I am the light of this world. When I die, I am no longer the light of this world," because he makes it a condition.