July 24, 1998

Religion and Reconciliation, Part Two

Memo To: Seth Lipsky, publisher of the Forward
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: A Farrakhan Sermon

[Those of you who did not see Part One of Louis Farrakhan’s speech on religion and reconciliation should begin there, where I’ve written an introduction explaining the background and importance of this April speech at the Northwestern University chapel. Those of you who are not familiar with Islam may be astonished at Min. Farrakhan’s acceptance of what almost seems the divinity of Christ. As in Christianity, there are a great many branches to the Islamic tree. Orthodox Muslims would have difficulty with the theology presented here. Any path that leads toward the truth has to be acknowledged as legitimate. What he is proclaiming as submission to the will of God serves as the path to the one true God, the Father of us all. In this, he is authentically Muslim. He would, for example, condemn the continuing Iranian executions of members of the Bahai faith -- on the grounds they are heretics -- and insist with most Muslims that Muhammad would disapprove of compulsion as an evangelical tool.]

Passover. Look at your country beloved Americans. It doesn’t seem like the death angel passed over Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee -- tornadoes lining up like soldiers marching in, destroying property, taking lives. You want God to pass over but the storms in your life are caused by you and me in deviation from the will of God. We can end the storms, the clouds, the tornadoes, we can end the hurricanes. We can end the earthquakes. You say, oh Farrakhan, I think your going off. When Jesus and the disciples were in the boat and Jesus went to the back of the boat and fell asleep and the winds came, disturbing the waters and the water was disturbing the boat and the disciples got so afraid they went back and woke up the Master and said "Master, please, wake up, trouble’s in the house!" When He woke up He came to the front of the boat, stretched forth His hand and said "Peace, be still." And when He said that, the winds calmed down.

Now some of you that are scientists, you’re not deep enough into science to understand that science and religion are not opposed to each other. Science and true religion compliment each other because all science comes from true religion. You wouldn’t be a chemist if there were no chemistry for you to study and since you didn’t create the chemistry of the earth or the heavens. You call yourself a chemist because you’re studying from the religion of Him who created the heavens and the earth. When you study physics, you study law as it relates to physical matter but you are studying something that is already in existence that you didn’t bring into existence. So how dare you think that because you’re a scientist you are better than a person who is related to God from which all science and all mathematics comes.

I don’t want to get off my point. But I guess my point was that God is the author and your science is not deep enough because the human being has powers yet untapped because we are so deviant in our behavior that our deviate behavior has crippled the power of our minds, our ability to regulate the affairs of nature. God did not create you in His image and likeness for you to be subject to the forces of nature. He created you to be the master of the forces of nature and this is why Jesus Christ was told that God had given Him power over all things. Then when Jesus calmed the storm, he turned to his disciples and said, "Oh ye of little faith." Why did He say that? Because what you woke me up to do, YOU need to wake up because you can do the same thing yourself.

I want to take us to the blood of the lamb. Jesus on the cross bled. At the last supper He gave His disciples some wine. Then telling people, "This is my blood that I shed for the remission of sins." Jesus was called the Lamb of God whose life was sacrificed according to scripture. For if you dip your hand into the blood of the lamb and make a sign on your door -- what does that mean to you, as a Christian, and to you as a Jew? See, the Jews are still looking for the Messiah. They know that the Messiah is still coming. They are not convinced that the Jesus of two thousand years ago was, in fact, the Messiah. So they are still expecting the Messiah. But the Messiah’s life, not his blood, because we can’t drink blood. The Old Testament stops us from drinking the blood of any life. Because the blood carries the health and disease of that life. So you don’t drink blood. But the life of Jesus Christ, that He lived, like your 26 years, Heisel, serving Second Baptist, you live the life of sacrificing yourself, sacrificing your family so that you could teach people and make them realize what God has put within them. It is that LIFE of Jesus Christ. It is the BLOOD of the lamb, that when you put your hands in His blood, meaning hold on to His life. Don’t talk about His life but live His life. Talking about the life of Jesus won’t save nobody. But living His life will save both Christians and Jews and Muslims too.

Let’s get to Abraham, then we can close and I am going to ask all of us to do something. Abraham is the father of many nations. Many nations. But Jews and Arabs claim that, through Isaac and Ishmael, they are the blood families of Abraham.

