1976-December-17

Bilalian News

The Fire of Truth

Imam W. D. Muhammad

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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 : " 1 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 : " 0 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 Translation by Yusuf Ali: Sura II: Verses 30-34
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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.

As -Salaam –Alaikum

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
God told the angels to prostrate (submit) themselves to Adam (the mind, the heart, the nature and the spirit that He wanted to rule the earth), and they all bowed down, saying to God that they had no knowledge except that that He had given them. But Iblis, the leader of the angels, refused to bow down to the man that God had made. God pointed out to the chief of the angels that all of his followers had submitted to Adam. He asked Iblis why he was refusing to prostrate himself to His new creation, the man that He Himself had shaped from stinky mud and breathed into him of His own knowledge and of His own wisdom. Iblis, in his arrogant, self - serving mentality said, "I am better than he (Adam)," thinking of himself before he thought of what was right and best for the whole. The leader of the angels told God, "You made me of fire, and You made him of black, stinky earth (clay) fashioned into shape."


Angels: Forces In Creation

This leader of all of the other angels had a nature that was different from that of his followers. In giving God credit for all of the knowledge that they had, the rest of the angels confessed with their own words that they did not even have the nature to disagree with God. Here the Holy Quran is using picture language, teaching as God teaches the baby when he first comes from the womb. God gives the newborn baby picture language to open his mind to a higher kind of language (truth).

The angels are things that we conceive as having no physical forms (invisible entities). We find that in creation there are many invisible things that have reality and that act on us from without and from within. There are the forces of gravity, the forces of electricity, the forces of light, and the hidden, invisible forces of noise. Not only are we affected by the noise itself, but there is also a force behind noise or in noise that affects the human being's nature. The noise hits the physical ear drums, but there is an entity of the noise that affects your very nature.


The Light Of Knowledge

There are numerous invisible entities in creation that science has now discovered that early man had not yet known. Early man thought that those invisible forces had some kind of reality like human reality, that they conversed with each other and that they had husbands, wives and children. But as the man came into more knowledge, he realized that these forces are only invisible forces in physical matter and that they have direct relationship with the physical world. When man comes into this knowledge, he takes on the light of knowledge and the light of science. For example, if a person is ignorant, we might call him dull or dark because this is the language that the world has given to us. They have translated physical light into terms to serve the meaning for spiritual and rational light. In the religious language, we have light meaning spiritual light, spiritual knowledge or deeper knowledge into the things that are physical. The physical world has their knowledge, they refer to it as light, and although they do not use the term light any more, we still use the term bright for a smart person, or for a person who is highly intelligent. With this language, God brings pictures to our minds that will enable us to understand a higher concept, a higher reality or a higher language of that reality.

Man had to grow to become the leader over the angels. Though he had the essence, the potential and the capacity to become the leader of the angels, the human being had to grow in the earth as an inferior and become the master (leader) over the angels. This particular leader over the angels is none other than mind (man), and mind has to live on earth and grow into the knowledge of creation.


The Chief Of The Angels

The chief of the angels is the mind of man who has come into power because of the forces of gravity, the force of heat, the force of lighting, and the force of sound. The leader of the angels has learned how to use these things to put himself into a high position of authority, ride on a big horse and command the others as his servants and his slaves. When thunder clasps and makes its loud noise and when lightning flashes and frightens the cave man back into his cave, this chief on the horse rides as though there is no fear. This is because be has gotten in touch with the reality of the thunder and the lightning; be knows that they serve him and that he has no reason to fear them. This is not to say that he cannot meet with a fatal accident, but the chief of the angels knows that the chances of such an accident are very, very rare. He goes bravely through the land while other men are running into caves and behind rocks for comfort.

Man has to act in the nature of the physical world because the physical forces, and even man himself to a certain degree, cannot get out of the nature of the physical world. When we first come up in the earth, before we come into civilization and into the knowledge of the world, we are just like animals. As our knowledge increases, we learn how to break the chains and the gravity of the physical world, how to get away from or to step above the natural law, and how to make a plane for ourselves and call it man's law. But man has to come from the same nature (the same simple origin) that the creation is of, so he, in his beginning, was an angel; man grows in knowledge and be becomes the leader of the angels. Then this leader of the angels, man, gets to thinking of himself as being the boss in creation, that he is his own boss, and that he has no force to answer to. But God is ever in charge and ever in control and He raises up a man from among them who begins to question their knowledge and question their conduct.


God's Man: Ruler Over The Angels

God revealed to His prophets that they should say to the angels, "Your knowledge is of the nature of fire. God has decided to make a ruler in the land, and he will not be a ruler of fire." Fire burns up things, twists them out of their natural form and causes them to deteriorate, break a loose or disintegrate. Fire destroys forms and it creates new forms. When we throw a piece of fat in the fire, we end up with grease and smoke. When God says that He is going to create His man and make him the ruler in the land, He is saying that He is also going to burn the world but with a new kind of fire. The fire of God's man will be the fire of pure light (truth). Light is different from fire in that it does not destroy the forms of things, it reveals (shows) the forms of things. God is not going to force a devil to come back into good form, He is only going to shine the light on the devil to let the world and the devil see that he is out of form. Allah is not going to change the human nature. He does not want to make the human being an angel or a spook flying around somewhere in the world. He is just going to shine the light on the real thing that He created to show you the reality that He made to exist. He does this so that we can allow that reality to come into being.

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

Your brother, W.D. Muhammad
