(Reprinted
from the Muslim Journal 3-5-04 to 4-16-04)
"To
Have Life Better and Abundantly" Part
1
(Imam
W. Deen Mohammed gave this Pub-lic Address in Newark, N.J., on Sun.,
Jan. 11, 2004, dur-ing the Unity Dawah Week-end and CPC/ComTrust
Business Conference hosted by Masjid Al-Haqq.)
Praise be to G-d. We hank you all and greet you
with the greeting of the Muslims, the greetings of G-d's servants
who came before our Prophet Muhammed of Arabia, peace be on him,
G-d's Last Prophet that He sent to this world, the Seal of the Prophets,
Muhammed. They are the greetings of As-Salaam-Alaikum. Peace be
upon you.
The beautiful sunshine today takes your mind off
the cold weather. And if I had any problems, just looking at your
beautiful faces and I know so many of your facings shining before
me, that is enough to make my day. We thank Allah for each other.
There is nothing better than the good family life
and unity. That is for private life at home or wherever we are.
And even more importantly, it is for the family of believers. Believers
are a family; we are a community. When we call each other brothers
and sis-ters, we are saying we are a family.
We thank Allah. I got sever-al calls before getting
here, telling me that if I were here I would be very pleased. They
were telling me that the spirit was very high. So I came here ready
to go. Last night (Jan. 10, 2004) was very beautiful, too. I enjoyed
every minute of it, and my visit here has been a great treat to
me.
Sometimes you have one thing in mind that you want
to share with the audience, but as you are in the same environment,
same place with them and meeting and greet-ing them and seeing their
spirit, you have to change your plan for your address. You change
it slightly but always with the same inter-est.
That interest is, as the Scripture says, "To
have life and to have it better and to have it abundantly."
Allah revealed to us through Muhammed, the Prophet, "I have
created you that you may grow." That doesn't mean to grow physically;
everything grows like that. As long as you have life, you are going
to be growing physically.
But G-d means grow in the life that He created us
for. He has created us that we may grow in the life that He has
created us for. That life, num-ber one, is spiritual life. When
you feel bad and it is not arthritis, when something is bothering
you deep inside, that is spiritual life.
And Allah created us to have a good feeling inside.
Not that pressure. Not that bad feeling. Not that empti-ness. Not
that fear. Allah cre-ated us to be in Paradise, and I am in Paradise.
I am truth-ful with no exaggerations; I am in Paradise.
The physical world all about us, whether you live
in a good land or bad land, in a good neighborhood or bad neigh-borhood,
the physical things all around us - once Allah says, "I'm going
to give this servant of Mine, this worship-per of Mine Paradise,"
noth-ing negative, nothing hurtful, nothing sad, nothing ugly, nothing
distasteful can pene-trate your Garden of Par-adise.
The Scripture says that when the faithful ones pass
in, they pass by those suffer-ing and hollering and making noise,
burning in the flames of hell. They will pass by them but be at
a distance and will not be touched or affected by hell, although
they can look at it from where they are.
That used to be just reading for me. And I accepted
it, because it is revelation. But now I have experienced it. The
flames can be even closer to you.... Oh, I love you peo-ple! It
is not everywhere you can get an audience like this who has a taste
for this heav-enly food that I love.
The ancient who were try-ing to be upright in their
human nature but were living in a human world that was animal, in
terms of its behav-ior, there were a few thinkers among them. And
the thinkers were in the time of the ancient pagan world. They put
in myth a food they called "heavenly food," and they called
it ambrosia. I don't know if this is the same ambrosia, but it is
heavenly food. Praise be to Allah.
Allah says He created us that we may grow in spiritual
life. Spiritual life is the life of our soul. The soul is the big
life that takes in everything. The brain feeds on certain things
that it encounters or experiences. Whatever it comes in contact
with, if it awakens interest in the intel-ligence or in the brain,
the brain will engage it.
But the soul can't help it. It registers everything.
A little baby crying too long in the meeting here, the soul will
be disturbed and say, "Why don't someone go and help that mother
with that child?" We will feel about that child, just like
it is our own child. That is the soul.
