09/17/1977
IWDM Study Library
Life Jubilee
Atlanta GA

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Brothers and sisters, friends, and enemies if there's any out there, As-Salaam Alaikum, peace be unto you. I'm especially grateful today for Allah, the Most High, for blessing us with the mind and strength and health to be present here.
Our honorable brother, who has done a very excellent job of MCing here today, Abdul Haseem Yamin. The honorable mayor of this beautiful city Atlanta, honorable Mayor Maynard Jackson, may Allah forever sustain you and sustain us, because we need each other.
There are many that I would like to express my personal thanks and appreciation to. Our honorees' names of these who are written here before my eyes. Commissioner of Public Safety, A. Reginald Adan. I believe the name is pronounced. Chaplain Roy, Pastor Austin. Hillside Chapel, Reverend Barbara King. Candidate, I believe, for the office of mayor here in Atlanta, Ms. Emma Darnell. Reverend Jose Williams, the executive director of SCLC, Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Mr. Thomas Azar, state church director for the Unification Church.
His great, Karul Dockanau, director of change and development for the Atlanta Temple for the International Society of Krishna Consciousness. Reverend Dalton Alexander from Laurel Church, and Mr. Carl Ware, president of the city council. All who in the audience, and most of them have addressed us today. As I said, there are many others that I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to for responding to the efforts of the Atlanta masjid number 15 under the able leadership of Imam Abraham, or Ibrahim Pasha, as we call it.
I would like to begin my address to you with some readings from the Qur'an. That is our holy book, our Bible in the Christian language. Beginning with verse 30 of the 21st chapter, titled the prophet. Verse 30 reads, "Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together as one unit of creation before we drove them asunder, and we made from water every living thing? Will they not then believe?"
A quick comment on this verse, verse 30 of this chapter, 21st chapter of the Qur'an titled "The Prophet." Here we are told that moral excellence is not a gift of a second life. Moral excellence is the life, but here, moral excellence is symbolized in the term water. We know that science says all living creatures and all living things come from water, so this verse is scientifically true, but there's a more important message in this verse. That is that all life begins in moral substance.
The daily life is a conscious life, an obedient life, a life that agrees with moral discipline. The first life that we come into as little babies is a moral life. We learn to say, "This is right. This is wrong. This is good. This is bad," before we learn to say, "This is a fact. This is an untruth." The moral life is the first life. We don't have to come into some new life or second life in order to take on moral growth or moral development. Moral development is the order of life. Even in the animal world we find some degree of moral excellence. Animals, in fact, when you compare them with the modern big city life that we are living, they have higher moral standards than we have.
G-d says in his Qur'an that man has been designed in the most excellent mold, but consequently he's reduced to the lowest of the low. So, we have the freedom, we have the capacity because of our intelligence, and our freedom with free will. We have the potential and the capacity to rise above all creation in moral excellence, but because of that same freedom and because of that same intellectual power or gift, we also face the danger of falling to the lowest of the low.
I will continue to read these verses now. This is G-d speaking, but G-d speaks in the plural sense or term saying we. We, not I. We. And G-d says, verse 31, "And we have set on the Earth mountains standing firm, lest it should shake with them, and we have made therein broad highways between mountains for them to pass through, that they may receive guidance."
Here, the Qur'an is using the symbolic language of earliest pictures, that is the symbolism or the allegorical language that we find in the Old Testament and New Testament and other scripture that you will find all over the world. But the Qur'an uses these symbols, these allegorical or metaphorical terms so often in different senses or with different applications that it awakens the intelligent mind, the searching mind to the real definitions of these terms. The Qur'an is designed to make us understand the use of these symbolic terms. So, here mountains represents authority, and G-d has established on the earth authority standing firm since the Earth took shape.
And G-d says, "We made therein broad highways if man passes between mountains," between authority. We don't have any freedom to move, except from authority to authority. Isn't that a fact? I find people who boast about what they know. I, I, I, I, I. Even G-d is not saying I, I, I, I, I. G-d says I, and G-d says we, we, we, I, we, we, we, I. So you say, "Hey, man, where do you get that from?", and you have to think. You got it from some place. So, he is traveling between mountains of authority or maybe between small ant hills of authority.
