The Final Call

‘Strong Families: The Foundation Of A Great Nation’

By The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Oct 3, 2017 - 11:26:33 AM

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[Editor’s note: The following article contains edited excerpts from the keynote address of the same name delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan on Sunday, August 27, 2017 at the Sheraton Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of the Family Summit-Conference presented by Healthy Relationships Initiative, The Winning Circle, Young People in Action International and the Center for Strong Families (https://www.familysummitconference.com). To order this message in its entirety now available on DVD, CD and MP3, please visit store.finalcall.com or call 1.866.602.1230, ext. 200. We encourage readers to order this vital message in its entirety to reap the full benefit of the wisdom it contains.]

I bear witness that there is no God but He, The Originator of the heavens and the earth; He Who originated life, He Who originated family.  He Who is The Origin of all the tribes and all the families:  His greatest desire is to see all the tribes, all the families, become one great nation of righteousness and peace.  I thank Him for His intervention in our affairs in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, The Great Mahdi (or “Guide”), Who came among us to rectify our condition.  But more than that, He came to choose us as the foundational stone of a universal government of peace; He came to make us the cornerstone of a nation that will never see an end.  He came to perfect the creation of God; He came to perfect The God, for from the very origin of God, He yearned for perfection. 

Allah (God) created the heavens and the earth; and The Qur’an says your eyes will roll back tired in your head if you try to find imperfection in what He created.  But He knew, as He set things in motion, and became Rabbil ‘alamin: He knew that He was The Origin of the existence of things, and Origin of the Law of Evolution, and The Origin of the stages of each creature and creation’s evolutionary development.  But the Law of Evolution was moving everything toward perfection. …

It is written in the scriptures of the Bible (and we’re going back and forth between Bible and Qur’an to talk about “family” today): A Man would be born Who would use the personal pronoun “I.” 

Man, Woman, Family being of ‘one accord’ is perfect precursor for oneness in the Human Family

“I” …  God uses “I,” and then God uses “We.”  But we are taught that there is only one God, and He has no associates.  If there is a “we” involved, God is associating with someone; so the “we” act as one, the “we” are of one accord, the “we” function from the Spirit of The One.  But the One that He (The Originator) willed into existence said, “Behold, I make all things new; there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and the former things will pass away,” “there will be a new sun, a new moon, a new star, the former things will pass away.” (Revelation 21:1-7) But our teacher, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, said you don’t have to worry about that, because that’s billions of years in the future.  But there will be a new sun, and a new moon, but there cannot be a new sun and a new moon, and new stars, until we first make a new man. 

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan

A new man: a perfected man—a perfect being that is under the name “Jesus.”  A perfect being that could say to his disciples, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” 

So when Allah (God), The Originator, said, “Be!” (Kun faya kun), He set in motion that next evolutionary course that would lead man to perfection; and from a perfect man He will produce a perfect world.  From a perfect man, He would have to perfect the nature of man.  In perfecting the nature of man, it would cause the perfection of everything that comes from the nature of man.  So, He had to perfect the so-called “religion of man”; because what you call “religion,” all of it has failed.  All religion has done the best it could, but The Qur’an says, “This day have I chosen for you Islam as your religion,” and “I have perfected for you your religion.” (Surah 5:3) What “day” is that?  It certainly wasn’t perfected in the time of Prophet Muhammad, otherwise you wouldn’t see all that hell going on in the world of Islam.  It certainly was not in the time of Jesus, because when Jesus came into the world, darkness had covered the earth, and it was as though no prophet had ever walked before.  Poor Jesus: He was the last prophet to the Jews.  They rejected him.  So he told them, “When He is come, the Spirit of Truth, He will guide you into all truth.”  (John 16:13) So we are looking for a Man.  We are not looking for a “spook,” or a “spirit,” we are looking for a Man Whose truth opens the eternal door to knowledge unlimited. 