The soul hears something in the inner ear and it
may sound good to the brain, but the soul will say, "Something
is wrong with that." But something can be so attractive to
the brain that it will occupy the brain so completely, that the
brain can't hear what the soul has to say.
That was the situation for our father in the Garden
of Paradise. The deceiver talked to him and got his brain to be
completely attentive to what the deceiver was saying. He got so
involved, so engrossed in what the deceiver was say-ing to him about
things that he did not have a complete knowledge of or hardly any
knowledge of.
He couldn't hear with the ear of his soul, so he
was deceived into believing a rationale that was given to him by
Satan, the Shaitan, the devil himself. But the soul never bought
it. And the soul couldn't speak loud enough for the man, our father,
to hear over the loud interest, the loud voice of Satan. He could-n't
hear.
Satan was telling him how to come into another life,
a higher life. And G-d invites us always to come into a higher life.
And G-d tells us, "Never did He plan anything for His worshippers
that Satan didn't scheme to produce the like of it" - to always
take us away from G-d.
Many people are looking for Satan in the city where
the pimps and prostitutes and gamblers, the lost souls are. Satan
has no interest in that. He had them thousands of
years ago. They are operating on his plan without him even being
bothered. He is not interested at all in what is happening in the
life of pimps and prostitutes and gamblers and drug dealers.
Satan says, "That is taken care of. But let
me see what we can do about the Imam's life. Let's see what we can
do about the Rabbi's life. Let's see what we can do about The Vatican.
Let's give our atten-tion to these boys who aren't playing our game.
Let us work our way into their think-ing so subtle, that they will
be on our team, too, while they are thinking they are preach-ing
the Word of G-d."
This is Scripture. I am coming from Scripture. This
is what Scripture warns us of. We are invited to come to the life
that G-d created us for. What is the life? It is the complete life.
Satan has tricked the world of religion into running
away from the whole responsibility that G-d gave to man and leaving
this world that G-d put us in to the wrongdoers.
Allah says, "Who has said to My worshippers
that this material world and the bene-fits of this material world
are not for them?" This is the Qur'an. G-d says, "It is
for them and exclusively for them in the Hereafter."
Let us address for a few minutes the second part
of G-d's Statement, "It is exclusive-ly for them in the Hereafter."
That statement in its second part is saying two important things
to us. First it is saying to us, "Don't worry yourself to death.
Stop grieving over the misery you see in the world. It is only temporary.
And I am allowing it.
"It is not exclusively for you yet. It is to
be shared with the wrongdoers. I have given the wrongdoers the freedom
to get whatever they can get out of this material world. But they
are shut out of the spiritual blessings. That they can't have, neither
in the here or Hereafter."
They will never experience the heaven that Allah
put Adam in, before he fell. They will never experience the heaven
that Allah put Abra-ham in. They will never expe-rience the heaven
that Allah put Jesus Christ in. They will never experience the heaven
that Allah put Muhammed ibn Abdullah, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
in.
They never will experience the heaven that Allah
put the pious saints in - from differ-ent religions. They will never
experience the heaven that Allah has put the son of Eli-jah Muhammad
in.
But Allah says He hasn't barred or shut anybody
out of getting beans and cornbread, having cattle and land and bank
accounts. He hasn't shut anybody out of that, because He is a Wonderful
G-d. He is even good to His enemies. He has given us a sign in David.
David had enemies, but he also had love even for his ene-mies.
Likewise it is for Jesus Christ and many of the
pious saints, including Muhammed the Prophet. He even cared about
his enemies, because they have a human soul, too. Who knows, only
G-d knows who can be saved and who can't. We are just to try our
best to be like our Lord in His Attributes of Patience, Justice
and, most of all, Mercy.
Praise be to Allah. There is nothing that G-d has
not extended mercy to, even to Satan, if you understand it. When
Satan refused to accept G-d's Plan for human beings, did G-d say,
"I'm going to whip you real bad for that." G-d said, "Since
you are deter-mined to do your thing, go on. You are free."
