Friday Sermon by dr Rashad Khalifa the Most Important Sermon GOD is Doing Everything 1987 06 05
Transcript
0:35 All united in this place of prayer, each individual soul joined in community of worship. One God.
0:46 LA ILAHA ILLA ALLAH
0:56 ALHAMDU LILLAH. WA ASHHADU AN LA ILAHA ILLA ALLAH, WAHDAHU LA SHARIKA LAH.
1:04 This, IN SHAA ALLAH, will be the most important KHUTBA I've ever delivered so far.
1:11 So, please pay attention, a special attention this time.
1:16 I will try to repeat the important points and I want you to bear in mind that I'm
1:23 talking to you, you. Don't say "he's talking to somebody else".
1:30 Recently, I have come to a very important conclusion about believing in God,
1:37 and this started in the Muslim Perspective issue of February 1987,
1:44 with the title "Satan Believes in God."
1:47 It dawned on me that throughout the Quran we are taught
1:52 that the majority of believers in God are going to Hell.
1:58 In SURA 12, verse 103 says "most people no matter what you do will not believe"
2:05 and then in 106, we're told that "the majority of those who believe will go to Hell."
2:13 This is in SURA 12 verse 106, and then we read
2:20 in SURA Al-Mu'minûn, number 23 verses 84 through 90.
2:29 I'm gonna quote starting at 84. "Say, to whom belongs the Earth and
2:36 everyone in it if you know? They will say to God! Say would you then take need?
2:44 or how come you do not take heed?"
2:47 "Say, who is the Lord of the Heavens, the seven universes, the Lord with the great Dominion?
2:55 They will say "God!" Say "how come you do
2:59 not observe righteousness or do not observe God?"
3:03 "Say, in whose hand is the Kingship of everything, over everything, the One that
3:12 can come to your help and does not need any help, if you know? They will say: God!
3:18 Say "how come you, you have been bewitched, have been... have gone astray?" So,
3:24 And in SURA 29 verse 61 says "if you ask them who created the Heavens and the Earth
3:31 and committed the Sun and the Moon? They will say: God!" and then the verse ends by
3:37 asking "how come they deviated?"
3:41 In SURA 29 verse 63, it says "if you ask them who sends water
3:47 from the sky to revive dead land? They will say: God! Say praise be to God, how
3:53 come most of them do not understand?" So, all these verses and many more
3:57 throughout Quran tell us that people believe in God. Satan believes in God, but
4:03 they're still going to Hell. Now why? And the very important conclusion is you
4:09 do not believe in God unless you know God as He really is with all His qualities,
4:15 namely, especially that God runs everything, that God is doing everything.
4:22 And this will shed a new light on our submission to God,
4:26 our acceptance of whatever is happening to you personally, or in the world,
4:33 to anybody, to anything, to any country.
4:38 We do not believe in God unless we believe that God is running everything.
4:43 And at this point, I would like to suggest a ZIKR for you, something for you to do.
4:52 Every day, wherever you go, when you're driving, or sitting, or you have
4:57 nothing to do, or even if you have something to do, I want this to dominate
5:01 your life even mentally, even when you're doing something, I want you to repeat
5:07 always "God is running everything", "God is running everything." This is your new ZIKR, our new ZIKR.
5:15 Because it will, it will... the whole world will look different to you. When anything is happening that may turn you into
5:23 an objector, not a submitter, this will remind you that God is doing everything and that you are objecting.
5:33 As a believer, you have no business losing your temper, for example.
5:38 You're not a believer if you lose your temper. And as I said that at the beginning
5:42 of the KHUTBA, I'm talking to you. Don't say "he's talking to somebody else."
5:46 I'm talking to you, yes you, Abdullah, Gatut, Mohtasham, Ahmad, the other Ahmad,
5:52 Frank and so on. I am talking to you, every one of you. You have no business losing
5:58 your temper because this indicates you're objecting to something God is doing.
