The Final Call

Life Demands Something From Us: The Power Of Faith And Economics

By The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Aug 2, 2016 - 10:12:10 AM

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(Editor’s note: The following article contains edited excerpts from a message delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan at Emanuel Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C., on Sunday, May 22, 2016. The Minister’s address was also connected to a Black entrepreneurs’ meeting in Winston-Salem under the leadership Joe Dudley, president and chief executive officer for Dudley Products Inc., a manufacturer and distributor of Black hair and skin care products. Order full message on MP3, Video Stream, CD,DVD @ Store.FianlCall.com)

(L-R) Pastor John Mendez and Min. Farrakhan; Muslims and Christians fellowshipped together.; Worshipper enjoying service at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C. Photos: Richard B. Muhammad and Andrea Muhammad

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.

Life demands something from us.

No creature that God created earns its justification for being except by being what God created it to be. You don’t see creatures violating that law. Everything that God created the creature to be you find it being. But the only one that there is a problem with is the human family.

God didn’t create us to be racist; He didn’t create us to be sexist; He didn’t create us to put one color over another, one race over another; that’s not His work.

He said, “I (in the Qur’an) created you into tribes and families that you may know one another.” So on this planet there are many tribes, many families, but they come from One Source. Some White people don’t like Black people and some Black people don’t like White people. But then I see White people with a Black dog. I’m a little confused. You don’t like Black but here’s a black dog—all black. I see you kissing the black dog, petting the black dog, hugging the black dog. But the Black human being we have a problem with

It’s kind of crazy. That is real sickness. How many of you like black onyx stone? I have one on made by our Native people—very beautiful—nobody objects. They don’t say, “what you doing with that black stone; hanging out with that black stone.” Just don’t hang out with Black people.

We like red rubies and green emeralds and diamonds that show many different colors and when you’re blessed to go to Kay Jewelers and get a diamond you can’t hold your hand properly. I’m not trying to be funny but the human being is very funny because he’s very stupid. There’s white sand and you love to go to the beach and stick your black foot in the white sand. You didn’t come away with a disease. I have seen pink sand and I’ve even seen black sand. I’ve seen mountains in Arizona and the mountains was so beautiful I jumped out of my car and begin to pray because the mountain had so many different colors in the stones.

Congregation applauds during program.

I see these beautiful flowers and all of the different colors arranged so beautifully. We bow when we get a bouquet of flowers and don’t realize as human beings we are the most beautiful bouquet.

It’s just that we don’t have anybody to put us together like the florist does with all those beautiful flowers. And that’s why Jesus Christ is so important even among Muslims. Muslims believe Jesus is coming back; they don’t say Muhammad is coming back. Jesus is returning and he’s returning with a man that in the Arabic tradition is called Al-Mahdi or The Guide. Why do we need a guide? I just told you.

Imagine us with a Ph.D. degree and stupid. I’m not belittling education. I’m belittling the foolishness of those with education acting like we don’t have it at all. What did God create the human being to be? What is His purpose for the creation of human life? The Bible puts it very beautifully. He created man and He didn’t say I did it. In the creation of man He uses soft pronouns … Let Us Make Man.

Each one of you was created by the Creator and given a gift from Him that makes you unique. You have never been before and you will never be again. What a joy it is to be on the planet with your uniqueness. Consider people who have never been and will never be, this is our moment in time. So we can make it a beautiful moment or we can follow Satan and make it like the moment that has arrived with human beings filled with hatred and division. Man against woman, woman against man. Neither one can do anything without the other. Man is made and woman is made to reflect God. …This vast universe will not hold back its treasures for those who seek it; just keep pulling for greater knowledge that will allow you to be a productive human being. That’s the aim of God when He said multiply. It just didn’t mean get a woman and have a baby—it means that too. But God says, “take what I put in you and multiply it with what surrounds you and produce a product that says that you were here being what I created you to be.” So your life and your work is glorification of God.

