1976-January-23

Bilalian News

The Fruit Of The Serpent

Imam W. D. Muhammad


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.

As -Salaam -Alaikum
My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Genesis story of Adam and Eve in the Garden has several interpretations on different, but related, levels of scriptural understanding. The ancient writers of scripture were wise enough in their writings and in their use of scriptural symbolism to be able to represent more than one important message with only one story. As example, we will briefly show in this article that the Genesis story of Adam and Eve brings us two important, but different, messages. In fact, there are more than two messages in this story and we will discuss them all in detail when time permits.

First, we will show that the story refers to the grafting of the concept of the Church from a false, unnatural rationale. Second, we will show that the story refers to the deception of the human being's reasoning process by the flesh.


“THE WOMAN”

The Church (Christian leadership) preached for a long time that women did not have souls like men. They taught that the woman was made from the physical body of the man, but not from the mind or from the spirit of the man. The evil influence of this kind of false teaching infected the societies of other people who did not have this concept of woman in their scripture, like Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and Jews. Men all over the world have used this kind of teaching for centuries to keep their women in an inferior position so that they could mistreat them.


WALKING AMONG THE TREES
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"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day; and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence 01 the Lord God amongst the trees ox the garden.”

(-Genesis, 3:6-8)
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After the serpent had beguiled the woman into feeding the man the fruit of the forbidden tree, they sewed fig leaves together into an apron and went walking in the garden, The "woman" (the falsely-made congregation of the church) and the "man" (which means the church leadership) that had been under a deep sleep were walking together under the trees. This means that they were walking among other societies. Why does the Church leadership fit "man" as a symbol and the Church congregation fit "woman" as a symbol? The Book (Bible) always refers to the congregation as "woman." The Church congregation is also referred to as "God's wife" from the earliest books of the Bible. Converts to Christianity are referred to as "God's children" and the prophets are referred to as His "sons." The symbol of man fits well because leadership does act in the role of a husband.


"LITTLE CHILDREN"

The husband looks out for the woman, he protects her, and he provides for her needs. This is the position of the leadership in the Church. The people who are new converts are called "little children" because they accept the voice of the church leadership and they give themselves to the congregation like little children give themselves to their parents. The congregation will take up collections to pay the converts bills, to help them, and to console them. The Church congregation does act as a mother for the newcomer and for weak ones in the congregation, and the Church leadership acts as the husband of the woman.


THE WEAKNESS Of CHURCH LEADERSHIP

The Book says that when the snake beguiled the woman, the woman gave the forbidden fruit to the man and he did eat it. This is telling you of the weakness of the Church leadership. The Church leadership is deceitful and devious. Once the Church (the man) is caught in a wrong or in a weakness, it will not confess or admit its wrong. The man in the Genesis story tells God that the serpent beguiled the woman. They say that the serpent is the tricky part of the mind. Who is the woman? They say that the woman is the flesh of the man.

The Bible is telling you that when the Church leadership is caught in their wrongs, they are going to blame it on human frailty. They will say, "We are only human beings. My thoughts got confused and my flesh is weak, so I went towards the road of materialism and I forgot the building up of the human nature.”


SNAKE: SYMBOL Of  THE MIND

The snake with a forked -tongue is used to symbolize the mind. This means that he does not have one tongue like a man, but he has two tongues. He speaks with truth and he also speaks with lies. The Indians of North America said that the Caucasian pioneers "spoke with forked tongues." The Indians knew what the snake meant. In Indian theology, they still have the snake as a symbol of the mind. There are some snakes that have one tongue like a human being and there are other snakes that have forked tongues.

What part of the mind is described with this picture of the serpent? It is the rational part of the mind.


SO-CALLED RATIONAL TRUTH

This whole society of grafted, Caucasian mentality builds everything on rational knowledge. They try to make you believe in high school and in college that rational knowledge is what you are supposed to build everything upon. What is "rational" depends upon the outcome of the processing and of the materials that are used in establishing the rationale. If I, as an individual, put my mind to establishing certain "truths," my reasoning processes will be based upon that "truth" as a foundation whether it is truth or falsehood.

When America establishes its rational truth, do you think that it is accepted in Russia, China, Mecca, and in all parts of the world? No! They are telling you to trust only them and not to trust God, the Bible, or religion. They establish for you what is "rational." Once you accept their rationale, you are caught in their trap of so-called rational truth. They know that if you go into a college and your mind is open, you will forget about the Church. You might say, "If there is no rational truth, then what do we have to go on?"

There is a rational truth. But if you use false material in the process of reasoning, you cannot come up with anything but false reasoning. You cannot come up with the truth using materials that are false. When you are reasoning in any given situation, you are using the concepts, the pictures, the definitions, the ideas, or the meanings that have been given to you. So, no matter how much you reason with a false rationale, your solution or your answer will be false.


THE DECEPTIVE NATURE OF THE MIND

The reasoning makeup of the human being is a great asset, but someone can corrupt it by feeding it false  information. They can deprive a human society of the power of reasoning. When the Bible says that the snake beguiled the woman and she fed the forbidden fruit to the man, it means that the rational process of the human being deceived the flesh. When we come into this world, we do not know anything. We have to learn everything from nothing. If the rational mind of the world is feeding us (the flesh) from the cradle to the grave, the flesh cannot do anything but accept the ideas that are put into it.

