1975-September-12

Muhammad Speaks

The Resurrection Of Religion

W.D. Muhammad

Religion is a living force that should be alive in the people. But as a living force, religion is also capable of coming under death. Some of the prophets of the Bible spoke of a day to come when there would be a famine of hearing the Word of God. The Book also says that a day would come when the sun would go down on the prophets and the moon would be turned into blood.

When rightly understood, these symbolic Biblical sayings plainly tell us that true religion would fade out in the world and come under a spiritual death, or under a cloak of darkness. This darkness would be produced by misunderstanding in the religious bodies of the world.

The world today has come through such a time when it has experienced the loss of true religious knowledge. Its ideas of religion have come to be more ideas of the make of the people than ideas of the early prophets who brought the Message direct from God as we find it in the Bible and in the Holy Quran.

People now think that the only service religion has to offer them and their communities is a spiritual service. This was not the case with the work of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Prophet Muhammad of Arabia (may the peace of Allah be upon him). In these great figures we call prophets, we see leaders of the community who battled the adverse forces in the physical environment and the human environment.

These leaders were brave enough to take up the challenge and risk losing their lives and risk losing face in their society by taking up a work that was not recognized by the society as a work that justified sacrifice on the part of the individual and the society.
The prophets did much the same thing as the scientists of the world are doing today: they called the people to open up their eyes to see in broad vision. The scientists of the modern world ask those who are not aware of science to open up their eyes to see things that people normally don't see.

They ask us not only to see the sun, but to also see the nature and the function of the sun, its hidden powers, its energy, its healing and curing forces, and its magnetic and gravitational power.
The prophets of old did much the same thing with the people. They directed the eyes of the society to look out from their small world and see the broad world of many lands and many people. They asked the people to look at nature and to study the workings of the sun, the moon, and the stars. The people were encouraged to study how earth and sky work together to produce, to grow, and to preserve life.

In doing this, the prophets forced the human vision to expand and to take in more truth. This process allowed the people to become wiser, more qualified, and more equipped to meet the challenges of life on earth.
When you listen to some of the religious services in our community today, you get the false impression that the prophets of old only recognized one enemy to man (Satan, the devil) and that this enemy was a foreign, invisible spirit out of the real order of creation.

But the prophets of the Bible and the Holy Quran did not have any problem identifying the enemy of man in the society. They recognized that the devil in the human society that was working against human progress, was man's own mind and spirit once it had come under the darkness of ignorance, falsehood, and wickedness. This teaching is very clear in the last two Surahs (chapters) of the Holy Quran.
We should ask God's protection from the slinking devil who whispers into the hearts of men from among men and from among the Jinn. The Jinn in religion means the hidden (invisible) evil forces, called "spirits." The Jinn has also been described as wild, savage, primitive creatures.

We see that this devil (Satan) is not something to fear outside of yourself, but it is something that develops within you in falsehood and wickedness and it affects your life.
The prophets were not dealing with superstitions, they were dealing with realities. They worked to rid the people of fear and superstition by showing them the truth that creation is one creation of like matter with one Creator over it.
There is no reason to fear the mysteries of the creation. The object in religion is to accept that there is one Creator and one creation and that there is nothing to fear except the one Creator Who is the Ruler over creation.

In teaching the people to fear only the Creator, the prophets caused them to rise up from primitive, savage fears into knowledge of creation. This knowledge of the prophets was the beginning of scientific knowledge. The people overcame their fears of the environment and were motivated to do something to bring about a better environment on earth for humanity.
Once the prophets got the people to accept the great truth of Creator and the reality of creation, they told them that men and women were important creatures with the power to act on their own. They could choose their own way of life and step out of the pattern that nature had designed for them. They were identified as creatures with a great freedom and great power to shape and influence the environment for better or for worse.

The only lasting reality is Creator. The Creator has manifested Himself in human life; therefore, the human body is a kind of carriage for the very presence of Almighty God. Anything in the creation is inferior as a physical object to the human being, so the human being discredits his own image when he worships things outside of himself if it be other than Almighty God.
Any religion that stands for wars, slavery, evil, ignorance, poverty, and bad health in the community is a dead religion. Today we are living in the time of the resurrection of religion.

In the history of the Honorable Master Elijah Muhammad (May the Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon him), you find that he stood not just for the spiritual upliftment of the society, but he also stood for material upliftment. He stood for order, cleanliness, righteousness, togetherness, unity, Truth, and progress in every field of human interest.
When you see this kind of movement in the community by the Nation of Islam, you see a religious role that is in accord with the religious role of the great prophets of the Bible. The Nation of Islam is a resurrection of true religion and it is a manifestation or a proof that religion has been resurrected. Religion with us is religion in the right sense and in the original order.

Most of the people in the Church do not know that the religious world grew up from the material world. The first knowledge, knowledge of the physical world, opened the eyes of the great religious masters to the knowledge of the inner world of the human mind. Everything that they discovered in the physical creation tied in with something within the mind.
The religious masters recognized that something had designed the physical world on the same pattern as the inner world (mind). Their knowledge had already enabled the people to learn how to cultivate the physical world. They had reaped the harvests of great gardens and they had built great pyramids.

As they began to recognize the need to cultivate the human mind, they observed the elements and the workings of nature and they applied their observations to the workings of the inner world (mind).
The earth was equated with, or symbolized by, the physical body (flesh); water represented morality; and the physical sun of the heavens stood for the sun within the inner body. They knew that as the sun rules the outer world in light, health, and purity, so our minds should rule the inner world in light, health, and purity.

Religion was revealed to man by Almighty God, but it was not revealed in the inferior (outer) world of physical creation. Religion was revealed by God in the superior (inner) world of the human mind. The man (mind) was placed in creation by the Creator to rule creation.
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30. Behold thy Lord said to the angels: "I will create a vicegerent on earth." They said "Wilt thou place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood? Whilst we do celebrate Thy praises and glorify Thy holy (name)?" He said: "I know what ye know not."

31. And He taught Adam the names of all things; then He placed them before the angels and said: "Tell Me the names of these if ye are right."

32. They said: "Glory to Thee: of knowledge we have none, save that Thou hast taught us: in truth it is Thou who art perfect in knowledge and wisdom."

33. He said: "O Adam! tell them their names." When he had told them their names, Allah said: "Did I not tell you that I know the secrets of heaven and earth, and I know what ye reveal and what ye conceal?"

34. And behold We said to the angels: "Bow down to Adam"; and they bowed down: not so Iblis: he refused and was haughty: he was of those who reject Faith.

Holy Quran; Yusuf Ali translation, Sura 2, verses 30 - 34
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If Almighty God is going to reveal Himself, He surely will reveal Himself in that which is superior (mind) to that which is inferior (physical creation).

God does not speak to us in some far away outer world, He speaks to us in the mind of our physical body. Brother and Sister, do not look for Allah out in some far away place. You should seek the Presence of Allah by turning your thoughts to the mind within. The Prophet Jesus taught that the kingdom is within you. He also said that he was in his Father and his Father was in him.

Allah always exists as One. The grafted world of Caucasian mentality has brought death to religion and it has separated the minds of men with racism, falsehood, and evil.
Today, the Nation of Islam (the Body-Christ) is rising with the Sun of Truth to resurrect the life-force of religion in the world. The wisdom of Divine Mind will unify the minds of all men into the Oneness and Unity of God.