6:03 We must know that God is doing everything, even the things that Satan is
6:07 doing, they are following God's law.
6:13 A good example in the Quran is before the creation of Adam, God is telling the
6:19 angels "I'm putting on earth a representative"
6:25 which in a nutshell says that God of course knew that Adam was gonna be
6:30 duped by Satan, and will go down to Earth, because after when Satan tricked Adam,
6:37 God said "go down to Earth all of you."
6:42 But this, before the creation of Adam, God is telling the angels "I'm going to
6:46 place on the planet Earth a representative, the human being."
6:53 So, even though Satan tempted Adam and Eve, God is doing everything
7:00 because everything is going in accordance with God's will.
7:06 This is our new ZIKR when you're driving, when you're sitting, when you're
7:09 doing anything. Eventually, it's gonna happen mentally every cell in your body
7:13 is gonna say "God is running everything."
7:19 And this is the true believer. This is the believer in God who will not go to Hell.
7:24 The majority of believers in God are
7:27 going to Hell because they do not believe that God is running everything.
7:32 In SURA 8 verse 17, a classic example "it is not you who killed them" - that was
7:38 after the battle, one of the battles in early Islam - "it is not you who killed
7:42 them, it is God who killed them. It is not you who threw when you threw" the arrow
7:47 or the gun or whatever "it was God who threw."
7:53 And this is a very important conclusion and this is why I think this is the most
7:56 important KHITBA I ever given to you.
8:04 I made a trip recently to Egypt and everything that happened in
8:09 that trip told me that we don't do anything. We do not do anything. God is doing everything.
8:18 The timing of my arrival, the timing of
8:20 my leaving, I mean, I get on the telephone and say "TWA, I'm changing my reservation
8:25 from Tuesday to Thursday." I decided to change my... I didn't decide anything.
8:29 I didn't change anything. Believe me, God is doing it. God is doing everything.
8:36 In SURA number 12, again, the brothers of Joseph decided not to kill him, right?
8:43 They think they decided not to kill him. They decided to throw him in the well.
8:48 But before this happens, way before this, years before they make this so-called decision of theirs,
8:55 Joseph sees the dream, the Sun, the Moon and eleven stars bowing before him
9:04 which is his father, his mother, and his 11 brother bowing before him,
9:08 something that was to happen after he's practically ruling Egypt as a man.
9:15 So, one day the brothers met to kill him. They...
9:20 The decision was already made. They could not decide to kill him. It was impossible.
9:24 But here they are meeting and they're taking votes "shall we kill him?"
9:28 "What shall we do with him?" And then they decided, they think, not to kill him.
9:35 God is running everything. And this is our new ZIKR. Just keep telling
9:41 yourself "God is running everything" especially when you are at the brink of
9:45 objecting to something or losing your temper.
9:51 When you lose your temper, tell yourself "you must separate yourself from you
9:56 as of now." When you lose your temper against a friend or a spouse or a brother or
10:01 a sister or anybody in the street, you tell yourself "you're not a Muslim.
10:08 You're objecting." Because God is running everything.
10:11 Believe me. When your friend or your wife or your husband behaves in a certain way that
10:16 gets in your nerves, God is doing it and it's because you deserve it.
10:23 So, you have to get on yourself, and correct your self,
10:29 and catch yourself objecting, not submitting to God. God runs everything.
10:42 I wanna give you an example so you understand how God is running everything
10:47 and how we have the freedom of choice.
10:52 Suppose I had a temporary ability of traveling in the future, let's say for one week.
11:00 I travel in the future and I see what happened to you, what decision you made.
11:05 Okay. So, I traveled all the way to the next Friday and I saw exactly where you went,
11:11 what kind of decision you made. Now back to this Friday, I'm giving you a choice
11:15 to go to New York or to California. I wanna give you a
11:19 choice to go to either New York or California. So, I'm giving you a choice.
