1976-March-12

Bilalian News

The Presence Of God's Power: Part 1

Imam W. D. Muhammad

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101. To Him is due 
The primal origin 
Of the heaven and the earth: 
How can He have a son 
When He hath no consort ? 
He created all things, 
And He hath full knowledge 
Of all things

103. That is God. your Lord ! 
There is no god but He, 
The Creator of all things: 
Then worship ye Him 
And He hath power 
To dispose of all affairs.

103. No vision can grasp Him, 
But His grasp is over 
All vision : He is 
Above all comprehension, 
Yet is acquainted with all things.

Holy Quran, Yusuf Ali Translation; Sura VI: Verses 101 -103
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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 the people of scripture (meaning the Christians and the Jews) asked the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) to make the sky open up and to make revelation descend down from the sky to them. They were looking for a physical miracle. The miracle of the wisdom was not enough for them. They wanted to see the clouds in the sky roll back without physical wind blowing them back. Then, they wanted a bright light to shine through the clouds with words written on it saying, "Thou shall not do this" or "Thou shall not do that" in order for them to believe in the message delivered to them by Prophet Muhammad. The Holy Quran replies to them that the people of Moses asked a thing still bigger than they were asking.


The "Truth-Body"

The people of Moses asked Moses to show them Allah in a physical body. The Holy Quran says that they were taken by a great blast because of their disbelief and their wrongdoings. Why was the request to see Allah in a physical body called a bigger wrongdoing than the request to see a physical miracle in the heavens? The followers of Moses were charged with injustice, unfairness, wrong thinking and crooked intentions. It is called a bigger thing because people who want to see a physical manifestation of Almighty God have already shown that they have rejected God in the fact that they make such a request. If you see the presence of God's power in truth, purity and righteousness and you reject that presence, what good will it do for you to see the physical presence of God? Nothing. Moses could have easily told his people that they had already seen God in the physical body in that they had seen his physical body yielding itself to the power of Almighty God. After all, what is there in the physical but submission to something that is not physical. Should Almighty God show you His physical presence with a physical human body? If you cut my physical body it will bleed, it will get weak, and it will not be able to do its job, but if you attack my body of truth it will completely destroy you. Instead of my truth • body being hurt by you, it would light up brighter and brighter and it would grow stronger and stronger every time you would attack it.


"God” Over The Kingdom Of The Flesh

What greater manifestation of God could people ask for than His manifestation in that body that reaches the superior part of themselves (the mind). Something that reaches only your physical flesh reaches only the inferior part of yourself. You should want God's presence to reach something in you that distinguishes you from ordinary flesh animals like horses and dogs. That something gives you power over them though, in your physical body, you are weaker than they are. A man cannot outrun a horse nor can he carry more burden than a mule, but he is superior in the mind and in the heart. Because of some superior powers that are in man's physical makeup, he is able to rule as a "god" over the kingdom of the flesh. So, when people ask that Almighty God show Himself in the physical flesh, they commit a great sin and a great crime. What they are really saying is that they want an excuse not to face God because they are too weak. When you plainly show them God in spirit and moral consciousness, they cannot contend with Him. They think like the people of Moses thought: they thought that if they could confuse the man of God with their challenge to see God's physical presence, they could destroy the prophet and "put God out of business" in their generation.


Satan's Test

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"And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan; for it is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, if thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence.

For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee.

And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

And Jesus answering said unto him, it is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."

(—St. Luke —Chapter 4:8-12—)
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Jesus fasted for a long time but the biggest test of his fast was Satan's test. It was the same kind of test that the disbelievers put to Moses. The disbelieving people, symbolized in the Book (Bible) as Satan, told Jesus that if he really trusted in a God that could bring about anything that He desired, that he (Jesus) should throw himself off of the pinnacle of the temple. What would that have proven? Even if Jesus had thrown his physical body off of the top of the building, what force did his physical body have but that force that He gave to it. The miracle is not in the physical body. If Jesus had thrown his physical body off the rooftop, it would have been just like throwing a lifeless body off the building. It could not have brought itself back up. The physical body has to obey the mind because the mind is superior to the body.

The prophet Jesus was tempted by Satan to destroy the body that he needed as a medium. He needed the physical body as a medium for conveying his mind to other physical bodies so that their bodies could also be used as mediums and so that their minds could also be reached. He would not throw away the only medium through which he could speak to the world. The physical body was his home (the home of his inner being) and he knew it. No matter how much power God has, He is not going to use that power to come to the rescue of a person who commits a foolish act with his eyes open.