The Holy Qur’an, in Surah 31 (Luqman), verse 27, says that: “...  if all of the trees were as pens, and all of the seas, with seven more seas added to it were as ink, you could never exhaust The Words of Allah. Surely Allah is Mighty, Wise.”  In The Problem Book (Problem No. 13), it tells us that: “The average man speaks four hundred words—considered well.”  But the Qur’an says everything that Allah created is a word.  So, if the average man or woman only can speak 400 words well, we’ve got a lot of words yet to go …  so how dare us arrogate to ourselves that we know so much?  That is why The One that came tells us that “the wisdom of this world is as foolishness with God.” (1 Corinthians 3:19)

***

I am honored to represent that God, and I am honored to represent that Man that could say “Be” (“As your Father is perfect in heaven, be.”).

How close are we to perfection?  So there is going to be a perfect family as the perfect foundation to a perfect world.  There has to be a perfect man to unite with a perfect woman to produce a perfect family that is so in harmony with The Nature of God and the nature of their own creation, that they will produce an exemplary family as the base of the unity of all families. …

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, when he was among us, said that The Saviour Who came, Master Fard Muhammad, said He would walk up a mountain 40 miles high just to teach one man.  Elijah Muhammad would say that to us; that Master Fard Muhammad loved us so much, that He would eat rattlesnakes to free us.  We met a Man unlike any other man ....  We met a Man Whose father was an Original Black man, who knew that the Lost People were lost in The West, among a new and strange people—the Caucasian people.  He had to make a Son that would go in among such people and not be discovered, so the scriptures of the Bible teach: “He came without observation,” “He came in sinful flesh to condemn sin in the flesh,” “He came unto His own, but His own received Him not”; and “the light shined in the darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not,” but The Word that was in The Heart of The Originator became flesh, “and that flesh dwelled among men.”  In that flesh, the Father went all over the world finding bits and pieces of knowledge to give to his Son, to prepare Him for the job at hand.

What was “the job at hand”?  A job like no other job; a mission like no other mission.  And what was that mission?  To raise a dead nation to life.  A people that belonged to God were taken out of The East, brought into The West, and made other than themselves.  So this One that would come had to be prepared to redeem us; to pay the price to relieve us of the tyranny of a tyrant.  He would have to know how to extract His people from the clutches of an enemy.  And out of that enemy produce a new mind from a new idea: a new man, a new woman that would be the origin of a new people and a new family.  He studied 42 years, according to what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us.  For 42 years He studied to deliver us from the enemy.  But listen to this: He visited every inhabited part of our planet; He spoke 16 languages, and wrote 10 of them perfectly.  …

Look at all the indigenous people that are represented here; look at all the colors that are represented here.  Look at all the dialects and languages that are represented here …  It takes a lot of wisdom to bring many together as one. 

America is still struggling with that problem (“out of many, one”):  White supremacy cannot produce the oneness of humanity.  In order for White people to be a part of being in “one accord,” White people have to be divested of a poisonous idea called “White supremacy.”  And we who have been ill-affected by White supremacy have come to the Family Summit sick, because White supremacy produces in its wake Black, Brown, Red, and Yellow Inferiority, so we are not ourselves.  White supremacy doesn’t make you yourself, or further your knowledge of self; White supremacy imposes itself on us to make us into itself.  So most of us are “White people” in Brown, Red, Yellow and Black skin … .  That is why it’s so difficult to make us a “family” again, because we want to include in The Family that which doesn’t belong in The Family.

But I’m going to tell the “odd fellow” how he can benefit from The Family, and become a part of The Family—but you have to know yourself.  You have to know what made you; you have to know why you were made different from those persons of color.  …

Read the Holy Qur’an, Surah 49 Al-Hujurat (“The Apartments”), the section called “Respect for Muslim Brotherhood.”  We will never become a “family” if we don’t have the knowledge that will allow us to respect every member of the family. And know that “The Family” reflects the diversity which manifests The Wisdom of The Creator … .  So, those of us who want an “all-Black” world?  Well, you’ll wake up.  (Smile.) This will be a hell of a place if everybody looked “Black, Black, Black, Black, Black.”  How many shades of green do you see coming up out of the earth, that makes owning property valuable to you because you have trees—different types of trees; or, you have shrubs, and bush, and you have greenery (different types)?  They’re all “green,” but when you put them together properly, it is a thing of beauty.  … So life is growing out of all the colors of the earth: Is there a sign in this for people who are searching for God? 