And we have made the heavens as a canopy. A canopy? It's like an umbrella. Well guarded. Yet do they turn away from signs, which these things point to. Verse 33, "It is he who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon. All the celestial bodies swim along, each in his rounded course." This is the Qur'an, revealed 1,400 years approximately ago, and it is telling us the things that many of us have recently learned, that the bodies of the heavens go in rounded orbit and that they move and are swimming with a swimming motion. If you notice that human being that swims in the water, the human being swims like this. Here, here, like that. Science tells us that the Earth, in its movement around the sun, does the same thing. Who told the prophet Muhammad this? He was not educated. He didn't go to formal school. So, who told him this? Almighty G-d. "Oh, I don't believe that G-d can reveal such things to a human being." That's the unbeliever's need.
Well, let's go on. We granted not to any man. Verse 34, "We granted not to any man before you", that means before Prophet Muhammad, "permanent life." That is permanent life in this physical world and of this physical creation. "If then you should die, would they live permanently?" Can Prophet Muhammad die, and by his death we go on living eternally? Verse 35, "Every soul shall have a taste of death." This is the decree of G-d. Every soul shall have a taste of death." G-d didn't say every soul shall die permanently. G-d says here, "Every soul shall have a taste of death." What does taste mean? Experience. The things that I have tasted, I have experienced. We ask each other sometimes. Say man, have you had a taste of the finer things of life? We mean have you experienced the finer things of life?
So, here G-d is saying every soul, every individual, every self. Soul in the Arabic language is nafs and also felt in this language is the same nafs. Every soul. Put a little nafs in there. Every soul, every person shall have a taste of death. You're going to die, and it's a shame that G-d had to tell us this. G-d's been telling us for billions of years. You see everything dying that come into life, but somebody got the wrong idea and caused the people to think crazy.
Do you know that people living on this earth right here today in the United States of America in 1977, September 16th, 17th, I believe, who believe that something is going to happen, and they are going to live forever on earth in their physical body, and something is going to change the physical matter, and it's going to exist forever? How greedy can you get for material life?
Every soul shall have a taste of death, and we test you by evil and by good. We say death is an evil, but it's an evil that we have a long time to think about, isn't it? It should provoke some goodness in our conscience. Life is a blessing you say or good, but G-d says we are tested by evil and by good. By way of trials to us you must return. By way of trials to us you must return. What does this mean? I have to return to G-d. Returning to G-d, we know what that means. Returning, getting our life right as G-d want it to be. That's returning to G-d. Is that true?
But G-d says not only to me. You have to return to us. It's not enough just to love me. It's not enough to want to be pure and excellent in your being like me. You have to be aware that there are other things under me that have demands on your life, too. Mommies, daddies, the society, the leadership, the Mayor, the President. All of these things are due some respect from us, and we owe them something, because we haven't made this world by ourselves. We haven't started anything by ourselves. In fact, before we can reproduce human life, we have to get together with somebody else. So, this world is not the world of an individual. This world is a collective world, and we owe collective appreciation or appreciation to a collective body, as well as appreciation to the one G-d.
G-d says, "By way of trial to us you must return." G-d is speaking specifically to his image that he has set for us, the image of truth and righteousness and to the laws that he has established in creation. Man deviates from the law. Man transgresses the law. I'm not talking about the 10 commandments. I'm talking about the laws that are more natural and more fundamental than the 10 commandments. I'm talking about the laws of good conscience, the laws of human nature. G-d has established the law, and G-d has said that he has with the power of his law in creation, he has established punishment and reward. G-d, through creation, he has established an ordinance, a natural law. There is a natural rule that runs through creation. The rule of justice, the rule of compensation, the rule of respect for the nature of the thing that you're dealing with. Fire is useful to man, but if you abuse its purpose, it is dangerous and destructive.
Likewise, or similarly, for everything in creation, it has a proper place, a proper use. If we abuse it, we reap the bad consequences. So G-d says that, "I appointed you." G-d says that we have done this, but G-d is using language like this to tell us that there are other things working under me that I have established. I have set a pattern and a law.
