By Demetric Muhammad, Guest Columnist
- February 20, 2024
We have been blessed by Allah (God) to have lived another year that we might celebrate and express our deep and profound gratitude for the most significant event in at least 66 trillion years!
The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad has taught us that for trillions of years, people worshipped their own ideas of God, but the true reality of God remained a carefully guarded secret. But it is unto the Black people of America that the great blessing of Allah’s (God’s) own self-revelation has been bestowed. For we believe that on July 4, 1930, Allah (God) appeared to us in the person of Master W. Fard Muhammad! All Praise Belongs To Allah!
So as many of us students of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan journey to the city of Detroit for our annual Saviours’ Day convention, let us pause to reflect and consider what might be dubbed our “reason for the season.”
For we are journeying on something of an annual pilgrimage to celebrate the February 26 birth of the founder of the Nation of Islam in America, the man whom the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us fits the Biblical description of “the Saviour”—Master W. Fard Muhammad. Minister Farrakhan has made us also see that what used to be referred to as “Saviour’s Day” should now be known as “Saviours’ Day,” because the work of Master W. Fard Muhammad fulfills another scriptural prophecy, the one described in Nehemiah 9:27 wherein God promised to send “saviours”—plural—to deliver his people from their wicked tormentors.
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The suffering of a people justifies a visitation from God
As a student in the ministry class of Minister Farrakhan, the theology of the Nation of Islam is quite possibly my favorite area to study, for it is the area where the divine message of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad makes the boldest, most significant, and inspiring claims! And there is no more bolder, and at the same time life-affirming and ameliorating claim made by the Messenger Muhammad than his claim that Allah (God) has visited the Black man and woman of America, to rescue us and to begin the process of our restoration, salvation, redemption and resurrection.
In a conversation with my brother and friend Jason R. Muhammad of Rochester, New York, he revealed to me an important passage contained within the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” A shortened version of this quote is below. Douglass states:
“If any one thing in my experience, more than another, served to deepen my conviction of the infernal character of slavery, and to fill me with unutterable loathing of slaveholders, it was their base ingratitude to my poor old grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully from youth to old age.
She had been the source of all his wealth; she had peopled his plantation with slaves; she had become a great-grandmother in his service. She had rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood, served him through life, and at his death wiped from his icy brow the cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes forever. She was nevertheless left a slave—a slave for life—a slave in the hands of strangers;
And in their hands she saw her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren, divided, like so many sheep, without being gratified with the small privilege of a single word, as to their or her own destiny. And, to cap the climax of their base ingratitude and fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old, having outlived my old master and all his children.
Having seen the beginning and end of all of them, and her present owners finding she was of but little value, her frame already racked with the pains of old age, and complete helplessness fast stealing over her once active limbs, they took her to the woods, built her a little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the privilege of supporting herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually turning her out to die!
Will not a righteous God visit for these things?”
This very powerful and emotionally moving passage draws from the treasury of the Black struggle for freedom, justice, and equality a frame and context that is ultimately supportive and vindicates in its own way the bold theological claim of Allah’s (God’s) Divine Servant, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
Frederick Douglass’ lamentations over the fate of his beloved grandmother and her victimization in the moribund peculiar institution of American chattel slavery help to make the profound reality easy to see, and that is said succinctly, “the suffering of a people produces the intervention of God.” Consider some scriptural support:
“They wait for naught but that Allah should come to them in the shadows of the clouds with angels, and the matter has (already) been decided. And to Allah are (all) matters returned.”
—Holy Qur’an, 2:210
The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey… And now the cry of the Israelites has reached Me, and I have seen how severely the Egyptians are oppressing them … .” Bible—Exodus 3:7-9
In the very excellent book written by Dr. Wesley Muhammad entitled “Take Another Look,” he cites scholars whose study of the Bible places an exclamation point on the idea that the Bible communicates and creates the expectation in the mind of the reader that God would one day visit his people!
“The decisive element in the theophany descriptions of the Old Testament … is the concept of the coming of God; the descriptions of the accompanying phenomena in the natural order are to be viewed as parabolic … but the supremely important matter is that God comes into the world … in the future.”—G.R. Beasley-Murray, “Jesus, and The Kingdom of God”
“The faith of the Old Testament rests on two certainties, equally profound and indissolubly bound together. The first is that God has come in the past, and that he has intervened in favor of his people. The other … is the hope that God will come anew in the future.”
—Quoting Georges Pidoux from, “Jesus, and The Kingdom of God”
The Honorable Muhammad teaches God is a man
The theology that Saviours’ Day celebrates is bold in that it strikes the prevailing concept of God maintained by many of the world’s religious adherents that God is a shapeless, formless, and immaterial spirit. And yet, despite the later theological developments advanced by rulers and religious authorities to make the belief in a “spook”
Or spirit God the dominant belief in the world today, a close look at what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister Farrakhan teach about the reality of God, harmonizes perfectly with the actual text of the scriptures. Consider how the most integral and important figures within the scriptures had interactions with God in human form. Such encounters have been dubbed by religious scholars by the word “theophany.”