11:24 You're going to freely choose California or New York for your trip,
11:29 but I already know, see, because I travelled in time this one week and I know that you
11:34 decided to go to California. So, even though I'm giving you the freedom of choice,
11:39 I know exactly what you're going to do and where you're going.
11:43 But it is much more than this. I don't think we can really understand it.
11:49 God runs everything and this is the condition. This is a quality of God and if you
11:55 don't know this quality, you don't know God and you don't believe in God.
11:58 And this is what the Quran means by all these verses.
12:04 When Satan inflicts disasters, diseases, cancer on people,
12:14 Satan is doing this in accordance with God's law, and we see this in the Quran.
12:20 I remind you of the example of the disciples of Jesus, when they
12:25 demanded a feast from the sky, and God said "okay. I'm gonna send it down but if any
12:31 of you disbelieves, I will punish him severely more than anybody that I ever punished."
12:39 Now, you know that the punisher would really be Satan,
12:42 but God - this is God's law. When they disbelieve, they step out of God's Kingdom, then Satan will inflict
12:49 the damage, but God is doing everything. So, even the actions of Satan
12:56 are under God's control. God is running everything. God will not be a god if He
13:01 wasn't running everything.
13:05 So, this is a quality of God that you must recognize and we're going to
13:08 commemorate. This is in our own language, in English, and you drive your car and
13:14 you say God is running everything, and you look at everything and you say God
13:18 is running everything, because this is the condition of belief in God.
13:25 The Quran says very clearly "when something good happens to you, it is from God,
13:30 when something bad happens to you, it is from you," but God is running everything.
13:36 God created the fire. You can use it to
13:38 cook a steak from a raw steak to a delicious cooked steak, unless you like it raw.
13:48 But you can also put your finger in that fire and burn your finger.
13:52 So, God created the fire to be in your service, but if you choose to put your
13:56 finger in it and suffer, then this is from you, not from God.
14:02 But it is God's law that made the fire as burning. If you put your finger in it, it burns. It's God's law.
14:10 It's one of the physical laws. There are many invisible laws
14:12 like if you disobey God, if you go drink, for example, it's exactly
14:16 like putting your finger in the fire but the punishment is not as visible.
14:21 You can be sure you'll pay. It's just like that, like the fire putting your finger in it.
14:27 Alcohol and drinking it, drugs and taking them, adultery and committing it,
14:33 all these things, they're laws that God's laws govern them and the punishment,
14:39 the physical - the fire, putting your finger in it, the punishment for the sins are exactly in the same way,
14:46 but they're not as visible. They're just as painful if not worse.
14:53 And this explains all the problems we see in the world,
14:56 the people breaking God's law and paying the price, just like putting their finger in the fire.
15:05 What is our role? What do we do? God is doing everything.
15:11 We do only one thing, one decision: to be with God or not.
15:17 After that God takes over. But we are absolutely free in that decision.
15:25 To submit is already done, and the choice, our choice is to willingly submit or unwillingly submit.
15:33 And those people who don't believe in God out there, they are submitting to God, except unwillingly.
15:39 I mean, they can't control the number of beats of their heart for example. I mean, this is one of the visible things.
15:47 But God runs everything. When Reagan decides to agree with the
15:52 Russians on limiting nuclear weapons, he's not deciding anything. He's just like
15:56 Joseph's brothers. He thinks he's deciding to meet with the Russians
16:02 or vice versa. But God runs everything.
16:11 We know also that the Angels are as free as we are,
16:16 from the incident where Satan refused to obey God and bow down before Adam.
16:25 God wants His creatures to be free, as far as that decision is concerned until
16:28 the Day of Judgement. The eternal Day of Judgement, there's
16:32 no more. We'll see everything, and we'll submit. Everybody will submit
16:39 including the dwellers of Hell.
16:54 It turns out that if we believe that anybody is doing anything, this is SHIRK. This is idol worship.
17:04 You're putting somebody who's doing something with God, next to God,
17:10 it negates the idea that God runs everything.
