Should we stone A. Wallace?
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awwww
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Peace,
You guys are doing just fine without me, so maybe I shouldn't even comment. But I just wanted to say that one can be a spiritual messenger or a messenger of many things (you are just bringing a message, which is hopefully important and helpful) without being specifically God's messenger. I didn't read all of those posts so forgive me if I'm just repeating maybe what someone else has said. I also believe that to be God's messenger you need to be God's prophet. So you recieve knowledge from from the unseen realm as a prophet, and from an unseen agent of God (angels), or God itself/himself as a prophet of God. And you are charged to deliver a message as the messenger of the thing or person who charged you with the delivery of that message. If you are a messenger but not a prophet, your the messenger of something seen and common in our world, like the messenger of a king, your friend, your parents etc etc. But as a messenger of God or somethnig else from the unseen realm you must have recieved that message in a prophetic way through some form of inpsiration where that unseen element has made positive contact with you that you can find no way to doubt or cannot rationalize in some other fashion.
The Quran tells all of us to take the example of God's messenger, Muhammad, and to go out and spread the message of the Quran. But that does make us all God's messengers. We become messengers FOR God, but not messengers of God.
I say all that to say Anthony, if you are positive that you were born to bring a message to mankind or to those in your circle and surroundings then the Quran does say that God has given us all a goal that he will push us towards. And I gladly accept and encourage you to bring that message out for all to see. Hopefully we can learn from it. But it is a big difference between saying that we are God's messengers and thus saying that we believe that God has personally charged us with a message through one of his angels or by personally calling us to this task, and saying that we believe God has guided us to a truth and guided us to the knowledge that we must expose that truth for as many as possible to see. In that case we are Messengers of the Truth but not messengers of God, even if one of God's attributes is The Truth (this name is somewhat profound and can be misleading. God is the Truth because he is the author of all things true and he represents all things true, hence making Him synonymous with the Truth. Just like we can say that a statement is true OR the truth). I'm sure you see what I mean?
but I hope you help humanity through the message you bring.
Godbless,
Anwar -
Peace,
You guys are doing just fine without me, so maybe I shouldn't even comment. But I just wanted to say that one can be a spiritual messenger or a messenger of many things (you are just bringing a message, which is hopefully important and helpful) without being specifically God's messenger. I didn't read all of those posts so forgive me if I'm just repeating maybe what someone else has said. I also believe that to be God's messenger you need to be God's prophet. So you recieve knowledge from from the unseen realm as a prophet, and from an unseen agent of God (angels), or God itself/himself as a prophet of God. And you are charged to deliver a message as the messenger of the thing or person who charged you with the delivery of that message. If you are a messenger but not a prophet, your the messenger of something seen and common in our world, like the messenger of a king, your friend, your parents etc etc. But as a messenger of God or somethnig else from the unseen realm you must have recieved that message in a prophetic way through some form of inpsiration where that unseen element has made positive contact with you that you can find no way to doubt or cannot rationalize in some other fashion.
The Quran tells all of us to take the example of God's messenger, Muhammad, and to go out and spread the message of the Quran. But that does make us all God's messengers. We become messengers FOR God, but not messengers of God.
I say all that to say Anthony, if you are positive that you were born to bring a message to mankind or to those in your circle and surroundings then the Quran does say that God has given us all a goal that he will push us towards. And I gladly accept and encourage you to bring that message out for all to see. Hopefully we can learn from it. But it is a big difference between saying that we are God's messengers and thus saying that we believe that God has personally charged us with a message through one of his angels or by personally calling us to this task, and saying that we believe God has guided us to a truth and guided us to the knowledge that we must expose that truth for as many as possible to see. In that case we are Messengers of the Truth but not messengers of God, even if one of God's attributes is The Truth (this name is somewhat profound and can be misleading. God is the Truth because he is the author of all things true and he represents all things true, hence making Him synonymous with the Truth. Just like we can say that a statement is true OR the truth). I'm sure you see what I mean?
but I hope you help humanity through the message you bring.
Godbless,
Anwarpeace,
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Peace,
You guys are doing just fine without me, so maybe I shouldn't even comment. But I just wanted to say that one can be a spiritual messenger or a messenger of many things (you are just bringing a message, which is hopefully important and helpful) without being specifically God's messenger. I didn't read all of those posts so forgive me if I'm just repeating maybe what someone else has said. I also believe that to be God's messenger you need to be God's prophet. So you recieve knowledge from from the unseen realm as a prophet, and from an unseen agent of God (angels), or God itself/himself as a prophet of God. And you are charged to deliver a message as the messenger of the thing or person who charged you with the delivery of that message. If you are a messenger but not a prophet, your the messenger of something seen and common in our world, like the messenger of a king, your friend, your parents etc etc. But as a messenger of God or somethnig else from the unseen realm you must have recieved that message in a prophetic way through some form of inpsiration where that unseen element has made positive contact with you that you can find no way to doubt or cannot rationalize in some other fashion.
The Quran tells all of us to take the example of God's messenger, Muhammad, and to go out and spread the message of the Quran. But that does make us all God's messengers. We become messengers FOR God, but not messengers of God.
I say all that to say Anthony, if you are positive that you were born to bring a message to mankind or to those in your circle and surroundings then the Quran does say that God has given us all a goal that he will push us towards. And I gladly accept and encourage you to bring that message out for all to see. Hopefully we can learn from it. But it is a big difference between saying that we are God's messengers and thus saying that we believe that God has personally charged us with a message through one of his angels or by personally calling us to this task, and saying that we believe God has guided us to a truth and guided us to the knowledge that we must expose that truth for as many as possible to see. In that case we are Messengers of the Truth but not messengers of God, even if one of God's attributes is The Truth (this name is somewhat profound and can be misleading. God is the Truth because he is the author of all things true and he represents all things true, hence making Him synonymous with the Truth. Just like we can say that a statement is true OR the truth). I'm sure you see what I mean?
but I hope you help humanity through the message you bring.
Godbless,
AnwarPeace Anwar,
Thanks for the explanation and I get what your saying. But is that how "messenger" is used in the Quran?
3620 And a man came running from the farthest part of the city, saying ?O my people, follow the messengers.?In this verse the running man is a messenger FOR God by telling the people to follow the messengers OF God?
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Peace,
That man is a messenger/message-bearer for God/God's sake (rasoolu llillaahi/ li-ajlillaahi), indeed. The messengers he mentioned are 'mursaloona.' and this particular man is only a 'rasool' and not a 'mursal' What's the difference? Mursalun comes fro arsala (to send). So a mursalun is someone who has been sent. By whom? That depends on the context. If you read 3514 you get the context of whom sent those 3 individuals and in 3617 we see that they had a message to deliver, making them rusul (pl. of rasool) as well.
As for your question about how the Quran uses the word, I have always been against trying to define a word through Quranic context (only in the most extreme situation would I accept this). Classical Arabic Dictionaries and Lexicons (which represent the speakers of the form of Arabic used before the Quran, during the time of its revelation and recently after the death of the last prophet(god bless him), during the time of the grandchildren, and great grandchildren of the companions.) are for that. With that I also want to add that whereas these dictionries also record usages of new meanings that coinicde with technological advances in post-Quranic history, post-Quranic events and new philosophical concepts, these meanings can be spotted from the source information that the dictionary provides (if it is a comprehensive dictionary). And such meanings must not be read into the Quran. As well, valid pre-islamic meanings that are just Quranically inconsistent should not be read into the Quran either. But that requires Quranic evidence that goes against these meanings in the Quranic context.
Godbless,
Anwar