Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

Summary:

In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza celebrates the channel reaching 100,000 subscribers, credits God’s support, and explains the history and meaning of the name “The Submitters” for God’s chosen people.

Video Transcript:

Praise be to God, there is no other god except God. Look at this. It’s the YouTube Play Button. YouTube sent it to us for reaching 100,000 subscribers. It says, “Presented to The Submitters for passing 100,000 subscribers. YouTube.” So, congratulations to all of us for this major milestone in our journey. Verse 3:160 says, “When God supports you, none can defeat you. And when he abandons you, who else can support you? In God, the believers shall trust.” God supported us because we supported him. Verse 22:40 says, “Absolutely, God supports those who support him.” And the way we support him, according to the Quran, is to strive in his cause with our money and our lives. Essentially, helping and contributing in many ways in the cause of God. So, congratulations to all of you for contributing in the cause of God. Some of you contributed with your time and skills to help me manage the YouTube channel and the webpage. Others contributed financially in the cause of God. Others through charity. and consequently, we had less problems and concerns while we strove in the cause of God. And some of you contributed with your public support.

And some of you simply contributed by not being demanding and burdensome to the community, carrying your own problems with your own shoulders. That’s also a way of support. And perhaps the biggest contribution is from those who prayed. Who prayed to God to strengthen us. Who prayed to God to increase our numbers. Who prayed to God to make us the right group of people. Who prayed to God to keep us in the right path. Who prayed to God to keep the love and peace between us, The Submitters. And to bless us. And who prayed to God to hopefully send us all together in heaven. So, congratulations to all of you for contributing in the cause of God. And may God reward you with the biggest possible reward, paradise forever. Now, back to this plate. It says the submitters. And the addition of the definite article, the submitters, not just any submitters, but the proper noun the submitters, marks a major milestone in the history of the name of our community. But let me first give you a brief overview of the major milestones of the names of God’s chosen people since the beginning. I’m purposely going to overlook some details and nuances to keep it simple, but in general, here is the story of our name.

