The Swan Song

(The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan delivered a near five-hour presentation Feb. 27 as Saviours’ Day 2022 was commemorated in Chicago at Mosque Maryam and the National Center of the Nation of Islam. His subject was “The Swan Song.” Below are excerpts from this amazing message. We encourage readers to get the full message on CD, DVD, or MP3 by visiting store.finalcall.com or call 1-866-602-1230, ext. 200.)

In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful, I bear witness that there is no God but He, Allah, the Originator Who originated Himself and from Himself gods came representing the oneness of the Creator.  He willed into existence one who, in the fullness of time, would perfect His creation. That one was born February 26, 1877. That man was born to rule, born to master the creation, born to show us the potential of each and every human being. He was born to come after the Lost Sheep; born to come to a people that were considered dead.

What would He do?  He would search for one to whom He could give a weighty word and give him the hardest job ever given to any human being who has lived on our planet.  What kind of job is that?  You must choose the right man when you are giving him a job like that.  He looked among us and He found among us a magnificently beautiful human being not made by this world and its educational institutions. He went only to the fourth grade of school, and being a son of the soil of Georgia, he, like most Georgia young men, had to do his work in the field picking cotton, doing what the master gave us to do.

The weight of a dead nation and the weight of what it takes to raise somebody who is totally dead.  The only thing that is not dead is that he’s walking, he’s talking, he’s thinking, but because he was from a people robbed and spoiled, stripped of our own humanity, treated on the level of the beast of the field, He had to raise Elijah Muhammad from a dead level to a living perpendicular and assign him a mission.

Master Fard Muhammad said He would talk to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and ask him, “Why don’t you accept the job?  There’s nobody to do it but you and me.” And the Messenger would just look down and the Messenger said he never spoke.  He was so deep in thought when the Saviour was talking to him that he couldn’t respond in what you would think is a proper manner.

So, Master Fard Muhammad asked him:  “Why won’t you accept the job and get the big name?”  He wasn’t interested in no big name.  He knew that job was a big job, but the comforting words that He gave his student were: “I will be with you.”

He said, “If you’ll back me, here am I. Send me.” Elijah Muhammad, what a teacher.  I’m so sorry that my brother Malcolm, who was my inspiration and my first teacher, didn’t stay in the class long enough to become the master that Elijah Muhammad wanted to make him.  After 12 years he ran into a problem.  Life is always presenting the living with a problem; a problem that will make you or break you.  But as [Student Minister] Brother Ishmael has been preaching for a few weeks now, you were made to conquer whatever life presents. 

You did it when you were sperm.  Why don’t you think you can’t do it now? Emitted into a hostile environment with a competition of a 100 million to a billion other sperms who had the same thing in mind: “We got to fertilize that egg.”  And when you made it, and I made it, and we made it, we were ready to come forth into life and face anything that life presents.  And with the mind of a conqueror, and the spirit of God, anything that came our way in order to get where we are today, we had to conquer.

You are a generation born from ancestors who came through the roughest of times, the hardest of trials, the depth of privation. Our ancestors died longing for a generation that would come forth, that would not bend, would not bow, would not scratch where they didn’t itch, but stand tall.

We are Black people who were brought to America to be made slaves—beaten and brutalized, misused and abused. Our women were the plaything of a slave master who used your womb to bring forth more slaves that whichever slave that was nurtured as a slave, the slave master could become rich.  The slave died.  The woman that birth him died, but children were born under that cycle of pain. In that period of total degradation, children were born.

Don’t you think that people who are under a burden don’t know how to pray?  We learned prayer the hard way because we didn’t come up the smooth side of the mountain.  We came up the roughest side that a mountain could provide us, but we are here, the strongest of the strong.

I want to introduce you today to the Son of Man.  Happy Birthday, Dear Saviour.  Happy Birthday, Saviour, because the dead are rising.  Happy Birthday, Saviour!

