JABRIL.MUHAMMAD
Previous Farrakhan The Traveler Articles
I wrote an article in this column about the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan in which I included an experience I had with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad when I was twenty-five years old. I had been thinking about it for about five years, in different forms, and in different ways, as I was learning more and more about him, as well as from him.
Finally, on November 19, 1961, I asked him, “Dear Holy Apostle, isn’t it true that when one reads Psalms, one is reading the heart of the last Messenger?” We were eating our bean soup. It is very difficult for me to put in words, on a piece of paper, the way that he reacted.
In part of his reaction, he reacted as if his attention was subtly caught by someone else in the room, of whom he had the highest respect. This is what he did, he turned completely to his left; where there was more space in the room and he looked upward, I would say about 45 degrees. I heard just a few of his words. I suppose I looked at him with my eyes wide opened.
More slowly, he turned back around to his right and resumed the taking of his soup. And as he lifted his spoon to his mouth, he glanced at me and said, “Yes, Brother.”
In connection with the origin, nature and purpose of the Book of Psalms, of which I had been blessed to have some knowledge–I’m among the few who had seen the Honorable Elijah Muhammad speak on some of his memories and sufferings as he continued working to ultimately relieve all of us of pain and suffering. On a few occasions, I’ve seen tears, welled up in his eyes, on specific occasions, when he was relating some of his experiences, such as what he went through for us when he had to suffer being on the run for seven years from jealousy and envious people who took him for an enemy.
Some of those experiences went through my mind as I ponder the question I decided to ask Minister Farrakhan about his trials. I asked him of his trials for our benefit. On June 13 of this year, he went through a difficult hour and fifty-five minute experience as he responded to my question. Some of the things he said, I have heard him say over the years. Some of the things he said seemed new, because of the context in which he was relaying each one right after another after another.
As I mentioned last issue, he shed some tears throughout the interview. It’s my intention to take up certain words such as cry, sob and weep to try to convey the pain that the words on the pages of Closing The Gap represent. And as I try the best I can, in a few lines, to convey something of the divine purpose for which he was put through pain–not for any crime he had done, but for the same purpose for which his teacher was put through pain for the redemption of us all.
Of course Minister Farrakhan is still going through pain, as it is yet a necessary part of the burden he was to share with his teacher, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
I remember an article that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote during the ending months of 1956 in the Pittsburg Courier. He was writing about the need for us to unite and then he wrote these words, which I never forgot, from then until now “that it took much suffering, but it could be done.” By the time he had written that article he had already gone through much suffering and he had years of suffering to go.
If you read the thirty pages that he gave us, in Closing The Gap we can read what his very first trial was as a young Brother in the Nation of Islam.
In previous articles and in a few of my past articles, I referred to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister Louis Farrakhan as the “Two Messiahs.” One of the most fundamental meanings of this term or title involves the act and concept of being anointed.
In the scriptures, we can see if we want to, when God anointed Moses and where Moses, under God’s guidance anointed Aaron. Of course Moses and Aaron were signs of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister Farrakhan. I know that many of us consider such talk foolishness and a waste of time. I know that many of us do not like to read of such. However, on CNN last night (12-21) they ran a few hours, right during primetime news, about the change in thinking on the part of Christians and some others in America, on issues that relate to the end of the world, the bible, etc.
Many, many people are paying even closer attention to the increasing correspondence between what’s going on in America and throughout the world, to prophecies about what would happen at the time of the end of the world.
If we visited the Grand Canyon and look at that majestic sight, regardless to the time of the year, or the time of day or night, I think everyone of us would say or think or feel something like “God.” There are many other sights or scenes or experiences that perhaps would cause us to say something similar. But that’s where we all are. In the plainest language, I can write it, two men–the Two Messiahs–the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister Farrakhan have suffered day and night to prepare and bring us all face-to-face with God’s reality. Of course there are others of us who have done our small part to be of assistance to these two men over the last seventy-five years and a few months.
I’m sorry that I’m rushing this article, I’m doing the best I can to rush it so that I don’t miss making a contribution, however small it may be, to help my Brother, Minister Farrakhan with his awesome assignment, burden and task, which he shares with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in fulfilling what was written of them, that they would succeed in successfully carrying out all aspects of completing the hardest job ever given to any man by God, which was given to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And he asked Almighty God to do something for him, which Moses asked God to do for him back then, thousands of years ago.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad asked Almighty God to make Minister Farrakhan to share his burden or his task. It included the effort Minister Farrakhan had to make in response to his teacher’s request of him to line his mind up with the mind of his teacher (the Honorable Elijah Muhammad) that there be one mind and through his mind, divinely came Closing The Gap.
More, next issue, Allah willing.