Jesus' eyes were open and he knew where the presence of God's power was located. He knew that the body did not have any power to bring itself back up against gravity before hitting the ground, so he would not let the disbelievers (described as "Satan") deceive him. The symbolic person (Satan) who tempted Jesus was not a spook or a spirit, but the spirit in that person or persons was the spirit of a rebellious devil.


The True Identity Of The Human Being

Brothers and Sisters, we are blessed by Allah today to have a great truth. If you are already great, our truth will make you even greater. But, if you contend with it, you will only turn yourself backwards into darkness. You might think that the Honorable Master Elijah Muhammad (May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) did not teach like I am teaching. He said that there is no such thing as a spook god or a spirit god without flesh. That is absolutely true. Who can see spirit without flesh? The physical eyes of the human being are not made to see spirit without flesh, physical eyes are made to see physical flesh.

I agree that there is no such thing as a spirit walking around without flesh, but that does not mean that God is flesh. Now we know that man and woman are not flesh, they are mind. We cannot identify ourselves in a physical way. It is true that the first identification of the human being is a physical identification, but after we get the real human identification we stop depending upon the physical identification. There are some parents who do not always know which child is which, if they are twins, from the physical identification alone. But, they can easily tell which twin is which if the real person within the physical body begins to speak to them. Within the physical body is the true identity of the human being and without the physical body there is no more identity than dress.


The Medium For The Inner-Being

The Book (Bible) refers to the flesh of man as a "dress." The Holy Quran says that Allah clothed the bones with flesh, and it also speaks of the flesh of man as "clothes." We never think of the bones as our identity, we think of the flesh as our identity. If the Holy Quran calls the flesh "clothing," it is telling us that the flesh is not the true identity. If a person is burned in a fire, his physical looks will be changed. If his physical looks are changed, it is difficult for other people to identify him. But if he does not let his tragedy throw him into madness or insanity, he will remain the same person within. A person can lose physical parts of his body and it does not necessarily have to take anything from the real person within. This is clear proof that our true identity is not a physical being, but we need the physical being as a medium for the inner being (the rational being, the moral being, and the spiritual being). 

Even if the human being loses physical parts of his body, he can do more than any other creature in creation. If animals lose a few limbs they are finished, but a human can lose his legs, his arms and he can be left with nothing but a trunk with a head on it, and he can still sit in an office and govern a country. A man can go physically blind and yet run the world. Human beings can lose much of their physical self and yet keep their power.


The Power Of Creation

Almighty  God  in  evolving  creation (growing creation from one level to a higher level) has shown us the presence of His power in our own progress or evolution. One of the attributes that the Holy Quran gives to Allah is the "Evolver," meaning that He brings a thing up from a low, primitive, elementary form to a higher form by developing it from one stage to another stage. He is never satisfied with anything in an inferior stage. He is always evolving it and bringing it to greater worth. In the evolution of physical life, Allah has gradually manifested to us, in our own make, the power of creation. That power is not in physical or material design, but it is in mental, moral and spiritual design. If you have become the ruler of many other people under you, it is not because you excel physically, but it is because you have excelled mentally, morally, or spiritually.


The Message In Religion

Almighty God has done a great thing with the man and the woman and He has really placed a great responsibility upon us by manifesting His power and His glory in us. We should now feel obligated to serve Almighty God and to take the responsibility for all of the weakness and the faults of those who are inferior in the growth of their inner-self. We should feel that their bad conduct is a burden on us, so we should be concerned about life everywhere. We should be concerned about the condition of plant life, the state of animal life, and the development of human life.

Almighty God has brought us up above the level of all life on earth without making us physically bigger than the elephant and without giving us muscles like the gorilla. In fact, He has not even given us longer life than many animals or plants. But, He has given us something else that has made us the gods in the physical universe. Nothing is superior to us, so we should feel that we are responsible for the conditions of the world. The message in religion is that man has been favored by God among all His creatures, and that God's favor places a heavy responsibility upon us.


The Disappearance Of Angels

The Bible says that God made man a little lower than the angels, but the Holy Quran reverses it and says that God made man above the angels. Both statements are true but they are not both true in the same time. When God first made the man, the man was a little below the angels but that was not the completed man. That was a stage in the development of God's man. So, in the first stage development, the man was a little below the angels. "Angels" means the nature of things. We see things as physical objects but we cannot see their nature unless we look into the object. Because people cannot see into the nature of things without great knowledge, they call the things "angels" that they cannot see but that they know to exist.

