Shadowing Practice: Why Jesus Defeats Islam’s Antichrist - Learn English Speaking with Video

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In Islam, the Quran promises that the apocalypse is coming.
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There will be disasters and death and a great deceiver, the Dajjal, a one -eyed false messiah who fools nearly all of humanity into worshipping him as a god.
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A monstrous horde will pour over the earth and drink the rivers dry.
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There will be a plague of worms.
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It will be the darkest hour that humanity will ever face
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but the tradition promises something else that in all of
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that chaos one figure will descend from the heavens from god on the wings of an angel
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and he will defeat the dijal hunt down be deceiver lead the faithful
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and carry humanity through to the other side of disaster
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and you will never guess who it is it's jesus yes
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in islam isa is the showstopper who turns the tide in the end days of islam
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and the thing is this isn't a fringe belief this is
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described in Islamic theology with extreme details written about it in both the Quran and Hadith, and in both Sunni and Shia traditions.
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So how did the son of God from Christianity, the one who was born of a virgin, died on a cross, resurrected three days later, all that stuff, how does he become the star of the Islamic apocalypse?
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Well, today we're gonna find out.
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We are following Isa all the way to the end of days, through the final battle, even to beyond, through a final unexpected twist of fate,
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and uncovering why Islam hands its final world -saving mission to him and not to any other prophet.
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So sit back, relax, and welcome to Religion Camp.
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What's up, people?
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Welcome back to Religion Camp.
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My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single Sunday we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from every religion from all time forever.
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Yes, that is what I do here in this tent every single week as I try to figure out what everyone believes.
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That is the purpose of this show.
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I do this show every week because two things.
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One, I want to understand what every person on this earth orients their life around.
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I think religion and God is very personal for many people, but it's also very cultural.
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And in order to be a better human being on this earth, I want to understand who is the God that everyone worships.
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And every person has a different version of it.
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And I want to understand what that is.
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I think it makes me a better person.
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Also, I want to take all the great things from every religion
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that I find and apply them to my own life so that I can be a better human being.
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I think by decoding all the world's religions, you get these threads of truth that manifest and show up over and over.
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And that to me is perhaps the core of really what humanity is all about.
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Now, today we're going down a path that is fascinating.
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If you've watched this channel before, or if you grew up Muslim, this is not going to be that new to you.
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But if you are outside of the Muslim world, or you didn't grow up in a Muslim country, or you don't have that many Muslim friends, well, this might be a little bit shocking.
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Now, let me just say a few things up top.
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One, I'm not Muslim.
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I grew up Catholic, and that is the tradition that I claim to.
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So if there's anything that I, you know, say wrong, any words I mispronounce, anything that I don't fully explain, my bad.
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I'm coming at this in good faith, trying to understand the mysteries of the Quran.
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Now, if there's anything that I missed, please feel free to drop a comment, YouTube, Spotify, I read all of them.
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So make sure you, yeah, if you have any interesting tidbits that I didn't mention in the episode, please drop them below.
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Just be nice about it.
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Okay, I'm trying my very best.
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Now, today we're talking about the end of times.
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Now, if you grew up Christian, you're probably familiar with, you know, the book of Revelation and the final battle and Christ coming back, all that stuff.
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But Islam has its very own detailed eschatological record that is fascinating
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and robust and has so many different little layers to it that I find fascinating.
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And some people will say that the signs are pointing that we're heading that way right now.
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All my Muslim friends are like, look what's going on.
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Read the Quran.
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Read Hadith.
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They're going to see.
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It's happening.
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Now, before I go any further, I want to say thank you to you for clicking on this episode.
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Because every time you click on an episode or subscribe to the channel or comment, like, anything like that, you help keep my dreams alive.
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You help the show grow.
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You help keep the lights on in the tent.
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You need to keep the fire burning here at the campsite.
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I also want to thank my good pal, Christos Papadopoulos, sitting right next to me, because he...
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Christos is still gone.
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He's still in Greece.
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So instead, I'm joined by the Dominican papi himself, Rafni.
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Que lo que.
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Que lo que.
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Now, let us jump in, okay?
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Now, in order to talk about this and to get to the end of the world and Jesus and all this stuff, first, we got to talk about Jesus, all right?
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This is the same Jesus.
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When we're talking about Islam and we're talking about Christianity, we're talking about fundamentally the same figure, so to speak.
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But what they mean to the two different religious groups is vastly different.
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So let's talk about Jesus in the Christian tradition.
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All right.
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Jesus, born of a Jewish virgin, son of God, the guy who Christianity is all kind of named on.
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And, you know, it's kind of like in the name.
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And most people know about Jesus through reading the Bible, specifically the gospels.
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But that is only one place that Jesus appears.
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He actually appears in many other places.
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So in the Quran, for example, the holy book of Islam.
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His name is Issa, the son of Miriam.
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That's Mary, the same Mary, by the way.
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And he actually plays a pretty big role in Islam, specifically at the end of the world in the apocalyptic literature.
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And that's what we're gonna go through today.
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And his story kicks off exactly how you would expect, with a miracle.
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There are two big passages in Quran chapter three, verses 45 to 55, and in the Quran chapter 19, verses 16 to 34, that really tell about these miracles.
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So Miriam is a virgin.
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An angel shows up.
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She's told that she's going to have a child by God's command.
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No father, but just a pure, miraculous birth.
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So far, all my Christians are like, all right, yep, that's what I know.
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Then it gets even more miraculous in the Muslim tradition.
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The baby Isa, and I mean like a newborn baby, he talks right out the cradle.
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He speaks up to defend his mom from a whole scandal of like, wait, whose kid is this?
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Where's the daddy?
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And when he grows up, the Quran gives him a full resume.
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He heals the blind.