That is mercy.
G-d says, "I'm not going to bring My Power
down on you now. But at the end of your thing; your thing has an
end. And when you reach the end of it, you are going to be in the
fix that you plotted to have My human beings in. And I have created
a fire that you don't know about. It consumes both men and stones."
G-d is calling the devil a stone. A stone can't
feel. But did G-d give up on stones? No. He said that there are
some stones, that under pressure, they will break or crack and water
will gush forth from them.
What is this G-d is saying? He is saying, "No
matter how hard hearted you have become, no matter how hard you
have become as a life, I put water in you and that water will still
be there. And the hell you are going to make for yourself will one
day crack your stones. Water will gush forth from them, and even
tears will fall from Satan's eyes.
Don't forget what Allah says in the Qur'an, "The
Fire is real." I am not talking about something that doesn't
exist or something spooky that you can't understand with your rational
mind. The Fire of Hell is something you can understand with your
rational mind.
The devil's existence is something we can understand
with our rational minds. And if I had permission, I could put my
finger on the devil right now. You know him. I can't put my finger
on every one of them. But I can put my finger on the biggest and
most concentrated company of them. And you all will see it plainly.
But once G-d shows us this, we are forbidden to
show the world. Allah didn't take him out of his hiding place, and
He didn't permit the prophets to take him out of his hiding place.
Now the Bible claims that G-d permitted the successor
to Jesus Christ, Peter, to have the power to bind Satan for a thousand
years, to lock him up for a thousand years and then let him go after
the thou-sand years. Now why would any righteous servant of G-d
want to let him go, if he ever locked him up?
Don't believe that story, even though it is in the
Holy Bible. Since the day he has been permitted to be free, he has
been free ever since. And nobody has the key to lock him up. He
comes out when he wants.
And those who think they have the power to put him
in jail and let him out are deceived. They don't have the power
to do that.
All we have the power to do is respect our good
nature, respect the good life that G-d created us with. And as long
as we respect the good life that G-d created us with, we have a
sure defense against Satan.
Something that seems small with no power has the
power to defeat Satan, and that is your goodness inside you.
Just stay with your good-ness and Satan can't touch
you. If you practice staying with that goodness long enough and
faithful enough - you are not letting sex tempt you away from it;
you are not letting greed for money tempt you away from it; you
are not letting fear of wrongdoers or bullies take it away from
you — if you stick with that long enough, you will win guaranteed
protec-tion from Satan.
He won't be able to come at you in any way. You
will be in Paradise, and he can never come into Paradise. He hates
Paradise, just like he hates the righteous servant.
The wise in the language of myth and culture have
told us that Satan hates this life. If you sprinkle some pure water
on Dracula, what happens to him? If you bring him out into the light,
what happens to him? He is OK in the dark or in the shadows.
The wise in the lan-guage of myth and culture have
told us that Satan hates this life. If you sprinkle some pure water
on Dracula, what happens to him? If you bring him out into the light,
what happens to him? He is OK in the dark or in the shadows.
The water means your innocence, your innocent soul,
your spiritual life. If he were ever touched by that, it is all
over for him. So he makes sure he is not touched; he stays away
from the righ-teous, and he stays out of the bright Light of Truth.
He knows it will do away with him.
As long as you keep to your innocence, don't worry
about the devil. Over a period of generations, of thousands of years,
the people exaggerated the image and power of the devil. They made
him bigger and more powerful than he was. They have him contend-ing
with G-d, as though they are on some equal plane.
In Islam, the Qur'an comes to correct that. It doesn't
say that G-d has any contenders, not even the devil. He is no contender
for G-d. G-d lets us know, "This Satan, this devil, that you
know in your life, he is not My contender. He is your contender."
He is the opponent or the contender of human beings, not of G-d.
G-d forbids that we even think something can chal-lenge
Him. Then He works on the problem of our think-ing that the devil
is so big. He says, "Fight the schemes of Satan (Shaitan),
for surely his schemes are weak." It is not like the old teachings
before the Qur'an came, that magnified him and saw big trouble in
him.
