1976-March-26

Bilalian News

The Presence Of God’s Power: Part 2

Imam W. D. Muhammad

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1. Has there not been 
Over Man a long period
Of Time, when he was
Nothing – (not even) mentioned?

2. Verily We created
Man from a drop
Of mingled sperm
In order to try him:
So we gave him (the gifts)
Of Hearing and Sight

3. We showed him the way:
Whether he be grateful
Or ungrateful (rests
On his will).

Holy Quran, Yusuf Ali Translation, Sura LXXVI: Verses 1-3
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In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful; Peace and Blessings upon His Servant and His Messenger, Muhammad, forever. Amen.

There is no god but Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Holy Quran says that there are people who boast that they are powerful because they have a certain knowledge. That person might be a mathematician, an accountant or the president, and he thinks that his special knowledge put him in his position. The Holy Quran is against that kind of proud thinking in the individual. There are many men and women who might have that same special knowledge, but they might never get into the high position of the proud person.

The Holy Quran is saying to us that man should not think that he has control of his own destiny, nor should he think that he is a special creation. Even if he uses his special knowledge, he will not always be successful. Whatever talent or blessing that he has to use is the blessing of Almighty God. No one knows where they are going to be next year. You can have all the money today, but next year you could be a beggar You can have all
the wisdom today, but that still does not mean that someone will give you power. A completely ignorant person might come and get what you have been struggling to get.


The Guarantee Of Peace
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34. Verily the knowledge
Of the Hour is
With God (alone).
It is He Who sends down
Rain, and He Who knows
What is in the wombs.

Nor does any one know
What it is that he will
Earn on the morrow:
Nor does any one know
In what land he is
To Die. Verily with God
Is full knowledge and He
Is acquainted (with all things).

Holy Quran, Yusuf Ali Translation, Sura XXXI: Verse 34
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This should tell us that there is a God always ruling and that He "runs the show" As He wants to run it. We can have knowledge, but that does not mean that we are going to get the benefit from it. The only salvation for the person is submission of his will to the will of the Creator of the heavens and the earth. Unless you follow the path of submission, there is no guarantee that you will be successful. Even submission to God will not guarantee us a position of authority over the world. You are not going to be guaranteed that you will be a millionaire or that people will admire, love or honor you. But, if you submit yourself wholly and willingly to the will of Almighty God, you will have the guarantee of peace. What is this life all about if it is not about the quest for peace?

The man that wants one million dollars wants it so that he can rest the burning, aggravating hunger for one million dollars. The man who wants to be seen and who wants people to worship him, wants this attention so that his gnawing desire for attention will rest. Almighty God says that you cannot find happiness by going after happiness because happiness is not a certain thing. You can only find happiness by going after God. Almighty God would not be just if He put happiness only in the hands of intelligence.

People would then get power in the world and they would get control over the world's education and learning. They could deprive certain people of the opportunity to progress because they would have a monopoly on the physical world. The people without the blessing of intelligence would be deprived of the opportunity to obtain wealth. If God were to design His world by putting happiness and wealth in the hands of intelligence, He would be an unjust God. He says that the gates to His physical treasures are wide open to everybody, and that the strongest man gets the prize.


Gods Special Gate
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93. Not one of the beings
In the heavens and the earth
But must come to (God)
Most Gracious as a servant.

94. He does take an account
Of them (all), and hath
Numbered then (all) exactly.

95. And everyone of them
Will come to Him singly
On the Day of Judgment.

96. On those who believe
And work deeds of righteousness,
Will (God) Most Gracious
Bestow Love.

Holy Quran, Yusuf Ali Translation, Sura XIX: Verses 93 – 96
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But, God has a special gate that is not open to anyone but to His special people. The wealthy cannot come into it, nor can the wise come into it. None can come into it but those that have the nature to bend their backs, and to stoop down low under the gate. You cannot come into that special gate of God standing up straight.

God said for the righteous man to put his head on the ground. This has a literal meaning (in the prayer position of the Muslim) and a figurative meaning (the act of mental or spiritual submission to God). If you do that willingly, you can come into God's special gate. Inside that gate you will have what the so-called "wise" people gnaw, scratch, and die trying to find - but they cannot get to it. The only way that they can get the "prize" is to submit just like the righteous man submits. If they will bend their backs down, put their heads to the ground and come under the gate, they can get the prize just like the righteous man.

There are many wealthy people and "wise" people in this world who are in hell even though they have doctorate degrees or own half of the city. Some of them might wonder how the righteous man and woman find happiness when they have all of the money and yet they are not happy. It is because they are going about reaching for the prize in the wrong way. Almighty God is not going to give happiness to anyone but to the righteous one who submits to Him.