This is Verse 36, "When the unbelievers see you, they treat you not except with ridicule. Is this, they say, the one who talks of your G-d? They blaspheme at the mentioning of Allah, the most gracious." Verse 37, "Man is a creature of hate." G-d in this Qur'an gives us several names that define our nature, our basic nature, and here one of them is adun, which means haste. It says man is a creature of haste. Isn't that a fact? Sometimes you can't get your child's attention to save him from some trouble he's about to run into. He's running out of the door, and it's raining, and he forgot to take his proper clothes or his proper hat. You can't even get his attention to help him or direct him out of the door.
Grownups are the same way. They get their minds fixed on something, and they'll just rush into it, and you can't get their attention to warn them to the little traps that they are running into or about to face because they're in too big a haste. "Man is a creature of haste. Soon enough will I show you my time." Now, here G-d didn't use we. He went from we to I. Said, "Soon enough will I show you my time. Then you will not ask me to hasten them."
Verse 38. They say, "When will this come to pass? If you are telling the truth." That's what they say to the prophet who was speaking the words of G-d. Verse 39, "If only the unbelievers knew the time when they will not be able to ward off the fire from their faces nor yet from their backs, and where no help can be reached." The fire. Where is the fire? And what does the faces mean? The face is before you. We are aware of the face. We see each others' face. We are conscious of the faces of each other, but we hardly think about the back, unless something comes up, right?
That means that that is on your conscience is going to burn you. Not to mention that you forgot.
Nay it may come to them all of a sudden and confound them. No power will they have then to avert it, nor will they then get a chance.
... burn you. Not to mention that you have forgotten.
Verse 40, "Yea, it may come to them all of a sudden and confound them. No power will they have then to advert it, nor will they then get a chance." More time to handle it. 41, "There were many apostles before you," that is before Prophet Muhammad for whom the Qur'an was revealed about 1,400 years ago. "But their mockers were hemmed in by the thing that they mocked." Verse 42, "Say, who can keep you safe by night and by day from the wrath of Allah, most gracious? Yet they turn away from remembering their Guardian, Evolver, who is Allah."
Verse 43, "Or have they G-ds that can guard them from us? They have no power to aid themselves, nor can they be dependent on us." G-d's using now us. What is us referring to? Again, to almighty G-d and to the law that he has established that runs throughout creation. You can't escape G-d, and you can't escape his law that works through all creation. What we see in the big cities today is the wrath of natural law that G-d has established in creation.
Verse 44, "Yea, we gave of the good things of this life to these men and their fathers, until the period grew long for them, see they not that we gradually reduced the land in their control from its outlying borders. Is it then that they will win?" What is this saying? G-d says, "Do they not see that we," meaning he and his laws working in creation reduced the land and our control from the outlying border? Now, what do we see reducing the land from the outlying borders? It is the water. The water goes out and pulls the land away, right? It rushes back in again, and grabs another bit. It just keeps going out and coming back in for another mouthful, right?
So, this is a sign, and G-d had inspired Prophet Muhammad to show us this sign so that he may speak through this sign and reach our conscience with a powerful truth. And that is that moral nature of the human being. We think it's there. We have the authority over our moral nature, we strangle the moral nature, we muffle the moral voice, but moral nature is something that can't stand still for long. When the high tide come or the low tide comes, it's going to begin to move. When it moves, it's going to reach up on the land and grab a mouthful and take it under.
I'll read down to verse 47. Verse 45 is saying, "I do but warn you according to revelation, but the deaf will not hear the call, even when they are warned." Who are these deaf people that can't hear the call? Are their ears closed? No. Their ears are open. Their ears are open. They can't hear the call. They're out there in the clubs, blocking the inner ear. The clubs of greed, corruption, lies, filth.
Verse 46, "But a breath of the wrath of your Guardian, Evolver, do touch them, then would they realize we did wrong indeed." They go on blocking their ears up, because they fear to give themselves the truth and moral excellence because of love of greed and wickedness. But soon as trouble sweep them off their feet and prostrate them, they begin then to plead for help. They won't help. They won't listen.