I don’t believe that Abraham’s family is genetic in origin. I don’t believe that Abraham’s family is physiological or biological. So that Jews and Arabs can say I’m a direct descendant of Abraham because I’m from Ishmael and the Jews will say I’m from Isaac and we’re cousins but we can’t get along. And yet both Jews and Arabs claim Abraham; and Jews, Arabs and Christians claim some affinity to Jerusalem.

We’re talking about reconciliation -- coming to an accord, finding the way or a common denominator that brings all into oneness so that we can begin to do the work of God in our time, in our space on this earth.

My dear and beloved Christians, Muslims and Jews, if you look at Abraham as a physiological or biological creature born somewhere around Iraq -- in that area of the world. I am not an Iraqi, so how can I be of Abraham? So you can shut me out. You say well no, you’re not Abraham’s, you didn’t come from that part of the world -- you’re an African, your hair is kinky -- you’re not from Abraham. It’s got nothing to do with Abraham’s hair or his nose or his birth. It has something to do with that man’s commitment to God. Because the Qur’an said of Abraham -- this is talking to Jews and Christians -- all people of the book, why do you dispute about Abraham when the Torah and the Gospel were not revealed until after him. Do you not understand? If from the Torah, you become Jew and from the Gospel, you become a Christian, then what was your father? Since the Torah came after Abraham and the Gospel came after Abraham, what was the religion of Abraham?

The Qur’an raises a very good question. Abraham was not a Jew, nor a Christian. That is true. He was before Judaism and he was before Christianity. Wait a minute, dear Jews and Christians, please don’t fight me now. No bricks yet. I’m only talking about Abraham. We are going to reason. Look, it says Abraham was an upright man, then it says a Muslim, meaning one who surrendered to God. He never set up any rival or partner with God. His whole mind, soul, body, spirit was obedient to God and because he obeyed God when God gave him some terrible commands -- go and pick your son up and sacrifice him. Now Heisel, this would be rough! There’s Heisel the third and Heisel Jr. is told by God, "I know you love him, but, Heisel, take that boy up on the mountain and kill him for Me." You say well "wait a minute God! I’ve been good to You, I’ve been obeying. God, what’s happening to You. Asking me to kill my son?" Then Satan comes up in you and says "God is working a trick on you there. Don’t you kill that boy. You’ve been waiting for that boy to come along and continue your work. Don’t kill that boy -- that’s not God talking, it’s an imposter."

You get all kinds of stuff going through your mind when God gives you a command that you don’t like. And everybody in here gets a command from God that you don’t necessarily agree with but the question is will you follow your will or will you surrender to God, knowing that God’s will is the will that should be carried out by those of us who love God.

So when Abraham took his son, saying "I have to do what God says" and laid his son on the altar. The beauty of it was the father but the beauty was also the son because he said "if this is what God wants, I want what He wants." And he lay there to die and just as Abraham was to proceed, the dagger dropped, God stayed his hand and said because you have shown Me that you love Me above the life that I gave you in your son, above all that you have, you love Me. I’m going to make you a leader of men and My covenant will be with you and your seed and if you can count the stars, Abraham, or the sands of the sea, you can count your seed in the blessing. And then Jesus comes, a son of sacrifice, that a Father sacrificed and the boy was willing to die. So God said "because of this obedience to Me and surrender to My will mean so much to you, you are My friend and I am your friend. He was an upright man, upright meaning he obeyed the righteous commands of God. He surrendered to God. The only people who can claim Abraham as a father are those who will do as Heisel B. Taylor asks you today. "Are you willing to surrender to God?"

If you are willing to surrender to God, He will be your friend and you will be His friend and there will never be a death angel over America. We can cast away the storms because we have surrendered to God, Muslims, Christians and Jews.

