JABRIL.MUHAMMAD
In the book Closing The Gap the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is reacting to a series of questions that involves the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and more.
Brother Jabril: What then led to, and what were the circumstances, which were preparatory, under which the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said to you, “You don’t have to study.”
Minister Farrakhan: Well, as he made me his National Representative and allowed me to carry on his National Broadcast, he wrote me a letter and gave me the assignment. He gave some subject matters in a letter for four weeks that I would have to deliver these subjects. After the four weeks he was very pleased.
He said, “You can go on a little longer.” As I went on longer, he was pleased. So after six months or so, he said, “You can go on for six years.”
At that time, it would take me one week to do a half hour broadcast, because I would write down every word that I was going to say; every scripture that I was going to use. Then I would go back over the language and see if I could say it more succinctly and more effectively if I used this word as opposed to that word, this phrase as opposed to the other phrase. So then I would rehearse it; because I’m reading from a script. I did that for three years.
One day I went out to visit with him and he told me, “Brother you don’t have to do that.” He said, “You go and stand up and Allah will speak through you.” I did that immediately. I just obeyed him. I never used notes. I started speaking on a subject and would allow God to feed me. This gave the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, I would imagine, a chance to see how God was using me.
At the end of the sixth year he called me. He said, “Brother, I will be coming on next week. So you let the public know that Elijah Muhammad will be coming back on the radio next week.” So it’s like you give your baby a lollypop and he’s sucking on it. He gets use to it. But you gave it to him. It’s your lollypop. So then you ask him to give me back my lollypop.
Well now he’s looking at the baby to see what kind of attitude the baby had. Well how would he know that? He would know that by the way I introduce his return to the microphone. So my next broadcast was called, “Hearken unto the voice of God.” So when I sent it out for him to play it in advance of his coming out, he then called me and said, “Brother, you may continue.”
I never gave it a thought that I would tell them hearken unto the voice of God. Then he allows me to continue after I’m supposedly introducing him, and he puts me back on. Well what was he saying?
Subsequent to that, it was getting now into the early 70s, and he is about getting ready to make his departure. He never would praise me in the public, as he did Malcolm. And he told me, when I became his National Representative that, “I’ll never teach another Minister like I taught Malcolm until I have thoroughly tried him.”
He was letting me know that I was going to be thoroughly tried before he would open up the wisdom of his wisdom to me. But what he began to see, I believe, in my extemporaneous teaching of his teaching, that God was already beginning to open up to me the inner or esoteric meanings of the teachings that it seemed like other ministers would only teach what he taught.
They seem to be afraid to dig into his words to find all the jewels that were in the word. But I call that intellectual cowardice, wanting to be safe, but not wanting to explore the depth of what this man had gotten from God. So I decided I was not going to do that. I was going to dig into the teachings and expose that which God showed me.
One day I came out to Chicago. I had made a speech on the Mother Plane and I was showing its spiritual significance and not dealing so much with the physical.
The Messenger was very angry, according to the way his assistant Minister, Yusuf Shah represented it to me. He said, “There he goes, out there showing off; yelling out his wisdom.” He was letting them know that I was right in what I was saying, but it wasn’t the right time, you know. He was whipping me, but praising me at the same time.
Somewhere along that time, I do not remember the circumstances; he told me, “Brother, you don’t have to study.” I didn’t ask him, “What, everybody has to study. Why are you saying I don’t have to study?”
Then as I went on, as it’s getting closer to the time of his departure, I began to see that as it was written, as I started standing up to deliver his message in his absence, that the scripture was being fulfilled.
I wrote a book where I placed some of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s words in it.
I was among those in the audience when he spoke these insightful words, in 1960 in Chicago.
I’m placing his words in this article.
“One Sunday, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad came to teach on the subject: ‘The Lost Sheep.’ ”
“At the outset, he told us not to respond to any points by clapping and the like since he was going to turn on his tape recorder at some point, for he intended that section of his speech to be aired later on in his radio program.
“He got into it. It was deep, beautiful and inspiring. At a certain moment he reached down to turn on the tape recorder.
“Somehow the tape got tangled up. He looked so disgusted. Brother John Ali, the then National Secretary, came to his rescue.
“As he was fixing the problem, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad stated the words I quoted from him, which I here repeat:
“ ‘Whenever you want to do good in this old wicked world, you are always tried to see if you really want to do it.’ ”
The word insight means “the capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person or thing.”
The word intuitive mean “using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious; reasoning; instinctive; easy to use and understand.”
How do you see this in the light of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad words to Minister Farrakhan, “You don’t have to study.”
Now, how do you see–the Christ–then and now at the end of this wicked world and some hints of the next world?
More next issue, Allah willing.