Verse 47, "We shall set up scales of justice for the day of judgment." Right here G-d is telling us that judgment is coming. The end of the execution of our own will is going to come, and we are going to have to accept the will of G-d. But he says here that, "We shall set up the scales of justice," meaning that G-d works in the conscience of the people, but G-d works also through the natural laws that he has established in creation. G-d and his law is going to judge the people, so that not a soul will be dealt with unjustly in the least. "If there be no more than the weight of a mustard seed of good or evil, we will bring it to account, and must are we to bring matters to account."
This concludes the verses. I read verses 30 through verse 47 of the 21st chapter of the Qur'an, titled The Prophet. G-d says in the final words of these verses, "Must are we to bring matters to account." G-d and the law working for G-d throughout the whole of creation in you, in everything was enough to bring about the judgment.
I call it a brief talk, because I usually talk so long that people will curse me almost audibly. Yeah, I can almost hear the words. I'm not going to do that to you today. I'm going to make it brief. In my brief talk today, I want you to look at the movement of G-d's truth that moves human life, and that movement is found in the Bible and in the Holy Qur'an. But since you're more familiar with the Bible than you are with the Holy Qur'an, I'm going to speak using the symbols of the Bible.
In Genesis, we find G-d saying let there be light. G-d say, "And there was light." And the light rose from what? The water. The light didn't come out of the land. The light came first out of the water. G-d says that he hung a greater light, and then a lesser light, and they rose up out of the water. The first light, what comes into our minds? The sun rising up or coming up out of the water. The second light, which is smaller than the sun or less in brightness than the sun, puts in our minds the moon rising up.
And he says he also decorated the skies, the heavens with the stars or hung the stars up in the heavens. So, here are three lights, and three figures. One figure is the sun, and the second one the moon, and the third figure are stars. The sun and the moon or the sun, that is ... I'm not sure about the moon, but I know the sun, the first light, came up out of the water, which tells us, as the Holy Qur'an told us in the verses I just read, that intelligence is established in the moral consciousness of the people. People later come into the rational things and begin to relate and direct questions and answers to purely rational positions and points of view. First, they are morally conscious people, and their intelligence is moving from a moral consciousness.
The Bible says as it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end. We find Genesis beginning in water, and we find Revelations ending in water. The light came up out of the water, and the beast went down in the lake. Is that right? So we find that the Bible, again, with creation coming out of water, and it ends with falsehood being drowned by water. So, it's moral excellence that G-d wants in a human being.
What can direct life? What can save the individual life? What can save the society? What can save our big cities with all the sins, coldness, cruelty, and insanity in it? What can save it if it's not the development of moral excellence? We have to develop moral excellence. That's the salvation of our lives, moral excellence. G-d is telling us that from Genesis to Revelation, that the salvation of your life is in moral substance, and if you don't develop that moral substance into moral excellence, you're doomed.
People done got told. They are in that process that they are hurt, they are burned. It's safe to say that the beast will be burned by the water. He was cast in a lake, but to that beast, it was a lake of fire. Is that right? Yes, the beast was cast in a lake in water, but on that beast's conscience, that water was fire that consumed him. We read the expression in the book. Says and the springs lift them up. Is that right? We know the plains don't lift. Water lifts. We say the water lifted up. Water comes in lifts it up and snatches it back, puts it down into the sea. Like the tunnel goes down, into the mouth of the sea.
The book mentions plurality, and I found that this context goes perfectly with my brief talk. I've only been talking on this subject about eight minutes. So, don't think it's not brief. It's still brief. I did a lot of reading. It's in two highways. In the Qur'an, it's in two highways, and Moses giving his people the way. He reminded them. He was about to leave them. He knew his time was going to be short, he had spent most of his time and finished his service for G-d, and he was about to leave them. He told them that I've pointed out for you two ways. The way of life, and the way of death.
And the Qur'an says, "Has not man considered that we have given them two eyes and shown him the two highways? The two highways. The Arabic language is so beautiful. So powerful and expressive. The word two highways is not two highways. You see? Really the only thing to do, you add directions, the right ending to the noun, and it says two. See, we take away from two highways when we say two. Then highway. When we say highway, it's two. I believe they say that. I believe that. See, I didn't go to the school of.... I think if you want to get the emphasis right, you have to manipulate those words. The manipulator of the word makes the greatest impression. The greatest impression on the mind.