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He cures lepers.
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He raises the dead.
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And maybe my favorite one, he takes a lump of clay, shapes a little bird, breathes on it, and it comes alive and flies off.
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I mean, it's like awesome.
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This is why I love reading excerpts from the Quran, which admittedly I haven't read the whole thing, but it's fun from a Catholic point of view because it's like, oh, this is the same.
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This is the same Isa.
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You know, like I like also the Muslims say, peace be upon him.
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They say, yes, Jesus, peace be upon him.
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It's like, oh, that's nice a lot of my christian friends
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that they don't say that you know
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so muslims are like putting respect on as a catholic i'm gonna start doing
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that i'll be like yep i pray to jesus christ peace be upon him
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because it's just like it's a nice it feels good you know also it's interesting to read
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because there's so many miracles or not so many but some miracles
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that occur in the quran that don't exist in the bible
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and so it's kind of fun to read it like
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if you're coming from a christian perspective you're like oh this
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is kind of like you know they're adding some elements to
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it you know it's like a multiverse now all of the stuff he does in the quran is pretty godlike
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And some of the miracles are consistent with what you would read about in the Bible.
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But of course, the theologies do diverge.
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Every single miracle, the healing, raising the dead, the clay bird, it comes by Allah's permission.
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So, for example, Quran chapter 5, verse 110, it literally lists them all out.
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And every time it's careful to say that Isa did it by God's power, not by the power of Jesus, not by the power of Isa himself.
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He's the one that is ultimately holding the tool, but God is giving the power behind it.
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Allah is ultimately the force that makes it happen.
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In Christianity, that's kind of also true, but it's because God the Father and God the Son, aka Jesus, are one, right?
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God's will in the person of Jesus and the person of the Father are aligned.
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So their power works in conjunction, even though their theology teaches that they are distinct persons, which is essentially how the Trinity works, right?
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Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
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But in Islam, of course, there is no trinity.
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When the Quran says Isa does miracles by Allah's permission, it's drawing a hard line in the sand, making sure that you understand the prophet is not God himself.
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And that is the role that Jesus plays in Islam.
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He is honored and revered enormously, one of the greatest messengers God ever sent for sure.
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But divine himself, is he truly God?
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Is he worth worshiping?
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Well, in Islam, the answer is no. So in Quran chapter 4, verse 171 and Quran chapter 5, verse 73, it comes right out and warns people,
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don't call him the son of God.
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Don't say Trinity.
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God is one.
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In the Islamic view, calling a prophet God is the single worst sin or the worst mistake that you could do,
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that Allah is ultimately one force and that all the prophets are serving Allah, but they are not the same.
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Now, it's a difficult theological concept, but as Christians, we believe also in one God.
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We are monotheistic, but we have the Trinity, which is its own episode we should do a whole thing on.
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But all of this sort of sets up the strangest claim in the entire episode, the crucifixion.
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So Christianity is built on Jesus's crucifixion.
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It is the single most important event that happens in the Bible and ultimately the resurrection.
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So in Christianity, you have the death and the cross and the resurrection three days later.
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And it's not a minor detail.
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It is the entire thesis of the religion of Christianity.
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But Islam looks at that same exact event and goes, not exactly.
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So for example, Quran chapter four, verse 157, 159 says it flat out.
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They didn't kill him.
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They didn't crucify him, but it was made to appear that way to them and that God raised him up to himself.
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Now, got to be careful because even most Muslims don't all read this the exact same way.
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Most classical scholars will say that it means somebody else got crucified in Jesus's place, some type of substitute while God lifted the real Jesus up bodily,
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still alive, that Christ was never crucified, therefore never had to be resurrected.
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Others read raised more like a spiritual thing.
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And it's genuinely still debated amongst Muslim scholars to this day.
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But the mainstream majority take, the one that we're going to use as a reference point for our story, lands somewhere kind of.
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interesting to hear if you come at it from any type of Christian context.
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It's the idea that Isa, that Jesus never died.
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He got taken up alive and has been there waiting by God's side ever since.
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Now, this is a really important theological note for Muslims because if Jesus never died, then he doesn't need a resurrection to come back like anyone else.
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He can just come back.
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So pick up a life that got paused mid -sentence 2 ,000 years ago.
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So in the Quran, the Quran's version of Jesus, he is miraculous and honored and human, but not God.
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And crucially, was never crucified or killed, just now hanging out with Allah in a bodily form, waiting.
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Now you might be asking, what is he waiting for?
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Well, let's jump to the next place that Isa enters the picture in traditional Islamic theology, and that is at the Apocalypse.
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Now if you're familiar with the Muslim end times, you're probably familiar with the Dajjal, the sword, the descent from the sky.
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But what's interesting is that almost none of that is described in the Quran at all.
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So this next part is the single most important thing to keep straight in the whole episode.
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So let's go through it slowly to make sure we can get everything right.
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Here it is.
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Almost everything spectacular that you're going to hear about Jesus's return, like him landing in Damascus, killing the Dajjal, aka the Antichrist, who I'll explain in a second,
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the saffron robes, the 40 -year reign, everything we go over, almost none of it is directly from the Quran, from the holy book of Islam.
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It comes from the Hadith.
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Now, the Hadith are a huge collection of reports about what the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said and did,
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gathered up and fact -checked in the centuries after the Prophet died.
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So you can think of it this way.
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Like, the Quran is scripture.
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It is, for Muslims, it's almost like Jesus himself in a book, in a text, that was literally given by God to the Prophet.
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The Hadith are a record of the Prophet's teachings things around
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that scripture both matter a ton in islam
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but they're not actually the same thing what's up guys we're gonna take a break real quick
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Now, let's get back to the show.
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So let's try to sort through these two sources to understand what we're talking about.
