Chapter XV

Are Ye Not All As Children of

The Ethiopians To Me

Blessed are you who are reviled and not esteemed on account of the love their Lord has for them.

Blessed are you who weep and are oppressed by those without hope, for you will be released from every bondage...

As you pray, you will find rest, for you have left behind the suffering and disgrace. For when you come forth from the sufferings and passions of the body, you will receive rest from the Good One, and you will reign with the king. You joined with him, and he with you, from now on, for ever and ever...(The Book of Thomas the Contender, Writing to the Perfect, The Nag Hammadi Library).

 

"A black American writer, J. Saunders Redding, describes the arrival of a ship in North America in the year 1619:

Sails furled, flag drooping at her rounded stern, she rode the tide in from the sea. She was a strange ship, indeed, by all accounts, a frightening ship, a ship of mystery. Whether she was trader, privateer, or man-of-war no one knows. Through her bulwarks black-mouthed cannon yawned. The flag she flew was Dutch...Her port of call, an English settlement, Jamestown, in the colony of Virginia. She came, she traded, and shortly afterwards was gone. Probably no ship in modern history has carried a more portentous freight. Her cargo? Twenty slaves.

There is not a country in world history in which racism has been more important, for so long a time, as the United States. And the problem of the 'color line,' as W.E.B. Du Bois put it, is still with us. So it is more than a purely historical question to ask: How does it start?--and an even more urgent question: How might it end? Or, to put it differently: Is it possible for whites and blacks to live together without hatred?..." A People's History of The United States, by Howard Zinn, p.23.

The question aside for the moment, it is clear that there could not be an awakening, or redemption in our time, not here in this country, and therefore not anywhere else in the world, if it were not for the Black experience in America. It was, and is, an essential historical ingredient to the evolution of the human spirit and the unfolding realities of our time. It was essential to blacks, who otherwise would not be part of the momentous events that are taking place, and which are about to take place in America; and it was essential to whites who would otherwise still be slaves to their own darkened nature and to the great delusions of racial and cultural superiority which they brought with them to this continent. We shall not, however, even try to retell the story here, it has been four hundred years in the telling. It is there in front of us (in black and white if you will...and in all the spaces in between), and others have told it in ways far better, they have lived it, and are still living it and still telling it. The books are open for all to see, the words, the pictures, the faces, the names and the events surrounding them, are engraved in vivid detail upon the national psyche; and those wholly spiritual feelings and emotions that attend the mind are riven even deeper in the national soul. (It is, indeed, a marvelous and terrible thing that God has done with all of us, marvelous toward them that have lived the story, endured and overcome, but terrible to those who have failed to understand the meaning of it all, and especially to those who have allowed themselves to be brought to places of authority here in America at this time in history...Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that all of us together had considered our latter end...Deuteronomy 32:29; Ecclesiastes 8:6-9; Ephesians 6:10-19; 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2).

Think of the birth of the American nation (Open the pages of the Book of Isaiah), and more than two centuries of slavery, a bloody Civil War (Ezekiel 20:46-49), and the flight from the South to the industrial cities of the North. Hear the strains if you can, of Paul Robeson singing That Old Man River, and think of 400 years altogether--four centuries of human affliction, continual struggle, and finally, deliverance. (Genesis 15:11-16).

The African-American story is an heroic story in that it is written from the ground up, and always in the face of physical and spiritual adversity and unending episodes of oppressive social injustice. Of course there are many other people who play an heroic role in the story as well--for it is ever so true: that from the rural south to the cities of the north, a secret language was in the making, one that the master still can not understand. He hears it spoken, and even tries to speak it himself, but he doesn't understand it. It's the language of the people. It resonates beyond the spoken word itself. It speaks in Seven notes--a multitude of chords and many lyrics--but then it reaches an Eighth note (a higher octave), which is synchronized with the heart. It speaks to the heart first, and only after that to the mind--but only to the mind that can hear and understand. It speaks only to those who can rightly interpret the lower octaves of sorrow and despair as well. This language emanates from the soul, from the entire range of human spiritual and emotional experience. It is the language of faith, of expectation, the song of liberation. (Exodus 15; Revelation 15:1-4). It speaks to the soul of the people. It vibrates with the Soul of the Universe...

If the heart and mind are aligned they will hear the words and understand the song. They were translated from soul to soul, beginning with the simple heartbeat of human existence, and then through the later beat of human oppression (as the Nimrods of the earth came to power, and the resulting spiritual struggles of human existence began to unfold). It is an epic story that has carried all of us back to Eden--back to Atlantis--to America. (One must truly understand what that is all about in order to understand and master the language itself). The hidden intonations were translated in the lilting rhythms of the field and (the real, heartfelt meanings of) gospel song, and then beyond the church house in the slow birth of the blues and even--up until the 1950s and 60s, before the music took on other forms--in the truly communal and secret vernacular of American jazz. It took every string, and both the black keys and the white keys to relay it, and both to understand it. Martin Luther King spoke to this reality from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963...(But then something went dreadfully wrong, especially with the Civil Rights Movement in this country. The rhythm was lost (the Shepherd was struck down before he could see the way the flock had to go), and the present generation is subliminally expressing its frustration with the failure of it all, and with our failure to see it. It is being expressed in the violent rap lyrics and the screaming and crashing hard core rhythms of the 90s and 00s--complete with fire and mayhem and a hedonistic orgy...at a Woodstock festival? Something did not come across. Well, actually it did. What came across was the intuitive sense that the Civil Rights Movement went in the wrong direction--into the system instead of out of it as the Word commanded us...2 Corinthians 6:14-18; Revelation, chapter 18. Those who made it into the American political, economic and, needless to say, military order have unwittingly become part of the powerful evil design that the American empire has upon its own people and the rest of the world...

ROSA VS. OUTKAST

by Leonard Pitts Jr.

Its not that the legal issues are compelling. Indeed, for us journalist types, there are few things sexier than a First Amendment lawsuit. But where the case of Rosa Parks v. OutKast is concerned, what scrapes at your heart is something beyond the law. For all that the suit may say about freedom of speech, it says more about the disconnect between African-American generations, the wrenching sense that an inheritance of pride and purpose was somehow never passed down.

For those who missed it: The Supreme Court decided this week to allow Parks to go forward with a suit seeking unspecified damages from OutKast, a rap duo that named a song after her. Said song is not about Parks. Nor is it about the Montgomery bus boycott, which she famously triggered by refusing to give up her bus seat in 1955.

The closest the song comes to referencing history is: "Ah ha, hush that fuss/Everybody move to the back of the bus." Parks lawyers say she feels exploited. They claim the song sowed confusion, cutting into sales for "A Tribute to Rosa Parks," a gospel album released in 1995.

Both arguments are weak. It stretches credibility to suggest even the most naive consumer could mistakenly buy an OutKast CD while looking for gospel. OutKast is Andre 3000 (Andre Benjamin) and Big Boi (Antwan Patton), two young men from Atlanta who, though capable of literate social commentary, are not above musical thuggery and the kind of potty-mouthed declamations so popular in hip-hop. This includes, but is not limited to, the deadly N-word. Benjamin and Patton have said, with touching cluelessness, that naming the song after Parks was their way of honoring her.

Problem is, and I don't mean to be harsh, they wouldn't know how to honor Rosa Parks if you wrote out instructions. The rappers and the 90-year old are as unalike as citizens of different planets. The difference is not just generational, not just about the gap between swing and rap. Rather its about a fundamental disparity in perception. Rosa Parks is from a time when the average black man or woman felt duty bound to live a life that reflected well on black people as a whole. If there is a single word for what African-Americans of that era prized, projected and sometimes died to defend, that word is dignity.

It sometimes feels as if each new crop of black Americans is, in some sense, starting all over again, going out with no tether to the sacrifices that made their lives possible, no recognition of their debt to past and future, no inclination to draw on an inheritance of purpose and of pride. Which is why many of their elders are vexed by them, turn away from them, give up on reaching them. BUT JUST WHOSE FAILURES DOES THAT REPRESENT?

OutKast is the product of an uncensored age, an age when people cross the line so routinely it has all but been erased. Parks became an icon because, faced with a moral challenge, she made a decision. I wish she had found a way, some method beyond the courts, of helping these young men to understand what that means. Understand that the process never ends. And that they have decisions to make, too.

GOODBY, BABYLON

By David Fricke

"This fantastic box of holy ruckus is the greatest anthology of antique Southern sacred song and oratory ever assembled. Packaged like a pioneer-family heirloom--in a cedar case with a nineteenth-century etching of the Tower of Babel on the lid--Goodby Babylon is six CDs of blues hymns, hillbilly hosannas, choral thunder and hellfire sermons from the 78/rpm era. Some of the most important figures in American music testify here, including the Carter Family, the Louvin Brothers, Blind Willie McTell and a pioneering gospel composer Thomas A. Dorsey. In a 1949 radio broadcast, Hank Williams sings a prophetic spiritual , "I'll Have a New Body," three years before his own earthly chassis gave out. The Stanley Brothers transform an African-American spiritual, "Standing in the Need of Prayer," into bluegrass church: silvery picking and sweet-mountain-air harmonies, with a revival-meeting jump in tempo at the end.

But much of this suffering and faith is the poetic invention of lesser-known men and women, white and black, who intimately knew heavy labor and poverty. On Disc One, bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson and J. E. Mainer's Mountaineers, a white string band from North Carolina, both sing of life after death with the heated urgency of men for whom life on earth held few rewards. In 1930s "Memphis Flu," Elder Curry and his Mississippi congregation turn local news--into a galloping lesson on the democracy of God's wrath. The spoken intro to "Down on the Old Camp Ground"--[a] coon shout by the Dinwiddle Colored Quintet--shows, however, that in 1902 there was equality under God but none in the record business.

