[Editor’s note: The following is the first installment of excerpts from the speech delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan at MosqueMaryam in Chicago, Ill. on April 8, 2007, which is Part 4 of the One Nation Under God Lecture Series. In light of growing tension in the Middle East and the importance of that region in biblical prophecy, we are reprinting this insightful message. The entire address is now available on MP3, DVD and CD through store.finalcall.com or call 866-602-1230, ext. 200.]
My subject today is tangential, in that I’m not going to speak specifically on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but on yours and mine. He showed us that the grave has no victory and death has lost its sting, but we have misunderstood the scriptures greatly to the joy of Satan. We are looking for resurrection from a physical grave, but the whole of humanity—Blacks in particular—are in a spiritual, mental, economic, political and social grave of ignorance. We are not the people that we should be. We are not the people that we could be. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave—although he never was placed under the earth, he was placed in a tomb with a rock at the head of it, but the angels came and rolled the stone away, and when they looked, he was gone. I hope that after today’s lecture they will look, and you will be gone out of the grave of ignorance, starting a new journey.
My subject today deals with the War of Armageddon, and it asks the question that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad asked several years before he departed from us: “How strong is the foundation? Can we survive?”
The War of Armageddon is already on. The hottest part of the war is yet to come, but the War of Armageddon, as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us, starts with truth clashing against falsehood, because it is falsehood and ignorance that has kept us in a grave, deathlike state. The presence of truth is what is upsetting the world of Satan. Our rising on the basis of our understanding of the truth ends Satan’s domination over us, personally, but the more human beings rise on the wings of truth, Satan’s world comes down, and the Kingdom that we pray for in Christianity; the Kingdom of God that we hoped would come to the earth—that Kingdom is on its way.
The scripture teaches, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand!” Well, why would we have to repent? It is because we have been born in a world of rebellion against God, and we have been shaped in the iniquity of that rebellion. Whatever God says we should not do, Satan and his devils tell us we should do, or “it’s alright.” Evil has been made fair seeming, however, when truth comes, the Holy Qur’an says, falsehood vanishes and falsehood is forever a vanishing thing.
I would like to start this lecture with a scripture from the Book of Galatians: “Be not deceived, for God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, the same shall he also reap.” This is to help us as common people, understand that no one can get away with evil in a world where God has set up in nature a just balance. This is why the Bible teaches “don’t deceive yourself”; don’t be in a state of self-delusion. Don’t be deceived by a world that has set up a judicial system that different courts absolve the guilty of their guilt, and men and women who can pay good lawyers feel they have gotten away with their crime. None of us is able to escape the consequences of our actions. The Holy Qur’an teaches us, “every deed has its consequence,” and this is why one of the major attributes of Allah (God) is His Mercy, for if it were not for God’s Mercy; if we as individuals would add up our evils done during our short period of life on the planet, what would the consequences be if justice were to come for us, or come to us for our actions?
Allah always tempers justice with mercy, and every human being should be grateful for the Mercy of God. We should be clear that every deed brings a consequence and only the Mercy of Allah can lessen the consequences of our deeds.
This law of reaping and sowing is a two-edged sword, because if you sow good seeds, you will reap a good reward. If we sow evil seeds, we will reap what we have sown. The Holy Qur’an, which is the book of scripture of Muslims, talks about a book that each of us is writing based on our deeds and that in the Judgment, we will be given our Book. If the Book is given in our right hand, this would mean the good deeds are heavy and would outweigh the deeds that are done that are not good. However, if our Book is given to us in our left hand, then our evil deeds will outweigh our good, and the consequences of our evil deeds we will meet in the Day of Judgment.
The Holy Qur’an says that when we see our Book, we will say, “Woe is me; the recording angel did not leave out anything.” The Holy Qur’an also says that, “If the evil is the weight of an atom hidden in a rock, and the rock buried in the earth, yet will Allah bring it forth.” So, there’s no hiding place for anybody in the Day of Judgment. We have prayed in the Al-Fatihah (Opening Prayer of the Holy Qur’an), saying that Allah is Master of the Day of Judgment; Master of the Law of Requital—that He can requite us fully for what we have earned or lessen it, for He is more than a Judge, for a judge can only act in accordance with the law, but the Master of the Law that God has set up in the universe is able to lessen the consequence, take away the consequence, or give us the full measure of the consequences of our actions.
Then the Holy Qur’an says, “In that day, you will see every nation kneeling down before its book.” Now, many of us would wonder, “What angel is writing down my deeds?” Since the Nature of God is righteousness and justice, and He created the human being that is not a devil, in His nature, then every time that we depart from the principle of justice and righteousness, it is recorded in our own brain. Just as when an airplane crashes, there is a black box that records everything that led to the crash; records everything of the instruments of the plane, so that those who examine the crash can look at the black box and determine what happened to that plane.