The snake in the Genesis story is the deceptive nature of the mind. The mind is rational but it also has the power to glide surreptitiously (snake-like) around the truth. The rational mind is a good thing in itself, but in order to establish weaknesses and lies, it will glide around the truth and present falsehood as facts. If a mind is weak, it is a ready receptor for a false body of knowledge or for a false body of information that the world wants to give it


YOU ARE A PRODUCT OF THE CHURCH

In the creation of the Church, the Church leadership was made corrupt. So, it was easy for "the snake" to appeal to a mind that was already false and to feed into that false mind a false rationale. The story says that the snake fed the forbidden fruit to the woman, which means the flesh. All the people of Western society accepted the rationale of Christianity, either directly or indirectly. Do not think that any of you have escaped the Church. Even if you have never been into a church building or have never touched a Bible, you are still a product of the church.


THE HUMAN WILL

Who is the man to whom the woman fed the forbidden fruit? It is the human will. The human will was originally divine. God made the prophet of divine mind; therefore, his will was in agreement with God and it was inclined to God. The will of the human being will get weaker and weaker if there is nothing in the environment for the will to do. If the will lives in a world of lies, it can do nothing but die. The human makeup of man is like the makeup of his physical muscles. If you do not use moral fabric, the muscles get weak. Also, if you do not use your mental fabric, it will get weak, the muscles will collapse, and your mind will be gone. The will power is the everlasting thing in you, but it can become weak.


YOU WILL SURELY DIE

In the Genesis, God told the man and the woman that if they ate of the tree of the forbidden fruit, they would surely die. But you do not see where Adam and Eve died after they disobeyed God. You never questioned it because your mind has been conditioned and programmed to read Christian theology but not to question it. You do not read of the physical death of Adam and Eve because they did not die physically. They died mentally, morally, and spiritually. The serpent told the man and the woman that they would not "surely die."


THE DELIGHTS Of THE GARDEN

The man and the woman were still alive physically and their eyes "came open." They died spiritually but their mental eye came open and the desire began to grow in them to learn more about the garden and all of its delights.

When the man's eyes came open, he recognized that he was in a field (garden) which could provide the things he now desired. He was able to learn a new knowledge and he was able to get a broader understanding of the world around him.


THE RIGHTEOUS CONSCIENCE

Before the man and the woman ate the forbidden fruit of the serpent, they were satisfied with righteousness and a belief in God. When they disobeyed God and took the unnatural course of human development, their spiritual eye closed and their intellectual eye opened to see all the great benefits of the garden (creation).

When God warned the man not to eat of the forbidden tree, did He speak from somewhere out of heaven? No. This symbolic picture means that God put in human nature the fear of going against the righteous conscience that is in a person.

Your conscience is not always "right," but it is always "righteous." If you have inferior knowledge, your righteous conscience will be wrong but yet your intentions will be good. If the righteous conscience is in the natural accord with the will of God, it will always be "right."


THE WILL IS EVER-LIVING

Brother and Sister, it is important for you to know that any man's will can be awakened no matter how long it has been dead if it is approached in the right way. In the will there is also the spirit (the soul). All these parts are related to each other and are spoken of as one body: human will, human soul, human spirit.

There are two definitions of soul. There is the physical soul that comes to you from the breath of the physical world, and there is the soul (called "spirit") that comes to you from divine truth. This soul that comes from divine truth is synonymous with spirit and in this soul is the human will. That soul cannot come alive if the will is not there. Because the will is ever-living in you, it can be approached and awakened.


WILL POWER DRIVES THE MIND

Once the will is awakened, the will will feed upon whatever it is awakened to. If you awake the will to moral values, the will begins to feed on moral values. By feeding on moral values, it will use its muscles and the will power will become stronger and stronger. The moral values of the human being will build up stronger and stronger. If the will power becomes awakened to the need for knowledge the will power moves the mind to acquire more knowledge. By the will power driving the mind, the muscles of the will become stronger and stronger. The mind accumulates more knowledge and it becomes stronger and it grows bigger.

When the will becomes alive to divine spirit, the same thing happens. The muscles of the will get stronger and stronger. At the same time, the muscles of the will are driving the human spirit to submit and to enlarge itself in the environment of Almighty God's presence. In doing this, the spirit becomes bigger and greater.
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27.  Verily this is no less 
Than a Message 
To (all) the World:

28. (With profit) to whoever 
Among you wills
To go straight:

29.  But ye shall not will 
Except as God wills,—
The Cherisher of the Worlds.

Holy Quran - Yusuf Ali Translation-Sura LXXXI: 27-29
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REVIVE THE WEAKENED WILL

The will is in the core of the whole human being. In our language, we have inherited the use of the word "will." Muslims say, "If it be the will of God." Christians say, "God willing."

The will is first in our nature. If there is no will, the person is dead. Will and incentive (motivation) are closely related. The absence of incentive and the absence of motivation in the Bilalian community have occurred because the will of the community is weak. When you come to the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in the West, our teachings will revive the weakened will within you. Your motivation and you r incentive will become stronger and stronger and you will begin to grow as a human being in the way that Almighty God intends for you to grow.

Your Brother, W.D. Muhammad