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What does the Quran give us about Isa?
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Well, similar things, the virgin birth, the miracles by God's permission, the non -crucifixion, the raising up,
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and the one teasing, disputed little verse, Quran 43, verse 61, that calls Jesus something like a sign of the hour,
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that hour being judgment day.
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Some scholars read that as a straight up prediction that he's coming back.
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Others read it differently in a more metaphorical sense.
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And honestly, it's one of those things that has just continued to be argued about.
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But that one verse is about as close as the Quran itself gets to talking about a return of Jesus
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and everything else, which is a lot in traditional, you know, Muslim theology or eschatology comes from the Hadith, the specific city of return,
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the specific clothing, the weapon he'll use, the specific enemy all of it lives in the big trusted collections.
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And these are the collections, which I'm going to try my best with pronunciation, the Sahih al -Bukhari, the Sahih Muslim, and the Sunan Abi Dawood.
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Now, there is a scholar named David Cook, and his stuff is basically the go -to academic reference on Islamic end -time materials.
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And he makes exactly this point.
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The overwhelming book of Islam's detailed apocalypse isn't scripture outright.
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It is hadith.
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It is recorded preaching.
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Now, Look, it's not like a problem or anything.
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For most Muslims, a solid, authenticated Hadith carries real religious weight, but it also does mean
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that the apocalypse we're going to walk through got assembled piece by piece in the tradition that grew up around the Quran, not inside of it.
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And it's important, I think, to highlight the difference between the Quran and the Hadith because, I mean, two reasons.
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One, a ton of people, Muslims and non -Muslims, genuinely have no idea which parts are scripture,
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like from Allah himself, and which parts are tradition told around the prophet after his death.
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So out of respect for the text and, of course, for the religion and everyone in it, we're going to do our best to keep it all straight.
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And two, I think it explains something that we're going to come back to over and over again, and that is the disagreements.
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So when a detail comes from a bunch of separate reports instead of one fixed verse, you're going to get variation, different versions, different chains of who heard it and from whom.
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And scholars are going to argue about what it actually means for centuries.
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Again, that's not a problem.
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It's just what a tradition built out of thousands of reports looks like.
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And you're going to find similar issues in Christianity to an extent as well.
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So now we can finally ask the question that we are leading towards this entire episode.
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God's gonna send one prophet down to earth to end humanity's final showdown, to save all human beings, one person.
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So why not the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him?
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The guy that Islam calls the greatest prophet of all, the seal of the prophets,
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the final messenger, why go past the prophet Muhammad and go to Jesus?
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So the classical answer to this question is brilliant, and it comes in layers, so stick with me.
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So the first layer is that Issa is the only one that's available.
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Remember how in Islam, Issa never died, right?
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He was raised up alive bodily, and he's been there ever since.
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Every other prophet, so Moses, Abraham, even the prophet Muhammad, peace be to all of them.
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One more peace to all of them, just for the sake of this episode.
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I'm just going to kind of save them, so peace to everyone involved.
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But all of these prophets are dead and buried and waiting on the general resurrection like the rest of humanity.
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But Jesus, he's the one guy with an unfinished life.
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So his return doesn't need a resurrection.
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It just resumes like you pause the movie and then you hit play again.
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The Prophet Muhammad story is finished, sealed and completed, buried in Medina.
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Isa's story is still an open book.
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And at the end of the world is where it's finally going to be closed.
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And there's a deeper layer even under that.
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And this part is so fascinating to me think about the two big mistakes, if you will, that Islam believes that the rest of the world made about Isa.
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The first mistake is that he died on the cross.
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And the second mistake is that he was God himself.
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Islam says both of these are wrong.
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So now you have to ask yourself, what would it take to fix both of those publicly and permanently and at the climax of all of history?
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Well, you need Isa himself back alive, which according to their argument proves that he never died, bowing to God, which proves that he isn't God himself and never was God.
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So this is how all those rumors will be dispelled in
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one singular action with the one witness literally no one can argue with, which is Jesus.
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And then the tradition adds a little twist.
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So the bad guy Isa comes back to destroy is the Dajjal.
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That is the name.
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That's literally the name that translates to the false messiah.
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This is the great deceiver, a figure whose entire deal is tricking the world into worshiping him as divine.
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And we actually did an entire episode on the Dajjal at religion camp.
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So you can check it out because the entire story of the Dajjal and who he is, and it's super interesting and frankly, pretty creepy.
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But notice what's happening here.
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Symbolically, the prophet who got falsely worshiped as God is the exact guy sent to personally take down history's ultimate false god.
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Literally the Antichrist.
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The confusion about who Isa was in his life becomes the whole reason
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that he's chosen to end the biggest lie about divinity when he comes back.
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Now, of course, scholars just call this, you know, poetic justice.
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And I mean, it is like if you look at it strictly like, you know, even if you are not a believer, a follower of Islam, you can look at this and be like, it's just good.
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It's just good writing, you know, and that is why Isa is the one at the end of times that is going to cut down the Dajjal.
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Now, let's look at the world that he's coming back into because by the time he shows up, the place is already on fire.
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So I know I mentioned a couple minutes ago that we already did an episode on the Dajjal, but really quick, if you haven't seen it, I'm just going to catch you up on all the most important things because I think it's needed for this section.
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The Dajjal is Islam's antichrist, right?
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The Hadith in Sahih Muslim describes him as one -eyed with the word kafir meaning unbeliever written right across his forehead.
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And every true believer can read it and see for themselves what it is.
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He shows up in a time of total chaos and famine, pulls off these terrifying fake miracles, and drags most of humanity into his lie.
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ultimately into believing that he himself is God.
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Now, how big of a deal is this guy?
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Well, there is a hadith, Sahih Muslim 2946, that puts it about as strong as you can possibly put it.