Goodby Babylon also disapproves the old rock & roll maxim that the devil has the best tunes: God owned many of them first. In "Down on Me," Eddie Head and His Family provide a sanctified 1930 blueprint for Janis Joplin's 1967 version; the female street singers Two Gospel Keys fire up the godliness in "You've Got to Move," later covered with more devilish flair by the Rollin Stones. And the Rev. J. M. Gates puts a grim spin on Christmas in his 1926 sermon "Death May Be Your Santa Claus," which became the title of a Mott the Hoople song. GOD TRULY WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS." Rolling Stone Magazine, January 22, 2004.

There's a New Song being written, by thousands now, we just haven't seen the concert, or heard all of its verses yet. It is still coming together. It has to include the Red keys and the Yellow keys you know)...

Harold Bloom, in his The American Religion, in a chapter entitled "African American Religion as Paradigm," touches on an aspect of American spiritual consciousness that has been explored, but not fully, not in the ways we shall discuss in the second part of this chapter:

I find this confirms again my own intuition that the American Religion is born about 1800, and that African American religion was a crucial element in this origin. The ecstasies of the first southern camp meetings tapped a mysterious current of sensation and perception that emanated from the slaves. Mechal Sobel, in "Trabelin' On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith" (1979), convincingly intimated that what became the religion of Southern Baptists relied unknowingly upon African spiritual formulations...There is an African-American paradigm that informs the emotional immediacy of unmediated Baptist encounters with Jesus...There is a development from collective to highly individual spiritual experience among the African-American Baptists. SINCE THEIR VISION OF A SACRED COSMOS HAD BEEN DESTROYED, IT WAS REPLACED BY A RELATIONSHIP TO AN INTERNALIZED JESUS...

The African Sacred Cosmos has been studied very extensively, but the fundamentals of its view of the spirit still are best set forth...by Geoffrey Perrinder in "West African Religion" (1961) and by Marcel Griaule in "Conversations With Ogotemmeli: An Introduction to Dogon religious Ideas" (1965). Mechel Sobel, citing them as her authorities, uncovered in the African-American Baptist faith clear survivals of the West African vision of the spirit. Strangely parallel to aspects of ancient Gnosticism, in my own judgment, these survivals may well be the tap-root of concepts of the spirit in American Religion...

This center of black Baptist spiritual experience became the unknowing paradigm for white Baptist conversionary life. The Dogon "true me" or "real me," what ancient Gnostics called the "spark" or "pneuma," became indistinguishable from the Spirit in which St. Paul had been caught up and transported to the heavenly regions. What continued to mark the difference between black and white Baptist experience was the more radical dualism of the African-American sacred cosmos. Doubtless, much of the provocation for this difference ensued from bondage, but survivals of Dogon twinning or doubling had to exist in order to account for the wide prevalence of African-American reliance upon the reality of the "man" within, which was transformed into the saving presence of an interior Jesus. (pp239-241).

In music, if Black America was not at the forefront of it all, it was right there at the very heart of it. In fact, Black Americans got to the Great Gathering first (besides those who first lived there that is, and, of course, those who had already streamed into Kansas and Nebraska before the Civil War, and who fought the first battles over the issues of slavery in America):

Son of man, take up a lamentation for PHARAOH, KING OF EGYPT, and say unto him, Thou art like a young lion of the nations, AND THOU ART AS A WHALE IN THE SEAS: and thou camest forth with thy Rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy Feet, and fouledst their rivers.

Thus saith the Lord God: I will therefore spread out my net over thee with a company of many people; and they shall bring thee up in my net.

THEN WILL I LEAVE THEE UPON THE LAND...AND I WILL LAY THY FLESH UPON THE MOUNTAINS, AND FILL THE VALLEYS WITH THY HEIGHT...(Ezekiel 32:2-9).

GONE TO KANSAS (Goshen, the Navel)

Meet at the Center

In the years after Reconstruction in the South, ex-slaves soon learned that though they were now ostensibly free, many white Southerners were doing everything in their power to keep blacks powerless, immobilized and landless. Blacks began to look to Kansas, the home of John Brown before the Civil War and a center of abolitionist sentiment, as a modern Canaan, a God-appointed home for the African race. Beginning in the 1860s, thousands of blacks began to migrate to Kansas where they believed they would achieve prosperity, and become truly free at last. The town of Nicodemus in Graham County, Kansas, for instance, was founded by black Kentuckians in the 1870s.

The largest wave of black migration to Kansas began in 1879 and continued into the 1880s. This group largely from the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Texas, called themselves "EXODUSTERS," COMPARING THEMSELVES TO THE ANCIENT ISRAELITES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Though they encountered difficulties not only in getting to Kansas, but also in settling in a place that proved to be no land of milk and honey, most blacks believed it to be infinitely preferable to living in the South.

Of course, not all Southern blacks chose to go to Kansas. Some refused to go out of fear of the unknown. As one ex-slave wrote: "I have a littel place and i Dont want to Brake up to Do better and Do worse." Some were simply reluctant to forsake their old homes, as was the freedman who said, "We feel sorry to think that we have to leave our fathers', mothers', wives', and children's dust and flee into other states to make a living."

This unusual song conveys the view of an ex-slave who chooses to stay in the South even as his neighbors vacate their homes to go to the Kansas "Promised Land." Dave and Cathy learned it from the fine singer Sara Grey, who learned it from the field recording of traditional balladeer Everett Pitt from New Jersey. Originally called "De Little Cabins All Am Empty Now," the song was written as a dialect piece by Thomas P. Westerndorfer in 1881...How a song written in a lively major key came to have this sorrowful Irish-sounding tune is a mystery, but we prefer this setting. It conveys the feeling of fear and loneliness experienced by the narrator, and provides an appropriate moody conclusion to our song collection, and to what was a devastating, terrible Civil War and Reconstruction on the Western Border. (www.bartonpara.com/civilwar/rebel/kansas.htm; www.kshs.org/library/bibafam.htm)

Oh this heart of mine am breaking with grief 'tis granted now...And I never will be happy any more...There are cabins in the valley, and cabins on the hill...And the green grass is growing 'round the door.

Can't you hear the owls a -hooting in the darkness of the night?...It brings a drop of sweat out on my brow...Oh I feel so awful lonesome, I fear I'll die from fright...Since the little cabins all are empty now.

Oh, they say they've gone to Kansas, where they say there's better times...But they will have to learn how to plow...Just the same as in Old Dixie, where they were wont to win their dimes...What's the use of living when there aint no joy combined...

The following two letters speak to the present state of racial relationships in America, as well as of the relationship between Blacks and the American order in general, and of the history of Africa, and its relationship to the mysteries of the Tree of Life (the Universal World Tree). The first to a saintly lady named Kadijah Ali, who sold religious articles on Fulton Mall in Brooklyn. The other to a Christian man named Arthur Hawkins who was also witnessing to his humanity and his faith while he sold religious articles in the lobby of the university at Huntington, West Virginia:

Dear Kadijah,

How can I thank you for the fellowship, and for all the spiritual support you gave me those several days at Fulton Mall? I hope to finish my work there on a fruitful day that God shall choose. There are, as you well know, many things that presently divide God's children from each other and many obstacles in the way of true love. Illusions, yes illusions. God has placed many illusions in the way, to keep the heart and mind of the unperfected soul from penetrating the excellent mystery within. Race is such an illusion. It seems to be such a distraction to spiritual growth. The great paradox, however, is that at the same time it is a means to it. The children of Light everywhere throughout the earth have seen through the illusion (into the heart and soul), and have overcome. (It comes so natural to children). The greater illusion, of course, is the entire material realm itself, in which all of us live and breath, and have our being. God has also made it to appear quite real, and in the lower of the Four Worlds, the world of Action, it is real enough. The pain is real enough; the injustice and oppression is real enough, the judgments are real enough, and the absence of true love seems to be real enough also. (In the realm of the Kabbalah there are Four descending worlds: Emanation, Creation, Formation and Action. Though we dwell in all Four of them together, the lower world is the one apparent to our physical senses. God has fixed and set it apart from the others to teach us the very real lessons of life, of righteousness, and of justice and judgment--indeed, in order to create in us the meaning and the lessons of Love itself. We could not have inherited the heavens above, nor the world to come, any other way). Returning now, as we have been, to the many dimensions of the Tree of Life in which these worlds are revealed, we realize that this Tree is the primary archetype of all existence and the very source of Life itself. We return to it because we came from it--from the very Mind of the Universe that is. Every soul born on earth, out of its own earthly mother's womb, is a child first of the Heavens above:

Please see Chapter 1, part 2

Let Us create Man in Our image. (And in the process let Us give Man an historical, as well as a scientific path to follow, one that will lead them at last, full-circle back to the initial state of Divine awareness in the garden of Eden [to the original Ethiopia] from which they have fallen. Let these historic paths lead them in turn to the next, higher octave of Human Consciousness, to the ultimate meaning and fulfillment of the words: Let Us creat Man in Our image. In the process let Us transfer the entire content of Our Mind into their minds, revealing and creating in Man not only the realization of Our nature but of their own. Let Us make Man fully cognizent of all the potential for Light and Darkness (Good and Evil) that exists between us--between God and Man. Let them experience the Darkness--in themselves--and then let them at last return to the Light. Let Us take Man from his natural state to a Spiritual state, and let them, at last, inherit the worlds above and the age-to-come). It is not complicated. We are presently in the final stages of being created.

Every soul (every mind) must eventually associate itself with the transcendent world (with invisible reality), whether in its own present lifetime or in a next, before it can pass over into that realm on its own, as it is written: That Christ (whether you call it Christ or not...call it Truth) may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being ROOTED and GROUNDED in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the Breadth, and Length, and Depth, AND HEIGHT. (Ephesians 3:17-19).

Each soul has been sent into this world, not only for its own sake but to facilitate the development of every other soul. We simply can not do without each other. On an individual level, and in its own lifetime, each soul must learn how to recognize, and how to commit itself to the very real Presence of God who dwells in all things--not only in every higher dimension, but in the sum of every natural and human event. The Whole Earth is filled with the Glory of God. Nothing exists but God. God had to instruct man in all of these things before They could set him free to inhabit the worlds above and the world to come. Not having learned these lessons here in these dimensions (in the great schoolhouse of Living Reality), we would invariably commit these same transgressions in the next. It is in this lower world that each of us are being created in God's image. What does God look like? She looks like you my dear Black mother-sister. They look like everyone, everywhere, all at once. (I refer to God as They because they are Father and Mother. But They, of course, are ONE).