The Real Heaven

In referring to heaven, Jesus said that no one was in heaven but he that came down from heaven (see St. John 3:13). Do not think that a physically dead body leaves the earth and goes somewhere up in the sky to heaven. To ascend into the sky is not an upward journey physically. The one who is in heaven is the one who came down from heaven. Jesus was saying that heaven is not necessarily up — you can come down from heaven and still be in heaven. Almighty God blesses yon to struggle for knowledge of Him with understanding. He will lift your moral body up from low - mindedness, your mental body up from darkness and ignorance and your spiritual body up from filth, corruption, pettiness and self -righteousness. God lifts the inner - body up and separates you from the low world that yon were once a helpless victim in.

After He lifts you up and separates you from the world below, you do not stay up in "heaven." If you stay up there, you will never know what real heaven is and you will be lost. But, if you come down from heaven after Almighty God has lifted you up, you will come down in heaven with other people. Then, you are really "in heaven."


The Only Heaven

We can only see the extreme of one thing by putting it with the extreme of another thing. If we go to heaven and stay there and never come back down to earth, we will never know where we went. So, Jesus, being a wise interpreter of the scriptures of the prophets before him, understood what the people in his day could not understand. They thought that heaven was a physical place up in the sky. Jesus used their ignorance to speak something to them that was off that subject, but something that was more important than what they were asking. They were looking for a heaven outside of the real world, in order to escape their obligation to be charitable in this world. They wanted heaven, but they did not want to extend charity. That kind of desire for heaven only serves to keep you out of heaven. The only heaven is to be blessed by God and then to feel that your blessing can only reward you if you share it with other people.

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27. (To the righteous soul
Will be said:)
“O (thou) soul,
In (complete) rest
And satisfaction!

28. “Come back thou
To thy Lord, -
Well pleased (thyself),
And well – pleasing
Unto Him!

29. “Enter thou then,
Among my Devotees!

30. “Yea enter thou
My Heaven!

Holy Quran, Yusuf Ali Translation, Sura LXXXIX: Verses 27 – 30
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The Mist From Heaven

Long before Jesus speaks on this subject in the Book (Bible), it gives the same message very beautifully. It says that God wanted a man on earth, but that it had not yet rained. So, God caused a mist to rise up from the ground. Here you have an example of the religious teachers using science to bring home the message of divine truth. Science tells us that a mist rises from the ground and goes up into the colder regions of the higher atmosphere. There it is collected (condensed) and it comes back down to the earth as drops of water that we call "rain."

Genesis says that God formed His man from the ground (the earth), but that He
did not form His man until He had wet the ground. The water that He wet the ground with also came from the ground. The mist could not stay up in the sky (heaven). If it had gotten up in heaven and stayed there, the man would never have been made.


Religion: Salvation For The World

Brothers and Sisters, I hope that you can see and understand the great truth that is in religion. The salvation of the world is in scripture (religion), not in the educational institutions of this world, nor in science, nor in industry. In the recent past, the world of Western thought believed that they were the salvation of the world and that they could lead the world to heaven. They promised the world that science and industry were moving ahead and that they were going to bring mankind into a "heaven on earth."

They thought that their governments could guarantee peace and prosperity to the world. They thought that science and industry could solve all the human problems of earth. All of a sudden, however, their world was thrown into a nightmare from out of its pleasant dream of paradise. It no longer moved forward with hope and bright eyes. All of a sudden our industry is killing us by poisoning the atmosphere and the water and by destroying the life that we depend upon for our own survival. This world of grafted, unnatural mentality thought that they had the power in their hands and that they were going to bring a heaven on earth to humanity, but humanity rose up and pointed a finger at them and said, 'You are killing the earth."


The Denial Of Wickedness

God is showing us that He is God. You cannot cut out a heaven for yourself and ignore God. If you want heaven you have to turn to God for it. The Book (Bible) prophesied that there would come curses behind curses because man felt himself to be independent of God and because he felt that he could do "his thing" by himself.

God made the man in the earth, and then set some instructions for him. He told the man that as long as he followed His instructions he would be successful. But, the man willfully disobeyed God, even though God did not put a heavy burden on him. God said that the man could eat of all of the trees except one.
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"And the Lord God commanded the man, saying of every tree of the garden thou mayest eat.
"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shaft not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

(Genesis 2:16-17)
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That was a light burden to put on the man. God meant that there was nothing that He would hold back from the man but wickedness. He denied the man freedom to be wicked in the land. God meant that as long as the man was right, everything would be open to him. If be wanted physical wealth, moral wealth, or intellectual wealth - the way was open to him. But, if the man wanted to oppose God and His way, he would bring curse upon curse down upon himself. These curses have wrecked the society so badly, until now we come outside and we cannot find a breath of fresh air to breathe.

The scripture says that the air, the lakes, and the rivers would be poisoned. It also says that once the man had poisoned the earth - the earth, the man, the woman, and the intelligence would be cursed.


The Eating Of Dust
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"And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shaft thou go, and dust shaft thou eat all the day of thy life.

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shaft bruise his heel.