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From the creation of Adam all the way to the end of the world, there is no fitna greater than the Dajah.
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Now, a fitna is a trial.
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It's a temptation.
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But it says in this hadith, there is no temptation or trial greater than this one.
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Nothing.
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He is the most dangerous test that the human race will ever face.
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And into all that chaos, a second figure rises up.
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This is the Mahdi.
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And this is the rightly guided one, a divinely guided leader who basically comes to rally the believers in the last days.
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Now, again, this is where we kind of got to go slow
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because the Mahdi is where the certainty starts getting a little shaky from interpretation to translation.
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Because, you know, the belief in Jesus coming back is basically a universal idea across Islam.
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It's rock solid.
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You're not really going to meet any practicing Muslims that don't believe that.
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But interestingly, the Mahdi is not as definite.
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And there's a big reason why.
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The Mahdi is not in the Quran at all.
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Like not even once.
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He's a Hadith and a later tradition thing.
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And even within the Hadith, scholars argue about which Mahdi actually has the most reliable reports behind them.
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So most Muslims do believe a Mahdi is coming, but exactly who he is and what he does, it's a little bit more blurry.
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So, for example, a core Sunni report in Sunan Abi Dawood, where Muhammad, peace be upon him, says the Mahdi will come from his own family,
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from the line of his daughter, Fatima. And
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that one line from the descendants of Fatima is exactly where two of the biggest branches of Islam go in different directions.
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Because, as you may know, Sunnis and Shias agree Issa is coming back.
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They agree a Mahdi is coming.
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But on the question of who the Mahdi actually is, I mean, they couldn't disagree more.
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And their disagreement centers on a major question.
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Has the Mahdi been born yet?
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So for most Sunni Muslims, the answer is no. The Mahdi is a future guy, Someone that is yet to come, not born yet, or at least not yet revealed.
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He'll be a descendant of the prophet through Fatima's line, who's going to step onto the scene during some period of massive global crisis,
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get recognized, and lead the believers, right?
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He's going to come later.
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But Twelver Shia Islams, this is the biggest Shia branch, and a very dominant religion, perhaps the most dominant in Iran.
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It actually gives a different answer.
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For them, the Mahdi isn't some future arrival at all.
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He's a specific, real, historical person who's already here, just hidden.
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Now, this can be confusing if you're not super familiar with the story.
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So again, you can check out our episode on the Dajjal, but I'll try to explain a little more here.
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They identify him, the Mahdi, as the 12th Imam, Muhammad al -Mahdi.
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He was born back in the 9th century, and they believe that he never died.
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Instead, he entered the state that they call occultation, which basically means concealed by God.
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So, he's alive, still on earth, and has been hidden among us and waiting for thousands of years.
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Now, sit with that for a second, because it sounds a little crazy if you're not brought up in this tradition, right?
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In this version, the end times don't create the Mahdi.
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They reveal the one who's been hiding in the wings the entire time.
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Now, that one detail creates a genuinely different story.
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And Shia tradition has built out the most detailed, most systematized end times roadmap of maybe any school in Islam,
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right down to the order of things and how they will happen.
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So some Shia narrations have the hidden imam come out and rule for a set period before Issa even shows up.
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And then Issa arrives and prays behind him, basically vouching for him like, yo, this is this is the real Mahdi, right? right?
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Sunni accounts usually pack the two guys' big moments like much closer together.
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But, and this part is really important because it is the thread that connects both of these versions.
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Isa, Jesus, right, is not the guy at the top.
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He comes back to back up the Muslim community's leader, not to become him or to replace him, which brings us to the moment that everything's been building towards.
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This is the actual descent.
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This is the single moment that Issa comes back to a world that is, I mean, just completely collapsing.
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And the Hadith describes this event with like movie level details.
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So mainstream Sunni theology and a lot of Shia traditions too, they say that Issa returns physically before the day of judgment.
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And the big description comes from Sahih Muslim 2937.
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This is a Hadith and here's how it goes.
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The terror that the Dajjal has brought to the world is at its absolute peak.
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It is just carnage and chaos and mayhem.
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And right at that moment, God sends down Issa the son of Miriam.
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And he descends at the white minaret on the eastern side of Damascus.
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And he's wearing two garments, lightly dyed with saffron.
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His hands are resting on the wings of two angels.
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I mean, just notice how specific that is.
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It's not somewhere on earth.
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They name a city that still exists.
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Damascus is still a real city.
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They name a structure, a white minaret, which a lot of later traditions pin to the eastern minaret of the great Umayyad mosque.
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They even know the color of his clothes and the angels holding him up on either side.
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Now, another hadith, Sahih al -Bukhari 3448.
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This gives you a matching promise.
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The son of Mary is coming down soon as a just ruler.
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And the hadith just keeps layering on the details.
370
When Jesus lowers his head, the water drips off, just like he stepped out of a bath.
371
When he lifts his head back up, the drops roll off of him like scattered pearls, and his breath is lethal to falsehood.
372
Every disbeliever it touches is said to drop dead, and it reaches as far as anyone can see.
373
But here's the moment that I think we should really lock into.
374
You would figure that Issa returns and takes charge, right?
375
I mean, he's Jesus.
376
He's the only prophet that's up there with Allah.
377
Like, he's going to come back, he's going to save the day, and he's going to rule the earth, right?
378
No. Instead, and this is from a hadith, from a report from Musnad Ahmad 23408, and it flips the entire thing.
379
So the Mahdi, out of pure respect, turns to Jesus and invites him to step up and lead the group prayer.
380
And Jesus says no. Isa looks at the Mahdi and says no. And he tells him, basically, this leadership is yours.
381
And then he falls in line and prays behind this Muslim leader.