It is in the context of these lessons that we understand and interpret present world events. It is also in this context that we understand the recent phenomenon of "black rage" (and by this we also imply "Divine Rage") against the American social order. For though God's controversy is with all the nations of the earth, America is the primary focus of God's creative work at this time in history, thus the final object of God's righteous anger. God would have the whole world witness the end of a nation-empire that--having conscripted (enslaved, of course, is the proper term) the precepts of God to itself in order to further its own earthly ends--is founded upon a historic violation of those very same precepts. (But how could it have acted otherwise? The paradox is that what would not have happened if we had obeyed God's precepts, had to happen because those very same precepts required it. Thus America, a nation that had to come into existence so that it could witness against itself, was founded in a state of almost total spiritual Darkness). The true sons and daughters of Liberty were already a nation in 1776, one that had already taken its rise in the time of Moses (and again in the time of Christ, and again in the time of Muhammad), and which was slowly and secretly assembling itself Westward in preparation for the Great Day of the Lord, a day that would (and which has now) come upon the whole world. (see Matthew 3:3):

A chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an HOLY NATION, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of Him who hath called us out of darkness into His marvelous light...(1 Peter 2:9).

This great people, assembling themselves in every historical way, out of every race, every nation, and every religious tradition on earth, had no need for another nation to rise up in its place (or rather in God's place--for the American nation has indeed taken the place of God in the hearts and minds of the American people...and it seems almost more so at times, in the hearts of many of the leading lights of Civil Rights movement). The spiritual Nation had no need for another to rise up and set it more free than it already was, as America's Founding Fathers attempted to (in the interest of enfranchised, land-owning and mercantile white men that is), or to commission it beyond the work it already had layed out before it--which was not the work of the nations of men, nor of building an American empire, but the work of the Gospel of Christ. (For those on the Judaic side of the Tree, the preservation of the Law. For Islam, a breakthrough to the true meaning of holy war). How can it be, that throughout the entire historical process very few gave thought to the words that said: I have layed a snare for thee O Babylon, and thou art taken, and thou wast not aware (Jeremiah 50:24; compare Revelation 18)? Of course, the answer is found at 2 Thessalonians 2:11. Or to those which said:

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field (and town to town, and county to county, and state to state), till there is no place (for the children of Light to dwell in righteousness), that they (the children of Darkness) may be placed alone in the midst of the earth...

Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine enflame them...

That say, Let Him make speed and hasten His work, that we may see it; and let the counsel of the Holy One draw near and come that we may know it.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight.

Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine (the draught of violence and ultimately self destruction), and men of strength to mingle strong drink, which justify the wicked for reward and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him...

Because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel...(Isaiah 5:8-24).

or to those that said:

And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he is found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death...(Exodus 21:16).

or to those which quite plainly said of the founders of the American nation:

For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error.

While they promise them liberty, they themselves are servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.

For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning...(2 Peter 2:18-22).

To who else can these words apply at the end of the 20th century than the hierarchy of the American religious and political order? The state of spiritual deception--the spell under which so many had fallen, and which continues even into these times--also explains why the average fearful citizen is at a loss to understand the meaning of the great "inner-city" disorders that have plagued America: drugs, robbery, murder, disregard for common civility, for personal property, and for authority, not to fail to mention the so-called "problems" of social welfare and "illegitimate" children, which are also attributed by so many of the well-heeled in this nation to some intrinsic lack of character among the poor and those of color. (There is, of course, no such thing as an illegitimate child in the eyes of God. Every single soul is foreordained, and brings a message from God into the world with it, and a task that it must complete as it enters the material realm--even if it only appears for a moment and returns). The words are also clear: The curse causeless shall not come. As the mind thinks the body acts. When those above are criminals and the companions of thieves the people below will be so also. (Isn't anyone out there listening to the words)? Nor is it God's intention to leave the poor of this earth piled up on top of each other, and crowded into concentrated areas of poverty and despair as they are in America (1 Samuel 2:1-10)...

And child-welfare programs--which the American economic and political order had to be forced to enact, because of its own inherent disregard for the teachings of Christ--has been a way in which God has been setting a table for Their impoverished and displaced children in the presence of their enemies. Woe to those who have tampered with it at the expense of the poor. Woe to those who line their own pockets in the face of God's poor. Woe to those who use the rhetoric of social concern and responsibility to enhance their own political and social standing among the people and their own personal well-being, while the real-life miseries and the state of servitude of the people below increase). And please do not interpret the upward mobility of blacks and others in America as a sign that some level of social justice is being achieved. The lines of oppression are only being redrawn. These are only unwittingly being enfranchised into the ranks of the oppressors and the unjust. Behold, these are the ungodly who prosper in the world. They increase in riches. (Psalm 73:12).

It is also no coincidence that one of the primary paths, perhaps the primary path, of upward mobility for blacks today is through the military services. America is only too happy now, and right proud, to place its own minorities (and this includes marginalized and working class whites) on the front lines to protect its own vital economic interests, and primarily the interests those who have either never served a day in military service themselves (Dick Cheney for instance), or those who found ways of hiding in the reserves and National Guard while others went off to do the nation's bloody business (such as George W. Bush). (These two are included in The New Hampshire Gazette's long list of mostly-Republican "Chickenhawks").

There is a great historical reality unfolding in the earth. The end of the world? Yes, but not in the sense that skeptics and intellectual critics define it, but in the apocalyptic sense no less. We have come to those events that will separate the end of one age from the beginning of another. Skeptics and critics should be greatly aware: God, the judge of all, is not a capitalist. And most of all God is not an American. Neither is God a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim. What God is, is Terrible. And one of His Holy Names is, in fact, AllaH, and millions in the earth are bowed down to it in absolute subjection. The Name itself has its meaning in the dimensions of Tree of Life, intertwoven as it is with the names EL, YHVH and IHSOYS (Jesus). Choose any path, however, and the word is the same:

If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for He that is higher than the highest regardeth: and there be higher than they...

There is a sore evil which I have seen under the Sun, namely riches kept for the owners thereof to their own hurt...(Ecclesiastes 5:8-13).

It also explains why those who are already enfranchised in the American order of things are by and large unwilling, or rather unable, to lay any part of the blame for these social disorders at their own doorsteps. They are enfranchised. They are made members. One will not be against what they are for. Those caught mind-and-soul inside the order of things can not see how each Tree is now bearing its own fruit, or how America, as the last of the great biblical nation-empires of the earth, is now reaping exactly what it has sown. (Genesis 15:12-16). America is founded in violence and warfare, and ends in the same, (Revelation 13:8-10).

Proverbs 9:13-18; Isaiah 30:25; Joel, chapters 2 and 3.

Why America? Can we not understand it in light of the ongoing judgments of God against the Judeao-Christian world, judgments that began in the most earthshaking ways with the World Wars of the 20th century? But why America? It is also a matter of geography and, of course, history--6,000 years of history. God had to choose some place on earth to bring all of these historic matters to their conclusion, someplace on earth to bring the Light and the Darkness to bear one upon the other, both in their perfected and mutually powerful forms. America, unlike any other nation on earth lies in the pathway of this great Solar/Lunar epic, and completes the story from Genesis to Revelation. It is the beginning of the story and the end of it. Thus the Great Paradox we call America--the land of Shadows and Images, the land of the greatest potential for Good, but nevertheless a very present Evil in the earth--fulfills the words: Let the two of them (the spirits of Cain and Abel) grow together until the harvest.

Malachi, chapter 4...(KJV)

The American people, laboring in both the Light and the thick Darkness, caught in the complex relationship between the two, have also failed to connect the events of September 11th with the very existence of the towers themselves, which those in a right spiritual frame of mind would not have built to begin with (Psalm 48:11-14). Only the most insightful associated their collapse with the judgments of God, and even fewer could see them in light of the words at Psalm 18:1-10, or Deuteronomy, chapter 32. Conversely, where were all the religious leaders when these things happened, when this Divine Theophany unfolded before the eyes of the whole world? As confused, and as entangled as anyone else in the course thicket of the American economic, political and religious order of things, many of them, nevertheless, appeared on the talk shows. And hardly wanting to offend anyone (or to risk waking anyone up), they equivocated the meaning of it all away--giving no place to God in any of these matters. Despite what many of them might have really believed in the hearts, they expressed instead (in the misguided interest of further social progress no doubt) their indignation against those Islamic extremists who displayed, it was obvious, no respect for the American way of life. (The ultimate reality is that God Himself has no abiding respect for the American way of life...Isaiah 40:15-26). And in so doing fulfilled the word, and kept Agag alive. (1 Samuel 15:1-23, KJV).

The people, fast asleep in the American Dream, have failed to associate any of the country's disorders with the words at Leviticus 26, and therefore to the presence of that great stone and copper idol standing so mystically and majestically in the middle of New York harbor, or to the thousands of other stone images that fill the land...

(There is a great difference between an image of a Buddha, or an image of some divine principle in human or geometrical form, such as a mandala or a crucifix, and an image of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, or some Union or Confederate soldier, complete with canon, flag and sword, raised up in the center of town. The one elevates the consciousness, the other ensnares the mind). Of course there are very few images in the land that are overty dedicated to the institution of slavery. But the flags and the monuments to the Confederate cause throughout the south stand there in their place, and serve as a reminder of the ways the idea of slavery was instituted and defended in the past. But it is the plaques and the monuments dedicated to the great names of the American political, economic and industrial order, and the great works of art they have sponsored in their own names, and the great cities they have built, attesting to their own earthly accomplishments, that speak volumes to the truly enlightened mind, of the ways the institution of slavery is organized and defended in our time. As the impending crisis unfolds, as the people actually begin to obey the Spirit and Come out of Babylon, as the American corporate order begins to collapse, it will defend what it believes is its inherited right to order the thinking, and exploit the labors of others with a vehemence practically unimagined by the leaders of Old South (or the North). The American military and police state has come into existence, and has been brought to its present state of readiness (even against its own conscious will), for the very purpose of defending the ruling Capitalist order against God. (It's not a conspiracy, it is the work of God itself).