I hate the term anti-Semitic because I would be less than a moral being of intelligence to hate another human being because of their faith tradition. It’s abhorrent to me that I would be charged anti-white when you can’t find one thing in my record that I have done against a white person or a Jewish person except to point out evil. How can you reconcile the ledger if you don’t point out that it’s not adding up. What we don’t like is for somebody to point out our own injustices. Who likes that? A father doesn’t want his child telling him, Daddy, you’re wrong. A mother doesn’t like her daughter saying, Mama, you treated me wrong. None of us want to be wrong. Neither Jews, nor Christians, nor Muslims. We want to be right. So when God sends a prophet into the world to point out where we went wrong, we don’t ordinarily say, "You’re right, thank you so much." You say you aren’t wrong and you try to defend yourself. Then you want to knock down the man that’s pointing out your wrongs. That’s why prophets have been killed and beaten and sent to prison. I am not the enemy of Jewish people. I’m not the enemy of white people, I’m not the enemy of black people. I am the enemy of sin. Whether that sin is in myself or in others, I have to stand against it because it is the sin that keeps me estranged from reconciliation with God.

Now I conclude, to the members of the Jewish community who are here, what is the criterion of the measurement of our conduct? Is it what is popular? Or is it the standard laid down by God through the mouth of his prophets? What did God tell you as a Jew? If you will obey My statutes, My laws, My commandments that I give you this day -- in the book of "Deuteronomy" He lists all the blessings that you will receive and then He lists all the cursings that you would receive if you rebel.

Government has a power. You have a right over your bodies, sisters. God gives you these bodies and he gives you power over your bodies but He also gives you guidance. You say, "I have the right of choice." You do. Choose the man you will sleep with. That’s your right of choice. But to choose death for the unborn, He doesn’t give you that right. Once you have made that commitment, He forgives you.

I’m not here to make you feel guilty -- there’s enough sin everywhere for all of us. So preachers ought not to preach like that, like we’re so holy. In all of our righteousness, the Bible says let us not get holier than thou. I’m not preaching for anybody to feel bad about some sin that you’ve done. I am asking us to understand what is pleasing to God. And if we’re going to surrender to God, even though it’s what pleases us, we have to say what is the pleasure of God and maybe I ought to stop doing this or that. Do you follow? It involves a sacrifice. If you said Jesus gave up His life, are you willing to give up that life that Jesus is displeased with? See now, that kind of church is the right kind of church. That kind of Gospel is the kind of gospel that you’ve got to hear every day. It can’t be something that tickles your ears. It has to be something that calls you to rectitude, to uprightness.

As a Jew, measure yourself against the laws, statutes and commandments of God and don’t say, "That’s oldtime, things have changed, moved on, that’s from the Old Testament days." Fine. Show me where God changes in the morality that He demands of His creatures. There are some scriptures... that are more relevant to the needs of the time but there are certain immutable laws and principles that keep on coming through that continuum of time and life. And they never change. You don’t know how to live life. You just got here. I don’t care how many doctorates the enemy has conferred on you. You don’t have a doctorate of living. Your doctorate is in death. Talking about I’m a doctor and smoking? I’m a doctor and I’m drinking? I’m a doctor and sticking needles in my arm or snorting cocaine in my nose. I’m a doctor and I’m eating myself to death. You don’t know how to live. You have to let the wise God who is the Creator and Architect of life show you how to live and you’ve got to stop rebelling against God. As a Jew, if you don’t want to accept the Gospel, if you don’t want to accept Qur’an, then go back to the Torah, and measure your life against what God has commanded and God’s commandment is the criterion. As you see how far off you are from the criterion, you’ve got to make up your mind, as a Jew, I’m going to reconcile myself with God by coming back to the standard that God laid down for me as a Jew, that I might continue to be God’s chosen instrument. Don’t you ever think that God will continue His choice of you when you have chosen to live a Satanic life rather than a life in obedience to the will of God.

