Worshipping Other Than Allah
What about somebody who calls something God, like a rock, or a stick, or a stone, or a tree, or a bone, or anything that you can see or you can hear like sound, or that you can smell like flowers or that you can taste or that you can imagine?
Any of these things, would be a false god according to Islam, why? Because, it’s something that’s in the creation and Allah is not in the creation. According to the Bible, the verses are very clear when it says, you can’t make any kind of an image or an idol about God. So, if it’s on the earth, under the earth or over the earth, you can’t worship it.
So what about the person who worships Moses and he says Moses is God? And you say "That’s ridiculous, why would he do that?" Wasn’t it Moses who went to Pharaoh and told him: You’re not God, don’t tell people to worship you, you are not God, you are not the Lord of the world, you are not Rabb Al-Alamin.
What about Abraham? Did people worship him? And again he was telling people about false worship.
David, Solomon; what did they tell the people? Worship God alone without any partners. Doesn’t that make sense?
Now let’s look at Jesus (Peace be upon him). I want you to go to your Bible, look in the book called Mark, chapter 12, verse 29. The people are asking Jesus "what is the greatest commandment?" Keep in mind that Jesus was sent only to the Jews, he said that himself. If you want to believe your Bible, it’s in your Bible. It says, Jesus told them he was only sent to the lost sheep of the tribe of Israel. It was not him, but rather it was Paul who came later who started carrying the message out to the non Jews. Up until that point they were all Jews who had converted over to Christianity, or actually had converted over to the way of Jesus, because according to Paul, they were never even called Christians until after he took the message into Antioch. They were called people of the Way, and that would have been the word "Deen" in Arabic, Ahlud-Deen (people of the Way). That’s what we are still called today as Muslims, we are People of Deenul-Islam, the way of submitting to God.
Now, if you’ll read the verse you’ll see something amazing. Jesus is confirming the teaching in the book of Deuteronomy. The greatest commandment is to know O Israel the Lord your God is one Lord, and you have to love Him with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength.
So all worship has to be for who? The One Lord, The One God. Is the word trinity there? No. In fact, the word “trinity” is no where in the Bible. The word “three” in relationship to God is not in the Bible. This is something amazing, that people can be brainwashed into believing something that there is no textual evidence for whatsoever. Not even in the translations of translations, not even in some of the corrupted translation or books that have things added or taken out of; you will not find this teaching, there is no three.
So, if somebody said “God is three,” and they want to worship the Holy Ghost - and by the way, that’s actually Jibril, the angel Gabriel is called the Holy Spirit, that’s his title "Ruhul-Qudus". He is mentioned in the Bible as "Ruhul-Qudus" and he is mentioned in the Quran as "Ruhul-Qudus". If you doubt what I just said, I’ll tell you how to prove it. Just take your Bible, go to the book of Mathew and look in chapter 2. Who is coming to Mary and telling her that she is going to have a baby? Then compare it and the other Gospels when it talks about who comes to her and tells her she is going to have a baby. Same words, one says the angel Gabriel and the other one says that it is the "Holy Spirit" (Ruhul-Qudus).
For us Muslims it's easy, because it tells us in the Quran that it is Jibril, the Holy Spirit, who comes to Maryam and tells her that she is going to have baby and she says, "How is this possible when no man has ever touched me?" The angel tells her that for sure with Allah, all things are easy because He merely says, "Be" and it is, "Kun, Fa Yakun."
Now, we understand from this that Jesus is created by Allah as a miracle birth and there is no doubt about it that he is the Christ. Muslims know he is the Christ. Christ is a word in Koine Greek which is the translation of the word from Aramaic which means "Masih". And we mistranslate that word or transliterate it to be Messiah. We call it Messiah in English, but actually it is "Masih", from the Arabic or the Aramaic or the Hebrew, means the one who is chosen, picked out or anointed. All of these come from this word – "Masih", which actually means to touch, to wipe or to anoint the head. They used to take anointing oil, which was olive oil, and they would put their fingers in it, then tap the forehead or wipe it on the forehead of the one who is to be their king. That was the ceremony performed when they would have a king who was a prophet and king for them. And he Jesus (Peace be upon him) is the Messiah, for us Muslims, we know because it’s in the Quran.
But is he God? If you say, "He was a miracle birth, he must be God". Wait a minute: just because it was a miracle, does that mean he was God? What about Moses? Didn’t Moses do miracles? Do we not find Moses having miracles so amazing that it startled even Pharaoh? How about splitting the Red Sea open? People talk about Jesus walked on the water, which we have no doubt about it, we know he did. But that doesn’t make him God. Walking on top of the water is one subject, but how about splitting the entire Red Sea open and taking all the children of Israel across, all the way from one side to the other. Then when Pharaoh’s team comes after them, he causes the water to close in and drown them all. Does that make Moses God? No, that makes him what? He is a servant of God, God defended and protected him, it’s a miracle. The same holds true of all the prophets, if they come with miracles these are identification marks for you to recognize that’s a prophet of God, that’s somebody special here, but it doesn’t give you the rights to worship him.
