JABRIL.MUHAMMAD
[Editor’s Note: This is a reprint and was published online January 16, 2003.]
Why do Jews, Christians and Muslims, who are considered experts on God and the scriptures, ignore the history, condition and position of Black people in the most powerful of all countries–America–in their writings about the end of this world?
Do these scholars see Black people as important in the fulfillment of God’s plan to the establishment of God’s rule or kingdom on earth, beginning here in America? Over the last few decades they are beginning to see. But, their views are mixed. Is this due to bias, intellectual dishonesty and a kind of ignorance?
The changes in their views are due to the work of God primarily through the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.
At present, America is the most extraordinary of all the nations of the earth. What is her place in scriptures? We cannot honestly ask, nor even try to answer, that question without facing who Black people really are.
The scholars have either ignored or marginalized Black people as well as the mission of both the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam–in public anyway–to raise Black people from spiritual death.
However, there are a few scholars who are not like the present majority. We’ll look at them later.
In 1965 I heard an interview of Dr. Hugh J. Schonfield concerning his book, The Passover Plot, which had just been published. I intend to return to a few major points he made in his book as they have a direct bearing on the mission of Minister Farrakhan, even though I have no reason to think that Dr. Schonfield had Minister Farrakhan in mind when he wrote his book. Instead, I’ll briefly discuss something from an earlier book he wrote which was titled Secret of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Based on aspects of the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, I felt that there was something about those scrolls that had some bearing on Black people in America. From time to time, I would look in books on the Dead Sea Scrolls only to discover that what was being passed off as insightful scholarship was no more than “claptrap.”
One day, while browsing in a used bookstore, I came upon a small book written by Dr. Schonfield on the scrolls. Even though the few pages I looked at contained nothing I understood, I decided to buy it anyway. It was only a few dollars. Over the next few weeks, I tried to make sense out of what he wrote but had to put it aside because the language was too technical. I read all but the last chapter.
Time passed. It’s now early 1973. I’m several chapters deep into a book that I had begun writing the year before. I’m taking up a point about the place of the Blackman and women in God’s plan. Our true identity was kept as a secret, from ourselves and from nearly everyone else, by both God and Satan until the proper time. It also involved the manner of its revelation.
It was then that I remembered the first word of the title to Dr. Schonfield’s book. It was “secret.” I had not looked at that book in years. I had read all but the last chapter of his book, but got tired of it. I now wondered if he wrote what he thought the secret was in the final chapter that I had not read. So I picked it up. Dusted it off. Read it.
I incorporated the essential points he made on this secret into what I was writing. However, I criticize him for not taking the next step, which, according to him, was the subject and the secret of the scrolls. He ought to have at least attempted to identify these secret people of the scrolls. He could have made a call, urging the scholars of the world to honestly look into this vital subject–maybe even hold a world conference (Smile).
It’s now 1976. I decided to see if he would take that next step or at least honestly discuss this subject. I wrote him through his publisher. Not long after, I received a letter from him from the island of Malta. I wrote four. He wrote three. My fourth letter contained a question for his response. It included a direct question about the identity of God’s chosen people he wrote about in his book, whose identity was kept as a secret. It’s now 2002. He has yet to respond.
In the last chapter of his book, Dr. Schonfield concluded, in so many words, that the writers of the scrolls wrote them to serve the needs of a future people who would be living at the time when God Himself would manifest Himself to the whole of humanity.
He further concluded that these writers foresaw that God would claim a particular people as His own, whom the scroll writers called the Elect. God would be especially merciful to those proving to be faithful to the purpose of His visit to them.
Dr. Schonfield wrote that the scrolls writers were, “É on the lookout for the coming Teacher of Righteousness of the End of the Days and of a Messiah from Aaron and Israel.” [Emphasis mine.]
This scholar further stated that these writers “É in many things are speaking in terms of future events and no historical circumstances that we know will fit all the explanations. We cannot, therefore, propose that James the Just, or Jesus, or John the Baptist, was the Teacher of Righteousness at the End of the Days as understood by the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“We have to consider why the opposing personalities are not named. We are familiar with them only from the description of the part they play. This could be because they serve as symbols of primeval forces and are not real people at all. We have taken account of the Cosmic Drama. But if these End Time figures are to be understood of individuals who have walked the earth and behaved as related, it is difficult to see why their identity, known to their contemporaries, should be required to be disguised. Is it not preferable to suppose that these persons cannot be named because they have not yet appeared?”
[Dr. Schonfield italicized his words for emphasis. I made them bold for extra emphasis.]
We need not know anything of the scrolls to know who Black people are today. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad made that plain. Then we, well, we kinda-sorta, forgot it. So Minister Farrakhan has, for 25 years, reminded us. However, the truth of the scrolls–which at best is a limited tool–should force the scholars to be what they have not been, up to the present, on this crucial subject.
Meanwhile, Black people continue to be tricked by the children of this world’s father. It’s a shame because now that wisdom, which was to come, and is the only wisdom which can overcome the wisdom of this world, is here.
There is also enough of it in Minister Farrakhan’s study guides–beginning in 1986–to enable the Believers to spiritually overcome this world’s father’s wisdom in his grandchildren–the hypocrites, if we would but use it.
If J. Edgar Hoover was alive, would he see Minister Farrakhan as
“a Black Messiah?”
More next issue, Allah willing.