17:15 So, if you think anybody is doing anything, I mean, this is by definition is SHIRK, idolatry.
17:26 This is why we're gonna remind ourselves to remind ourselves against Satan's ideas,
17:32 we're gonna always say "God runs everything."
17:36 You're gonna do it for a while, and then you'll forget, like I forget.
17:40 So, I'm gonna keep after me and after you, and we're gonna repeat that.
17:44 I'm gonna remind you, and you remind me, and we will always continuously until every
17:49 cell in our body is declaring: "God is running everything."
17:53 Because this, like I said, sheds a whole new light on Submission, the idea of Submission.
17:59 And this sign out there on the wall "Happiness is Submission to God"
18:04 is a profound sign. There's a lot more to it than meets the eye.
18:09 You're gonna be perfectly happy, and this ZIKR "God runs everything"
18:15 is going to help you into total Submission because anytime you start to
18:19 complain or object, you're gonna remind yourself "God runs everything."
18:23 I'm complaining against God. I'm complaining that God is doing this, so I'm complaining, I don't like it.
18:34 We sometimes we turn into complainers, and we have to catch ourselves.
18:45 Complainers will complain when things are good. They complain when things are bad.
18:49 They get into a rut and they'll complain continuously. That's objection. That's the opposite of Submission.
18:59 There's a good example of decisions. The May issue of the Muslim Perspective,
19:07 we decided to print a certain number and we said "okay, we're
19:10 gonna get to these Muslim organizations. They don't deserve the
19:14 Muslim Perspective anyway. So, we're gonna skip one, do one and skip one."
19:19 So, we'll send only Muslim Perspectives to half of them, and okay we made a decision, right?
19:25 We make decisions, but God makes the decision and God's decision prevails.
19:30 So, the next day, the press they called me and they say "guess what, we made a mistake."
19:34 I said "what?" Said "we changed the page." They printed one page on the wrong side.
19:43 So, they have to do it over, for nothing. So, we ended up with a large
19:49 number of Muslim Perspectives anyway and we had to send every, you know, the Muslim Perspective to everybody.
19:54 But this is an example of deciding, right? We decided to eliminate these names,
20:01 but God decided "No! You're gonna send it to every single one of them."
20:05 God runs everything.
20:20 TUBU ILLA ALLAH. Repent.
20:36 ALHAMDU LILLAH. WA ASHHADU AN LA ILAHA ILLA ALLAH, WAHDAHU LA SHARIKA LAH.
20:44 I believe this ZIKR is very important, very significant and I believe
20:49 is gonna help all of us. So, I'm going to repeat again, impress on you that
20:55 whenever you have a chance continuously "God is running everything."
20:59 "God is running everything. God is running everything."
21:02 silently and loudly, every chance you get, and eventually, like I said, every cell in
21:09 your body will be pronouncing this important decision. This is the requirement to make it to Heaven.
21:24 I want to talk again about being upset and fighting with anybody.
21:31 Being upset, complaining, fighting, for your own good, you shouldn't do that.
21:40 We should not do that for our own good because it backfires manifold.
21:46 When you say a hurting word, or a hurting look.
21:51 The Quran goes all the way to suspicion. Inside of your head if you suspect, if you're suspicious of some...
22:01 you know, you look at me and I have a stomachache or something, and I'm making a face,
22:05 and you say "this guy is not friendly to me," you've committed a sin.
22:09 And it's gonna backfire on you. You're the one who's going to suffer.
22:15 You must seek excuses for the people. If I pass by you and I'm making a face,
22:21 it is not because I hate you, probably I do, okay, maybe I do, but what you are
22:27 supposed to do is "oh, he must have a headache or a stomachache or something is bothering him."
22:33 And you love me instead of hate me, for your own good.
22:38 But if I am making a face, if I'm passing by you and I'm making a face
22:43 and you assume that I do it because I don't like you, and it is true, even that
22:47 little suspicion in your head will hurt you, will backfire on you, so let alone being loud, calling names.