Adam (the first man)—“And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.”—Genesis 3:8
Abraham (father of righteous)—“The LORD appeared again to Abraham near the oak grove belonging to Mamre. One day Abraham was sitting at the entrance to his tent during the hottest part of the day. He looked up and noticed three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he ran to meet them and welcomed them, bowing low to the ground. My lord,” he said, “if it pleases you, stop here for a while. Rest in the shade of this tree while water is brought to wash your feet. And since you’ve honored your servant with this visit, let me prepare some food to refresh you before you continue on your journey.”—Genesis 18:1-3
Moses (liberator of the slaves)—“When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses … .”
Jesus (Messiah)— “It is also written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true. I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me.”
—John 8:17-18
Prophet Muhammad (last of the prophets)—“And there endures for ever the person of thy Lord, the Lord of glory and honour.”—Holy Qur’an Surah 55:27
Vern Pythress in his “Theophany: A Biblical Theology Of God’s Appearing” has stated:
“The appearances in human form have part of their basis in the fact that God created man ‘in the image of God’ (Gen. 1:27). On the level of the Creator, God acts in a way analogous to human action, and his nature is fittingly represented in human form, rather than the form of an animal or a plant.
He speaks, he thinks, he knows, he hears, and he acts in power. Human beings through their bodily actions imitate his actions. Their imitation is fitting, because God’s action is the archetype or original pattern for human action. In addition, human appearances of God have a special weight. Even though in the Old Testament such appearances are temporary, they anticipate the permanent coming of God in permanent human form … .”
Compare the words of Mr. Pythress with what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote in his illuminating book, “Message To The Blackman in America”:
“The Christians do not believe in God as being a human being, yet they believe in Him as being the Father of all human beings. They also refer to God as He, Him, Man, King, and The Ruler. They teach that God sees, hears, talks, walks, stands, sits, rides, and flies; that He grieves or sorrows; and that He is interested in the affairs of human beings. They also teach that once upon a time He made the first man like Himself in the image and likeness of Himself, but yet they believe that He, Himself, is not a man or human.”
Master W. Fard Muhammad’s demonstration of love for the Black man and woman
Master W. Fard Muhammad stayed among us for a little over three years, but the Nation of Islam has continued for the past 93 years operating from the foundation He laid in those three years and the continued guidance that He provides the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister Farrakhan.
In fact, in my opinion, it is what He produced for us in the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister Farrakhan that is Master W. Fard Muhammad’s greatest demonstration of His love and power.
For the Bible states that the people of God, those who suffered and were tormented, have a glorious destiny to hope for; a destiny that involves divine transformation. And among us, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan have been the first to undergo such transformation into the divine.
The Bible in 1 John 3:1-3 describes it like this:
“Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are now children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when Christ appears, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself … .”
As the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has articulated:
“God came ‘wearing three hats,’ one for Himself, the power in which He would not reveal, and hats for two men from the people whom Whites had destroyed.”
Those who wish to falsify the history and purpose of Master W. Fard Muhammad frequently occupy mainstream spaces and enjoy a wide audience. And despite this unfortunate reality, it should be known that the true authority on the Coming of Allah (God) in the Person of Master W. Fard Muhammad is the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the man whom he trained for three years and four months personally; and his servant that he trained for 20 years and has guided for the past 47 years, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.
I close this writing with some important quotes and passages from the treasury of truths about Master W. Fard Muhammad expressed by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad:
“HE GREATLY rejoiced over us and was real happy that He had found us. He said that He would make a new people out of us who submit to Him by causing us to grow into a new growth, not an entirely new body but a reversal of the old decayed body into a new growth, which He said would make us all as we were at the age of 16.”—June 9, 1956, Pittsburgh Courier
“No civilized Nation wants the uncivilized Negroes, but Allah, our Loving and Most Merciful God, Who came in the person of Master Fard Muhammad in 1930. It was not until 1933 did He begin revealing His true self; I knew Him at first sight in 1931, for I was expecting Him.”—February 8, 1958, Pittsburgh Courier
“You are alright today if you just will accept your own religion. And no getting on knees to ask for forgiveness for your past. All of that is forgiven. God told me to tell you that He will forgive us all the past; just accept your own, now. Go from here and not think over what happened in the past. You did not know who you were nor the enemy.
So that is right and just that you should be forgiven for that which you had no knowledge of. So this is what He told me to tell you. And since we don’t have to go on our knees for yesterday, be sure that we go on our knees for today. A people that have did everything that the devil did and tried to beat him at some of it, get forgiven for all of that evil. You certainly should be happy… .”—August 27, 1972, Theology of Time Lecture Series
“This is what He wants to make out of you and me, not just Believers but gods. Every one of you, according to what He has taught me, will be gods.”—October 8, 1972, Theology of Time lecture series
“So God and I love you so well that He sent me to tell you these things to make gods out of you. That’s what it’s for––make gods out of you. You say, ‘I know I will never be a god.’ Yes, you already is a god. So I thank you, thank you, thank you.”—July 2, 1972, Theology of Time lecture series
And a special excerpt from a letter written by Master W. Fard Muhammad to the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad on September 7, 1933:
“I have treasured all my life love for the lost-found nation of Islam …”
HAPPY SAVIOURS’ DAY!
Brother Demetric Muhammad is a Memphis-based author and student minister in the Nation of Islam and a member of the Nation of Islam Research Group. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter @BrotherDemetric. Read more at www.researchminister.com.