The blind eyes are opening; the deaf ears are opening; and the stopped tongue is now speaking with the voice of a man. Happy Birthday, Saviour! We traded in our bottle, our pipe, our smoke, for a scripture that began to teach us who we are.  As women, we threw off the mind of a harlot.  We threw off the mind of a woman that is only for the wicked pleasure of sick, depraved men.

Once we knew we were the first creation of God, His words were, “Accept your own and be yourself.” And we started the journey of life. We have had great leaders before the Coming of Master Fard Muhammad; and we thank Allah so much for them.  In looking back on our slave history, in every tribe, in every family, there was a man, there was a woman who had light in the midst of the darkness.

In every tribe, under every circumstance, there was a woman who cried out for a child who would deliver us from this condition.  There’s a law in nature that says when you are deprived of something that is naturally your birthright, you long for it.  In that longing, the longer you are deprived of it, the stronger your desire for relief from your burden grows.  The longer the period of suffering, the stronger the womb and the sperm that produces a soul.

I know that I never could have made it without God and my teacher.  I never could have made it, but I’m stronger.  I’m better.  I’m wiser because I held onto my teacher; and now he’s making me the master of the condition, the master of the circumstance and the master of the enemy.  If only Malcolm could have stayed in the class; if only Muhammad Ali could have stayed in the class; if only the son, Warith Deen, would have attended the class, it would not have been necessary for me to be here today.   

You cannot tell me that you have a great teacher, but your love is shallow.  You cannot tell me you have a great leader, but your love is fickle.  You cannot tell me you have a great teacher, a great Prophet, and you can only hang on while the Prophet is among you.  But the moment the Prophet is gone, vanity and envy, and all these wicked characteristics manifest.

Poor Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, he fought the good fight.  He was true to what he taught.  He was the embodiment of the spirit of what he taught, and when he left, a great disciple arose, Abu Bakr.  When a great one leaves, there are always those who desire his place.

But as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “They want my crown, but they don’t want to pay my price.”  They have said many terrible things about me.  They said, he wants to be the leader. He wants to be seen. He doesn’t really love Elijah Muhammad.  He’s an actor.  You should go to school and learn how to act like me, because if acting is what brought me from a musician singing dirty calypso songs, writing dirty calypso songs, trying to be better but didn’t know how, but that was not my calling.

One day when the play I had written was playing right here at Dunbar High School, there were two shows, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad came to the evening performance, but I didn’t know it.  Oh, and did I sing, and did I dance, and did I play my violin. 

I did all that I knew how to do in that world’s life.  Some of you beautiful brothers and sisters have so much talent, but the one thing you don’t have is a moral compass. So, money becomes your master.  And when money and fame become your master, Satan, who has the money, becomes master of what you want to master.  He makes us an offer that we can’t refuse, and we end up selling our souls.

Some of you love the Minister but you can’t come too close.  Some of you really love the Minister, but you can’t talk about me in certain circles.  Some of you love me and I’m like a lovely song.  So, in introducing you to the Son of Man, I could be an actor.  I could have been a great one because Satan is a great actor.  He teaches acting school and some of us have become good students in Satan’s acting class.  We don’t know how to be real.  We don’t know how to be sincere.  We don’t know how to be really committed to what we say we’re committed to. We are liars after a major liar.

I was in that world, and I was good at what I did.  I used to wonder why God gave me all of these gifts?  If you have a gift and you find it, you want to know what is the purpose?  How should you use your gift?  When you don’t know God but you have a gift, you don’t know God but you have something so wonderful that they want to exploit it, they will give you money and you will play the exclusive clubs. You will have a lot of women, if that’s what you like.  And you will have a lot of men if that’s what you like.  I was in that kind of world.

My brother Harry Belafonte was playing in a Broadway show called “Almanac,” and he was chosen to play the part in a movie in Hollywood and he got the part. That left the part in “Almanac” for somebody who could sing calypso and dance.  I came down from Boston and I tried to sing and dance, play my little Quattro, and I was told I didn’t get the part. 