They'd say, "Don't engage him! He is too powerful!"
But the Bible, too, came to deal with that. It said, "Rebuke
Satan." Don't just listen to him, and you know he is talk-ing
wrong. Rebuke him means to tell him he is wrong, and he will run
from you. The Bible says, "Rebuke Satan, and he will flee from
you."
That one statement kills all the other stuff about
him being so powerful. Rebuke Satan, and he will flee from you.
I was convicted for failing to obey the Selective
Service order and was spending time in Sandstone, Minnesota, federal
corrections institute. The Jehovah's Witnesses were in there too
for doing the same thing, failing to obey the Selective Service
order.
There was this big, tall cop-per tone skinned Saintifier
in the religion of Jehovah's Wit-nesses. He knew who I was. But
he thought I was a Mus-lim so far away from G-d, that he thought
I was Satan. So we are having a conversa-tion, and I have always
been the same as I am now. I don't believe in forcing something
on you that you don't want.
So I was being very nice and respectful and was
not trying to convert him. But responding to him and what he was
saying to me, I had to make a little trouble for him. I was being
as gentle as I possibly could. But he got so upset, he said to me,
"Get behind me, Satan." That is what he said to me.
We both were in jail, and I guess he could move
away from me for about 100 feet. So I said to him, "Hold up
brother, the Bible says, 'Rebuke Satan, and he will run from you.'
I'm not run-ning, so what are you run-ning for?"
This brother made parole before me, and then I got
out and got back in the Temple. My father would not let me preach,
and I think he didn't want me to make trouble for my parole. He
was afraid that I might say something that would go against my parole.
First I thought that I was still under punishment, but later on
I understood it as my own protection. He was protecting his son.
But I was in the Temple one night, and who do I
see? My friend, the Jehovah's Wit-ness. When our eyes met, we were
so happy to see each other. No matter what kind of situation you
had with your "homie" in prison, when you see that person
outside of prison you are happy.
You were both confined together and both put in
a bad situation, and when you are both out of that situation, you
are happy. You forget every argument you had.
That is the same way it will be for us, when we
get out of this trap that the world has put us in. And our wayward
leaders, straying from righteousness that they had in slavery and
immedi-ately afterwards, have put us in this trap.
When we save ourselves from this prison of ignorance,
misguidance, deviation from the Law of G-d, deviation from faith
and love for G-d, when we break out of this, we are going to be
just like those "homies" that see each other when they
get out of prison.
We are going to love each other. It will be: "As-Salaam-Alaikum,
brother. As-Salaam-Alaikum, sister. Praise be to Allah." We
are going to get it back.
The Jehovah's Witness said, "I just came to
see you." I told him how happy I was to see him. He asked where
I lived and I told him. He said, "I'm going to come by your
house." And he did, but he never joined the Nation of Islam.
Isn't that something? He came out of prison, found
out where the Temple was and came there just to see me. He never
tried to convert me to be a Jehovah's Witness again. All he wanted
was to be in my company as a friend. It was wonderful.
Allah invites us to life. Genesis is an invitation
to life. It is talking about the life that G-d created human beings
for. It is not the life of rats, cats, dogs, sheep, cows, chickens,
rabbits, snakes. No, it is a special life.
None of those creatures were created for the life
we were created for, and none of them can benefit from what Allah
created as we can. None of them.
Animals have intelligence, like we do, like we do.
I used to think that they couldn't reason, because sci-ence said
they couldn't. But science is making a big mis-take. Some animals
can rea-son.
I believe that is what is being said, when G-d says
He made some animals on the same day He made man, on the Sixth Day.
He didn't just make man on the Sixth Day;
He made some animals also on the Sixth Day.
This is Genesis in the Bible. And if you understand
it, it is the same thing that is in the Qur'an. It is in the Sixth
Chapter of the Qur'an, called An'am or the animals. But that Six
represents the Day that He created man.
Allah says in the Qur'an that there is no creature
that crawls upon the face of the earth that Allah has not assigned
his life in a commu-nity similar to yours. There is the community
of birds, the community of ants, the com-munity of bees.
