[Editor’s note: The following article contains excerpts of the Saviours’ Day keynote address delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan on Sunday, February 22, 2015 at Christ Universal Temple in Chicago, Illinois. This message is now available in its entirety on DVD, CD and MP3. To order, please call 1.866.602.1230, ext. 200 or visit store.finalcall.com.]
In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
I am a student of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. The Qur’an says “every nation has received a messenger”—and my beloved Muslim family believes that the final messenger is Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. But when Prophet Muhammad came, the Western world had not been discovered, America had not been founded, slavery had not begun, and the Native American people, who are the owners of this country, had not met an enemy that deprived them and us of life, liberty and the pursuit of their happiness.
America is in need of a divine messenger and a warner from God. America is in need of someone to help her to keep her from a destructive fall.
A criminal nation (America) and the current condition, a people kidnapped, enslaved and robbed
Inside America is a people that did not ask to come here; a people that were brought out of their native land and people, and brought on a westerly course. And here we are, the Black man and woman in North America: What is our condition? A people robbed and spoiled. … Nearly 50 million of us who do not know our origin in the world, 50 million of us are ill-acquainted with our own history so that today they are “kind enough” to give us a month to study a History that is older than the Sun, Moon and Stars.
Slavery is a crime! Then America is a criminal. Kidnapping is a crime! Then America is a criminal. Robbery is a crime! Then America is a criminal to bring us from our native land and people, and rob us of a connection to our native land and people. You have Irish here; they have a connection. You have Italians here, you have Greeks—everybody has a connection. Ours was cut off. That’s a crime.
Black man and woman: You don’t wear the names of your parents. We wear the names of our former slave masters and their children. That’s a crime. Other people can speak words of their native language or mother tongue, but for us, “mother” gone, “father” gone; “motherless child” sees a hard time. That’s a crime. “Slavery”: Selling another human being like a piece of property; then, if we disobeyed master, to be beaten, to be burned at the stake, to be castrated. All of these horrible things have happened to us as a people.
To my dear Christian family: We have to consider that for 300 years they never taught us to read. The Bible was a locked book, and any White person of decency that tried to teach us to read was severely punished; and so, in the 1700s, they thought it not incompatible to have us as “slaves,” and then to make us “Christians.”
I submit to you that we were never made Christians to bring us closer to Jesus, because if we were as close to Jesus as we could be, as we should be—as we must be—we would never be in the condition that we are. And the church would never be an instrument of disunity rather than an instrument of unity of all the Christian family.
Nobody changed our condition, so God, as He did in the past, intervened in our affairs and in America’s affairs. And His pattern is the same: He doesn’t run to the ruler to choose a messenger. He doesn’t go to the college to choose a messenger. He goes among the oppressed, the poor, the weak, the disadvantaged, and out of them He chooses a man and feeds that man the truth that will deliver his people and the truth that will warn the government that has mistreated his people, that perhaps they might listen and avoid utter and complete destruction.
So we believe that The One Who was to come has indeed come, called in your Bible “The Son of Man,” Who would come out of The East, for as the scripture teaches in the Book of Matthew, Chapter 24, verse 27: “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” He would come: Habakkuk the prophet saw Him coming! Isaiah the prophet saw Him coming! Moses saw Him coming; Jesus talked about His coming!
“As it was,” Matthew 24:37 teaches, “in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man.” Is it like that today? What was it like in the “days of Noah”? The scripture teaches in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 6, verse 5 that “every imagination of the peoples’ hearts was to do evil.” How about America today? A robbery every 15 seconds? A murder every 30 seconds? Murder, robbery, rape and racist killing, and our own fratricidal conflict killing one another: This doesn’t have anything to do with Jesus. It doesn’t have anything to do with Prophet Muhammad.
I know my president, Brother Barack Obama, was trying to keep away from saying “Islamic terrorism”; and today, I want to help my brother—I want to talk about the root of “terror.” And I have a word to say to you, brothers and sisters, about “terrorism” and the universal cry that is intensifying in the people for justice.
I hate the division that is manifested in the world today, particularly in the world of Islam, where we are witnessing the killing of Christians because they are Christians, the killing of Jews because they are Jews, and those who kill Muslims simply because we are Muslims. I would like to say those things that unite us, to say the things to make us see each other as a “family,” and to say those things that will demonstrate to the world that God has raised a light in the midst of the darkness of America that shines back towards The East where all the prophets came.
The “light of the prophets” has gone out in The East, and it is now alive and well in The West. Today I’m going to weave all the scriptures together, and in that process weave us together as a beautiful garment of many colors like Joseph’s coat, that you may see where we fit, and why the universal cry that is intensifying for justice has called God out of His hiding place.
‘The Day of Judgment’ in which we now live
The Al-Fatihah, which is to the Muslims like “The Lord’s Prayer” is to our Christian family: Elijah Muhammad would say this prayer, “In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, The Beneficent, the Merciful, Master of the Day of Judgment”—but he added something—“in which we now live.”
That’s where I’m going today; because for religious scholars and leaders to think that The Day of Judgment is “afar off”: You’re in it right now. And that’s why if you watch the weather, the meteorologists can’t get it right. That’s why there’s trouble all over the Earth, because we are at the end of the time of this world.
Dear pastors, pay attention: The Bible teaches “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever would believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” I cannot allow you to think that God loves this world, because if you think that way you’ll want to stay in it; you’ll see yourself as desirous of being a part of it.
My poor brother president: He’ll never be able to bring peace, no matter how sincere his heart is. I’m so sorry that he wanted to be Pharaoh in the time of the end of Pharaoh. I’m so sorry that he wanted to be Pharaoh when God has come to put an end to that “Egypt” which old Egypt was a sign of.