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shall bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast harkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee saying, thou shaft not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shall thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

(Genesis 3:14-19)
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Intelligence is under the symbol of a snake in the Bible Genesis. Once the man listened to his own intelligence and disobeyed God in his flesh, his intelligence was cursed to crawl in the earth on its belly like a snake and to eat the dust of the earth. Since the man did not want to "feed" on God, his mind was cursed to feed on nothing but dry earth. His desire went away from the great human aspirations and he fell to a level where his mind fed on nothing but money (dust of the earth). There is no life in money. Money is dead, but it represents life's energy that has been put into something. If you look at the physical thing (the token) and do not respect the life that has produced it, that is a curse. It is a curse because you are going to get further and further away from your human obligations.

Many people look at a $10 bill but they cannot see $10 dollars worth of human energy, they just see dust (the dry material thing). People who just grab money for money's sake do not see the human sacrifice in the dollars that they are stacking up. So, their "eating" in the earth becomes like the eating of dust (something without life). They become lifeless because they do not have feelings for people anymore, nor do they regard life anymore.


Snake-Life

When a man has died as a human being, he becomes just like a snake biting the dust. He does not require physical life anymore for his body. He does not go looking for eggs, vegetables or meat when he wants food, he goes looking for dry dust. This is the condition that materialistic people fall into. They get so far away from human understanding that they do not identify human beings with the wealth that they are going after. That kind of snake-life (that kind of mind) in the world ends up going from one curse to another curse. The snake (the subtle part of the mind of man) will deviate, skate around the truth, sidewind and it will speak with two tongues-telling a He out of one side of its mouth and the truth out of the other side. It will just speak the truth to attract you to accept a lie. That kind of mind brings more and more curses upon itself.


The Manifestation Of Curses

The Book says that the woman (which symbolizes the flesh in this particular scripture) was cursed also. The mind of man, because it had disobeyed God and gone away from God thinking itself to be independent, brought the flesh of man under a curse. The first thing that happened was that the mind fell under a curse, but the mind did not know that it was cursed because it was blindly seeking to satisfy itself independently of God. Gradually the curses began to manifest themselves.

The first manifestation of the curses after the curse of the mind was the curse of the woman (the flesh). The mind enslaved the flesh-bodies of people and it denied the flesh-body of people, decent 'clothes, decent food, and adequate housing. The subtle part of the mind of man (the snake) first brought a curse upon itself, then upon the human world, then upon the earth. The soil did not produce tike it did before. Man planted but he did not reap like he did before. This means that a mind ruling the world in wickedness will get wealth, but it will not get the pleasure out of its wealth. The wicked mind will not be able to benefit from its wealth anymore because its mind is cursed.

The Book says that the curses grew and grew and grew. Now, in this day and time, we see all of those curses grown to fullness. We see the mind of man now almost completely killed in the earth. We see the flesh of the world now recognizing that something has gone wrong. Today problems are so big for the mind and for the human flesh that the world can see that it has moved itself from a heaven (garden of Eden) into hell. The world has moved itself into more and more difficulty as time progressed, until it is almost at the point of saying that man cannot guarantee anything. He does not know what hell tomorrow is going to bring for him.
How can we save ourselves?


Remake The World

Today, you can save yourself from hell and put yourself in heaven by understanding and accepting the presence of God's power within yourself. That power is not in physical or material design, but it is in mental, moral, and spiritual design.

Almighty God has placed a great responsibility upon you, brother and sister, by manifesting His power and His glory in you. You should now feel obligated to serve Him and to take on the responsibility of remaking the world.
Thank you.
Your brother, W.D. Muhammad

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The Wisdom Of W.D. Muhammad

God is one who sets up frontiers, A frontier means something that you see in front of you that promises you increase in wealth, but something that challenges you with difficulties, hardships, and suffering. Whenever we bear the word "frontier," we know that somebody went in and suffered to establish it.

To establish a frontier, someone has to have the patience, the humility, and the self -control to take off their fancy clothes and risk having them torn and soiled. He has to go in and suffer with his hands, with his feet, and with his whole body. He has to throw his body out of comfort and enjoyment into discomfort and misery for the sake of coming out with a better life, more wealth, and more happiness.

We don't tell you that heaven is open to you and you don't have anything to do but just walk in and sit down. God never made a heaven like that for anybody. You have to earn whatever God gives you and you will only get what you earn. If you don't put out anything, you don't get anything.

There is no company, no corporation, or no country that has a bigger promise to offer you than the Nation of Islam. Maybe you can't see that promise now. It is only seen by the fortunate ones, the observing ones, the wise ones; those who think and search out wisdom and truth.

We don't expect all of you to look at the Nation of Islam and see that this is the
grandest opportunity on earth for any people.

We hope that Allah will bless us to appeal to a second side of you, to correct your ignorant mind, and to get you to see what the wise see suddenly when they look at us.

We know what we have. It is going to get bigger and bigger, stronger and stronger, and brighter and brighter. It is going to triumph over all opposition.

We have something to give you that can save you if you will accept it — something that has Divine miracle power in it. It can do more to aid you physically and materially than all the so-called faith healers in the country. It can do more to help you mentally than all the psychiatrists in the world it can do more to help you morally than all the Baptizing that goes on all ever the globe.



