1986-November-14

Muslim Journal

Gog And Magog: Part 3

Imam W. Deen Muhammad

(Editor's Note: The following is from a lecture delivered October 5, 1986 at Masjid Honorable Elijah Muhammad.)

The Bible says that Satan became a prince of the air." It also says: "And they went upon the breadth of the earth." This is a play on air, and global expansion and dominance. Isn't it the great air power of modern-day warring nations that gives them superiority and dominance. It's the air power.
You must also understand that there is a play also on the influ­ences, which operate in the life of society very much the way air operates in the physical environment. It is the exchange and con­stant flow of influences that keep us living. If you aren't influenced by anything, you are dead.
So they gained the ability to get on top of the influences, and control the circumstances in the life of the people by controlling the influences. Right now, the rightous are under a great burden be­cause of the influences. We don't drink, but the drinking power blows its influences into our life. We don't use narcotics, but the problem has brought influences into our lives. We are not seeking dominance over the earth, but the problem now is bothering our lives.

We can say that Gog and Magog represent the ungodly people on earth, or as many say, the heathens. But I don't like to use the term heathen, because that's an old term, and it doesn't work very well today; the meaning is kind of off. So we will say the ungodly people — this Gog and Magog — who are all over the earth. Satan, accord­ing to Revelation, was imprisoned. It is said that God ordered that Satan be bound for a thousand years. Now, I don't know what you have in your imagination. Maybe you are imagining a personality or a creature being caught and put in chains or bound up some kind of way, but I think Satan is in prison, in Mecca. He may be dead, but he's in jail.

Wherever Satan can't carry out his bidding, the situation for him is prison.
So I understand this to mean a period of time that wouldn't allow Satan to carry out his work. The condition among the people would be so good, the masses of the people would be so sensitive to moral life, that Satan wouldn't have a day of freedom among them for a thousand years or whatever that thousand represents.

When he comes out, Satan seeks to gain influence and control over the ungodly people of the earth, that is the juj-wa-majuj,' or `Gog and Magog.' Juj-wa-majuj are not original Arabic terms. So we have to be aware of the meaning of juj and majuj, in the environment where these terms originated. `Jur means, having a head, and `ma-juj' means having no head. It means leaders having leadership, and `ma-juj,' having no leadership. So here the ungodly people of the world are put into two descriptions: one is that they have leadership, and the other is that they have no leadership. They are at war with each other and we get caught in the crossfires, and suffer their problems. Satan can't get at us directly, so he gets at us through them. Satan encourages this condition in Gog and Magog. He encourages the headless to love headlessness. And he encourages those who want leadership to go to the extreme and become fanatic in their advocated leadership, to the point that they establish dictatorship. The other side is weak liberalism. And what do you have in the end? You have militaristic power and anarchistic power. These things have spilled over into the private lives of the people of the earth.

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What is Satan after? Why is he staging this great battle or conflict that covers the whole earth? It's because man, in his natural state — the form that God gave him — is too much for Satan. So he needs all the forces he can get just to stop the righteous, because the righteous love Allah and their religion more than they love their own lives. They don't care about threats upon their lives. They don't care about threats against their security. They are told: 'Don't you know you live in our territory; if you don't go along with us, we will deprive you of an opportunity to have a livelihood? You won't have a job. None of your children will have jobs.' The righteous, who know their Lord, say, 'Well, if my Lord has chosen that for me, I am happy to receive it. I am ready for your persecution. I gladly accept it.' We accept it because we know this is not the only side. There is another side. It may seem that Gog and Magog and their chief Satan won on this side, but those who are truly believers in their Lord know that he loses both here and in the hereafter. His wins are only deception.

We see how the great empires of ancient times, the Roman Empire is the perhaps the grandest of them all, depended heavily on the military, and struck terror into the hearts of nations with their soldiers, the marching, the drums and the signs of death that they carried. For example, a dead man upon a stake to let their opponents know that soon they would want to be dead.

Japan, in modern times, became a militaristic state. The Greeks had their militaristic state even before the Romans. The desire for dominance and to become the greatest power or the ruling power over all others, drove nations to improve their military and to build it up so that no other nations could contend with it. Who has this position now in the world? The West.

Satan's target is the ideal person, the man that God made. He fears the man that God made, because he knows the man that God made can beat him on the battlefield. So he tries to keep circumstances under his control so that the man that God made will never grow. He wants to keep him in the cradle of his birth, so that he never grows and becomes a full-grown man. Satan knows that once the man that God made becomes a full grown-man, he will be too much on the battlefield for Satan.

What is his target in that man that God made? It's the general potential that God put in him. God has put in him a moral, spiritual, social, political, industrial and material potential. God put into us a potential for all our needs in these worldly circumstnces. But what is he aiming most specifically at? He's aiming at the governmental potential of man. For God has made man to be a government within himself. And if man ever comes into the government of the individual, he will be reconciled with his Lord. He will have God on his side and his vision in his hands. Can't you see that Satan's attacks are attacks on the government of the individual? If we could have a breathing spell; if we could have a few days free of dope, alcohol, and theft problems, we would get our lives together. We would organize a government of oursevles, but Satan keeps us so busy dealing with sects outside of ourselves that we can't have time to construct our very own personal lives. He's warring upon the government of the individual, because he knows that if you ever come into a government of yourself, you will be able to do battle with him.