In the beginning, during the time of Adam, the word submitter and the word God-fearer were synonymous. At that time, before scriptures, before communities, before social structures, if you feared that God can punish you, you did the right thing. And if you did not fear that God can punish you, you allowed yourself to do the wrong thing. It was as simple as that. At that time, it was not about believing in God. They all, including the bad people, believed in God because Adam had told them that he had spoken to him, and they did not know different. Believing God was a given. And the evidence for the fact that both the good and the bad people believed in God is the story of Adam’s two sons. They both presented an offering to God. This shows that even the bad brother believed that God existed. However, he did not fear God. He thought that maybe he can outsmart him, or maybe he can escape from him, or maybe God will just not see, or maybe God will simply overlook what he did. And this foolishness caused him not to fear God. So, in the beginning, the distinction between God’s chosen people and those who were not chosen was reflected by whether they were God-fearers or not. So, initially, the name of God’s chosen people was God-fearers. And that’s what Adam’s chosen son calls himself in verse 5:28, he called himself a God-fearer. Then later, when people learned agriculture, which enabled the creation of the first cities, and people could live close together, people still had to fear God to go to heaven, of course. But one person’s fear of God could be in conflict with another person’s fear of God. When it came to the time, the place, the form, and the practical aspects of reflecting that fear of God in the society. So it became necessary to coordinate the fear of God. So in this environment, when it became for the first time necessary to coordinate the fear of God, God sent Abraham, who was the first to call himself a submitter. So submission is simply coordinated fear of God. The fear of God in coordinated form. So again, the coordinated God-fearers were named through Abraham as submitters. Then later, when agriculture became more specialized, cities started to trade and frequently communicate between each other. And this enabled one city to overpower many other cities. And so the first states were born, the first nations. So now the coordinated fear of God, or submission, could be disrupted by human power structures. And as a result, a need for the management of that coordination emerged. And in this environment, God sent Moses to organize the submitters. And for the first time we had the first nation of submitters, which God established through Moses. And because there can be only one nation of submitters, God had to choose one of the nations of the world. And given that at that moment, the children of Israel were the nation which was the most undeservedly enslaved in the world, they were the best candidate to be transferred into a nation of submitters. And in this way, the children of Israel became the first and only nation of submitters in the world. And because they were the only nation of submitters, this made the words children of Israel and submitters synonymous during that time. So, when they said we, the children of Israel, they meant we, the submitters. We, the children of Jacob who was a submitter. Then, when the children of Israel eventually displeased God with their arrogance, God let the Roman Empire occupy them. And as such, they were not God’s chosen people anymore. To end their choosing, God sent Jesus. And this time, the whole process had to restart. Jesus did not go there to organize them at the city, national, or empire level, but to tell them how to be saved at the individual level. Just like during the time of Adam, which is one of the many reasons that the Quran says that the example of Jesus is like the example of Adam. And as I told you at the time of Adam, the chosen ones were called God-fearers. And this is what the early Gentile people who believed in Jesus also called themselves, God-fearers, as it is reported in the Bible. In the book of Acts, chapter 10, for example, and in so many other places in the New Testament. They called themselves the God-fearers, people who feared God. The word Christian was a Greek label which the outsiders gave to them to refer to people who believe in the Messiah. But they themselves called each other God-fearers, just like in the times of Adam. But there was a slight difference this time. While believing God at the time of Adam was a given for both the chosen people and the unchosen people alike, at the time of Jesus, after centuries of forgetting and distorting of the history, and lies by the bad people, and the invention of other idols, and so on, belief in the only true God became questionable by the bad people. So, now only those who believed in the miracles which they saw, or the messages which they heard through the prophets and the messengers, believed in the one true God. And those who believed in all the messages and miracles which God sent were the only ones who truly believed in God in the correct way. So, now the most important distinction between the good people and the bad people was belief. Both believed that God exists and that he is all powerful as shown by the miracles and believe that he will definitely not let us down if we just do the correct thing. So for the first time the chosen people were called believers. So at that time of Jesus the word believer, God fearer and submitter were synonymous. And this is the culmination of the names for God’s chosen people. First they were called God fearers, then submitters, then children of Israel and then believers. Now, this applied only to people who reached levels of civilization to have empires by then, which included the children of Israel and the people of the Roman Empire, mostly Europeans. But there were other people who did not reach that same level of civilization in their cultures. They still did not have nations and empires. And the most advanced among the rest of the world who did not reach that level of civilization were Arabs. So for them, the Arabs and the rest of the world, this whole history of name changes did not fully apply yet. Because as I told you the names changed while people passed different levels of civilization. So when when God sent Muhammad, they started where Abraham had left. Arabs were not a nation yet or an empire. Their highest level of organization were tribes and the first Arab city as a proper organized city, not just a bunch of tribes like in Mecca, was Medina. Medina means city. For the first time they had an organized city. So the Arabs reached the city level of civilization when Muhammad was sent. Just like in Mesopotamia, they had reached the city levels of civilization when Abraham was sent. The social structures in Muhammad’s place in his time resembled that of Abraham’s place in his time. And at the time of Abraham, they, the chosen people, were called submitters or Muslims in the Semitic languages. And so the people during the time of Muhammad were also called Muslims in the Arabic language. Unfortunately, Arabs only managed to become a nation soon after Muhammad died. And as such, they did not have a messenger to lead them when they became a nation and also an empire later. And because they went through the next two stages of civilization, becoming a nation and then an empire without having a human messenger, they went through those two stages with many mistakes. And while being unauthorized, so there was no opportunity for the progression of the name of God’s chosen people to another more specified name during that time. And therefore, they got stuck being called Muslims. And then eventually, the world as a whole progressed into a level of civilization where most people were able to read. So, around the 1980s, this enabled us to translate the word Muslim into different languages. And in English, we, the chosen people, were called in the authorized English translation of the Quran, submitters, which is a translation of the word Muslim in English. Now, once the world reached another level of civilization, globalization, where the majority of people could not only receive information in real time through TV, but they could also pass information back through internet. So, once the majority of the world reached internet levels of civilization, this enabled the submitters to organize as an online community. And because there can be only one community of submitters according to the Quran, this means that there is only one group or community of submitters. And because it’s only one, our last and final name is not just submitters, but the submitters. You are either part of our community and a submitter or outside our community and a non-submitter. You cannot be a submitter while being an outsider because we are the submitters, the only group of submitters. Individuals outside of our community can only be half submitters at the most. But we are the submitters. And by the way, the Quran mentions both versions. It mentions submitters as a description of an individual human attribute, but when it comes to naming us as a group, it calls us the submitters, al-muslimeena. For example, in verse 41:33, God says, “Who can utter better words than one who invites to God, works righteousness, and says, ‘I am one of the submitters.'” Then, in verse 22:78, God says, “You shall strive for the cause of God as you should strive for His cause. He has chosen you and has placed no hardship on you in practicing your religion, the religion of your father Abraham. He, God, is the one who named you the submitters initially.” You can check this in the Arabic Quran and verify that it says al-muslimeena, the submitters, not just muslimina, submitters, but al-muslimeena, which means the submitters. So, here it is clear that our name as a religious community is the submitters. By the way, in total, the Quran mentions us as the submitters, instead of just submitters, about 14 times. So, this is our final name on Earth, the submitters. And, this will be our name until the end of the world. So, let me remind you again that in the beginning, we were called God fearers, then submitters or Muslims, then children of Israel, then believers, then for the rest of the world, Muslims again, and then submitters since the 1980s, and now finally, the submitters. This is our last name and our group defining Quranic name. Verse 22:78 clearly names us the submitters. So, this is the final name of God’s chosen people. And, this plaque cements the fact that the internet world recognizes us as the submitters. Spread the word about who we are. Our brand is the submitters. Our name is the submitters. Our description is the submitters. Our will is to be with the submitters. We are honored to be the submitters. We strive as the submitters. We increase in number as the submitters. Even our YouTube channel is called the submitters. We stay united as the submitters. We worship God as the submitters. And until our last breath on Earth, we are the submitters. But at the moment of death, because we die individually, we return to being just submitters. And then we get resurrected as submitters. And then we finally are labeled as a community to community together as the believers before we enter the city of believers during the Messianic Age. And then finally in paradise, we are called the winners. So guys, to get that ultimate name recognition in the end as the winners, let’s stick together in the cause of God as the submitters. May God protect us and support us and make us victorious in the end.