Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director
Summary:
In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza describes a survey he did at a supermarket asking who Jesus is, and shows that Christians overestimate him as Lord while Muslims underestimate him as just a prophet, when the best answer, according to both the Quran and the Bible, is that he is the Messiah.
Video Transcript:
Praise be to God. There is no other god except God.
About a week ago I went to Walmart, a grocery store, a supermarket. I had prepared a questionnaire for the people leaving through the exit door. The questionnaire had only one question: “Who is Jesus, according to you?” I asked the same question to about 100 people, and all the Christians who responded answered either “Lord,” or “Savior,” or “Lord and Savior,” and all the Muslims who answered said “a prophet,” except for one of them, who said “just a person.” So, according to Christians, Jesus is Lord and Savior, and according to Muslims, a prophet, or just a person.
The collection of these answers reveals the deep, totally unnecessary biases which these two groups have against each other. One group is deeply overestimating the role of Jesus in this world, while the other group is deeply underestimating it. Not once did either of these two groups mention that Jesus is the Messiah, even though that is the best answer, both according to the Quran and according to the Bible. The Quran mentions Jesus as a prophet about four times in total, but it mentions Jesus as the Messiah a total of 10 times. And yet the Muslims mentioned him as a prophet every time, and the word “Messiah” did not come to anyone’s mind when asked who Jesus was. Can you see the deep conscious or subconscious bias which the so-called Muslims have in relation to Jesus?
On the other hand, when the Christians were asked who Jesus is, they never answered “the Messiah” either. They always said “Lord and Savior.” Again, this reveals their deep conscious and subconscious bias in relation to Jesus. Their answer is not in line with the New Testament, where the same question was asked of Peter, the disciple of Jesus, and his answer was not like theirs. In the New Testament, in the Book of Mark, chapter 8, starting from verse 27, we read that Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi, and on the way he asked them who people said he was. They replied that some said John the Baptist, others Elijah, and others one of the prophets. Then he asked them who they said he was, and Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” So if Christians were not biased about Jesus, they would have answered exactly the way Peter answered: that Jesus is the Messiah. According to the Bible, this answer, that Jesus is the Messiah, was revealed to Peter by God Himself, and this makes Peter the first person besides Jesus to publicly testify that Jesus is the Messiah.
By the way, I know that Jesus is called “Lord” by many people in many places in the Bible, but many other people are also called “lord” in the Bible. In the Bible, the word “lord” simply means a slave owner, for example in Luke 16:3, Luke 20:13, Acts 25:26, and 1 Peter 3:6. In all these cases in the New Testament, the word “lord” is used to refer to someone other than Jesus. So the word “Lord” does not uniquely specify the identity of Jesus. There are many lords mentioned in the Bible. To this day, they have lords in Great Britain; they gather in the House of Lords. Even in the Quran, there is an instance where Joseph, who was a slave, called his owner “lord.” So there are many lords in the Bible and the Quran. Of course, there’s only one Lord of the universe, God, but there are many lords of different slaves, and many different lords who own different properties, and so on.
Also, there are many prophets mentioned in the Bible and the Quran, but there is only one Messiah. So the word “Messiah” uniquely specifies and defines the identity of Jesus, which is why, if the Christians and the so-called Muslims were unbiased communities, it should have been the first word to come to their minds, in most cases, when they were asked who Jesus is. Most of them should have said “the Messiah.” That’s what defines him. But instead, none of them said it. How deeply biased they are! How deeply the Christians overestimate Jesus, and how deeply the Muslims underestimate him!
And by the way, saying that Jesus is the Messiah is what most annoys one of God’s biggest opponents, according to the New Testament and the Quran: the Jews. When speaking about Jesus, they hate it the most when you say that Jesus is the Messiah. They are not as jealous if you say, for example, that Jesus was a prophet; they had many prophets, and one more prophet wouldn’t make a big difference to them. And when Christians tell them that Jesus is Lord, they do not hate it as much either, because they find it ridiculous and not worth challenging, since it is very clear in the Old Testament that there is only one God. According to the Jews, the Christians are simply discrediting themselves when they say that Jesus, the son of Mary, is God, because it’s so obvious in the Old Testament that there is only one God.
But when the Jews hear Jesus called the Messiah, that is what they hate hearing about Jesus the most. The truth hurts them, because they rejected the one who was supposed to be their king and their savior, even more than David was. And their excuse for rejecting him is that he did not fulfill his political mission. They wanted someone who would elevate the Jews in the political arena of the world, not someone who would expose their evil intentions. Their argument doesn’t stand, because in the second coming of Jesus, after we are resurrected, Jesus will fulfill his expected political mission as well. He will be king on Earth for a thousand years, during which all the believers will enjoy a material life here on Earth without any imperfection. Anyway, the Jews rejected him, which is clearly evil, but in this video I’m focusing more on those who claim to accept Jesus: the Christians and the Muslims.
As I said, the Christians and the Muslims either overestimate Jesus deeply or underestimate him deeply. They can’t seem to have a balanced opinion. Let me give you an example of what their bias looks like. It might not be a perfect example, but it will drive the point home. Let’s imagine that I showed a picture of Elizabeth II, the queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, to many people in a questionnaire, and asked them, “Who is she, according to you?” Now imagine if all the Muslims answered, every time, “She is the queen of Australia.” It’s technically true, but what about the fact that she was also the queen of Great Britain, the queen of England, the queen of Scotland, the queen of Canada, and the queen of many other places? If all the Muslims always answered “Australia,” it would be a biased underestimation of the queen’s role. Or imagine that every Christian, when asked the same question, said that she was the queen of the whole world and the seas. Wouldn’t that be a gross overestimation of her role? Yes, she was officially the queen of many countries, but not of the whole world, and not of the seas. Similarly, they are grossly overestimating or underestimating the role of Jesus.
After all, the biggest role of Jesus is to be the Messiah. Why not mention that? Why is that not the first thing which comes to their minds about Jesus? He is the Messiah, which means the chosen one. He was chosen by God to lead the believers, anyone who is sincere in his heart, to the city of believers, to lead them there and have a 1,000-year kingdom on Earth without any imperfection: a perfect kingdom on Earth for 1,000 years, where all of us believers will live, to show Satan that you have to leave things in God’s hands for things to go perfectly, which Satan couldn’t do. Satan wanted to take control from God. So of all the people who ever lived, Satan hates Jesus the most, because he is the one human being who directly disproves him. Satan wanted control from God so that he could have a kingdom of his own on Earth, while Jesus will do the reverse. He will leave everything in God’s hands, so that God can create a perfect kingdom on Earth, which will happen soon after we are resurrected.
Now let me address one important issue. I am fully aware that the Quran says that we should not make a distinction between any of the prophets. As a prophet, Jesus is like all the other prophets, but as the Messiah, he is the only Messiah, the only Messiah mentioned in the Quran.
So, to summarize, if anyone asks you who Jesus is, the best answer is: he is the Messiah. This answer most annoys those who are furthest away from God’s grace, and most satisfies those who are closest to God’s grace. It’s the answer which is most in line with how this question is answered in the Bible, and with how Jesus is confirmed and mentioned in the Quran.