A two-time Medal of Honor recipient, General Smedley Butler, said that “WAR IS A RACKET” AND THAT HE SPENT HIS 33 YEAR MILITARY CAREER BEING A BODYGUARD FOR U.S. BUSINESS INTERESTS. I submit that protecting U.S. business interests, SOMETIMES REFERRED TO AS "NATIONAL INTERESTS” is still the primary mission of the U.S. military. Wartime profits go to a select few at the cost of many.

Again to quote Gen. Smedley: “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one IN WHICH PROFITS ARE RECKONED IN DOLLARS AND LOSSES IN LIVES. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. IT IS CONDUCTED FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE VERY FEW, AT THE EXPENSE OF THE VERY MANY. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.” An Open Letter to the U.S. Military, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, Charlie Liteky ,May 7, 2003

Does this image in New York harbor, the one that captures the imagination of millions of passers by and vistors to that city each year, represent Liberty? To many it does. Many have given their lives for it. To many other discerning and oppressed individuals it ultimately represents a lie--the lie. It certainly represents a natural and historic disregard for the precepts of the Torah. (So why should, say a true Torah-observant Jew--even in their own adherence to the American mythos--take Christianity serious? After all, America does claim to be a Christian nation). Be circumspect in these matters the Law says. Studying this image from every angle, we see that it definetly does not represent the form of freedom, or liberty, wherein each of us have been called to stand (see Galatians 5 and 1 Peter 2:16), but another fallen image of it, which releases and legitimizes man's basest instincts to do evil, to forget his own maker, to find ways to become rich and famous, to build towers in one's own honor, to fill the land with oppression, and to enslave and conscript others into their service, and to take exultant pride in the exercise of it all. It represents the highest notion unregenerated man can make of the idea of liberty. True liberty sets the soul free (regardless of its own earthly circumstances) to do good and not evil. It also sets the mind free to correctly interpret the spiritual import of these times, indeed, to even care about such an interpretation in the first place. It is as the Word says: If Christ shall set you free, ye shall be free indeed. The mind set spiritually free can readily associate the people's sojourn here at the Western ends of the earth with the words in Deuteronomy, chapters 26 to 32. If it cannot it is because it is either completely innocent of it all (and shall not be held altogether in account for it), or deeply vested and complicit in the very political, economic, and religious order that has grown up in place of the words themselves:

For the devising of idols (images of the truth, but not the truth itself) was the beginning of spiritual fornication, and the invention of them the corruption of life.

For the worshipping of idols not to be named is the beginning, the cause, and the end of all evil...(Wisdom of Solomon 12:27; 1 John 5:21).

The Word came into the world to set us free, not only from ourselves but from the very things that God is bringing to pass in the earth. For the Lord will do nothing but He first reveal His secrets to His servants... And especially can one cancel or nullify Karmic law in the Day of Release by observing the ordinances of renewal and atonement that God has also enacted on our behalf through the Law and the Prophets...Until that day, however, it is sad to be approached by young black men with almost four hundred years of hatred in their eyes, spewing racial fire and venom out of their mouths, and by young black girls with matching attitudes. These children can not see how they have been turned into an image of that which they hate. Neither can they see--being blinded by the Darkness that is emanating from within themselves--how God is employing them as instruments of this Divine judgment instead of instruments of Wisdom and Understanding as others would have them to be. These young people--like the world that swirls seemingly so mindlesslessly and uncaringly around them, either ignoring them or exploiting them--are in the same state of spiritual bondage.

I said to this angry young man: "I am not your spiritual enemy. I am here testifying to the same things that you are." Unable to listen, he said: "What are you doing handling the word of God, you devil. You white devil! Don't you know that you are going to hell?" "We are already there," I said. "Don't you know that God is going to feed you with grit and gravel?" he said. "It's the serpent's fate," I replied. "SHAWTAWN!" he screamed. "Say it right! Say your own name right!" he screamed. Another yelled: "You cannot even say Allah's name right. Pronounce it right! Say Elohim!" I tell him that one should not pronounce God's names unless they know how to interpret them. "The word God means 'dog,'" he shouted. "Your god is a dog." The word God to me means "good" I said.

"As to the true God of the human conscience, He cannot be attacked. He has his 'raison d'etre' in an invincible faith, and not in more or less ingenious arguments. Within the conscience a sacred voice is to be heard, which speaks to man of quite another world, the world of the ideal, the world of truth, of kindness, of justice...I have no need of miracles for believing in Him (or of simply referring to them as Holy Father, Divine Mother, but sometimes just simply God), I have only to listen in silence to the revelations of my heart." Ernest Renan, 1862, Dictionary Of All Scriptures & Myths, by G. A. Gaskell, p.316.

One mature looking man in a very fine suit walked into the crowd. He identified himself as a pastor of some congregation, and said: "You know that we are your daddies. We black men are your fathers," trying I suppose to disorganize my thinking. "All the ways of God please me," I said, "and if all our common forebears were African then I am pleased and intrigued with the very idea of it. But I must remind you. If the black man was the original Adam then he is also responsible for the fall of the human race; and that the way to the Tree of Life (the higher mysteries of God) were taken from him." But now we are (all) the children of the Spirit, born not of the blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:12,13). "Not you," he said. "You (the white man) are the children of your spiritual father, the devil, and the works of the devil you will do." "As the serpent is lifted up in the wilderness," I replied. God is in the process of redeeming (actually creating) human nature, and will--each soul in its own proper time--transform the spirit of the entire human creature into the glorious liberty of the sons and daughters of God. "Not you," he intoned, "you are cursed with leprosy--the whiteness of leprosy--and the curse hangs over you this very day." I felt sorry for this brother.

One strident Israelite said to another: "Why are you even talking to that white devil?" But how, I thought to myself, can he know what color I am? "How do you know what frequency my soul is vibrating at unless you get to know me?" I asked him. "How do you know that I am not a black man in a white man's body, and born this time--because of God's love for all Their children--among those who are so obviously in need of redemption? And how do you know that you are not a white man, a leprous man in a black man's body, what with all the hatred and mistrust for others you are showing?" He didn't answer.

Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?...

But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not gainst the truth.

This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish...

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.

And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace...(James 3:9-18).

An older gent added: "Well after all, what color is God? Black!" "If you are the same color as God my friend, then you are invisible...For God is a spirit, and those who worship God must do so in spirit and in truth." He said: "Doesn't it say that His hair is like pure wool?" (see Daniel 7:9). "Who else has hair like wool?" A woman included: "And doesn't it say that He is the color of bronze?" Yes, I replied, and while it also says in one verse: I am black but comely oh you daughters of Jerusalem (Song of Solomon 1:5), it says in another: My beloved is white and ruddy... (Song 5:8-11). The black mentioned here also implies a state of hiddenness, and specifically that which is obscured before the dawn hour, and revealed each morning with the Rising Sun, (continued)...

The sign of the Ram in the East, the Lamb of God in the West.

Thy people shall be willing in the Day of thy Power, in the beauties of holiness FROM THE WOMB OF THE MORNING: thou hast the dew of thy youth...(Song of Solomon 1:5).

...as it is also written: As the morning spread upon the (nations). (Joel 2:2), and: The Lord hath made darkness His hidden place. (Psalm 18:1). Which, of course, does not mean that God is not Black in the anthropomorphic and metaphysical sense (of course They are). It is just that He and She is both hidden and revealed in all the races of humanity together. Every true child of God knows this.

The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal...(Revelation 21:16).

The above Mandala was taken from Black Elk's "The Sacred Tree." Please do not imagine the Angel of Divine Presence in purely male terms as is pictured here. The Female principle permeates and gives life to the very design itself. And do not see the Caucasian race on top. The design represents the Four Directions of Human consciousness--West-South-East-North. (click on image).

How do we make use of such a Mandala? We obey it. When all those who participate in the Great Circle (the Sacred Hoop) of Life are joined together in One, in common understanding of each other's sublime and noble place in the Great Design, and when each sees that there is absolutely no inner difference between themselves and all others, God is fully Present in their midst.

And so neither is the hair of wool the hair of any human being or race of people. It is the hair of the Ram. (Daniel 8:3). The Ram is a symbol of the Divine Father, under whose watchful and corrective guidance the children of I-SRA-El took their rise 4,000 years ago at the time of Abraham (during the Vedic age), and again 2,000 years later under the symbol of the Lamb of God. The Ram (present in the sign of Aries), symbolizes all the powers of the East which the Father has reserved for Himself against the Day of Judgment. The children that went forth out of the East (in the form of the Universal Body of Christ), are symbolized by a Lamb because their ultimate mission in this age is to lay down their lives, and to die--not only the first death (the death of the old nature) but the second death as well. (And then to rise again, Romans 8:31-39). And this, so that the prince of this world--the spirit of Antichrist in the earth--might be manifest in the end. And also that the pathway that leads out of the dimensions of this world into the eternal dimensions might be manifest as well. Only those with true Soul-force can pass through.

The Ram symbolizes the figure of Brahma, the Great Father, who returned to the West in the Hebrew mysteries. He appears there in the name of Abram, or Abraham. The sign is revealed in the precessions of the ages through which history has passed since then. We are now passing into the age of Aquarius, and all the events of our times are a sign of it. (Luke 22:9-12). About two thousand years ago the world entered the age of Pisces--the sign of the Two Fishes. (These are the Two Fishes with which Christ has been feeding the multitudes). About two thousand years before that, in the time of BRAHMA (Abrahm), the world entered the age of Aries. It is at that time in history that the symbols of this great Heavenly Circle--these Twelve signs--were affixed in the Hebrew system of thought. Roughly two thousand years (or Forty periods of Jubilees) before that, the Circle of Genesis began with the age of Taurus in the garden of Eden. We have returned to this place again, as it says of the great Ox, Behemoth: The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willow of the brook compass him about. Behold, he drinketh up a river...he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth. (Job 40:21-23).