Now, let me go to the Christians. I have to say this to my Christian family -- now, you may not ever want me to come back here again. But you shouldn’t invite me if you don’t want to hear what I have to say. And if what I have to say is not what you thought I would say, that is because you don’t know me. Dear Christians, you talk to Jesus; you talk Him up. You praise His name. You shout all over the place about Jesus. But what kind of life are you living? I have to talk like this because if I don’t talk like this, I’m not true to God, and I’m not true to Jesus and I’m not true to Muhammad, and I’m not true to Moses or the Prophets and I’m not true to myself. I don’t care anything about popularity. You’ve been beating the hell out of me for thirteen years for something that I’m not guilty of. But I’m not going to bow down. Dear Christians, how in the world can you claim Jesus and won’t live the Gospel? All you’ve got to do is read the Gospel and measure yourself against the criterion and see if you’re on it or off it. If you’re off it, that’s how much you’ve got to surrender to get on it. Did you hear what I said? You have a free ride as a Christian, and even as a Jew, because some of the rabbis and some of the pastors will not preach the criteria and ask the people to live up to what God has laid down. The Bible tells you, that yes, He’s going to kill the witness but He’s going to put their blood on your and my hands if we don’t call them to the righteous standards of the Gospel.

When I say you’ve had a free ride, many of you join churches that tolerate your foolishness. Let me see if I can be a wild, crazy thing and join the church -- you know what I mean? I’m happy that I found a home! But you’ll find another home in Hell. And the Pastor who’s been leading will be right there in Hell with you! And you will cuss him out and say, "Why didn’t you kick me Rev?"

Now I’m going to get to the Muslims. All right, Muslims. You’re worse than the rest because you claim to surrender. I’m going to surrender. To what? To our passions. If we surrender to God we’re magnetic, we draw people -- people not afraid to be around you, they come to you. Because, as a Christian, when you surrender to the Gospel, you become as magnetic as Christ. When you surrender to the Torah, you become like the Prophets; they’re alive in you: Abraham is alive, Moses is alive; Solomon is alive. David is alive. Jesus is alive. He’s alive! The question is: Is He living in you? As a Muslim, I have to look at myself and examine myself against the standard of God laid down in this book of revelation called the Qur’an. But I also believe in the Gospel. And I also believe in the Torah. So I’m bound by what I read. In truth, it takes a heck of a person to live by the Gospel -- you know Jesus is really calling you to be supernatural. The natural thing is that if I cuss you, you cuss me. That’s natural. You hit me -- Pow, I’ll hit you back and I’ll try to hit you harder and make sure you don’t come back again with another one. That’s natural. But Jesus is not calling you to do the natural thing because what Jesus brought was the redemption of human beings and reconciling human beings to God. In order to do that you’ve got to do an unnatural thing. I mean when they smack you on one cheek, the natural thing is bust them in the mouth. Now, I’m not going let anybody come up and smack me and I’m going to stand still. That’s the slave doctrine -- to keep the slaves all bound up in Jesus so they would never quit. When you take an insult, do you insult back? When you were reviled and all men of evil that said against you falsely, for the sake of the Gospel -- how do you respond to that? I have yet to find somebody who’s happy when they pick up the Sun Times and read "Farrakhan, the anti-Semite..." -- I don’t read that and say, "Ha, ha, ain’t that wonderful! That’s great!" I can’t rejoice in that, but in my soul, I’m contented because I know I am not that. My greatest desire is for you to know that I’m not that. I wish that the rabbis would hear. I wish that we could sit and discuss and dialogue. Because we do have more in common than we have at variance. But if we don’t dialogue, how can you point out to me where my error is and how can I point out to you where I think your error is? So that we both can be corrected before God. If you tell me there’s nothing to dialogue with -- I will not speak to this man -- to me that is unworthy of us as human beings. Heisel, I believe is a grandfather -- are you a grandfather? I am a father, a grandfather and a great-grandfather and I don’t know how many years I have in front of me, but I don’t believe there are as many as I have behind me. I am concerned about what life will be after I am gone. What about you?

I close with these words. I love black people. I’m born from among them. I feel our pain, our suffering, our hurt, at the hands of evil and injustice. Please don’t fault me for loving my own people because I cannot fault you for loving your own people. I am happy to see white people loving each other; or Asians loving each other; Native Americans loving each other. That’s natural! But I’m overjoyed when I see Black People loving each other because that’s very rare in a society where we have been trained to hate ourselves and to hate one another. Now, here’s a challenge to Black People. I make no apologies for standing up for Black People. I believe I will do that until God takes me away. But I am maturing every day in the Word of God. God is not after a black family and He’s not after a white family. He is after a family that is not born of flesh but a family that’s born of spirit.