22:58 These backfire on you. For your own protection, for your own peace of mind and happiness, don't do it.
23:07 The reason is that the mechanism of it is that it is objection.
23:12 It is complaining against what God is doing. God is running everything.
23:17 And if your husband, or wife, or your friend is behaving in a certain way,
23:22 it's because of something you have done. You have to turn, you have to join your wife
23:25 or your husband or your friend and call you names or whatever the other person is doing.
23:32 You ally yourself with your enemy against yourself because it's something you have done.
23:36 You say "God is punishing me for something I have done. I have stepped out of God's laws."
23:43 And always on your mind is "God is doing everything."
23:47 And don't say I'm talking to somebody else. I'm talking to you, every one of you, and me. I have to remind myself.
24:00 I think I'm the oldest person in this place. Anybody older than me? gosh.
24:05 See, from my experience as being your elder,
24:12 I'll give myself the privilege of advising you. From experience, it backfires on you
24:19 when you lose your temper. Happiness is submission to God.
24:25 You have to make a decision right now that you will never be upset. You will
24:30 never complain. Let other people complain. Let them be upset. Let them call you names.
24:35 You take the defeated side, for your own good.
24:40 Because believe me you're a lot happier this way and you end up victorious.
24:46 There is nothing in this world that is worth being upset about.
24:51 Believing that God runs everything, as you read in the Quran, equals or
24:55 is better than, excuse me, is better than owning everything in this world and twice as much.
25:04 If you own Manhattan and all the real-estate on Manhattan, they consider you rich.
25:09 So, I'm not talking about Manhattan. I'm talking about all of the United States, all of Japan.
25:14 If you own Hong Kong, you'll be rich, with all the real-estate over there.
25:20 But believing in God, the proper way, is better than owning everything in the
25:26 whole world and twice as much. Does this make you happy? It should.
25:33 The simplest thing you do as a believer which is praying five times a day,
25:39 if you put it in the right perspective of a person who believes
25:44 is the greatest thing that can happen to anybody.
25:48 Okay. I want you to put yourself in this situation. You receive a telephone call from the
25:53 White House. They say "Frank Jurgen, you're invited to have lunch with the president next Wednesday."
26:03 Okay, I'm gonna use Frank as an example. Frank immediately will call his work
26:08 "I'm not coming to work on Wednesday" and will call his friends "guess what? I'm invited
26:14 to lunch at the White House." And he'll find the best clothes to put on
26:25 for that important meeting.
26:29 Well, five times a day, you have an appointment with the King of kings. If you believe
26:32 that God runs everything, that God is the president of the whole world, that Reagan
26:37 is a dinky servant, an insignificant creature of God, if you really know that
26:47 well, is this what you will do for every prayer? You have an appointment with God five times a day.
26:54 You're gonna call work and say "I'm not coming to work because I have an appointment
26:58 with the president of the whole universe." So, this puts things in perspective.
27:06 Are you gonna seek excuses not to go to the White House?
27:10 I have a headache, Mr. president. Most people will go even though they
27:16 have the worst headache, a migraine and they'll still go.
27:24 Okay. I finished the main topic and there are two points that I would
27:29 like to mention before I close. One of them is something that I started to do.
27:35 I should have done it long time ago. There's a statement in the Quran that say
27:38 "eat and drink but in moderation," not too much.
27:43 So, I started doing this after Ramadan and it feels great not to fill your stomach too much.
27:50 I mean, look at the wisdom of the Quran
27:52 (7:31) كُلُوا۟ وَٱشْرَبُوا۟ وَلَا تُسْرِفُوٓا۟
27:54 "eat and drink but in moderation" not too much and it's a great thing.
28:01 If I continued the same, I wouldn't be able to wear this suit.
28:07 I'm beginning to put on some of my clothes that I had discarded.