That’s why we’re here with Mr. Joe Dudley. He came to birth like anybody else. His teacher, S.B. Fuller, came to birth like anyone else. George Washington Carver came to birth like anyone else. But he had a gift and he found it in peanut-products. He was so productive the Ford Foundation recruited him. When you’re a producer, people look for you. When you’re doing nothing somebody is looking for you alright. It’s probably the sheriff because when you’re not doing something productive you’re doing something. Smile.

God puts us in a race, a competition. Billions of sperm, but only one will get to that egg to produce the first cell of life. The vaginal tract can be very acidic and hostile. The sperm doesn’t have a lot of time. It has to get to that egg and get there quickly. When the right sperm comes and touches that egg, the first cell of life has begun. The vaginal tract is a hostile environment and the sperm has to swim upstream like the salmon against gravity but you made it; you’re here. You made it as a sperm mixed with ovum. How dare you talk about how hostile the environment is? “White folks make it so difficult, I can’t do anything.” Shut up. From sperm you were made into a full-grown human being in the image and likeness of God. There’s nothing stopping us but our ignorance and our unwillingness to fight negative forces. …

The first verses of the 96th Chapter of the Holy Qur’an, called Al-Alaq (“The Clot”), go like this: “In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful (Iqra) Read.” That’s the first command that the Prophet Muhammad heard—Read. When a people don’t know how to read, they’re in the clot stage of their development. It doesn’t mean that they can’t grow into a beautiful growth but they’ve got to have the right to read. And that’s one of the first things that the slave master took away from the slave, the natural right to feed a curious nature to know. We’re born into the world knowing nothing but we have this insatiable, curious desire to know what we have come into.

Watch your babies today and I mean watch them. Don’t let that doctor stick a needle in your baby telling you it’s vitamin K. Their K is a killer. The world is closing down. They don’t want to see any more Black genius; they don’t want to see you multiply in the earth and build the Kingdom of God. They must stop you at the cradle. … So you cannot afford to be a foolish woman. The education of the female is a must. But it must be the proper education. Look at how the body is formed, an umbilical cord is there and when the body comes out of this precious womb covered with the blood, the body has to be washed, cleansed, the umbilical cord cut and the baby, according to Ezekiel the 16th Chapter, must be swaddled and salted. There was a baby like that in an open field and a man came by, saw the baby and said this word, “Live.” Because if that baby didn’t have the right care, it would have died. It’s talking about you. You grew up in the womb of slavery but you fed from the mother that you were growing inside of. America has been a giant womb for Black people. You are not free. You haven’t made any history. You live in the history of the womb that you are forming in. Your name is not your name. Every good deed that you’ve done you’ve done in the name of your former slave master.

How can you be free and don’t even know that all the credit of your life goes to your slave master’s name which you wear so proudly? A baby’s life doesn’t start when conception begins. A baby’s time begins when it takes that first breath and the umbilical cord is cut and it’s washed and swaddled and somebody then has to care for it in its development, teaching it values. Then that baby can become a great one.

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When things don’t go the way you want, why do you think that The Lord is mistreating you somehow? No. God is trying you somehow. He favored something or someone else: “I’m better, I can preach better, give me the job.” But it’s not about you being able to speak better. What kind of heart did you bring to the endeavor? Is it a diseased heart? God said to Cain, “Cain why are you angry? What happened to your face? It’s fallen.” You know how when you get disappointed how your face falls. Your mouth turns down, you start looking pretty ugly. God asks Cain a question. Then God said, sin is at the door. Cain didn’t understand; he was angry with God.

Let me help you, by God’s grace, to see something in the meaning of that to keep you away from disappointment and going crazy after you get disappointed. You didn’t get the position that you think that you deserved. You didn’t get the accolades that you know you worked hard for. “They overlooked me and I’m mad as hell and I’m going to tear this organization up, that’s what I’m going to do.” You’re not crazy, you’re not lying now—because when you get disappointed you can become a devil.