382
So think about what that image is saying.
383
The most exalted figure in all of Christian history,
384
literally God himself, right, comes back in glory in front of everyone and chooses to be one worshiper in the crowd,
385
bowing to God right alongside the Muslim leader.
386
So in one gesture, the whole tradition makes its entire argument that Isa is not God himself, but is a servant of God.
387
Now, I'm going to pause here because this is the exact kind of thing I want to flag just for nuance.
388
Not every hadith agrees on this point specifically.
389
Some narrations actually have Isa leading the prayer, And Muslim scholars have, once again, spent centuries trying to square these two.
390
Maybe he leads once, maybe he defers another time, maybe the reports are describing different moments entirely.
391
So we can't just pretend like it's settled.
392
The point is just that the dominant image,
393
the one carrying much of the theological weight is the one where Isa humbles himself before God and prays behind the Mahdi.
394
Now, after that moment of humility, he goes to war, except the fight with the Dajjal is not the fight that you're expecting.
395
In fact, killing the Antichrist is not even ESA's hardest job.
396
Do you have a friend that buys gold instead of crypto because he doesn't trust the internet?
397
That's a power move.
398
You got a buddy that has like a backup generator
399
and a bunch of canned food and somehow knows that a blackout's coming before the power company does?
400
That's a power move.
401
And do you have a friend that hired Morgan & Morgan?
402
Well, guess what?
403
That's a power move.
404
Yep, Morgan & Morgan is America's largest injury law firm with over 100 offices nationwide and over 1 ,000 lawyers.
405
They've recovered over $30 billion from more than 500 ,000 clients.
406
In Florida, they secured a $644 million verdict after the defense argued that the victim and his wife should get nothing.
407
That is a power move.
408
So if you are ever injured, you can check out Morgan & Morgan.
409
And their fee is free unless they win.
410
Go to forthepeople .com slash Gagnon or dial pound law.
411
That's pound 529 from your cell phone.
412
That is forthepeople .com slash Gagnon.
413
This is a paid advertisement.
414
So here's the actual showdown.
415
And I promise you, it's not maybe the epic like Hollywood sword fight that you're picturing.
416
So here's what the Hadith say happens.
417
The moment the Dajjal sees Issa coming for him, he starts to dissolve.
418
And the image that the tradition uses is unforgettable.
419
It says that the Dajjal melts like salt in water.
420
Remember, this is the creature who terrorized the entire planet, who fooled all of humanity, who got called the single greatest trial since Adam.
421
And the instant he lays eyes on the real prophet of God, staring at him, he just falls apart.
422
And that's significant because, again, think of Issa's breath.
423
It literally says that falsehood literally can't hold its shape in the presence of the real thing, that literally the breath of Issa can destroy falsehood.
424
But Jesus chases him down and finishes it at a specific spot, at the gate of Lod.
425
Now again, because this detail is rare, most apocalyptic prophecies name places that are either symbolic or maybe lost to history,
426
but once again, not this one.
427
Lod is a real place.
428
Today, it's called Lod.
429
It's a city in Israel right near Tel Aviv.
430
And you can pull it up on a map right now.
431
You can just Google it.
432
It's actually where Israel's main international airport sits.
433
So a prophecy written down in the seventh century pins the exact death of the Antichrist to a spot
434
that you can literally pull up right now on Google Maps.
435
Whatever you make of the theology, that kind of specificity is really cool and really interesting to Islam.
436
Now, here's another little thing that I love about how all the old scholars basically organized this.
437
So the chapter in Sahih Muslim that tells this entire story is basically titled all in one sentence, The Appearance of the Dajjal,
438
His Stay on Earth, and the Descent of Jesus and His Killing Him.
439
They didn't file these in separate stories.
440
To the guys who completed and ultimately compiled the Hadith, the Dajjal
441
and the Returning of Jesus were always one arc the deceiver
442
the one sent to undo him they were bound together from
443
the jump like they are interconnected like cosmically like you can't
444
have a dijal without jesus coming to destroy him like their their destinies are intertwined
445
and so the dijal is dead
446
and in most people's mental movie of an apocalypse that's the climax right like you had this evil person
447
that tried and you know tried to deceive all of humanity then the hero comes down
448
and then judgment day comes and then roll credits, that's the end, right?
449
Produced by Dick Wolf or whatever comes up at the end of this movie.
450
Except in Islam, it's not the ending.
451
In fact, it's not even really the middle.
452
This is where Islam's version splits hard from the one that most people in the West think that they know.
453
And honestly, it's stranger than you probably even realize.
454
Here's the version you probably know.
455
If you studied Revelation in like Sunday school, you would probably think like, this is probably a story you're familiar with, right?
456
Jesus comes back and it runs pretty much straight into the final judgment.
457
He returns.
458
Satan loses.
459
The world ends.
460
Everybody gets judged.
461
Heaven and hell.
462
Boom.
463
That's it.
464
But in Islam, killing the Dajjal doesn't trigger the end.
465
It opens up an entire new chapter of history.
466
So let's go through the actual sequence in Islam.
467
Issa returns, kills the Dajjal.
468
A stretch of peace and prosperity settles over the earth with him ruling justly.
469
And then the ground cracks open with the next crisis.
470
It's called Yajuj and Majuj, Gog and Magog.
471
Now, what is this, right?
472
Who are these two?
473
Well, they're not just a Hadith tradition, but they actually come straight out of the Quran, which once again, matters a lot for the theology.
474
So remember that.
475
Sarah al -Khaf, chapter 18, verse 94 through 98, tells of a righteous ruler, this guy, Dul -Karneyan.
