JABRIL.MUHAMMAD
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There was an interesting CNN TV program I watched this past October that relates to the origin of superstitions. It relates to what sits under that which comes to many minds about today, which is Friday the 13th. It relates to the subject of the explanation of all things.
Perhaps if there is any one word that comes to most minds, in this country anyway, about “Friday the 13th,” it’s the word “superstition.” But that’s also what many think when you use the word “God,” even though this is a “religious” country.
Many people present themselves, or are presented, as “experts” in every field of knowledge known to human beings, every day in America. So, on any issue that becomes “news,” here comes expert after expert after expert.
An illustration of this occurred on the CNN TV program, Reliable Sources, which aired October 26, 2002. That week the titled was Did Media Help Catch Beltway Sniper? It was the second of two consecutive programs on the events respecting those murders.
I’ve intended to cite these programs in this column ever since I first saw them, as they bear witness to certain truths pertaining to “the test of knowledge” which is now going on.
In the October 26th program we read:
“MORELLO: There were plenty of profilers who refused to speculate and refused to go on television or even return reporters’ phone calls.
“KURTZ: Good. Well, they should get a gold star. They should get a medal. But let me just read one quote from one of the experts who was on TV, Jack Levin, talking to ‘The New York Times.’
He said, “All right, my predictions were not that close. But the average American was hungry for information. And when there isn’t real news, people make up their own. People wanted a story of who this guy was. What we did, by providing it, comforted them.
“I think that’s claptrap.”
Look at his words again: “people make up their own.”
I’ve seen this word, “claptrap” before, but really didn’t know what it meant. So this time I looked it up. I learned that essentially “claptrap” means “pompous or important sounding nonsense.”
Other dictionaries and reference books teach that “claptrap” is “an attempt to win applause; cheap, showy, pretentious nonsense; trash.”
Of “claptrap” (and it’s synonyms, “gobbledygook, officialese, gibberish, and garbage) S. I. Hayakawa’s book, Use The Right Word, A Modern Guide To Synonyms states that it “is a form of expression designed to attract and win popular approval by the use of cheap sensationalism or artifice. It stresses worthlessness and showiness: a piece of claptrap passing for a serious study of work-class life; an impassioned political speech full of claptrap.”
A lot that passes for real knowledge is pure “claptrap.” And, as it was written of these days of the greatest display of divine wisdom, there would be many who are being deceived by the self-deceiving “claptrap” of false teachers; “experts.”
This is the time of one of the biggest holidays of this country. Most may not pay attention to the various religious experts, who every year are presented to speak or write on the traditions, superstitions, myths, legends and, just plain “stories” of this holiday.
This is also done for Easter. How many people pay attention to how many times, over the last several decades that the scholars are coming ever closer to the position of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad respecting the entire subject of Jesus? Is the public being subtly conditioned for something huge?
Why do the writers state in The New Testament over and over and over again that Jesus is to be revealed? Reveal means “to disclose something that was unknown or secret; to make something visible that had been hidden or covered.” It means more, but for now, how can this possibly refer to Jesus, when Christians and Muslims talk like they already know Jesus?
Yet the Bible teaches that he is to be revealed. If this is true, what truth was not told 2,000 years ago about him? Has humanity been told what those things are since that time? What is there about him we still don’t know? What will be known about, of and from him, when he is revealed?
Jesus said that “You shall know the truth and it shall make you free.” How much of this refers to Jesus? If Jesus was the embodiment of the truth, what truths of him were not told 2,000 years ago? How will those truths free us? What shall we learn of him that will have a freeing effect on us? How will this effect affect the world?
The first chapter of the book of Acts describes a scene in which the disciples of Jesus saw him going up to heaven, and to God. Christian theologians taught that the fifth chapter of the book of Revelation describes this same Jesus, who had just left his followers, entering that heaven to meet his Father and get a book. So from one point of view he is departing. From the other point of view he is entering. In Acts he is leaving earth for heaven. In the book of Revelation he has left earth and is seen entering heaven.
In heaven Jesus received a book and power.
Then we’re taught that this Jesus is to return, to the earth, to do that which has never been done before. Meanwhile, who were the twenty-four elders who bowed to him after he arrived in heaven? Are these the same who are referred to as the “Exalted Assembly” of whom Muhammad spoke centuries later, in the Holy Qur’an, 37:8 and 38:69?
Many translations of Psalms 89:5-8 tells us that the heavens will praise God’s wonders and none is like Him, in the assembly of His holy ones. (Others use the word “do.” But why do many use the word “will?”) He is written of as “feared” and “revered” in the council of the holy angels. Who are these “holy ones?”
In a lesson from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, reissued by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, we read of twelve scientists who met in the latter part of the 1800s about the solution of the problems of Black people here in America.
Was Master Fard Muhammad, Who met and taught the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, in any manner at all, from that group of scientists?
Muslims the world over believe that the Mahdi is to come at the end of the world. They expect Jesus to appear at that same time. The Two are to be together. Among what people are They first to meet?
Is not it interesting that Jews, Christians and Muslims interpret those things the scriptures teach that are to happen in the last days of this world, in their favor. And each group does so without a real explanation of the place of Black people? How do Black people really fit into the theologies of these religions?
How will the issue of reparations affect the final outcome of these questions?
Remember, Minister Farrakhan represents the Mahdi, expected by the Muslim world and the Messiah expected by the Jewish and the Christian world. This will become very evident in a very short time.
More next issue, on the revealing of Jesus, Allah willing.