The continent of North America is the Great Ox, Behemoth. (Job 40:15-24).

And we see why it is said that Christ's Feet were made of "bronze" (or brass). The place of the Feet of the Mystery of Christ on the World Tree symbolize things that are coming to pass here at the Western ends of the earth (see Romans 10:15); and because bronze is an alloy, or a mixture of substances made stronger when they are joined together, so the children of God are likewise coming to perfection in Christ as God molds them together in the great spiritual fires that try men's souls--dross out, purity in. One kind alone makes a very weak substance. (Open the Book of 1 Peter).

The Caucasian race, nevertheless, will concede some thoughts on the charge of leprosy and the curse that attends it, because we can also perceive the demographic, and historical as well as racial implications if you will, in the dimensions of the oracles. The charges have nothing to do with physical, or racial characteristics however (such things are the work of Nature and cannot be changed, and need not be cured), but everything to do with the state of the Soul and the condition of the heart. We see in the oracles that the visage of the Mystery of Christ (the Angel of the Lord's Presence) appears in a very distinct form to fill up the spaces on the World Tree northward and westward, as it is written: From the rising of the Sun even unto the going down of the same shall my Name be great among the Gentiles. (Malachi 1:11)...

The Higher Egypt

The Spiritual Sun came up out of Egypt in the time of Moses, and again in the time of Christ, energizing the entire history of Europe--for both good and evil (mostly evil it seems...2 Thessalonians 2:7)--in its path to these Western ends of the earth. It rose up out of Egypt, but it is also setting in Egypt. It is setting in America, the original source of the mysteries of Egypt. For Egypt is a spiritual concept, and the land we associate with Egypt today is a cosmic reflection-below of the greater mystery-above, and is a symbol, not only of the Human body itself but of the entire Lower World through which the mind of Israel is presently sojourning, and from which it must be still be delivered. (The events described in the Book of Exodus did not happen in the literal sense, but rather they have been happening in the epic, historical and spiritual sense, from one end of this epic story to the other). Egypt is the base upon which the whole mystery of Darkness has been set. It extends on the Oracle from the Upper kingdom in the East to the Lower kingdom in the West, as it is written:

The Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy (redeem) you...(Deuteronomy 27:68; Genesis 15:13,14).

The whole of it also gives epic meaning to those words that apply to everyone--male and female alike--who have ever given their lives in the cause of true justice, or who have ever died in the light of the Mystery of Christ (a number which includes untold numbers of Caucasian people in addition to the untold numbers of others of every other race whose lives were taken from them, and whose lives were offered willingly, over the course of this entire age), and who must still fill up this number in our time:

And their dead bodies shall lie in the streets of the Great City, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. (Revelation 11:8).

When I mentioned that all of us here in the West have come down to Egypt together, and that each of us are still subject to the spirit of Pharaoh in our time (please understand Ezekiel 31 and 32), one man, challenging the notion of a collective and shared state of slavery, said: "Are you trying to diminish the meaning of the black experience in America? Are you trying to say that the white man was a slave like the black man, and that God is calling him to rise up just as he is calling the black man?" One of the holdings of the Black Revisionist Movement is that Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and the true children of Israel were all black, and that the White race by force and cunning stole this heritage, conscripting the stories to itself, and now here I was, it seemed to him, stealing the meaning of the slave experience and trying to apply it to the White race as well. Of course, had this brother been reading all the history books at our disposal he would have learned that the white man has been enslaving his own kind, just as the black man has been enslaving his own kind, long before our common experience here in America. The word slave (from Slav) comes directly from the white man's own earlier and personal experiences with the institution of slavery. And as such one has only to look back over the history of America to see what a slave the white man has been, and that to his very own lower nature. Whosoever committeth sin is the servant (the slave) of sin. (John 8:34).

The nature of the white man's slavery is that he does not even realize he is a slave. He has been given flags and slogans, and material things and entertainment to sustain him--to keep him unaware of it. He cannot realize how the strongest chains of all are the Chains of Ignorance. These have been prepared by God for the rulers of this world, and for those who yield to them. Understand Revelation 20:1-5. (The "thousand years" in this verse is also symbolic of the times in which we live, and of the years that have already reached their conclusion. Understand 2 Peter 3:8-13; Psalm 90:1-4). The American experience has not only served to expose the darkest and most subtle nature of European civilization to the world at large, as well as to heighten the spiritual life of the African soul in the process, but it has served in the end to expose the darkest nature of humanity in general to humanity itself. Thus the American experience has provided a final vantage place, for both personal as well as collective self discovery. It has also provided a high place from which the Children of Light can look out upon the rest of the world, to survey the work that lies before them after the judgments of America are complete. (Revelation 22:1-6).

Of course the eyes of the rest of the world are focused on America as well. It is the creative focus of God's intentions in the earth at this time in history. Both good and evil are coming to perfection here. Out of this great cultural mix, stirred by all of the social, political, and economic forces of our times, will the true people of God emerge--the true Holy Nation. It is these who will go forth to restore the earth. These will be all of those who have confronted and overcome both their own personal sins as well as the historical transgressions of Israel as a people (for sin and bondage come in many complex forms and with many faces). They will come from every race and religious tradition, and fulfill the words:

For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been such a thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it?

Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the Fire, as thou hast heard, and live?

Or hath God assayed to go and take Him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord did for you in Egypt before your eyes.

Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the Lord He is God; there is none else beside Him...(Deuteronomy 4:32-35).

But why, we must ask ourselves, does the European seem to be the most sinful of all, the most decadent, the most violent and destructive, the evilest? And, again, we look into the oracles for the answer. We discover the Dragon (Revelation 12:9), and its whereabouts--right there in the center of Europe. (See Isaiah, chapters 27 to 29). And we discover, or imply, that it's not because he is devoid of God's Holy Spirit, as the man on Fulton Mall insisted, but because he is also very intricately connected to the covenant of God "for both good and evil." (Deuteronomy 11:26-32). He has been made to dwell upon the high places of the earth, and upon the fattest places, thus he has also been made to bear upon his own historic shoulders this great burden of Darkness--for which he is clearly guilty as the whole world attests, and for which he is to be judged--but, for which he is also called to repent. Thus he is intricately connected to the plan of redemption as well. Seeing the dimensions of the Christ Mystery spanning the age, passing out of the East, across Europe to the West, we can begin to understand the import of the words:

(For) Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree...(Galatians 3:10-13).

I myself wish at times that I could be absolved of the curse (the curse of whiteness as it is), but I accept God's decrees. I am not interested in defending the caucasian race, and find myself standing awkwardly silent and in general agreement when it is being attacked by others, trying to distance myself somehow from the accusations. Of course I am complicit, everyone is complicit in the structure and complexities of evil, but I have also repented of it all, as have thousands upon thousands of others. Nevertheless, just recently I received a letter from a Cheyenne taking me to task for "accusing" him, as he said, "of not seeing the big picture." It was in response to a chapter in this work entitled A Journey of Atonement. He wrote:

I read your response to my endeavor to protect my peoples ways. Accusing me of not seeing the big picture. Wrong my friend, my people are the only ones that truely understand the big picture. We have suffered through all your people have had to offer since 1492. We have survived the massacre at Sandcreek, 1864, led by your Christian Minister--Col. Chivington--who made the infamous statement: "Kill all, children, elderly, women, nits make lice!" We didn't ask for your Christian beliefs, hell you people killed the man that offered you peace and life!!! So please do not accuse me of not knowing or seeing the so called "Big Picture." Because my people have been seeing it for centuries, and our religion and faith are all we have left. And friend over my dead body will you get that from me. In the Spirit of the Cheyenne--Bernard Red Cherries.

At the recent protest gathering around the issue of reparations for African-Americans, held in Washington, D.C., during August, 2002, a Brooklyn councilman who said of himself: "I am not a politician, I am an elected revolutionary," also said: "I'm angry, I'm mad. I might just walk up to the first white man I see and slap him, just for my own mental health." (?) Was he including the number of whites in the crowd that day who had also come to support the work of N'COBRA, (the National Coalition Of Blacks for Reparations in America)? Would he slap those who have served the Civil Rights movement over the years in what ever capacity they have been able to, or allowed to? or those who are on the front lines of the antiwar and anti globalism movements of our time? or those who are on the front lines of the environmental movement? What does he mean by "white man?" Racism works in reverse also.

Thus the "cursed one" is not only the Universal Christ who has come bearing in his cosmic folds both the good and the evil in the world (the spirit of Light and the spirit of Darkness, the spirit of Christ as well as the spirit of Antichrist), but it can be any one of the followers of Christ in the world, regardless of race, to whom the words also apply which say:

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things become new.

All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ (the great universal non-violent sacrifice), and hath given to us the mystery of reconciliation.

Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.

For He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him...(2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Romans 6:1-10).

He who knew no sin is the higher state of consciousness, the potential that dwells in every soul. (Psalm 32:1,2). It is the active and redeeming principle of Creation descended into the life of the world, and particularly into the lives of all those who have been carried up into the (Solar state of mind), into the circle of these great historical events. The circle began in Eden, took its course Eastward after the Fall, and then finally back to the Americas again in the Mystery of Christ. (Please see Hebrews 2:11). The children of Israel are set apart by their collective ability to lift up their minds to this sublime reality, to the mystery of God in Nature, and the mystery of Nature in man, as it is written: But unto you that fear My Name shall the SUN of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves in the stall...(Malachi 4:2):

A Hymn to Aton

Thy dawning is Beautiful in the horizon of the sky, O living Aton, Beginning of Life!

When thou risest in the Eastern horizon Thou fillest every land with thy Beauty.

Thou art beautiful, great, glittering, high above every land. Thy rays, they encompass the lands, even all that thou hast made.