476
And the name literally translates to the two -horned one,
477
which way back in time walled off a violent world corrupting people behind this massive barrier of iron
478
and molten copper like to protect everybody else from them
479
and surah al -anbiya chapter 21 verses 96 through 97 promises
480
that one day this wall will give out
481
and the world corrupting people will come pouring down from every height
482
and the release all by itself is a sign that the hour is near.
483
Now, the hour of this is, of course, you know, the end times.
484
And then the Hadith fills in the horror of this whole thing.
485
So Gog and Magog swarm out, all these world -corrupting people, and their numbers are beyond counting.
486
From every slope, every hill, they just come and destroy.
487
So they drink entire lakes dry.
488
One report says that the first of them passes the Sea of Galilee and drinks it down.
489
And then the last one to arrive is like, Oh, I thought there was water in this lake.
490
I mean, they just destroy everything.
491
They eat everything.
492
They trample everything.
493
They destroy and defile everything.
494
And for once, Issa, the guy who just melted the Antichrist with looking at him, he can't fight them.
495
There's just too many.
496
So he and the believers retreat.
497
They pull back to a mountain besieged and cornered by Gog and Magog, Yuzh and Majuzh.
498
And times get so bad that a single ox's head is worth more than a fortune.
499
So how does this catastrophe get resolved?
500
Well, it's not by Issa and not by any army.
501
No, Issa and the believers just pray and they beg Allah for help and they look to Allah.
502
They say, what can you do to fix this?
503
And Allah answers directly.
504
And what does he send to wipe out the mightiest force that humanity has ever faced?
505
A worm, or rather a parasite, a tiny parasite into the necks of Gog and Magog.
506
And in a single night, the entire uncountable horde just dropped dead all at once.
507
It literally says, as one soul dies.
508
The most unstoppable army in all of history undone, not by some great hero's blade or by a great general or by a rebellion of the people,
509
but by God's smallest curse in an answer to a prayer.
510
And then there's the cleanup.
511
And even that's described very vividly.
512
The earth is buried.
513
in their bodies, literally uncountable amounts of these world corrupting people that destroy everything,
514
just covers the entire earth until God sends birds to haul the corpses away and rain to wash the entire world clean.
515
And then peace comes back under Isa again.
516
Oh, and one final image just to really hammer everything home.
517
There's a Hadith in Sahih al -Bukhari where God tells Adam to send forth everyone bound for the fire.
518
And the ratio comes out to like 999 out of every 1000.
519
And when the horrified crowd hears this and asks how anybody's getting saved against those odds, the answer is basically, hey, relax.
520
The overwhelming bulk of that 999, that's actually Gog and Magog.
521
So most of the people that die are going to go to the fire, but most of the people that are dead at this point are the uncorruptible
522
or the corruptible earth -eating people that are existing behind these gates.
523
And that's how the tradition pictures their numbers.
524
Not a nation, not an army.
525
Damn near most of everyone who's ever lived.
526
It's an interesting note just how many people will be sent to the fire because that's how the tradition pictures it.
527
It's not a nation that gets sent.
528
It's not an army.
529
It's almost everyone who's ever lived.
530
But the vast majority of them are Gog and Magog.
531
So now the deceiver's gone.
532
The final catastrophe of, you know, these, the horde of people drinking every lake dry, they're gone.
533
The earth is clean and it's at peace, which finally lets us circle back to the guy that our story started with.
534
What happens to Jesus now?
535
Well, he's ruling the world, which is now at peace.
536
And it's kind of described as like the golden age.
537
And during this period, the Hadith describes a few specific acts, really big symbolic ones.
538
And once again, you have to handle these carefully
539
because this is a spot where even like the most thoughtful Muslim scholars themselves are really cautious.
540
So keep that in mind.
541
To start, a lot of widely repeated hadiths say that Issa sticks around on earth for about 40 years before he dies.
542
But the truth is that's not some fixed like locked in figure across every report.
543
Different chains will give you different timelines.
544
So treat 40 years as a popular round number.
545
And then there's two acts that get singled out and they are super fascinating.
546
First, Isa is said to break the cross,
547
which is traditionally read as him personally rejecting the whole Christian claim that he was crucified and that he is God.
548
Second, he said to abolish the jizya.
549
That is a tax that was historically levied on non -Muslims living under Muslim rule.
550
And the classical reading is that in Issa's time, there's simply nobody left to tax because his return settles the truth.
551
So no more room for doubt or for questions.
552
Everybody on earth is on the same page.
553
All people that are living on earth are Muslim.
554
But, and here's a caveat, a lot of modern scholars read breaking the cross and abolishing the jizya symbolically.
555
Or within the specific historical moment that those reports first came out.
556
Not as like a literal, physical, like exactly beat by beat this is exactly what's going to happen prediction of things that will occur.
557
And honestly, the same tension runs through the Gog and Magog stuff too.
558
Some contemporary voices read chunks of that more allegorically as well.
559
Though, to be fair, in the other direction, plenty of mainstream classical scholarship pushes back on that claim.
560
So scholars like Yasir Qadhi, a really well -known contemporary voice in Islam, he generally insists that these are literal future beings and events,
561
not metaphors, not symbols.
562
These are real parasites and a real horde of people and a real Issa that comes down to kill a real Dajjal.
563
And here's the disclaimer that I've been kind of making through the whole episode that I want to make again.
564
Not every detail in this story carries the same weight or the same confidence.
565
Some of it is rock solid near universal belief across Islam, yet some of it is one report amongst several different reports,
566
and it's still getting talked about 15 centuries later.
567
And saying that doesn't weaken the story.
568
It's just a true respectful and representative of all the different beliefs across Islamic traditions.
569
Like any religion, Islam is not one single thing with one way to be.
570
And honestly, the same thing is true across Christian denominations, right?
571
Especially including end times for the record.
572
Some people in Christianity are like, oh, we all get raptured.
