JABRIL.MUHAMMAD
None of us who are privileged to write columns, in this great newspaper–The Final Call–can ever express all that we would like to state in any one article. Such is often the case with my article.
The following excerpt is from a volume of the twenty-five volume set, of The Expositor’s Bible, which was edited by the Reverend W. Robertson Nicoll, copyrighted 1903. The volume containing this excerpt is The Gospel of St. John, by Marcus Dods, D.D. It reads:
“Is God to be kept out of all reality? Is He merely to look on, to see how His creatures will manage, how this and that man will bear himself heroically, but Himself a mere name, a lay figure crowned but otiose, doing nothing to merit His crown, doing nothing to warrant the worship of untold worlds, commanding others to peril themselves and put all to the proof, but Himself well out of range of all risk, of all conflict, of all tragedy?
“How can we hope to love a God we remove to a throne remote and exalted, from which He looks down on human life, and cannot look on it as we do from the inside?
“Is God to be only a dramatist, who arranges thrilling situations for others to pass through, and assigns to each the part he is to play, but Him-self has no real interests at stake and no actual entrance into the world of feeling, of hope, of trial?
“And if a Divine Person were in the course of things to come into this human world, to enter into our actual experiences, and feel and bear the actual strain that we bear, it is obvious He must come incognito–not distinguished by such marks as would bring the world to His feet, and make an ordinary human life and ordinary human trials impossible to Him.”
When sovereigns wish to ascertain for themselves how their subjects live, they do not proclaim their approach and send in advance an army of protection, provision, and display; they do not demand to be met by the authorities of each town, and to be received by artificial, stereotyped addresses, and to be led from one striking sight to another and from one comfortable palace to another: but they leave their robes of state behind them, they send no messenger in advance, and they mix as one of the crowd with the crowd, exposed to whatever abuse may be going, and living for the time on the same terms as the rank and file.
This has been done often in sport, sometimes as matter of policy or of interest, but never as the serious method of understanding and lifting the general habits and life of the people.
Christ came among us, not as a kind of Divine adventure to break the tedium of eternal glory, nor merely to make personal observations on His own account, but as the requisite and only means available for bringing the fullness of Divine help into practical contact with mankind.
But as all filth and squalor are hidden away in the slums from the senses of the king, so that if he is to penetrate into the burrows of the criminal classes and see the wretchedness of the poor, he must do it incognito, so if Christ sought to bring Divine mercy and might within reach of the vilest, He must visit their haunts and make Himself acquainted with their habits.
“It is also obvious that such a Person would concern Himself not with art or literature, not with inventions and discoveries, not even with politics and government and social problems, but with that which underlies all these and for which all these exist–with human character and human conduct, with man’s relations to God. It is with the very root of human life He concerns Himself.
“The sufferings of Christ, then, were mainly inward, and were the necessary result of His perfect sympathy with men.”
Although scholars, such as the one I quoted above, have in mind the prevailing, or the Christian view, of a man named Jesus, who lived two thousand years ago, most of this excerpt more appropriately fits, with far greater force, Master Fard Muhammad.
Is there any application of this quote to Master Fard Muhammad? Yes. He came here incognito. Does this also touch the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan? Yes, but in different ways.
How? A major key to understanding these applications can be found in a Saviour’s Day talk of 1954, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, in which he indicated the coming of Minister Farrakhan, whom he would not see until the next year.
He said: “There has been lots of different and contrary teachings concerning the Bible’s teachings of Jesus and Jerusalem (Palestine).
“I want to help you to clear your own self of that misunderstanding as God Almighty Allah has revealed it to me … They have mixed our brother intertwining the history of Jesus of 2,000 years ago with that of the history or prophesy of what they called the coming of the Messiah and what we say the coming of the Mahdi.
“They have taken and mixed these two prophecies or these two histories together. And also you will find in that same history of the Bible some portions of it dealing with the Messenger of the Mahdi instead of dealing directly with the Jesus of 2,000 years ago. Therefore today it is such confused history that you cannot understand it without divine guidance.
“What you are looking for or rather what you think that has happened is now happening in this day.”
Let’s enter this limited discussion through a brief commentary on the meaning of three words, that appear on the front cover of the fifth (in the order that we received them) written Lesson left to us by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
It’s an important Lesson. This Lesson, called by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, The Problem Book, (although it’s untitled) is composed of approximately 45 percent of the total number of words that compose these six Lessons.
These three words are “thorough,” “knowledge” and “mathematical.” By Allah’s help I’ll get to their definitions next issue.
Meanwhile, two movies that are instructive are “Needful Things.” It’s an excellent portrayal of the devastation effects of slander. It further provides insight into the methods evil is spread with the mouth surreptitiously or such manner so that the worst kind of slanderers are able to hide, until discovered.
The movie “Amadeus” is an excellent portrayal of that one-hundred percent evil: envy.
Most of the above was written on November 12, 2001 and sent to The Final Call.
More next issue, Allah willing.