Thou art Re, and thou carriest them all away captive; Thou bindest them by Thy love.

Though Thou art far away, Thy rays are upon earth; Though Thou art on high, Thy footprints are the Day.

When Thou settest in the Western horizon of the sky, the earth is in Darkness like the dead.

They sleep in their chambers (see Ezekiel 37), Their heads are wrapped up, their nostrils are stopped.

And none seeth the other, while all their things are stolen which are under their heads, and they know it not.

Every lion cometh forth from his den, (see 1 Peter 5:8), all serpents, they sting.

Darkness...the world is in silence. He that maketh them resteth in His horizon...

Thou lord of every land, who risest for them, Thou Sun of Day, great in Majesty.

All the distant countries, Thou makest also their life,

Thou hast set the Nile in the sky.

When it falleth for them, it maketh waves upon the mountains, like the great green sea, watering their fields in their towns.

Thou art in my heart, there is no other that knoweth thee save thy son (Ikhnaton)? (Moses)?

Thou hast made him wise in Thy designs and in Thy might...

Thou didst establish the world, and raise them up for Thy son, who came forth from Thy Limbs,

The king of Upper and Lower Egypt, living in truth, Lord of Two Lands...

And for the chief Royal Wife, his beloved, Mistress of the Two Lands...Nefer-Nefru-Aton...

Living and flourishing for ever and ever.

Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, by James Breasted.

The mysteries of Egypt--which flowed out of the Western Eden in ancient times--were translated into the precepts of the Torah. (Please refer to that "well-worn" text at Acts 7:22). The Angel of the Lord (Exodus 23:20-23; 24:10), whose Presence is revealed in the epic context of this same Sacred Law, as well as in the motions of the great Solar Wheel, AND in the unfolding context of present world events, exchanged identities with Jehoshua (one of the primary archetypes of the Hebrew literary tradition). The children of Israel, in turn, adopted the Divine Persona, and became to the world what they perceived in the spiritual realm, as it is written: Let them that love God be as the Sun when He goeth forth in His might. (Judges 5:31). And: He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the Noonday. (Psalm 37:6). The noonday refers to the realization that the ancient City of David is not in the East where the Sun rises at the time of Passover, but in the North, in the center of Europe, where the disk of the Great Sun comes to the place named Beauty on the World Tree. (Understand Matthew 24:32). Thus Paul will say:

For God who commanded the light (Life itself) to shine out of darkness, hath shined into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (Hesus of the West--Krishna of the East)...(2 Corinthians 4:6).

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It is not possible for anyone to see anything of the things that actually exist unless he becomes like them. This is not the way with the (unspiritual) man in the world. He sees the sun without becoming a sun, and he sees heaven and earth and all these things, but he is not these things. This is quite in keeping with the truth. But you saw something of that place, and you became those things. You saw the Spirit and you became Spirit. You saw Christ and you became Christ. You saw the Father, and you shall become Father. So in this place you see everything and do not see yourself. But in that place (the higher state of mind) you do see yourself, and what you see you shall become...(The Gospel of Phillip).

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Then shall the righteous shine forth as the Sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear let him hear...(Matthew 13:43).

Is the white man smitten with leprosy? Yes, but it is not evidenced by the color of his skin. It is rather evidenced by his deeds. The Western political, religious, and economic order has indeed been a fretting and rising plague in the great Body of the Mystery of Christ--one that has been rising in the world since the time of Cain in the garden of Eden, thus one against which God has also been rising in all the other powers of the earth since those same ancient times. World Capitalism, while it constantly tries to readjust its energies so as to pass itself off as the cure itself, is the final stage of this disease. The better life seems to become because of it, the more evil (deceptive, not to mention destructive) it actually is. Thus the priest is instructed to look "deep" into the skin. (Leviticus 13:1-3). Is the white man alone in his affliction? Not any longer.

The root of this deception, this "confusion," stems, as we said, from the time of Adam, when the Darkness (along with the Light) emerged out of the doctrines of Adam to half-govern the mind of the ancient Vedic/Egyptian/Hebrew world...

The disease came right along with the children of Israel as they began to come up out of the East in the time of Moses, as it was also written: Beware in a plague of leprosy... Remember what the Lord did to Miriam by the way, after ye were come forth out of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 24:8,9). Miriam was smitten with leprosy when she and Aaron protested Moses' marriage to the Ethiopian woman. To understand the epic meaning of it all one must, of course, find themselves back in the garden, back at the roots of the Tree of Life in the land of Ethiopia. (Genesis 2:13). It will soon be plain to see that the Scriptures are not referring to that Ethiopia, to that land lying near the headwaters of the river Nile in the East--but to this original land of Ethiopia here in America, the place referred to in the Book of Genesis, the land situated at the site of the ancient Garden, near the original source of the (Heavenly) Nile. (Please see Chapter 2, and the sub-chapter entitled Heavenly Nile). The Ethiopian woman, we discover, is the entire "Nation-Church," the people collectively, all who have returned in these fulness of times to this ancient place at the Western end of the earth, as well as all those who were already here. (2 Corinthians 11:1-4). She is every color, and will appear in the holy garments of every religious tradition and every people; for all the children of God, from all the corners of the earth, are coming to the rites of the Sacred Marriage in the mystery of Christ...

Miram and Aaron, as the allegory goes, wanted this perfection for themselves, for their own race as it is, in their own times. They said: Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? Hath He not also spoken by us?...And the Lord heard it. (Numbers 12:2). And Miriam was shut out of the camp SEVEN days: and the people journeyed not till Miriam was brought in again. (12:15). The answer in this matter is that the Lord had not spoken by them, nor does the Lord speak through any who hold a racially or religiously exclusive doctrine (no matter whether it be exclusively white or black, Christian or Jewish, or any other). Thus Miriam was put out of the camp figuratively, even to our very own day. There is only one true spiritual race in the world, and only one true Holy Nation, and it has not risen up yet. We must all beware in a plague of leprosy.

You will remember that young black man who walked into the very warm conversation you and I were having with the Hasidic Jewish man. He stepped up to inform the Hasid who the "true Jews" really are. "I know, I know," said the Hasid, "you are going to tell me that I am not a Jew." But with his eyes he intoned: "Messiah will decide." No truer thought on the matter could be expressed, for the true Jews will be known on that day. They will be known by their observances of the true meanings of the Law and the Prophets, but particularly by their love...not only for God and the things of God, but for each other and all others. They will be known by each other--true Jew, true Christian, true Muslim, true Brahmin, true Bodhi, true Warrior...Black as a Heavenly Night, Yellow as a Solar Morning, White as a Clear Day, and Red as the Evening Sun, and every beautiful (bronze) shade in between. There will be only One True Religion and One Spirit. Each of us--you a Black sister, dressed in your beautiful Muslim garments, (clothed in reverent devotion to the One Creator who you so lovingly call Papa), me, appearing to be of no serious religious persuasion at all, and the pious Jew in his ritual clothing which set him apart from other Jews--were, nevertheless, fully appreciative of the others' religious expression. The self-certain young man revealed himself when he tried to divide this fellowship, and fell into God's trap. It was obvious that he lacked any understanding of this text at 1 Kings 3:16-28, or of the dimensions of the World Tree, of the principles of Kabbalah, or of the history of Judaism as it took its rise from the time of Christ. (Romans 11). It was obvious that he lacked an understanding of the meaning of the coming of Messiah. But in one thing he was correct? Is the Black man a true Jew? Indeed he is, when he walks in the precepts of God's Law:

For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:

But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God...(Romans 2:28,29).

The true Deliver is the Lord--the Lord of Glory whose Presence fills up the sum of all spiritual reality, and the sum of all present natural and human events. All the scriptures must be understood in that light. And on earth the anointed ones for this time shall be discovered at the place named Majesty on the World Tree here in the West. All the literary symbolism in the Scriptures must be followed to this place and to this moment in time, wherein all things must be fulfilled. This age, as such, will draw to its own conclusion, and a new age will be born. All the principles of Life, and Love, Harmony and Balance, will be revealed in God's anointed ones (continued)...

Where are God's true Black ones? Right there in the first Remnant on the Left-hand side of the Oracle, among all the others--true Christians, true Muslims--who are standing bold in the day of judgment, as it is written: I have kept me Seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Ba'al, and every mouth which hath not kissed him...(I Kings 19:18; Revelation 11:13).

...and the words will be fulfilled which say: The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son. (Matthew 22:1-14). The words do not only refer to the marriage of all God's children to the Presence of the Lord who is revealed in all of the higher, invisible dimensions of the Tree of Life, but the "son" in this parable is the spirit of Paul (Saul) that has descended into our times along the line leading from the Fifth sefira on the Oracle into the name DaViD at the Eighth sefira named Majesty. The marriage unites the Sun and the Moon, the two sides of the Tree, thus the true light of Christianity to the true light of Judaism, as it is written:

Moreover the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun, and the light of the Sun shall be Sevenfold, as the light of Seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of His people and healeth the stroke of their wound...(Isaiah 30:26).

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How am I to speak to you about him? His aeon (sefirot) is indestructable, at rest and existing in silence (hidden), reposing and being prior to everything. For he is the Head of all the aeons...This is the First Thought, his image; She became the womb of everything, for it is She who is prior to the all, the Mother-Father, the first man, the Holy Spirit, the Thrice-male, the Thrice-powerful, the Thrice-named androgynous one...(The Apocryphon of John, The Nag Hammadi Library).

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Till we come in the Unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a Perfect Man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ...(Ephesians 4:13/Genesis 5:1,2).

Thus not only is the Male and Female principles united to each other in the Mystery of Christ, in a state of perfect balance, but so is Christianity (the Solar principle) to Judaism (the Lunar principle) united to one another again. Thus Paul's stern admonition about boasting against the natural branches, For the Lord is able to graff them in again. (Romans 11:11-23).