But they told me, well, you know, the man who can give you the part, he’s a homosexual.  This is how you lose your soul.  When you compromise your integrity as a human being, as a man, as a Black man, and allow the enemy to have his way with you, male or female.

There are beautiful Black women, talented Black women, but Satan always wanted to see you as a tart, some lovely sex creature.  So, he doesn’t feature your voice.  He features what goes along with it and he accentuates the negative and diminishes the value of the positive and you sell your soul. Satan wins again.

That’s why we have a prayer that says, if it’s besides Allah, we don’t want anything that is beside Him.  When they told me about the homosexual that seemed to like me, I said, tell him if my talent is not good enough for me to get the part, tell him to keep it.  If you can’t walk away from money, from fame, and you become a whore, then every time you commit a whoredom, your talent is diminished; your strength as a woman or a man is diminished.  You sold out.

In my growing up in show business, I always had prostitutes that were my friends.  They loved me, and they protected me as a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old who was a budding talent. A 40-year-old woman came into the club, and I had on a black onyx ring. After the show she asked me to sit, and she was going to buy me a drink. What do you drink?  Oh, I don’t drink but I’ll take a ginger ale.

When you start down that road, anything you compromise of your character leads to a greater compromise until you are nothing.  If you can’t turn wrong down and put your trust in a Higher Power to get you what you want without selling your soul, then the enemy has robbed you because you’re not connected to the Giver of your gift.

What does that have to do with The Swan Song?  Hang in there with me because a lot of you will be singing before the night is over.  You thought you were coming to hear mine?  Is that what you came out to see?  Well, I’m going to sing a song for you because I want you to live and not die from the song you sing.

Well, were you going to retire? Retire? How can a teacher of wisdom, from the God of wisdom and the Messenger of wisdom retire as ignorant as we are?

There’s no Swan Song like that for me.  But when I get finished, you may find a song in there for you and I’m going to help you to sing it strong.

[You may be thinking] Farrakhan’s closing down the shop.  The Nation’s finished because they don’t have another Farrakhan.  You don’t need another one.  This one is sufficient.  There is a swan called the “trumpeter swan.”  He doesn’t wait until he’s dead to sing.  He’s singing all the time. 

Let me tell you what a Swan Song is, and before I finish today, you’re going hear something that’s just for you. When you hear the note that God designed for you, hold it in your mind. If you play that note right, you may come out of death into life again.  God did not come for you to die.  He came for us to live. He came to give us life and give it to us in abundance.

If I lose my place in my prepared notes, I have helpers who can help me.  But I can’t give you the notes because I don’t even follow them. When I come out, I read you.  You’re the notes that I want to sing.  You are the people of God and you’re the ones that God came 9,000 miles for.

He threatened Elijah Muhammad not to lose the form of one of the lost-founds.  He never wrote Elijah Muhammad “best wishes to you.”  He said, “Best wishes to you and the whole 17 million” because the value of Elijah Muhammad to Master Fard Muhammad is how he would come after you and get you out of a dead state and make you into a god.

While I’m on that subject, some of the people who are around me don’t like to be called “student minister.”  I’m sorry.  I thought I would talk to the class.  The problem with you and me and us—I put myself in it because God has saved me from it—but I want to help you get out of that position that you don’t like being a student.

When the devil confers a degree on you, he’s finished with you.  He’s finished with you because he’s taught you enough that he can use you for his purpose because he’s trained you well to bow down to him.  I’m a student, but I’m in the classroom of God, a student of God, growing into one.  I’m going to meet my Father to see if he Approves me for my diploma.

Thank you, Allah, for leading me in this way.  Allah-U-Akbar.  The Love of God is the key to the manifestation of who you are.  All of you are great.  There’s not one of you here in the mosque, in the tent, in the musallah, in the gymnasium, wherever you are in this building, every one of you is great.

And God is so beautiful, He shares his greatness with us. 

To be continued.