God did not love this world. He declared its destruction the day of its inception. He gave this world six days. … And to my Seventh Day Adventist family: In “the seventh day,” God would come. And you, Black man and woman: You think so little of yourself.
Though you sing the song “What He Did for Others He Can Do for Us”—but He hadn’t done it yet; and you have rejected the gift of life that He wishes to give to you because you are so in love with your former slave masters, and their children. You want to be a part of this. Wrong. The scripture teaches, “Come out of her, My people. Babylon has fallen and has become a habitation of devils.”
Do you really think you’re a saint? Let’s discuss this, because if we are “saints” then God helps righteousness. What is a “devil”? A rebel against God and His way; and not only one who is a transgressor, but leads others into transgression.
Brothers and sisters, I just want you to pay attention to my words; if “the seat gets a little hot,” I’m not after you, I’m after what’s sitting up inside you that makes you an enemy of God and an enemy of yourself. … If you fear, you won’t live to see justice. If you are a scared-to-death people, you are scared of the power of the enemy because you’re not acquainted with The Power of God.
“God so loved the world”: When you use the definite article, you’re talking about that world that is “the example of worlds,” and is why this world will not last! God so loved the world that was in His Mind, that He gave His only begotten son to bring that world into existence because this one is perishing—and if you love this world, you will go down with it as it’s going! That is why you have to be told the truth that will set you free.
Free of what? Free of your oppressor. Free of the tyranny of those who terrorize you. Free of that fear that makes you into a “little boy” in the face of your enemy, when God wants to make you a man.
‘The Cry of the Human Family in Demand of Justice’: With 100 percent dissatisfaction, what power will bring about 100 percent change?
God’s world is in need of a truth that will set up a government where everybody can live in peace under real freedom, real justice, and real equality. Christian family: You pray for it every Sunday, and even through the week! You don’t pray for “this world,” but you say “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” “The Will of God” is not being done today in any country, including the holiest places of Christianity and Islam, and Judaism; so we can go from Jerusalem to Mecca, to Medinah, to Rome—to wherever you think is a “holy place,” it has been defiled.
And those of us who think that we are “holy” because we like to put on robes, and strut like peacocks in front of the ignorant as though we are “holy”: You have never been holy. Even if you tried, you haven’t made it. So let us disabuse ourselves of the arrogance of self-righteousness, and the hypocrisy of it. “There is none righteous, no not one.” (That’s what the Book says.)
If this were God’s world, there wouldn’t be 100 percent dissatisfaction. Trouble is breaking out in all the countries, and America, “the land of the free”—and the home of the slave, as well as “the brave”: There’s trouble in Ferguson, trouble in St. Louis, trouble in Chicago, trouble in New York, trouble everywhere you look. Because “justice” is not where we look; it’s injustice that is the order of the day.
Seven billion people on our planet are upset, angry, dissatisfied with those who lead and govern their lives and the institutions that have been put into place by various governments to govern lives of the people of the Earth. This intense cry for justice demands The Presence of God—and we find Him in The Great Mahdi (or Mahadiah, or “Guide that is Self-Guided”).
The poor Muslim world, trying to get back to the pristine purity of the faith of Muhammad: You haven’t made it, have you? And you won’t make it because you are not guided right. That’s why God sent a Guide; because we’ve lost the way. Christians: You’ve lost the path of Jesus; in fact, most of you never knew his path. You know his name, you know something about his goodness, his beauty as a human being, and you love to praise him in song, in dance, and in preaching, but our hearts are far removed from living the life that he wanted us to live. So what good is it to know the name of a great one, to talk about him, and then deny him in our actions?
Every nation on Earth now: If you listen to the politics of each nation, they’re running on a theme, or a plan, about “change” to satisfy the dissatisfied elements. But no change can satisfy the demand of the Human Family for justice. No change orchestrated by those presently in power could ever satisfy the cry of the people. You know why? Because this cry is not a cry that comes out of some petty hurt or pain; it’s not a cry to “fix the unions,” it’s not a cry to “straighten out the politics,” it’s not a cry to “get the mosque right or the church right”—it’s so much deeper than that.
The change that will satisfy the cry of humanity can only come not from any present ruler, but from God Himself. No institution that presently exists can satisfy the cry of the people; no government—and no religious order.
Again, no religious order can satisfy the cry that is coming up out of the people in your own order, much less the order of someone else. And you know why? Because what is demanded out of the very Nature of God, and the nature and order of His creation that is inside the nature of the people, that has been stirred, now, by the cry for justice: There’s something in you that is crying out, and it cannot be met in the political arena, or the voting booth.
Now, you can vote for whoever you want for mayor. But it is an exercise in futility; because you are never going to get what you think you might get if you put “the right man” in office. I don’t care what his color is—he can’t fix it because he doesn’t know enough to solve the problems. The problems are too complex, and the cry continues to get stronger and stronger. …
The people are crying out for The Kingdom of God to be established on the Earth. This is why God says through the Book of Revelation, “There will be a new heaven and a new earth, and the former things will pass away.” That not only means there will be a new sun, a new moon, new stars; that is in the works now, but we will never live to see it for it’s billions of years in the future. But The God with perfect knowledge is dissatisfied even with what we think is already “perfect,” so there will be a new sun, a new moon, a new star—but that is not what the scripture is talking about.
A “new heaven” means a new spiritual order, and a new political order governed by the spiritual order that will bring human beings together. Not on the basis of color of skin, or ethnicity or biology, but on the basis of our desire to do that which is right.