Our black box is our brain that has recorded everything that we have done outside of the law of justice and righteousness. To prove this point, every one of us can go back into our childhood and remember every dirty little thing we did that we know was incorrect, and every dirty little thing that we do is recorded up to the present time. Isn’t it interesting that you can’t remember all of the good that you have done, as you can’t remember how many breaths you took in the last hour? As breathing is natural, the doing of good—for the righteous—is just as natural. Since you are the righteous, it is so unnatural for you and me to do wrong, and all the wrong that we do is remembered and “woe is me”—we haven’t forgotten anything.
What kind of book does America have, since every deed that America has done is recorded somewhere? America has stacks of e-mails today; stacks of congressional records, state records, city records, court records. America has a book. Every act that America has done is recorded. What kind of record does America have before God and the Law of Justice and Righteousness? Don’t be deceived; don’t be self-deluded, for God is not mocked. Whatsoever a nation sows, the same shall that nation also reap. With the sins of the world, as I mentioned in my previous lecture, the condition of the world is an indictment against its governments, so the only way to remove a world like this is by the same way a world like this came into power. This is why the rulers of the present world always walk on a red carpet, because they came to power shedding the blood of others and they maintain their power through war and the shedding of blood.
As Jesus said, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword,” and he even goes so far as to say, “If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind.”
What has America sown and what shall America reap? She has said to the world that she is a model of virtue and correctness. America has declared to the world that she is the moral champion, and that she has the right to sit down dictators and leaders that are not according to her liking. America has said, in her own eyes, that she is a god beside God, and has developed the power to destroy the six billion people that live on our planet 100-300 times over.
She’s a mighty power, styled in the Book of Revelations as a beast, and the question is asked, “Who can make war with the beast, for the beast has brought down fire from heaven?”
It was America that brought down fire in nuclear war against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I have been reading, recently, that the plans are already made for America to attack the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States can’t win a ground war in Iraq, and it can’t win a ground war in Iran. So, the only way for America to defeat Iran and bring her to her knees and cause the world to tremble is to use her nuclear power, claiming that she’s knocking out Iran’s nuclear capabilities while all the time killing innocent civilians.
This is what she did in Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein; America dropped so much armament on Iraq, she called it, “shock and awe.” America was not bombing military sites; she was bombing the city of Baghdad, killing tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis to force Iraq to bow down. That is why when President George W. Bush captured Baghdad, he rushed to the aircraft carrier and said, “Mission accomplished,” because he thought for him, the war was over, but the war had just begun. President Bush had triggered the fiery part of the War of Armageddon.
Daniel talks about the handwriting on the wall that was written in blood in the strange words “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,” meaning “God hath numbered your kingdom and finished it. Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.”
This wasn’t the international criminal court; this wasn’t the world court—this is God’s Universal Balance of Justice, and He had weighed Babylon.
“Your kingdom has been numbered and is finished. You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.”
Who is that Mystery Babylon that the Book of Revelations talks about, and what is her future? A voice came up in that Mystery Babylon saying, “Repent! For the Kingdom of God is at hand!” America has to repent. Repent for what? Repent for what she’s done to the Native Americans. Repent for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Repent for how she coveted Mexico and lied and made war on Mexico in order to take away from that country the land now known as Texas, New Mexico, California, Arizona, and all the way up into Utah. That was once Mexico, so why is the United States upset that the Mexicans are coming back? They are called undocumented aliens. They are only coming home to what was once theirs.
Now, when someone tells you to repent, repentance has a time factor to it, because if you don’t repent in a timely fashion, you cannot postpone, allay, or get a respite from the Judgment of God. Pharaoh was given time to clean his act up, but Pharaoh was so arrogant because he was the power of his day. He didn’t repent, however, as he was drowning in the Red Sea, he bore witness that Allah was God. That is good; he received credit for just saying it as he was dying, so The God said, “Well, you didn’t do it in time, so I’m going to save your body.” The body of Pharaoh is in the museum in Cairo as a warning for America’s leaders. You all can put your trust in the power of the enemy, but you would be wise to put your trust in the Power of an angry God. …
There are 20 states suffering under difficult weather and weather forecasters say it is “very unusual weather;” they never have seen anything like this before. Well, we haven’t seen anything yet. The God Who controls wind, rain, snow, hail, cold, heat, fire, water, tornadoes, earthquakes and famine is angry with America, and He is angry with you for your failure to heed His Warning and get up out of your deathlike condition, because this world has earned the chastisement of Allah (God). Jesus said there would be wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes in diverse places, famine, pestilence, and this is just the beginning of sorrows. The Bible teaches, “Had not that time been shortened for His elect’s sake, no soul would be left alive on the earth.” You and I have entered a time of trouble like there never was since there was a time and a nation. You can read about our actions in the scriptures for the prophets said we would be just like we are, and if we don’t make a change, we will suffer a terrible, terrible chastisement from God. America has entered that time of trouble.