Let us think of it in terms of the prophet Elijah and Elisha. They did the miracles as well. They took the bones of a prophet and brought it back to life, how is this possible? And how does life come back after somebody’s been dead? This happened in the time of Jesus too, but that doesn’t means he is God.
If you said, "It's 'because of the miracle birth, he had no father". There is no doubt about it, the Quran said the same thing. What about Eve? She didn’t have a mother but you don’t worship her, do you? What about Adam? He didn’t have mother or a father, are you going to worship him? I don’t think so. Now these are things people added later, the people who were unfortunately misguided by the devil. They got people to start doing the very thing that would negate all of their good deeds and throw away everything that they had worked hard to do because they refused to listen to what Allah said. Those who really believe in Allah and really accept what He teaches understand that there is only one message here: "Don’t worship anybody but God," and then everything after that can be forgiven, provided you’re sincere in your repentance. For sure even if a person is bad, he can get out of hell. This is a teaching in Islam; everybody gets out of hell eventually, except for those who refused to accept this simple teaching: God is One, you have to worship Him alone without partners. If you can’t accept the first two commandments, if you can’t accept that you cannot be a Muslim, you cannot be a good Jew nor can you be a Christian.
Some people are going to argue, especially the Christians. They will argue the hardest with you. You know why? Because they don’t want to hear the truth. They will tell you “Yes but, yes but.” Then Paul came along and he had a different message, "...and Paul said, and Paul said, and Paul said." Who is Paul? Is he God? Are you going to worship him? Do you believe everything he said? If you do then I’ve got a special news flash for you. Read the book that follows the four Gospels. It’s called the Acts of the Apostles. Read in there where Paul tells the story how he has an occasion to meet with Jesus on the road to Damascus, he describes it real clear. But then again, later on in Chapters 24 and 26, he tells a story again but with a different twist. No one of these three stories is exactly like the others. In one case he said, he is the only one who hears it and the only one that sees it. The blinding light, the voice, nobody else sees it or hears it. He falls down, he goes blind. In another scenario he says no, they saw it but they didn’t hear it. And in another one he said, yes, they saw it, they heard it and they all fell down on the ground and in that case he didn’t go blind, he just got his message right there on the spot. So which one are you going to buy?
I’ve got a bigger one for you. I want you to think about this. Go back to the Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew has a statement in there confirmed by the Quran. This is the reason I’m accepting it. I don’t accept the English version of the Quran any more then I accept English version of the Bible. But I’m telling you that we do have in the Quran in the Arabic language what confirms this verse, therefore I'll quote it to you. Matthew Chapter 5, verse 17-19, Red letter addition of the Bible - it's going to be in red letters because they said Jesus said it. He says: "Think not that I came to destroy the law…" (the law in this case is called the Torah and it means the books of Moses), "…and the prophets" (in this case he is talking about the books that I just mentioned; Amos, Zakariyya, Hosea, Jonah, and the Psalms from David and Solomon etc). It says: "I did not come to destroy the law and the prophets but rather to fulfill the law and the prophets. And not until all things are accomplished shall a single dot.." (in other translations it says: iota, tittle, jot, dot - not a single little mark) "...be in any wise lessened to be weakened." And then it say, "...if anybody breaks the least commandment and teaches that, they’re going to be the least in the kingdom. But if anybody keeps the commandment and they teach that, they’re going to be the highest in the kingdom. And unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees..." (Pharisees were the people who were the religious leaders of the time in the temple), "…then you’ll in no wise enter the kingdom". There is something for us to think about.
I want us to take time to reflect on this teaching because this is exactly what makes the difference between a true follower of Jesus and somebody who just says it. That is to do what Allah has commanded to do, what Almighty Allah had commanded. He has commanded all his Prophets to do and say the same thing. Say, I believe in God, He is One and He has no partners, and worship Him with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul. Do that and you are a follower of Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, all of the Prophets, and Jesus the Christ (Peace be upon him) and Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him), because they said the same thing. How clear does it need to be for me, for you, for all of us to realize what this message is about.
So with that we can sum up that whoever worships Jesus has violated what he said. Whoever follows a way other than what we’ve just described, has not really believed in Allah and they have not truly served Him, and they are on their own, and may Allah keep us free from them, and may Allah guide them before it’s too late, Ameen.
Sheikh Yusuf Estes