I wonder sometimes about God, you know, how no two raindrops alike.  Now, as we are talking, there are a lot of raindrops falling in Houston (Hurricane Harvey).  Don’t you ever laugh when you see Nature doing its work under the direction of The God that I am talking to you about.  Into each life, some rain must fall; [but as] the song says, “too much has fallen in mine.”  “Too much” rain is a curse—though we can’t live without rain; but our teacher, Elijah Muhammad, named four great judgments that would come against America, and the first one was “unusual rain.”  Also, unusual snow, unusual hail, and unusual earthquakes.  Is God angry? 

***

On Aug. 20, I was blessed to be in Chicago to speak to our community and the world (“Seek Refuge in Allah”), and I sent a message to President Trump.  I said to Mr. Trump that “America is a preserved area, according to our teacher.”  …

I said, “Mr. Trump, no bombs from a foreign government is going to fall here, according to what The Messenger taught me; but this area is preserved for God.” 

Now I want you to pay attention to this:  Because all of us talk about God, even if we don’t believe in Him.  But God desires to make Himself known to us by doing something that no one else could do but He Himself, so that the scripture might be fulfilled (“Every knee will bow, and every tongue will be forced to confess” that Allah is God).  So He raised Elijah to represent The God that taught him, and Elijah raised me to continue to make that God known.

Remember what I said earlier, that Master Fard Muhammad said He would “climb a mountain 40 miles high just to teach one man.”  I used to hear it and hear it—I didn’t quite understand it; and then I ran into it, sitting at the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s table … . What a wonderful place to be, at the table of a man whose mouth is made to speak The Will of God.  And he would look in my face and say: “I saw a man climbing up a mountain late in the evening, carrying a heavy load.  And he said, ‘Lord, when will my help come?’”  And then he said: “As the man got to the top of the mountain, he said: ‘Hosanna!  Hosanna! My help is come.’  And the angels came and bore him away over the dashing foam.”  The highest mountain on the earth is Mount Everest, at 29,141 feet.  That’s a long way from “40 miles”; that’s a little better than six miles, close to it.  So, that wasn’t “the mountain” He was talking about.  Then on another day I was sitting with my teacher, he said to me: “Brother, do you know what it means when it says that Jesus fasted in the wilderness for ‘40 days’?” I said, “No Sir, Dear Apostle.”  Because every time he asked me a question, most of the time I didn’t know anything.  There wasn’t a question that he asked that I had the answer, so I just shut up.  Unlike some of us, who want to show how smart we are; you know you don’t have the answer, but you’re not intelligent enough to shut up so that you can get the answer.  The Messenger said, “Brother, it means that I was not permitted to make a convert to myself in 40 years.”

Now, the teacher is such a master: The student is being taught when he doesn’t even know he is being taught.  But I know I remembered those words, along with hundreds of others, that he spoke.  That means that when he was among us, he was not permitted for us to know exactly who he was; so we called him “Messenger,” “Dear Apostle.” 

“O Allah!  When will my help come?”

 What kind of help you lookin’ for, Dear Apostle?  “I’m looking for one that God would make for me; one that would loosen the knot in my tongue,” meaning “make clear The Message.”

***

Master Fard Muhammad came to North America by Himself July 4, 1930, and He was wearing three hats—but He exposed two.  Go and read “Point No. 12” (under “What The Muslims Believe”); this is how The Family is getting started:  It starts with God making a messenger that’s like a woman to Him.  Elijah Muhammad said to me: “He wooed me, as a man would woo a woman.”  Why is that?  Because you cannot reproduce what you are and who you are except there is a woman so in love with you.