Well, that might be showing you the two highways, but the highway is two. Not one. Two. Have you made any headway on that road that is two? One goes up. The other goes down. One is difficult. It takes a little effort. Takes some muscle and will power, some endurance to get to the top. But the other one, it takes nothing but a relaxed mind and just fall on down the hill.
So, what are we talking about now with this genesis of life from Genesis to Revelation? We are talking about the movement, the nature of society. That natural movement in society that drives the society. You heard the expression, the accent of man. Well, the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is talking about the accent of society. It must get its base and its start in moral consciousness, and it must rise intelligently. There must be an intelligent movement from a moral being.
Certainly we must be born again. The method of scripture is not to be born again in some unearthly form. You don't have to become unearthly, that is unlike us, to be born again. Nicodemus had a problem, and he wanted to know how he could be saved. Christ Jesus says, "You must be born again." Nicodemus, he was confused, because he knew, "I'm a good man. I love G-d. I recognize Jesus. I will follow his way," but I believe he told Nicodemus to go back and get a way. Is that right? He had sowed up some wells. I believe Nicodemus, he didn't give him a direct answer, but Nicodemus was a rich man. The answer for him ... I can't remember positively or clearly, but his redemption or his reason to be reborn was through charity.
A lot of us, we take on the mind of our religion. "I'm a good Christian. I'm a good Muslim. I'm a good this. I'm a good that." But we're still now [inaudible 00:39:13]. We haven't become that good Samaritan that one of our excellent teachers mentioned. The one who will share what he has for the sake of his brothers. All to come into this character, society denying of charity into a consciousness like this, we have to be born again. What does being born again actually mean then for us as religious people reading the Bible and the Holy Qur'an? It means coming out of the life of selflessness, self-righteousness, self-consciousness, self-interest. Coming out of the individual consciousness into this community consciousness. That's being born again.
When you're working for yourself, it's easy. It's easy when I go out and get something and bring it back for me, but it takes a little effort for me to go out and get something and bring it back for somebody else. Working for me is often downhill, it's easy. But working for others is a steep highway. The Holy Qur'an says, "What will make them understand? But the highways is giving food to the poor in the day of plenty." It's freeing the slave. This is what the Qur'an says. This is charity. The Bible says the same. In different words it says the same. It's the same.
So, this is the steep highway. This is the path to the new birth, the rebirth, to the second life. Once you take on the second life, you find peace. You find rest. We can't rest, because we're warring with each other. But once we work together as a unit, there is no warring. There is peace. Pray for the day when I don't have to be scared that you're going to take my goods from my weak hands with your stronger hands. We pray for the day that I don't have to worry that my children will come up out of a selfish institution of learning, a racist institution of learning and be denied the path that G-d gave us, the blessing of education, the blessing of knowledge.
So, we worry. We don't know what's going to happen to the children. When I die, what will happen to my children? Will there be a selfless person around to care for my young or will there be a narrow-minded, a Nicodemus, self-righteous that hasn't been reborn?
You see what G-d is trying to tell us from Genesis to Revelation? You have to come up out of the water of individualism into the universal air of community life, and stop living as an individual and start living as a community. That's salvation. Jesus said in his words as they are, says, "Cast your bread on the water, and it will come back to you." A lot of us want to give our charity to the authorities. We want to give our charity to the bully, to the mighty of the land. Give your charity to moral excellence. Cast your bread on the water. Give your charity to moral development. Don't go to the houses of authority of this world. Go to the lowly people. I don't care how high they are intellectually or materially, if they have any kind of moral excellence, they don't stand high. They walk humbly in the land.
The books says that the meek shall inherit the earth. The water shall spread that land by mouthful and mouthful until the mountains are pulled into the sea, and the earth is leveled again. This is what G-d has said unto us in the scripture. The book says that the mountains shall be leveled. The Earth shall be made as smooth.
Those men of signs who had no knowledge of G-d's symbolism in the picture or the symbolism that is given through G-d's word in the scriptures, they thought that the scripture or Revelations had made a mistake, that the Bible says that the earth is flat. No, the earth is round and crooked and bumpy, but one day it's going to be flat. G-d is going to make it flat, because G-d wants this world to be equal in everything.