There are many Muslims who might take exception to what I say because we’re into the black thing and the black thing is good because it’s a medicine to heal the suffering produced by white supremacy. But after you’ve brought balance to the organism that was sick, you can’t continue to give it the same kind of medicine. Now, I want you to hear me. White supremacy is a sickness and racism comes out of the feeling that I am better, not because I’m intelligent and righteous but I’m better because my skin is white and my hair is straight and so and so and so; that’s immature. I’ve seen white folk play with dogs and love their dogs and some of them are short, some of them tall, some of them wide, some of them real ugly looking but you love your dogs and you say this is my dog and you dress him up and put him in shows and hope you win a prize for the way you shaved your dog or trained your dog. But if you can admire the diversity of God in the dog family, or the diversity of God in the fish family, or the diversity of God in the rock family, if you can admire the diversity of God in the Earth family and in the planets and the stars, what makes you so stupid, so moronic, that you can’t admire the diversity of God in the Human family?!

Why am I less because I’m black. Why are you more because you’re white. That’s sick. That is very sick. So brothers, in the Black family, when you learn to love yourself, then you can love others. For Jesus’ sake, love your neighbor as yourself. So neighbor love is predicated on self-love. When you love yourself and love being with yourself, that’s your family. That’s your black, genetic, biological, physiological family. Good. That’s very good. Here’s my Korean family. I went to Korea and saw all Koreans. I didn’t see a whole lot of other people there. I was the other people. I went to Japan, I see Japanese. I was the other people. When you come to America, this land has everybody of the Earth in one place but they just haven’t learned how to relate above their ethnicity, their racial identity, their cultural heritage. Why? Because you haven’t come up yet into spiritual life in Christ. There is no Jew, Greek, no male, no female all are one. Outside of Him? No. In Him. When you get in Christ. Come on the inside of His mind. Then you rise above your race, your color, your heritage and you become one with a kindred spirit that has surrendered to God. If Jews, and Christians and Muslims can find and understand in the Torah, the Gospel and the Qur’an, that common thread that goes in all the revelations and all the prophets and through that understanding, we can see unity in that diversity. Then, and only then, can we grow to be a part of the Family of God. In Bishop Kim and the Unification Church’s language, when the children are all out of order, they really need a true parent. That’s a fact -- a parent that will not tolerate the ignorance of the children. What we need are true leaders, true teachers, who become true spiritual parents of the Human Family that has gone crazy. And I submit to you as I leave you, that the only way we can become a family, a real spiritual family, is to rise up into the worship of God and surrender ourselves to do His will. When you do that, you will never see my color, my hair or my lips or my eyes that are slanted, or my baldness of head -- you won’t see physical impediment: You will begin to look past that to see if this is a kindred spirit in obedience to the will of God and when you find that person, then you have found your true brother, your true sister. Listen, "Jesus, your mother and your brother are outside and they wish to see you." He said, "My mother and My brother are in the Temple with Me." They said, "Master, your mother and your brother -- " He said, "My brother is he who doeth the will of My Father."

When you come into the Will of God and you surrender and do His Will, we don’t talk color anymore, we don’t talk national identity anymore. You don’t say I’m Italian; I’m Greek; I’m Jewish; I’m Russian; I’m Polish; I’m Egyptian; I’m Arab; I’m Black; I’m bip. You say "No, I am of God." I don’t say I’m a child of God. I’ve grown past child. I’m an active participant in bringing about the Will of God. I, too, am a god but I’m a little god. As David said, "Ye are all gods, children of the most high God." So we’ve got to start getting up out of this child-like stage. Come into the man and woman stage in the spirit of God. Then we can say to wind, "Hold up, there’s some good people here."

You don’t have to create storms, you can stop them. We can keep the death Angel away from America but the death angel is in America. God doesn’t want any other nation to have this. This is where he is going to make himself known. Go ahead Bill Clinton, arrest the tornado! That’s a weapon of mass destruction. Go ahead and arrest it. Arrest the wind, arrest the rain, arrest the floods. God is plaguing you, America. If you don’t wake up, you’ll die in your ignorance. God is judging America and I don’t care how much money you think you have, your money won’t save you -- nothing will save you unless you say "I surrender God!"

Happy Birthday, my brother, and may God bless you!

Original Story

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