Bacteria have their commu-nity. The microscopic
life that you can't even see with your eyes has its community, and
they are crawling, too, upon something.
The life that G-d wants for us is the life that
you can't have without the tool for the soul being established.
What is the tool for the soul? Your intelligence. Your brain. You
cannot have the life Allah cre-ated for the soul, until you establish
your brain.
Your soul goes out like air in a balloon. If you
can imag-ine the skin of the balloon being the extent of space or
as far as you can go out in space, the air is the soul and the air
is pushing the balloon out.
And Allah has created space, so it will extend as
far as our life requires it to.
There is no limit to it.
As far as your soul wants to go out, let the germ
of life be alive in the soul and it will push, it will fill the
balloon up with the spirit and life of the soul. That balloon is
not lim-ited like the balloons we buy for our children; they will
burst, when it reaches a cer-tain limit.
That skin that Allah has given to hold the core
life of our soul will keep expanding forever. It will keep opening
up forever, to give your soul more room and to want more. It opens
up to unlimited expansion, unlimited exten-sion, unlimited room.
You can have as much as you want. Allah created us like that.
But something as small as the point of a needle
can hit the balloon and lose all of the air. I guess that is why
Allah revealed that Satan had been disappointed, and that, "This
day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My Favor
on you and have given you My Choice of reli-gion, Islam."
But G-d also says, "Don't drop your guard now.
Satan has given up hope of deceiv-ing you in big things, but be
aware of him coming at you in small things." Like your respect
for your husband, sis-ter. Like your respect for your wife, brother.
Like your respect for your parents, chil-dren. Like your respect
for your children, parents.
These are the things G-d made us to naturally manage.
It is the nature of the heart to take care of these things. But
when Satan comes at us with his schemes, he takes every-thing available
to him and uses it to take us out of the life that G-d created us
for.
What is this life? In its best and complete picture,
it is the life that has been given to us by The Life. And the highest
life for us is The Word of G-d. That is Qur'an, true, pure, perfect
revelation.
When it comes into our life, it gives us a chance
to have a bigger and better and more beautiful life, and certainly
a much more productive life, than we had before.
Is it really a new life? No, it is the same life
you had before. The Sign is in Jesus Christ, and most of the stu-dents
of scripture missed it. So Allah revealed it again. As Jesus Christ
predicted it would happen, the Spirit of Truth would come. He revealed
it again to Muhammed the Prophet.
The same Signs that Jesus came to show the world,
that came in the clouds of the heavens and in parables, here G-d
brings them again in plain language. This time it is not in the
clouds of the heav-ens but in broad daylight. He is a man whom G-d
chose to be His Last Messenger to fill the role of the Seal of the
Prophets.
This man was not called by G-d so that he would
be made clean and sanctified and holy and righteous, or made fit
to be G-d's servant and messen-ger. He was already fit before he
knew G-d. He was already the complete human being that G-d wanted
before he even knew a religion.
Muhammed didn't know of religion proper. He didn't
know Judaism or Christiani-ty. He didn't even know the Sabean religion,
and it was in Arabia. In his part of Arabia, there were no Sabeans.
Those Arabs were not interested in that kind of thing; they were
boasting in their own knowl-edge.
Their knowledge was com-mon sense reasoning. If
you didn't come to them with that, they wouldn't accept anything.
They didn't believe in the Hereafter or Life After Death. They didn't
believe in G-d the way religion believed in G-d, and Muhammed was
born among them.
Those Arabs worshipped idols and believed in the
cre-ations of their fathers. What-ever their fathers made and told
them that it was a god and had some kind of super power, that is
what they believed in.
They had 365 of those idols, and had them in the
house called the Ka'abah, the house built by Abraham, the highest
in the worship of G-d. Abra-ham built the house there, but they
had lost its meaning and had put their false gods in there, the
little models that they made or crafted with their hands.
G-d chose Muhammed because he did not worship any
of those idols. He chose Muhammed because Muhammed would not follow
the ignorant behavior of his people.