What do I mean by that? G-d will want charity to restore justice to everyone. If it serve justice to everybody, there's not going to be mountains of wealth and bodies of poverty. There's not going to be mountains of learning and valleys of ignorance. There's going to be knowledge free, running free for all like water, and water seeks its level. Water fills the low places before it touches the high places.
Does the doctor go to the healthy and then say, "Let me go see how the sick are doing?" The doctor should go where the need is, and charity should go where the need is. Charity in Islam is the giving of everything that is helpful or useful of any people, human being. Compassion, knowledge, food, clothing, shelter. Whatever we give of ourselves that is useful and good in the eyes of G-d and man for the sake of bettering the life of people is charity and is love.
Jesus, he came as a sign of his charity. He preached love and he preached charity, but he made that charity more than the giving of money. It is the giving of sympathy to those that need our sympathy, the giving of a helping hand to those that need that helping hand. This is a real expression of love of the adult, mature level. Love on the child, on the immature level can only see money. A baby comes in, "Mother, did you get me anything?" Mommy has given that baby more dollars than that baby could count, but the baby can't see those dollars. The baby sees candy bars, crackers, music boxes, toys, et cetera. But mommy been washing clothes. She's tired. Her hands hurt. Her legs hurt. Her feet are tired. She been washing clothes and ironing them and put them away in the drawers. Put the pants with the pants, the shirts with the shirts, the socks with the socks so that it won't take long to dress baby. Go right to it. Getting right to it. Everything in its place. Everything done right.
Mommy has done all that, and then she prepared him a nice, good meal. The baby is going to eat today, and he's not going to eat raw food like the wild wolf eats. He's going to eat some food that's been cooked. It took time. She set the timer or she watched it for two hours, maybe fours or three hours or maybe for just 30 minutes, but she put time into the food and she used her mind. She's discriminate in her choice of seasoning. She hit with the salt, she hit it with the pepper, she wiped it a bit with a little bit of margin. A mother has given this child a whole lot of money, but the baby couldn't see it. He said, "Mommy, did you get me anything?" If she can't show him a sucker or a toy, he starts crying.
Let's rise above that individual concept of love and charity. Rise up into the community consciousness and begin to realize that we all are being given something all the time, and we owe each other something all of the time. Do you know it's not that there's one individual that we can sit in this house and not be warring with each other or not be insulting each other? Why are you sitting there? I'm not holding you there in that seat with a gun, but you have respect for yourself and respect for me. You have respect for the mayor and respect for the family, and respect for all of the excellent people that we have up here on this platform from government and from our religious services.
You have respect for yourself, and for this platform. So, you're sitting there, and I hope you have respect for the truth that's bigger than all of us. You're sitting there. Is that right? Okay, but it doesn't have to be like this. The Holy Qur'an says can't you see the signs and the fact that G-d has enabled you to communicate with each other intelligently? That's a sign, a sign that G-d don't want you to live as an individual. He has made it possible for you to communicate with each other intelligently. As long as we don't apply the rule of faith to our communication or any of our communication, we are not going to be humane. How can we unite with the Christians if the Christians going to approach us and respond to us from emotional experience? We can't come together, but because we have good Christians representing Christian leadership here who are able to respond from something higher up the rung of human evolution than emotionalism, we have some unity here today and we represent some collective leadership.
This is together, and G-d says that he has put in us the ability to express ourselves intelligently and made it possible for us to communicate by intelligence or with intelligence, et cetera so that we can become one. How come I can remain one with myself? Don't you know what I lose in communication with myself? Myself becomes divided within myself. When my moral nature can't communicate and make sense with my rational nature, then I have a war between my rational makeup and my moral makeup.
So, in order to have my own individual human and peaceful order, I have to be able to communicate or relate intelligently inwardly between my different forces that are working in my head, the forces of intelligence, the forces of intellect, the forces of passion, the forces of morality. All of these forces are working in this one kingdom, and if I don't give them the language of intelligence, because G-d has not given us a verbal language that enables us to unite. Is that right? The Chinese speak Chinese. I can't talk to him. I haven't learned Chinese. But if he's intelligent and I'm intelligent, we can overcome the barrier of Chinese and English. Is that right? And we will begin to grow into a new language of communication in time, but it takes intelligence. We're going to need a whole lot of intelligent applications to correct our moral outlook on life. We have left the old discipline. We have condemned the old institutions, and now we are going wild and free like a wild horse without a rider.