When a woman loves a man like that, she wants him inside of her.  I’m not talking “sexual,” but that’s how it begins.  I’m sorry, but that’s reality; see, that’s not lust, that’s real love, The Creative Force of God.  Elijah did not want “himself” anymore.  Elijah wanted his Teacher…  So he “died,” that his Teacher might live in him.  But he needed a helper; so in that case, he became the male, or “the alpha.”  But he was looking for a special helper.

No man can do The Work that God has put on you to do without a special helper…. God made a man in Elijah; and when Elijah saw his minister, right away he gave me my assignment—the first time I met him on February 26, 1955.  As time went on, my love for my teacher just deepened, deepened, deepened; I didn’t need to be around him “all” the time.  See, if the love is real, there’s something about the man you love.  If he is a good man, and a teacher, you feed on him.  When you can’t see him, you feed on him, and fill your heart with him. 

We have to make a perfect family.  And it starts with perfect love, and total commitment, not this bull-stuff that you call “I’m in love.”  You don’t know what love is, so God came to show us love, so that we could have perfect unions, better relationships.  Relationships not based on sex.  But we are Negroes—the product of the enemy:  So all of our relationships are rooted in sex, and not in true love that gets you into The Mind and The Spirit and The Heart of one another.

I was looking for Elijah all my life—I didn’t know it was Elijah, I was just looking for a man that would deliver us from the tyranny of our oppressor.  That’s why you don’t equal me, because you don’t love like me …  [Your way of “love”]: it’s a vain kind of expression, and that’s why you give up; you run away from what you say you love.  But I could not run from my Elijah.  And he did everything he could, he said, to turn me away from him; yet I would not turn.  And one day he said: “Brother, I want you to line your mind up with my mind, so it will be one mind.”

Brothers: You don’t need a woman if you don’t know what the hell to do with yourself.  You better get in the F.O.I. class, and be made a man.  Your search for a woman is based on lust.  That’s why the divorce court is filled, because your marriages have no meaning.  We’re talking about “family.”  “Family” doesn’t start with whoring; a “family” doesn’t start with adulterous men who never can find enough in the woman, that they have to sample “A” and “B” and “C” like they’re in some damn cookie shop, taking a bite out of “this one,” a bite out of “that one,” a bite out of the “next one.”  Family starts with the adoring, the search for [real love].  When I found Elijah, I adored him, I didn’t worship him.  Some fool would say, “He worshiped Elijah.”  No.  See, when love is present, every woman wants a man that she could feel secure with; every woman needs a man that she could feel secure with.  I was secure in Elijah—but I was a thousand miles away from him; I was in Boston, he was in Chicago, and I saw him once a year. 

“Well, how did you communicate your love?”  See, it was a long-distance love, but not that b.s. kind of “long distance,” for I knew what role I played as the “female” in this arrangement.  In that relationship with The Man of God, I became the female.  I’m trying to show a woman how to be “The Woman of God,” because I Lived It.  If your wedding vow resembles, “Do you, John, take thee, Mary, to be your lawfully wedded prostitute?”  Damn, that’s kind of bad, where a woman has to give you favor in order to get a pair of shoes; or, you have to rape her in order to get a favor, because she isn’t willing to give you pleasure when we’re giving her pain.  I’m talking about real love that is the root of real family, real marriage. 

Aren’t you tired of going to court?  Aren’t you tired of marrying one, two, three, four, five times?  “Because in Islam, I can’t fornicate, but I do it.  In Islam, I shouldn’t commit adultery, but damn; I mean, yes, I do it.”  This is a great subject.  And I pray that we are not hurt by truth.  Truth is not meant to hurt you; it’s meant to help us be what The Creator wanted us to be.  I was a thousand miles away, in love with my teacher; so the way I could show him that I loved him was not writing him “love letters.”  You get busy on The Assignment that God gave that man.  You don’t act like you have nothing to do.  You’re supposed to help a man. Help him to do what God has put on him to do.