They would celebrate once a year and go around the
Ka'abah, with the poor ones in the nude. The rich ones told the
poor, "If you join us, you have to be naked." It meant
that they had not produced any knowledge; they could produce no
clothes to wear.
They had a faint knowledge of what the Ka'abah indicated
or signified. They knew it signified human life in its origin or
a symbol of the original home of human life.
The original home of human life means the life of
the inno-cent baby. And for a society, it is the society in its
innocence, in its natural goodness, before it becomes greedy and
a warmon-ger.
Margaret Mead, the researcher, discov-ered a society
in this time, no more than 50 years ago, and told about them as
having no concept for crime. Now isn't it something, how Allah,
the Creator of this world, let this world exist and be changed by
scientific and industrial man?
But that man missed a lit-tle spot in this last
day of rev-elation. That little spot sur-vived to become known in
this last day of revelation, when man had the power to change everything
in his environment, to redo it, take it away from nature or what-ever.
So Margaret Mead dis-covered them and put those people back in history,
so it would be there for the rest of times.
It will be there for the rest of times, because
this is the end of times. There's no change coming. Nobody is coming
to this society to take it over and make it different. This is the
biggest that we can become with the brain. We only can build upon
what we have now, but we cannot become any bigger now with the brain.
This is the end of times for this scheme, this run
of things, that G-d planned for, that the devil planned for. We
are living in the finality of the miracles of Satan and of the Miracles
of G-d. Nothing is coming bigger as a challenge to the soul of man.
Here G-d has allowed this society to be hidden from
the explorers, who have gone all over the world looking for things
untouched by them, so that they can get it and touch it and see
what they can change or make of it.
This one little people sur-vived, and Margaret Mead
said they had no concept of crime. That they were just like innocent
babies when born. They trust each other with everything and don't
fight each other. They are naturally good.
Isn't Christ Jesus a sign of that? That though he
is a human being like us, in the world, he is different from the
rest? Innocent. Pure. Wanted nothing but goodness for him-self and
others. Really, he was put in the world to want it for others, because
he was born with it. He didn't have to go after it for himself;
he was created with it from the first day.
Then Muhammed came. Here is a man, Jesus Christ,
was a sign in the manger with animals in the Nativity with animals.
Here is Muhammed in the beginning of the new world of Islam, in
its Nativity, with animals -but unspoiled by the animals, untouched
by the animals.
From the midst of the ani-mals, Muhammed walked,
and went up in a mountain to get way away from the ani-mals, so
he could not hear a thing they were saying. He couldn't be bothered
anymore with the picture of their shameful behavior. He went up
in the mountain as high as he could go, and there he found a little
opening.
He went into that hole and cried out to the skies.
He did-n't know G-d by the name of anything. All he knew was the
idol worshippers called their idols "gods." He cried out
up there: "Help my soul. Take this burden off of me."
And G-d's first word to him was, "Read."
Muhammed knew that G-d wasn't talking about read
the daily newspaper. He knew G-d didn't mean read a business contract.
He was making and writing business contracts. So Muhammed understood
what G-d meant, when G-d said, "Read." And Muhammed said,
"I can't read."
G-d meant, "Read My Com-munication to man for
his sal-vation." Muhammed never had any scriptures in his hands.
He never had a priest or monk or holy man to teach him scripture.
He couldn't read.
This is in the Bible. There will come a time when
there will be a famine and it will spread all over the world. It
won't be a famine of food. It will be a famine of hearing the Word
of G-d.
Again in the Bible, it says, there will be a little
book, and the people will not be able to read that book. And a man
will come upon that book by chance. He will have it in his hand
but won't be able to read it. He will go looking for somebody to
read for him this strange book that he has come upon.
He goes to the first person, "Will you please
read this for me?" And the first person says, "I'm sorry,
I am not lit-erate. I can't read plain lan-guage."
He keeps going and finally comes upon another man
and says, "Will you please read this for me?" And the
man looks at it and says, "It's sealed." S-E-A-L-E-D!