THE SYMBOLIC COMPARISON OF THE JEWS AND THE MOON

By Rabbi Avrohom Berger

With the approach of the month of Nisan, we read the special Parshah of This month is for you the first of the months of the year, because the month in which the Jewish people were redeemed from Egyptian slavery is the first and foremost in the Jewish year. It is the time when the world was created, when the patriarchs were born, and when we shall again be freed from our present exile. (Others have attributed these things to the time of the New Moon of the Seventh Month).

The Talmud tells us (Sukah 29) that the Jewish calendar is based upon the Lunar Month, while the nations of the world count their years according to the Sun. Where in the Torah is there any indication that the Moon is the principal element upon which our time-reckoning is founded? The Hebrew word for the a month is Codesh, which means new or renewal. Because the Moon gives off no light of its own, it is reflecting the light of the Sun. Each month the Moon is born again. As the Moon and earth move along in their orbits, more of the Moon's sunlit part is seen, until it shines as a Full Moon. Then less and less of the sunlit part is seen, until the dark New Moon appears (in the West).

All our holidays are based upon the Moon, the heavenly body that revolves around the earth once in about 29 and a quarter days...The Midrash (Exodus) sees in the rythm and orbit of the Moon a similarity and reflection of Jewish history. Just as the Moon increases its light until it reaches a complete fulness by the 15th of the month, and then it gradually diminishes until it becomes dark, so it is with the Jewish nation. With the appearance of the first Jew--Avraham Avinu--on the world scene, the world began to be illuminated by the spark of G-dliness. The decendants of Avraham advanced the Jewish idea.

In the time of Moshe Rabeinu, a Torah nation was created. And in the 16th generation from Avraham, Judaism reached its highest point in the reign of King Solomon, whose fame and wisdom spread throughout the world, and who built the first Temple. The Jewish Moon was full.

Then the decline began. With the ascending to the throne of Solomon's son, king Rehoboam, the Jewish kingdom was split in two (and Ephraim went backwards), and the deterioration lasted another 15 generations, until the time of king Zedekiah, the 30th generation from Avraham, when the independent Jewish State disappeared with the destruction of the Beth Ha-mikdash, and the exile of the Jewish people.

In the prayer of the Sanctification of the Moon, we find another resemblance of the Jewish people to the Moon. "Just as the Moon is renewed, so the Jewish people will be renewed," meaning that even in the darkest hour we shouldn't despair. We always have the spiritual strength and vigor to liberate ourselves from the dreary and gloomy situations in which we sometimes find ourselves (Daniel 12, for instance), and resume the struggle to revitalize ourselves and to flourish and thrive again.

Since all of our beloved holidays are dependent upon the date of the Jewish month, the Rabbinical Court had to determine each month in accordance with halachic procedures, the day when the new month will begin. The Talmud relates (Rosh Hashana 25a) that once, when the Roman (read American) authorities prohibited the Jewish sages to proclaim officially when the new month will start, in order that the Jews shouldn't be able to celebrate the holidays, R. Yahuda Hanasie sent R. Chiya to a certain small town to establish the precise time when the New Moon was seen, and when Rosh Chodesh will be. Since this had to be kept secret, they made up that in case the mission will be successful, R. Chiya should send the news in the code words of "DAVID, THE KING OF ISRAEL IS ALIVE AND EXISTING." Rashi explains that David is compared to the Moon, because the renewal of the Moon brings with it the hope and expectation that the kingdom of David will be reborn.

This as also the reason, that at the Blessing of the Chodesh we appeal to G-d, that He "should redeem us in the near future, and gather us from the Four corners of the world." Since the emergence of the New Moon represents and embodies the idea of our national rejuvination and our hopes and dreams for redemption, so we pour out our hearts to Hashem and urge Him to transform the concept of the Jewish comparison to the Moon, into the concrete reality of actual redemption, and to make it an accomplished fact. The Jewish Press.

The young man's contention was that the black man is the "natural branch" of this mystery, and that the "so-called" Jew has drained for himself the milk of God's word that was intended for the black man alone. The idea is as racist, and historically short-sighted as those of the orthodox Jewish man who approached me one day to tell me that I was wasting my time, that God's blessings are to be conferred upon Israel alone, meaning the "Jews" alone, and that my interpretation of the Kabbalah, which makes of Israel a universal nation, is a corruption of the precepts of the Kabbalah as they were taught by the sages of Israel. Of course, because these things were sealed from the sages of Israel (with Seven seals), as they were from the "fathers" of Christianity. Neither knew anything of the central mysteries of Israel, or of the pathways the secret Oral Traditions took as they made their way throughout the world in ancient times (and indeed, down into Africa whose religious and social traditions, and those of the North, were made to be mirror image of the other--just as the mysteries of the East are reflections of the mysteries of the West). Neither Judaism or Christianity were aware of (the core of) their own secret traditions, or of the history of those Essenes whose kabbalistic doctrines found their way into both the Gospels and the teachings of Rabbinic Judaism after those times...

Actually, Kadijah, I will be just as ecstatic if the anointed ones are Black, or if one of them is. We know this much, however: God is not in the racial game. The Messiahs will appear out of that same natural branch of Judaism to which the oracles of God were first committed. They will appear from the Judaic side of the Tree of Life, bearing witness to the Universal Mystery of Christ, and the whole world will be humbled. (I told you about the Hasidim of Eastern Parkway who threatened to beat me up if I did not get out of their neighborhood, right in front of a giant poster saying: "The Messiah is Coming." Be assured, the Messiahs will not arise from there, or rather, from them. They will not appear from any faction of Judaism that espouses the Zionist cause, or the "Jewish" cause alone). This marriage, and the manifestation of God's anointed ones, is understood in the numerical and hieroglyphic dimensions of the name D.V.D.--two Dalets joined together by a Vaw (or Waw) in the universal Mandala of the Tree of Life...

Dalet-Vaw-Dalet

In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as D.V.D. and the House of D.V.D. shall be as God, as the Angel of the Lord before them...(Zechariah 12:8-10).

This universal symbol encompasses the idea of Heaven and Earth, and defines the relationship between all the peoples of the Earth, one to the other. Thus we learn from it that the Throne of D.V.D. will pass (not through bloodline or dynasty, but) by selection (in much the same way as each succeeding Dalai Lama has been chosen over the last several hundered years), and through the institution of Holy Marriage to every race of peoples on earth. The succeeding Anointed Ones shall be chosen from the South, East, West, and then North again, one after the other--forever--until the world is satisfied that the kingdom of God has truly arrived on earth, and has come among all peoples).

The Throne of David will be the focus of our thoughts, but not the object of them. We will not be taught to contend for such an office as the children of America are taught: "Why you could grow up to become the President of the United States" they are told. This will free us from the delusions of power that we as a people suffer from today. (For such power, and such an office, must be a burden, not an aspiration). It will also free us from the complex of servitude, as we learn to treat and respect, to revere each other as truly equals in the sight of God. We will pass from a pyramidal state of mind to a circular. For even those who are called to this office by the Spirit will acknowledge the greatest among us to be the least among us. It will be their constant responsibility to remind us of our own nobility, of our own Christlikeness, not their own. We will serve them in proportion to the way in which they serve God, and us. Heaven will insist on it. In their relationship to each other, as well as to us, they will serve as a living symbol of the principles of Divine Union between Heaven and Earth. They will also serve as a constant reminder of our own spiritual centers--of the realization that the way into this universe and out of it again exists in the depths of every single soul. The Law will issue forth from Zion in exactly the same measure as right and balanced thought issues forth from the heart and mind of every other perfected soul on earth. The Anointed Ones will keep us ever-mindul of the Christ in each of us, and of the words: I am the Tao, the Dharma, and the Chi, The Way, the Truth, and the Life, (John 14:6).

But woe to them, says the Scriptures, that say let him make speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it. (Isaiah 5:19). The American nation is clearly in violation of this historic precept, and is being judged for it, as is the Zionist state of Israel in the East, as will the Mormons in the West and every other group or sect that imagines that it alone is the "chosen" one. But what is God to make of such efforts as the "Lost-Found Nation of Islam On Behalf of All So-Called African Americans?" It too is in violation of this precept. It too, not long ago, declared itself to be--not merely one nation called out from among other nations (and particularly from among the American nation), but--"the" nation, "chosen of God above all other nations." The following are excerpts from the March, 1993 edition of Muhammad Speaks:

"My beloved people, my dearly beloved people (read Black), I bring you great tidings of exceeding joy. Behold, this day in the making of history--a new day like unto none other! A day with no precedent and unparalleled in time. A New Nation is dawning by the power of the "Son." (Isaiah 55:4,5). As of the day of this writing, within the last two weeks, the Supreme Leader and Teacher of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, Our brother, the Honourable Silas Muhammad, sat in the renown and internationally respected walls of the Peace Palace located in the Hague. This was a historic day for each and every Black man, woman, and child in the Americas, and especially in the budding history of the Nation of Islam...

Recently the Lost-Found Nation of Islam was invited to an UNPO meeting at the Hague...The acronym stands for "Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization,"...This is one of the world's premier diplomatic organizations, from which four new nations have been born and are now recognized in the U.N...

During this time, Mr. Silas Muhammad and the Attorney General of the Nation of Islam...had the honour of observing the Holy Flag of our people lifted up and flown as the flag of our nation. The flag was brought to Black people in 1930 by Almighty Allah in person, Master Fard Muhammad, to whom praises are forever due. What! Indeed a historic moment...

It was prophesied, "He will lift up an ensign from afar." (Isaiah 5:26). This prophecy, in the lifting up and establishment of the "Holy Flag" in the international forum is a sign to you. Measure your leaders by what they do of "real worth and truth." This is not a game, a Broadway play, nor a time for actors! This is the time for God in person and a nation of Gods to show and manifest the strength of their powers!

Hold high the flag of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam! Plant the staff down deeply that it does not sway! The spiritual dawn is rising, vice-versing itself. This is the dawn of the Spiritual Son and the dusk for many others. So let it be written so let it be done." Dr. Minister Kuba Abu Koss.