28:13 God created the universe. This will help us appreciate God and how He's
28:18 running everything and will induce us to make this new ZIKR continuously.
28:24 In the last issue of Parade Magazine, Carl Sagan wrote an article about billions and billions.
28:31 God created a billion trillion stars. Now, forget the planets that go with these stars
28:39 and forget the fact that the Sun is one of the dim stars.
28:44 The bright, a bright star is defined as a star that is a million times, at least a million times as bright as our Sun.
28:54 So, God created a billion trillion stars,
28:56 and here there's a table from Parade that says "how long it would take to
29:02 count to this number," you know, "the billion trillion" or...
29:09 "a billion trillion will have
29:18 7x3, 21 zeroes" which will make it a septillion.
29:26 A billion trillion is a septillion. Okay. So, but here they went as far as a quintillion.
29:30 Let's just go to the small number, okay? Quintillion.
29:34 Quintillion is one two or three four five six, six time 3 - only 18 not 21.
29:40 The quintillion, "how long it will take you to count this number from 0, 1 count
29:45 per second, night and day?" You know how long it will take you to count the quintillion?
29:49 Let's forget the other 1 million stars and let's forget the planets,
29:53 and the heavenly bodies and all this, it will take you, listen to this,
29:57 you're gonna say: 1 2 3 4, just counting, okay? Not creating, counting. It's gonna take you
30:05 32 billion years which is more than the age of the universe.
30:11 Okay. I mean, the universe is not 32 billion years. But if you just count,
30:16 you look at the stars and count one by one, it's gonna take you
30:21 32 billion... this is mathematics. Because you divide the quintillion by
30:25 the second and the minutes and the days and so on.
30:30 It will take you 32 billion years to just count them and God created them.
30:36 So, you can appreciate the greatness of God.
30:41 AQEM AL-SALAT.
30:45 ALLAH-O AKBAR. ALLAH-O AKBAR. ALLAH-O AKBAR. ALLAH-O AKBAR.
30:52 LA ILAHA ILLA ALLAH.
30:58 الله اکبر
31:02 (1:1) بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
31:04 (1:2) ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ ٱلْعَـٰلَمِينَ
31:07 (1:3) ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
31:09 (1:4) مَـٰلِكِ يَوْمِ ٱلدِّينِ
31:11 (1:5) إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ وَإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِينُ
31:14 (1:6) ٱهْدِنَا ٱلصِّرَٰطَ ٱلْمُسْتَقِيمَ
31:16 (1:7) صِرَٰطَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ غَيْرِ ٱلْمَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا ٱلضَّآلِّينَ
31:23 الله اکبر
31:25 سبحان ربی العظیم x 3
31:30 سمع الله لمن حمده
31:33 الله اکبر
31:35 سبحان ربی الاعلی x 3
31:40 الله اکبر
31:42 الله اکبر
31:44 سبحان ربی الاعلی x 3
31:50 الله اکبر
31:53 (1:1) بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
31:56 (1:2) ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ ٱلْعَـٰلَمِينَ
31:59 (1:3) ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
32:01 (1:4) مَـٰلِكِ يَوْمِ ٱلدِّينِ
32:03 (1:5) إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ وَإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِينُ
32:06 (1:6) ٱهْدِنَا ٱلصِّرَٰطَ ٱلْمُسْتَقِيمَ
32:09 (1:7) صِرَٰطَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ غَيْرِ ٱلْمَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا ٱلضَّآلِّينَ
32:16 الله اکبر
32:18 سبحان ربی العظیم x 3
32:23 سمع الله لمن حمده
32:26 الله اکبر
32:29 سبحان ربی الاعلی x 3
32:34 الله اکبر
32:37 الله اکبر
32:39 سبحان ربی الاعلی x 3
32:45 الله اکبر
32:46 اشهد ان لا اله الا الله وحده لا شریک له
32:52 السلام عليكم
32:54 السلام عليكم