It's locked up from people who don't have this kind of knowl-edge.
But along comes one who looked like he had been
slain from the foundations of the world. He is not even alive to
the foundations of the world. "A little lamb without spot or
blemish." Not a wolf going out to kill something, sneaking
and lurking in the shadows. Not a wild bear.
It is a little lamb that wants nothing but to be
left alone with his family. He is not out to kill a thing. Praise
be to Allah. He comes up and sees it and takes the book. But he
has to reach up for it, for those who have it are in power and are
high up.
The little lamb is way down here on the ground with
the poor and common people. He reaches up and grabs the book, and
he breaks the seals and reads it. That was Muhammed the Prophet.
But he couldn't do it, without G-d's Help. That was Jesus Christ
as a Sign.
G-d had to tell him more than once. G-d told him
once, "Read." He said, "I can't read." G-d told
him the sec-ond time, "Read." And he said, "I can't
read." The first time G-d told him to read, Muhammed was responding
from his experiences: "I can't read. I have never been edu-cated
to do this."
The second time G-d told him to read, Muhammed respond-ed
with his intellectual abili-ty, his rational mind, his brain. And
Muhammed said: "I can't read." G-d told him the third
time, "Read." Then Muhammed didn't speak from his mind.
His soul began to read. And his brain heard it, and his brain spoke
it to men and they wrote it down.
Now we have the Qur'an. Praise be to Allah. See
what we get when we are in good company! G-d blessed Abra-ham to
see where He wanted us to go with our lives.
Abraham couldn't see it happening in his time; the
time for it was too far in the distance. Abraham couldn't live to
see it, but G-d gave it to Abraham as a vision, as a hope. And Abraham
passed it on down to others and charged others to pass it on down
to others.
For eventually, the time was going to come when
you could go into this vision called The Promised Land. Moses wanted
it, but he didn't have enough time to see it. So he appointed Joshua
- spirit. He appointed the holy spirit in the people and held it
respon-sible to carry on after he was gone.
But Joshua only could fight the battle of Jericho.
He couldn't live to see it either. But he did bring the walls down.
Then Jesus Christ came, and he as a Sign was the Promised Land.
He was a Sign of the Word. But the Sign had to be read and understood.
Jesus Christ said, "I'm doing my best to show
you. But I have to go away. For if I don't go away, the Comforter
will not come unto you." The Comforter means the ability in
you to receive this and to understand it clearly.
Jesus Christ was saying, "It won't come, unless
I pull myself out of your sight. You are looking at me and you won't
see it." Isn't that the way Truth is sometimes? You have to
get away from it to see it; you have to back up. If you are too
close, you can't see it too good.
Then comes Muhammed the Prophet fulfilling the pre-diction,
"When The Truth comes, falsehood vanishes. For surely, falsehood,
by its own nature, is a vanishing thing."
In essence, in purpose, in the role of fulfilling
the promise of G-d, who is Jesus? Jesus Christ. Who is Muhammed?
Jesus Christ. They are the same. And Prophet Muhammed said, "There
will come a time when you are going see Christ Jesus and me togeth-er."
What he was saying is that, "You are missing it now, and I
can't tell you. But I am Jesus Christ." The world missed it.
But he is not the Jesus Christ. He is that purpose
that was in that Jesus Christ. As a human being, he had the same
essence that was in Jesus Christ. The human essence of Jesus Christ
and the human essence of Muhammed the Prophet are the same essence,
one in the same.
Where does the origin go back to? To the first man
G-d made fit for the Garden, Adam. If you study The Gospel of Jesus
Christ in The New Testament, it will trace the genealogy of Jesus
Christ back to Adam. And it says, "And Adam was created by
G-d."
Then Allah revealed to Muhammed in the Qur'an to
say, "The likeness of Jesus Christ is Adam, and he was created
by G-d." It says the same thing, and we don't know that it
is commentary on what I just gave you from the Bible.