573
Other people are like, it's a period of peace before Jesus.
574
Some people say it's a period of peace after.
575
There's discrepancies, which leaves one last thing to say about Isa, because once again, his story still isn't finished,
576
but it is about to be.
577
Now, in Christian scripture, the returned Christ reigns forever.
578
Death is behind him.
579
He is resurrected.
580
Christ basically rules for the rest of time.
581
But in Islam, After all of it, the descent, killing the Dajjal, Gog and Magog, the parasite, the years of ruling, Issa eventually dies.
582
And in this tradition, it is a natural death, a normal human death, just like everybody else must have.
583
And here's the thing.
584
The ending isn't some afterthought.
585
It is a really important point in Islam
586
because it's Islamic theology insisting once again that Issa is fully and completely human and only human.
587
An honored prophet, very important, but again, not God.
588
So his natural death at the end of the story, once again, just drives that point home.
589
Now, before we wrap up, there's another important detail, and I just want to flag it as one of like the shakier links in this entire chain.
590
Some later Islamic traditions hold that Isa is buried or will be buried in Medina near the Prophet Muhammad.
591
There's even said to be a spot reserved for him.
592
It's a widely repeated belief, but again, it's not grounded firmly in the Quran.
593
And it's honestly one of the more debated, less certain claims in this entire story, but I thought it'd be interesting to bring up.
594
So the one prophet God sent back to earth is also the one prophet Islam is very, very specific to tell about his death.
595
Isa doesn't come back to become eternal or to become God.
596
He comes back to finish being human.
597
So I'd bet that many of you had no idea that Jesus played any role in the apocalypse in Islam, let alone being like a starring role.
598
Unless, of course, you've listened to this channel before, or you have read up about, you know, Muslim eschatology, or you were raised Muslim.
599
It's a fascinating detail.
600
And it's not just like, you know, a footnote.
601
It's not like Jesus is like one of the characters.
602
He is the one who comes down who the whole thing centers on.
603
And think about how significant that is for a second.
604
Two of the biggest religions that the world has ever produced disagree about who Jesus is.
605
At the deepest level, the disagreement can go, Right.
606
One says he is God.
607
The others say that calling him God is perhaps the biggest sin you can make.
608
And he was just a great prophet.
609
It's not those differences are irreconcilable.
610
Right.
611
Yet separately across 14 centuries, both of them looked ahead at the end of everything to the final battle, the last darkness.
612
And in the middle of that, both of them see him, Jesus Christ, the son of Mary.
613
So while the two traditions disagree fundamentally, I don't dispute that, and they disagree who Issa is, how it all goes down,
614
and which details are literal and which are symbolic, but if you set that aside for a second, it's interesting that underneath all the disagreements, both of these apocalypses are leading to the same thing.
615
That after all of that, after the deceivers and the Antichrist, the Djal melting like salt, Gog and Magog swarming over the hills, the parasites, the plagues, the despair,
616
all of that, the world coming apart.
617
After everything, there will be peace.
618
A world made quiet again, where everyone is in harmony, made whole, made perfect.
619
And in both stories, Jesus is central to that peace.
620
And of course, according to the role that Christians have always given him, and now the one that you know Islam gives him to,
621
that is massive and really interesting to me, right?
622
Yeah, two faiths that can't agree on exactly who he is, but yet both are trusting the same face to carry the world out of its darkest hour
623
and into the peace on the other side.
624
Both sides are promising that the apocalypse isn't the end of the story
625
and that Jesus will be integral to finishing the job.
626
Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a brief overview of the story of the Muslim end times,
627
specifically the role that Issa plays in all of it.
628
Crazy.
629
Issa bin Miriam, Jesus Christ himself.
630
If you had to take a sample, Rafni, could you do me a favor?
631
Could you Google how many Muslims are in the world and how many Christians are in the world?
632
I mean, it's got to be like most of the world or like how many like Catholic Christians, right?
633
Because Christianity is probably, I'm going to guess 1 .5.
634
Islam is another 1 .5.
635
What do you think?
636
So Christians represent the largest...
637
Whoa.
638
So 29 % of the world's population, 2 .3 billion.
639
And now what about Islam?
640
Things down there, right?
641
Oh, Muslims are the second fastest growing, 1 .9 billion.
642
So 29 % plus 25%, 44%.
643
That's just about half.
644
Dang near, you know what I'm saying?
645
That's about half.
646
So if you ask half of the world who's going to be there at the end of times, at the end of the at the apocalypse, it's going to save everyone.
647
Half the people on the world is going to be like, oh, Jesus, that's an insane run.
648
Generational run.
649
Now, again, I'm not saying every religion is saying the same thing.
650
I'm not saying everybody agrees.
651
I'm just saying the fact that you could just be like, yo, who's the guy that's going to save humanity?
652
And everyone, half the people, one and two are going to be like, yo, Jesus Christo.
653
That's kind of fire, dude.
654
if you think about it like
655
that you read about islam you read about the quran all
656
of a sudden you get real proud of being christian you're like dude our guy did
657
that that's fire think about that
658
and then the jews are probably a little bit excited because he was born jewish you know i mean
659
so the jews are like yeah he's kind of our guy
660
you know we actually made him you know that's fire dude think about
661
that like even if you're a like atheist
662
or agnostic to think about the impact let's say you just think
663
that jesus was a historical person you don't think that he was divine at all You don't think he was a prophet.
664
You don't think he was God.
665
You just think he was a guy with some ideas, right?
666
If that's your camp, the most influential human being to ever live.
667
Yeah.
668
I mean, not even close.
669
And then there's Michael Jackson.
670
It's like Jesus all the way down here, Michael Jackson, and then go another hundred feet down me.
671
Think about that, right?