We're headed in any direction. We don't know where we're going to fall or what we're going to run into. It's because we have left the first learning. We have to constantly evolve. The first learning is moral consciousness. We have to come back into moral consciousness and respect moral issues. What is troubling the government now more than anything else? Moral issues. What is troubling the community, the neighborhood, the block more than anything else? Moral issues. What's plaguing the relationship of husband and wife, of parent and children? Moral issues. Can't you see the revelation, it has come true, that you have been born out of water?
G-d says, "Never again," in the Bible, "will I destroy the whole earth with a flood." Not the whole earth, but he didn't say I'm not going to destroy it with water anymore, did he? The United States is being destroyed with the water, with the polluted morality. We are being destroyed, poisoned by a polluted morality. In order to save ourselves, we have to do just what was done in Genesis. We have to rise up out of the pollution towards the light of intelligence. We have to apply intelligence to our moral conscience. Don't you know morals can't be left alone? People say I'm freed. Freedom means the freedom of moral life. No, freedom means the freedom to execute your own individual intelligence to direct your own individual moral life. That's what freedom means.
Freedom doesn't mean relaxing, giving up, hanging loose, going low. That's not freedom. Freedom is not throwing our senses out the door and walking out in the world blindfolded. That's insanity. That's suicide, and that's the path we're on. We are on the path of moral suicide, and the west, in order to be saved, it's going to have to come back into that first light, moral consciousness.
The Pope. He knows what that is. He sprinkled once with the water. Twice with the water, and a third time with the water. What are you trying to do with that water? Bring up a plant? Hell nah, he's trying to bring up some sense. In order to bring it up, you have to have a start in moral consciousness, which is defined in the symbol of water. Water.
A human being meaning passionate life, order, discipline. What will bring the passion, the wild passion, the appetites of the flesh into some order and into some discipline, so the life can grow? What will do it? The application of moral doctrine that has in it the light of intelligence. Can't do it with a feeling. Drink water and say you got the feeling. But the effort is to bring life, intelligence out of the water. For in the beginning, G-d said let there be light, and he caused a great light to rise up out of that water. Is that not Genesis?
All right, merely a sprinkling won't get it. You have to teach some sense to the people that you are trying to get to come into some moral discipline. He sprinkled water so that the passionate life, which is the very elementary life or the very primitive life of human society. We are creates of forces that are called the forces of passion. We want to jump on this and jump off that. We want to eat up this and spit out that. We are moved by the forces of the flesh. Is that right?
We need moral people to have a higher intelligence then, to bring that light into form, proper form, this proper discipline so it grows naturally and as G-d ordained for it to grow. But we can't stop there. The book say we must sprinkle again. Once you get this passionate life under some control and some discipline so that it can grow, you can take eyes off it now for a while, get on the second job. Get your rational mind in order, and your rational mind needs the same substance so that it will grow properly.
You must assign moral doctrine to the rational mind if it is to grow properly. A rational mind with no respect for wrong will turn out to be a Richard Nixon, as somebody has already said. But we can't stop there either, because the Pope said the same thing another time. So we sprinkle one more time, and this time we sprinkle on man's spirit. Some men, you ought to know if they're laying down with sheepskin. Ph.D. Rolling in letters that look like a Greek alphabet formula or something. And let little bit of stockings, or little bittie pannies, or little bit of brazziere knock him right off the throne.
We find that we have to go back to first things. We found that this is in the passion of the human being, and he taught us that he forgot the third thing. So, he comes now into a spirit. It's powerful. It's worth attacking, because he will justify his sin emotional and passionate behavior with the so-called logic that he's gotten from the higher schools of learning. He will play with the rules of logic and say, "Hell, this is natural to play like this." But we should say, "Man, look at the consequences. Let's define intelligence over there where your flesh is being consumed, where your pocket book is being consumed."
Thank G-d. Peace be unto you. As-salamu alaykum.