When I say "we," I am speaking of the
scholars. I am down here and they are way up there in Saudi Arabia
and Al Azhar University. I listen to what they say, with their great
voices way up there, and I come back home with the little that I
came there with. I don't buy what they had to give. I left their
big stuff right there where they were.
I know that for many of you, even some who are my
good friends, this is a chal-lenge. They will say, "I know
he can't have more than those big boys. He can't be into something
that they aren't in."
Haven't you been put down as a people lower than
any other people on this earth? To believe that you were sub-human
and kin to apes and monkeys? To believe that you were cursed by
G-d, just because of your color? Didn't the Scripture say that the
lowest rail shall be made the highest rail?
If that is true, then a Black man from slavery history,
a distant child of slaves, from the most put down race on the planet
earth, if the Word of G-d is to be fulfilled, has to be brought
from the bottom and put on the top. If not, then G-d didn't tell
us the truth.
And I have come to know G-d's Justice. Whatever
G-d permits to happen to inno-cent people, and we know a lot of
our fore parents weren't innocent; they were liars, thieves, whoremongers
and killers of their own peo-ple. And we know that they didn't just
look for the crimi-nals, when they brought us over here and put
us in bondage.
They just grabbed us up and grabbed up the Little
Lamb and made a big mis-take. G-d then said, "You can do that
to those criminals. You can do that to your peo-ple. But I will
not let you do that to My worshippers. And because you mocked the
whole people when you did it, I am going to lift up the whole people
in America, until they are higher than anybody else in the knowl-edge
and skills and use and performance of My Words."
And that has happened already. It is just a matter
of time for you to respond to the great life that G-d put in us
and become the great peo-ple in the material environ-ment that you
can be, just on the power of that Light that has come into the son
of Eli-jah Muhammad. And that is a fact.
G-d knows I want nothing for myself. And a few of
you know me and know that I want nothing for myself. I wish I had
a way of saying this and my picture was hid-den. I wish there was
a Bro. Shabazz or a Sis. Jamillah, anybody, to say this instead
of me.
But I don't have anybody to say this. I want no
atten-tion to myself. I want noth-ing but to be left alone with
a private life. I would be happy if someone else would be this man
as a leader.
But this has already hap-pened. The people up high
in the great religions on this
earth, not just Christians and Jews - there are other great religions
on this earth, and they have seen what has happened in the midst
of our people.
They have seen how we have gone in two different
ways. Some have gone for righteousness following Christianity and
the Church. And other Blacks or African Americans have taken the
way of the new Islam that came into the United States by way of
the mysterious W. D. Fard.
They have studied this thing and have more knowl-edge
of these mysteries than you have. And they have come to the conclusion
that G-d is performing a great work again. He is creating a people
again, like He created a people before. And this time, He is creating
a people out of the African Americans or Blacks of America.
Believe me, they know that and are studying and
watch-ing what they are seeing. They are benefiting spiritu-ally
and intellectually from what they are seeing. And they are benefiting
political-ly from what they are seeing.
When G-d puts new life into the world, that new
life not only feeds the area that G-d put it in. It also sends out
its light and its influence to the whole world and the whole world
benefits.
A great thing has hap-pened in the United States
of America. I could not even stay with G-d, if I did not see what
was happening in the United States of America.
No Christian church could get me, and certainly
no Mosque of Arabia or Egypt or of anywhere could get me.
Would you believe this lit-tle fellow with just
a few hours of college education was sitting over there with the
big boys of Saudi Arabia, in a meeting of the top schol-ars, and
I told them, "There is no way that you all could get me to
become a Muslim, if I had not experienced what I experienced in
America under the Hon. Elijah Muhammad."
There would be no appeal. Did they want to give
me holiness? There is plenty of that in the church. Do they want
to make the soul feel good? You can go to the dope house for that;
the biggest drugs in the world are in the United States of America.
They looked at me and could say nothing. They did-n't
even ask me why. I am Wallace D. Mohammed, son of Elijah Poole Muhammad.
Why would I put on the stuff they wear for the desert of Saudi Arabia
and I am here in the cold of Chicago? Why should I try to look like
the Saudis?
To
be continued...
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