Why are you angry? Why is your face fallen? If Cain had spoken back to God, God could have taught him. And if we recreate the garden scene, here’s what I believe God would have told Cain: “Cain I needed somebody to till the ground and you’re doing it and I admire the fruit that you brought me from the ground. I’m not displeased with you. But your brother brought me a lamb and I’m looking down the Wheel of Time and I see a man coming that is styled as a lamb. I’m looking down the Wheel of Time that a lamb is going to take away the sins of this world. It’s not that I don’t want the fruit from the ground. I see the fruit coming at the end of this world of evil. I see a man coming that, like a lamb, is going to sacrifice his life to redeem man once again to me. I’m not rejecting you.”

He saw the Christ coming. God doesn’t see in our timeframe. You and I are finite. We are here for a short time and we’re gone. We expect everything that God promised to come to us in our time and then we get confused. “I worked so hard in the church and I’ve done everything you asked me to do. Why should I be sick? Lord I got cancer now.” But can you look at God and say thank you? Can you thank God for the trials in your life and say thank you because they made you stronger? They increased the faith that you showed as a baby on your mother’s breast. Jesus was trying to get a little rest in the boat, a storm came up. He’s sleeping peacefully. “Master wake up. The storm is gone kill us all,” said a disciple. Jesus looked at him. He went to the front of the boat and said, “Peace be still.” Then Jesus looked at the disciples and said, “Oh, ye of little faith.” If you just had faith the grain of a mustard seed, you could say to the mountain be removed and it would be so. How many mountains are in your life as a business person and you say it can’t be moved? “I just can’t make it.” There is no such thing as “can’t.” That’s one word that you should throw out of your language. When God created the universe from nothing, he destroyed the impossible.

All things are possible if only, if only, you believe. So your business is being tried. Sometimes you can make the payroll and other times you’re struggling. You say, “Lord, I may have to close my business down.” But if you listen carefully to the Lord, he said, “Remember when you were on the breast, you kept on pulling until you got something. Keep on pulling, brother.” Seek and you shall find. Ask and it shall be given. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. …

God is the master economist. Poor people we’re so stupid. We’re on barges driving garbage around from port to port. We can’t find any place to bury our garbage and you know economy, you know what economics are. God wastes nothing. You see a buzzard, I talked about him today. He flies around. He can sense something dead down on the ground. That’s his meal. The buzzard circles to make sure the coast is clear. And it flies on down and eats what is dead. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, my teacher, told me that God taught the buzzard its prayer. The buzzard after it eats turns its face to the East, flaps its wings and flies away. The buzzard has more sense than we do. We eat and don’t give thanks to God for what he gave us. Then comes the eagle, who isn’t looking for anything dead. He will kill what he wants and then eat it.

Brothers and sisters, you have become a meal for all the immigrants that come to America. They find their way into our community and they set up shop. They have no respect for us because we’re not busy. We’re not engaged in the activity of life producing what we need and what we want.

So these kinds of vultures and eagles come in and they set up shop. I know you love long hair, sisters. Lord, you look so pretty. Smile. You really do. When I turn on my television, I see all these Black girls on the news. All of them have long hair. I know it isn’t real, but the Koreans have made us look good, haven’t they?

But check your pocket. You got it on your head, which shows you didn’t have much in your head, and the Koreans are going to a bank in Koreatown. You’re telling your landlord, “I’ll have it next week but this week I had to get my hair.” Don’t be mad with me. Take better care of the hair that’s under that weave, you are already beautiful. I understand. I’m not mad at you, but spending $500 and $600 on hair? We could take that money and invest it in some of Mr. Dudley’s products. We could take that money and begin to turn it and make money for us. That shows you have something under the wig. I want you to see that this is economic genius if you study how God fixed this.

May God bless entrepreneur Joe Dudley. May God bless all those who work with him and for him; and may God bless each and every one of you to find the gift that God gave you that is exclusively yours. Discover that gift, exploit that gift and then give it back for the glory of God—then we will be a civilized community, a community that looks out for itself.