JABRIL.MUHAMMAD
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In Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Dr. Schonfield wrote: “But if these End Time figures are to be understood of individuals who have walked the earth and behaved as related, it is difficult to see why their identity known to their contemporaries should be required to be disguised. Is it not preferable to suppose that these persons cannot be named because they have not yet appeared? These people have a certain kinship with such apocalyptic figures as the Lamb, the Beast of the Land and the Beast of the Sea, and the False Prophet.”
Those persons, written of under symbolic names, as the Lamb, the Beast and the False Prophet, etc., who are described in the Book of Revelation are, no doubt, prophetic. They were foreseen by people living 2,000 and more years ago, to come in the future at the time of the change of the worlds.
According to Dr. Schonfield, these persons were written about in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they seem to be or have a kinship to these figures in the New Testament. But their experiences and works are written in such a way so as to make a reader feel that he/she is reading of persons who lived before the time of these writers and their scrolls.
Dr. Schonfield, however, is not convinced that this is the case. He observes that when all allowances are made for the position that the writers of the scrolls are describing people of the past and “traced out everything that approximates to the descriptions given, nothing comes out just right. Some things stand. Others we are forced to discard. We cannot obtain a coherent story that tallies in every particular with any known historical situation.”
His conclusion, which he is convinced meets all the requirements and solves the problem of what the scroll writers were really aiming at, is put this way:
“After carefully weighing all the evidence, I conclude that the Qumram Commentaries, influenced by legend and tradition, and by recent external events, are actually telling us about the future, and by no means a remote future. They are offering us interpretations, which are dramatic and prophetic portrayals of what is yet to come, while recognizing that the ‘mystery of iniquity’ is already at work. They are writing history in advance for the guidance of those Elect, faithful to the Law, who will be living in the ‘Time of Testing.’
“We are not to seek for the Teacher of Righteousness of the End of the Days, and those opposed to him, in any individuals who have yet appeared, though some historical characters have helped to shape their likeness, and partial fulfillments have taken place.”
Theologians use the word “type,” which means a sign. When persons and/or events partly fulfill some prophecy they become prophetic signs of real persons and events yet to come. Those persons or events, which partly fulfill a prophecy, never meet all the terms of the prophecy. There are always important points, or details that do not occur in the type, or the sign. That which does fulfill all of the terms of the prophecy is called the “antitype,” or simply, the fulfiller of both the word of prophecy and/or that which the type (sign) serves to direct our attention towards the real person(s) or events.
Dr. Schonfield made the point that Jews, Christians and others may have taken many of the prophecies, in the scrolls, as having been fulfilled in some of their teachers or others of the past. (This idea makes many uncomfortable.) He continued:
“This view does no violence to the evidence that parts of the exegetical story applied to events and situations in the remote and recent past. The story does not begin in the future; for the End Time, though prolonged, has begun; the Elect are suffering persecution, and evil has manifested itself in high places. The accounts are too vivid and circumstantial to be treated as fiction. The writers, basing their explanations of the Prophets on real experiences, sincerely believe that what they relate will come to pass. They are reading in some detail the Signs of the Times.”
Remember, as Schonfield states, that the Dead Sea Scroll writers based their writings on the writings of the prophets. Remember, the prophets are the ones from whom the various books of the Bible come; even though the world now knows that the prophets’ books are not in their pure form, as left by the prophets.
Dr. Schonfield continues: “When we look at some of the scrolls, the War of the Sons of Light, the too ample account of the form of government in the Manuel of Discipline, the fragments describing the position of the Messianic High Priest and the Messiah of Israel, the ordering of the Elect in Council, when we hear of vast treasure buried, presumably to be recovered to finance the messianic campaigns, of the fate of the good and evil protagonists (leading figures) in the Commentaries, then it seems to me, we are passing away from what was and is and moving into the realm of what is to be.”
If the scrolls were written for the guidance of a particular people, yet to come, how much more valuable are the books (Bible) their writings were based on? What of the Qur’an, which verifies the Bible’s truths? However, without the correct understanding of it, it is of no benefit to the very ones for whom it is intended.
Dr. Schonfield continues: “All these considerations, and many more, when we go over the records, tell in my opinion of a gigantic effort, of the most careful planning and preparation, so that the elect of the period of the Consummation (the end of the world) would be primed with everything they would need. Everything would be in the books, nothing neglected, and the books safely stored for their predestined purpose. This view accounts for much that otherwise would be obscure.”
This principle has been taught worldwide, again and again by Minister Farrakhan, as well as his teacher for around 70 years.
Further down in his text this learned White scholar writes:
“It would appear that in the caves of the Khirbert Qumran area, we have stumbled upon books designed for the faithful in the last struggle with evil, books for the skilled to understand and not meant to be accessible before time … .”
Who are these that he calls “the faithful?” It is clear that from his words that this scholar regards the time in which we live as the last days of this world’s rule. If we are living in the time of the last or final war with evil, or the final war between God and those with Him, and the devil and those with him, where on earth are the elect people?
But it seems he could not bring himself to admit that the only people, on earth, who fit the description of this elect people are the Black people of America.
This material on the scrolls bears on “the test of knowledge” I referred to in Volume 22 Number 13, of this newspaper, which we are all taking RIGHT NOW.
Visit http://www.writtentestimony.com for more on this.
More next issue, Allah willing.