672
Like the level of like just influence of a dude.
673
Shout out to him, bro.
674
Like I believe he's God.
675
You know, I believe Christ is king.
676
You know what I'm saying?
677
But if you don't believe that, you just got to give it up to Jesus one time.
678
Just be like, yo, he really did that.
679
He snapped like crazy.
680
I don't know.
681
What do you guys think?
682
Is there anything that I missed?
683
If you grew up Muslim, if you're a Muslim scholar, if there's anything that I said incorrectly or just completely overlooked, please educate me in the comments.
684
Just be civil.
685
Try to be kind about it.
686
I'm really doing my best here.
687
So let me know if you are a Christian or grew up in some other type of faith tradition, maybe you're Hindu or Jewish.
688
What did you think about this?
689
Is this something that resonated with you or there overlaps with your own end time stuff?
690
I mean, Hinduism has a fascinating end time with Kalki coming back and the Kali -yug and all that stuff.
691
It's crazy.
692
So if there's anything that I missed or anything that you think should have been highlighted more, please drop a comment, YouTube or Spotify.
693
I read all of them.
694
And even if I don't respond right away, I do read them and someone else will certainly respond and it'll be helpful to the conversation in the comments.
695
Additionally, if you like historical stuff, we talked about a little bit of history today, but not really.
696
But if you like a lot of historical stuff, well, great news.
697
We have History Camp.
698
If you like deep diving on crazy mysteries and occult stuff and conspiracies, great news.
699
We have Campy Agnon.
700
That's the main channel where I talk to people way smarter than me.
701
And I want you to join our secret society.
702
Yeah, it's a very secret society.
703
You're going to get every episode of this show and every other show completely ad -free.
704
You're also going to get monthly Zooms.
705
You're going to get bonus episodes that never go out to the public.
706
And you're going to get merch discounts.
707
And all of that is yours for a small sacrifice.
708
It's not a blood sacrifice.
709
No, it is just going to be the price of a cup of coffee every single month, $5, and you're going to get all that and more when you go to patreon .com slash campgagnon.
710
You can check it out in the description below.
711
Now, of course, if you just like to rock with the religious vibe and you're fascinated by what everybody believes, well, great news.
712
You're in the right place.
713
You're always welcome at religion camp every single Sunday.
714
God bless you all.
715
Have a beautiful weekend, and I'll see you next time.
716
Peace.

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Jesus Defeats Islam’s Antichrist”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: jesus, Muslim, islam. This video has 716 sentences and 9113 words to shadow. The speech runs for 47:45. The speaker talks fast, about 191 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

WordPronunciationMeaning
prophet noun/ˈpɹɑ.fɪt/Someone who speaks by divine inspiration.
scholar noun/ˈskɑlɚ/A student; one who studies at school or college, typically having a scholarship.
verse noun/ˈvɝs/A poetic form with regular meter and a fixed rhyme scheme.
humanity noun/hjuˈmænɪti/Humankind; human beings as a group.
miracle noun/ˈmɪɹ.ə.kəl/An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin.
apocalypse noun/əˈpɑkəlɪps/A revealing, especially a prophecy of, or the unfolding of, supernatural events.
theology noun/θiˈɒ.lə.d͡ʒi/The study of God, a god, or gods; and of the truthfulness of religion in general.
believer noun/bɪˈlivɚ/A person who believes; especially regarding religion.
argue verb/ˈɑɹ.ɡju/To show grounds for concluding (that); to indicate, imply.
pray verb/pɹeɪ/To direct words, thoughts, or one's attention to a deity or any higher being, for the sake of adoration, thanks, petition for help, etc.
bury verb/ˈbɛɹi/To outlive.
scripture noun/ˈskɹɪpt͡ʃɚ/A sacred writing or holy book.
resurrection noun/ɹɛzəˈɹɛkʃən/The act of arising from the dead and becoming alive again.
belief noun/bɪˈliːf/Mental acceptance of a claim as true.
angel noun/ˈeɪ̯n.d͡ʒəl/An incorporeal and holy or semidivine messenger from a deity or other divine entity, traditionally depicted as a youthful, winged figure in flowing robes.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

WordPronunciationMeaning
come back verbTo return to a place.
grow up verbTo mature and become an adult.
check out verbTo record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
come down verbTo descend, fall down, collapse.
go through verbTo travel from one end of something to the other.
show up verbTo appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically.
come out verb/ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/To be discovered; to be revealed.
go down verbTo descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

  • They say, what can you do to fix this?
  • Dang near, you know what I'm saying?
  • You know what I'm saying?
  • What do you guys think?
  • Is there anything that I missed?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

StructureIn the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters nowyou've watched · haven't read · has been
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does itwas born · are aligned · is honored
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thingone who was · guy who Christianity · persons, which is

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 131 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

  • The “th” sounds: theology /θiˈɒ.lə.d͡ʒi/, theological /θi.əˈlɑd͡ʒɪkl/, clothing /ˈkloʊðɪŋ/, bath /bɑːθ/, thread /ˈθɹɛd/
  • The “sh” and “zh” sounds: resurrection /ɹɛzəˈɹɛkʃən/, worship /ˈwɝ.ʃɪp/, collections /kəˈlɛkʃənz/, prediction /pɹɪˈdɪkʃən/, temptation /ˌtɛmpˈteɪʃən/
  • Long words — get the stress right: humanity /hjuˈmænɪti/, apocalypse /əˈpɑkəlɪps/, theology /θiˈɒ.lə.d͡ʒi/, resurrection /ɹɛzəˈɹɛkʃən/, disagreement /dɪsəˈɡɹiːmənt/

How to practise with this video

  1. Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
  2. Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
  3. Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like prophet, scholar, verse.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →