[Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint that was published online on April 26, 2005.]
“Those who expect not the meeting with us, and are pleased with this world’s life and are satisfied with it, and those who are heedless of Our communications … their abode is the Fire… . Those who believe and do good, their Lord guides them by their faith… .” -Holy Qur’an 10:7-9
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On March 27, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan delivered part two of his wondrous February 27 Saviours’ Day address, “He Came That We May Have Life.”
Early in his address, Minister Farrakhan said: “Now, I am a student. And I love being a student of a great master teacher, who taught me out of the Torah, the Gospel, the Qur’an, the universal laws of nature, history, mathematics, science. And he has put upon me a responsibility to complete an assignment that was given to him. Though I am lesser than he–much, much, lesser than he, yet I have a responsibility–in his name; not in my name–to complete his assignment.”
This article continues the subject of my last article, on Minister Farrakhan’s relationship to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his place in Allah’s plan. This subject helps us grasp the function of Allah’s angels, as mentioned in my last article, in relation to our salvation.
We’re now in the final period of this phase of our journey with Minister Farrakhan. It will manifest more good and evil from us (and others) than has been manifested up to this point.
It seems that this journey is to reach its critical juncture, in relation to Minister Farrakhan’s call for the Tenth Anniversary of The Million Man March and its realization. Then, this journey continues on to its ending, at what the Holy Qur’an calls the: “MEETING WITH ALLAH.”
In connection with this upcoming “MEETING WITH ALLAH,” there is in Minister Farrakhan’s Study Guide No. 20, entitled “Closing the Gap,” a major key to having our sins erased.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught, in effect, that when our good is manifested, it’s an opportunity for us to increase that good. When our bad is manifested, that too is a blessing in that, if time has not run out, that’s an opportunity to see it, become empowered by that understanding and then rid ourselves of it.
Minister Farrakhan stated in a very early letter to us with his Study Guides that we should seek out our defects like jewelry.
Muhammad Ali wrote in the introduction to Surah (or Chapter) 64 of the Holy Qur’an: “This chapter is appropriately entitled The Manifestation of Losses, because, not only will disbelievers find their losses manifested on a certain day, but believers will also find such losses manifested, if they have been remiss in their obligations.”
So unity is a major key to our mutual success in helping each other with our mutual obligations, which is concisely described in Surah 103:1. We are to: “Consider the time! Surely man is in loss, except those who believe and do good, and exhort one another to Truth, and exhort one another to patience.”
The Messiah said: “To teach truth in a land where falsehood has reigned supremely takes patience on the part of the teacher as well as those being taught.”
Minister Farrakhan answered a question on his relationship to his teacher, a one-question interview I conducted with him on January 10, 1996, which I placed in the book, entitled “This Is The One.”
Brother Jabril: Brother Minister, on the night of June 4th, right after your Phoenix speech in 1995, you spoke to a little over 40 of us, at your dinner table, about the relationship between the mission of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and your mission, with your mission coming out of his mission. You spoke of your mission and his mission as being mutually compatible and complimentary. Would you please elaborate?
Minister Farrakhan: If a man is to be a helper of another man, the question becomes what help does he need? And based upon that necessity, persons are probed. Persons are sending their resumes. Persons are interviewed and persons are selected to help in whatever phase of the work or assignment that the main man has.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, like Moses, desired a helper. That desire was in him from the time he started his mission. He knew that he needed a helper, but not for the reason that he thought. But it would later come to him, as he grew in understanding his assignment, exactly what kind of help he would need. So he scanned the persons that surrounded him. And he measured them based upon his knowledge of the scripture and the help (in persons) that God gave to former prophets that shared the assignment of those prophets. So in Surah Taha, Surah 20, Moses asks God for a helper. And the first thing he says is, ‘Expand my breast for me and ease my affair. And loosen the knot in my tongue that they may understand my words. And Make him to bear of my burden or an aider to me.’
Now, if we look at those words, ‘Expand for me my breast…’ well, that could mean when your breast is expanded, you can take in more oxygen. The more oxygen you take in, the more power you have taken in to give your body more power; for the energy of life is in the oxygen that we breathe into ourselves. So this also goes for the spiritual world and these words mean, ‘expand my breast for more inspiration, more understanding that would give me more power to do a greater work.’ Again, since in the chest cavity or in the breast cavity there is the lungs and the heart, then he’s asking God to grant him broader compassion, broader sensitivity, a greater love coming from his expanded breast for an expanded mission.
As you may recall, the mission of Moses was, one, in the West, then in the East. So his breast had to be expanded; for first he had to deal with a savage people in the hills and cavesides of Europe and later, according to the scriptures, deal with another type of sickness in Egypt. So he has two assignments: one West, one East.
So, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has an expanded assignment. He has an assignment in America. He has an assignment in the Caribbean. And he has an assignment that covers the whole of the children of both the first and the second Adam. So his breast has to be expanded to fit that requirement. Well, it takes time to expand your breast. It takes time to open you up to the depth of understanding of your mission. He said that he had come to fully understand the last aspects of his mission at the time that he was to leave.
He was only given forty nights. Thirty, and then he was given ten more. And after that forty nights, he then calls his helper and says to his helper, ‘Take my place among the people and follow not the way of the mischief-maker.’ So the helper is not to look exactly like the person he is helping, but the helper helps in the expanded version of the mission of the master who preceded him and laid the foundation for him.
More, next issue, Allah willing.