There was a time in the past when people thought that there were angels in the wind making the storms. They thought that there were angels in the earth bringing spring and fertility. In fact, they thought that angels were behind all the great wonders that they witnessed. They called these forces "angels" until they learned what they really were. When they learned what they were, they stopped calling them angels and they began to describe the nature of the forces in scientific language. Then the religious man began to lose more of his "angels" to scientific descriptions.


The Second Man

When God said that He was going to make His second man, who was not to be lower than the angels, man had already began to identify angels as forces in creation. He had not evolved the first man's mind enough nor had He expanded the first man's intelligence scope so that he could see enough for him to be complete.

After growing the man in knowledge, it was time to make the second man. The second man was not to be a little below the angels, he was to be a little above the angels. The scientist is above the forces of creation because he knows them and he has mastered them. The storm that frightens the ignorant man does not frighten the scientist. In the Holy Quran when God describes the man that He is going to make, all the angels but "Iblis" bowed down and they all made obeisance to His man even before He had made him. They were not bowing down and giving obeisance to the man that was already made, they were bowing down and submitting to the man that God showed them that was to come.

A Ruler In The Earth
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30. Behold, thy Lord said to the
angels: "I will create
A vicegerent on earth."   They said :
" Wilt Thou place therein one who will make
Mischief therein and shed blood ?— 
Whilst we do celebrate Thy praises 
And glorify Thy holy (name) ?" 
He said : " I know what ye know not."

31. And He taught Adam the nature 
Of all things; then He placed them 
Before the angels, and said: " Tell Me 
The nature of these if ye are right."

32. They said : " Glory to Thee : of  knowledge
We have none, save what Thou 
Hast taught us: in truth it is Thou 
Who art perfect in knowledge and wisdom."

33.  He said : " O Adam ! tell them 
Their natures."  When he had told them,
God said : " Did I not tell you 
That I know the secrets of heaven 
And earth, and I know what ye reveal 
And what ye conceal ? "

34. And behold, We said to the angels : 
" Bow down to Adam : " and they  bowed down :
Not so Iblis :    he refused and was haughty :
He was of those who reject Faith.

Holy Quran. Yusuf Ali Translation; Sura 2:   Verses 30 -34
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The Holy Quran, in its teachings on the birth of man, says that when God decided that He was going to make a man He told the angels that He was going to put a Caliph (a ruler) in the earth The earth had life (plants, animals, people) but God decided that it was to put a ruler in the earth. He decided to make a ruler by opening the mind of the man and by letting the man see that he is chief over all of the creatures. Before the time of Prophet Muhammad, the man was told that he should obey the angels. With the divine revelation ok Prophet Muhammad, it was time to move the man on into his rightful position that he was justified to inherit.


Knowledge: A Reward Of God

This is an allegory (a picture story) telling us a great thing. When the angels saw what God intended, all but one submitted and said (in words): "0, God, we do not have any knowledge of our own. The only knowledge we have is what you have given us. So, whatever you wish, we will obey. We have nothing to contend with and we cannot resist you." How can gravity, magnetism, electricity and all of the other forces of creation rebel against the Creator? All they have is the power that Almighty God has given to them. But man, on his own initiative, is able to increase his knowledge. God gives him so much knowledge, but He also gives him a mind (a mental makeup) that can increase his knowledge if he applies it.

This application of knowledge is what brings about the problem for man. He fails to see that, although he is free to increase his knowledge, his increase is still the reward to him of the Creator. Without the Creator he would not have any reward. The man failed to see this and he began to think that he was a special creature. He began to think that he was the only god.

We will continue this very important subject in next week's article.

Thank you for honoring us with your time to read these few words.

Your brother, W. D. Muhammad

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The Wisdom Of W. D. Muhammad

In the physical world we see fire as something that is powerful to destroy things. Nothing brings about a more thorough and complete destruction of physical things in the physical world than tire. The wise men of religion only used Scripture to tell you how thorough and complete the destruction of this grafted world would be when it came.

The soil, the oceans, the trees, nor the animals of the earth have ever rebelled against God, so why should God destroy the earth? It is the minds of men that have acted against truth, justice, and righteousness and have brought the world to a state of hell, confusion, and ignorance.
To right this, someone has to come and renew the minds of mind. The minds of the people must be renewed (given new life) and given new soil for their knowledge to grow in. They must be given a new sun to feed the growth of that knowledge... (Not Complete)