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"The truth is dreadful to those who have enjoyed rulership through deception. Therefore the Caucasian rulers will go to great lengths to keep Black people from seeking reparations (money and land) as the only real solution. They have tried, and will try to keep Mr. Silas Muhammad out of the public eye. They have also tried, and will try to slander and diminish him in the public eye. The success of an international reparations effort will not only mean that America will have to pay a great debt, it will mean that lies about the identity of God's chosen people which have been used to manipulate the world will be exposed...

The War of Armageddon is taking place now, and the minds of the people are the prizes captured in this war. It is comforting to Muslims to know that there is one thing the deceiver cannot control. I have heard the Caucasian man himself confess that people are suckers for the truth. Black people respond to the truth like no other people on earth. Nowadays the truth is showing up everywhere. Government coverups are being un-covered and liars are being exposed. The truth has a way of coming out no matter how carefully it is hidden. The truth is like the sunlight...when the hour of sunlight comes it cannot be stopped.

No matter what confusion, deception and manipulation is used against the truth, and no matter how powerful and hard-fighting the Caucasian deceivers are, they cannot win against a weapon that is unstoppable." Muhammad Speaks.

It is obvious that we do not disagree with the Nation of Islam on all things, particularly concerning "truth," and the judgments that shall befall America. And who would not like to see our African-American brothers and sisters receive reparations for the injustices of the last four hundred years?...

Woe to him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong: that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work...(Jeremiah 22:13).

But we would point out the inconsistency in appealing to an agency comprised largely of "deceiving Caucasians" at the Hague to guarantee its status as a nation--one that renders it no different, or no more "chosen" than any of the other nations of the earth. Such a recognition needs to come from God alone--or rather, from God first. Then it will come from men. But if the Lost-Found Nation of Islam is content to be simply counted as one among all the other nations, of equal status (as the Zionist State of Israel in the East was first content), it must be reminded that the Lord's indignation is against them all. (Isaiah 34:1,2). Truly in vain is salvation hoped for from the hills, and from the multitude of mountains. (Jeremiah 3:2). The Lord has a controversy with the nations, the small as well as the great, and it can hardly make a difference if they are very old or just born (too soon). Compared to the excellent state of mind God is creating in the true Holy Nation all other nations are counted to him as less than nothing. (Again, see Isaiah 40:15-17).

Just as the American nation "borrowed" the precept of e pluribus unum from holy writ (Isaiah 13:4), so sadly enough the Lost-Found Nation of Islam has left it behind. "This is no game," it declares, "no play." It appears, however, from an eye cast upon other episodes in Amerian history, that--with all of this conferring of nationhood, titles, and ranks upon itself, and investing itself with a sense of its own importance out of proportion to the reality--that it is playing the same biblical and spiritually-childlike games, and with the same notions of "chosen peopleness," and marching around in the same kinds of uniforms, as the Mormons in the 1800s. One will recall that Blacks were excluded from the Mormon priesthood then, as Whites are presently and clearly excluded from the leading ranks of the Nation of Islam today. The times are far more critical now for the birth of true understanding. And just as the doctrines of the Church of the Latter Day Saints fell far short in the 1830s, and still falls far short of the necessary understanding of these times (not realizing how God was setting them apart as a microcosm of the entire American experience, of the entire American religious, political, and military state of mind)...

And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, AND UNTO WIZARDS THAT PEEP, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God?...

To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them...(Isaiah 8:14-22).

...the Nation of Islam falls just as short--also imagining as it does that God has gone to all of this historic trouble for them and their followers alone. Even Malcom X had grown weary of such a doctrine. (And, as we know, payed a martyr's price for it; as did Dr. King about the same time as he was waking up to an understanding of the intrinsic evil of the political order that he was leading the people into. Had the two of them lived on, and seen fully eye to eye, they would have eventually come together to call the people "out" of the American order as the Scriptures command. The order would have collapsed, and something approaching the new would have been born. But it was not time yet. The Beast was still too powerful and too subtle (For who is like unto the beast...?), and the material and social benefits of being American still too alluring. And besides, this present generation--Generation X--had yet to be born. Despite what some think of it, and its seemingly present lack of direction, it has the energy, the technical expertise, and the spiritual wherewithal to change the world. All it has to do is rise up together, obey God, and give an emphatic "NO" to the present system of things...see Revelation 18).

The next to last page of this particular issue of Muhammad Speaks cites Revelation 13:18, rightly applying the "Number of the Beast" to the American system of things, saying: "Behold, America, you are in judgment." To fully comprehend and interpret this number, however (to have access to its fullest meanings), requires more than just perceiving the face of spiritual wickedness in the highest places of the American political and religious order; it requires that one first enter into a fully heartfelt relationship with God Themselves (with the Presence of Divine Wisdom who encoded the number in the pages of the Scriptures to begin with--thus with those principles and realities that connect the Mind of God to the mind of Man in our time). One must not only be on this path to higher consciousness, as Paul said...

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,

May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the Breadth, and Length, and Depth, and HEIGHT;

And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God...(Ephesians 4:17-19).

...but one must have completed the journey (the Pilgrimage), and have come to perfection in every emotional, intellectual, social, political and spiritual way as well. One must not only be a child of the Beatitudes, but possess a heartfelt concern for all those who are being judged, and a yearning desire to see them delivered from the Hands of God who judges them. One must be willing to confront the "Beast" and to lay down their lives on behalf of all people, for this is also the work of the True Holy Nation...

There are certain other spiritual realities to consider as well, all of them factoring into the grand design. One must also possess the gift of discerning of spirits:

Pastor Mark Thomas calls his 50-acre spread outside Allentown, Pa., a "church" of the white supremacist Christian Identity Movement..."I'm a racist," says Thomas, cutting to the quick. "I choose to use the term 'racialist.'" National Socialism, as envisioned by Adolf Hitler, is a political companion of Christian Identity...

They flock to Thomas's bucolic lands to study Identity creed: that Aryans are God's chosen people; that come Armageddon, God will order his white flock to kill all non-Aryans in a U.S. based race war...

Thomas's message...is a stew of ingredients taken from three major national hate groups: Christian Identity, a mostly anti-Semitic faith that anoints whites as master of all; the Idaho-based Aryan Nation, a skinhead-friendly paramilitary operation, some of whose members have been linked by cops to racially motivated killings (the emphasis mine); and Posse Comitatus, a political movement that frames the Founding Fathers' vision as a christian (read white) government in which the only authority is the local sheriff.

The Bible is clear on what to do, Thomas says: "The Christian obligation to bear arms is found in Luke. We are to wrest control of the planet by any means necessary."

The event is set for the U.S.: "There will be a race war," he says. "I'm committed at any cost to establishing a white Christian government within the limitations of God's law. Does God's law allow under certain circumstances the taking of human life? Sure."

Self defense is one way. Armageddon is another. "Kill a Jew? Kill a Black? he asked. "Only if God commands it, and I believe it will only happen upon the second coming of Christ." The New York Daily News, July 26, 1993.

This Klansman, as spiritually sick and afflicted as he is, reflects a broader spiritual reality. He represents another sub-set of the American state of mind. The whole Aryan movement, in its own extreme and isolated ways, reveals the underlying complex of spiritual and social reasonings that drive the collective complex of the national psyche itself. It is characterized by an obsession (a constitutional obsession) with guns, and an intrigue with (para)military operations, with the idea of violence as a solution to social and political problems, and a wholly ill-formed biblical sense of the meaning of holy warfare and the ultimate Christian sacrifice. (That which dieth of itself, or is torn of dogs is not accepted...Only that which is called, as was Aaron, is acceptable). In other words, there is a strain of this Aryan spirit in every American, whether they accept and recognize it or not. For these are the values that are imparted to every American child every day of their lives. The Arayans just take them to the extremes. It requires the constant and selective vigilance of the Divine Spirit to overcome them.

These values are imparted in a thousand interrelated ways (at home, at church and school, and through the massive and supporting presence of the American media), and they take hold because few step forward to say that these ways are not only un-Christian, but that they are clearly signs of spiritual insanity. (Those who do come forward to say so are, of course, partitioned and vilified, as the Nation of Islam so otherwise rightly observed). For what difference does it make to the Mind of the Universe if one group upholds these values from a cabin door or mountain enclave in Idaho, while the larger group upholds them from the frontsteps of its own national borders, or from the doorsteps of the White House. Both commit the same things in the name of the same God (but the government even moreso as the Waco/Oklahoma incident revealed. It reaped what it sowed), the same God who, in the very same Scriptures as these patriots read, commands the children of Light to transcend this state of mind and to have nothing to do with any of these affairs at all. What the American government is to the Aryan Brotherhood, however, all the other nations in the world-at-large are to the American people and the American government. They see the American nation in the same light as the American government sees the Aryan Nation. Both are driven to their mutual states of behavior because in the great scheme of creation the Mind of Christ is not fully formed in them yet. There are vast undeveloped spaces there in their own minds that have not been filled yet by either real spiritual experience or inspiration...

When we understand that Genesis 1:14-25 is not referring to the material stars in the material heavens, or to the creation of animal life on earth, but of Creation's descent of the into the human life-force--from the heights of spiritual reality (the angelic realm), through all of the intellectual and emotional levels of human consciousness (symbolized by the various animals and other creatures of the earth), and finally to the creation of the spirit of Adam (man) in the earth--then we can also see that these Aryans (and all others who hold to a doctrine of racial or national superiority), are among the beasts getting from under the limbs of the World Tree, and the fowls from his branches. (Daniel 4:14). They are all revealing themselves in the judgments of this age, as it is also written:

He hath prepared for Himself the instruments of death (Ps.7:13), The sword to slay, dogs to tear, fowls of heaven, and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy...(Jeremiah 15:3).

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There be spirits created for vengeance which in their fury lay on strong strokes; in the time of destruction they pour out their force and appease the wrath of Him who made them...(Ecclesiasticus 39:28).

Open the pages of the Book of Jeremiah at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in the center of Europe:

Yea the stork in heaven knoweth her appointed time, and the turtle and the crane and swallow observe the time of their coming, but my people know not the judgment of the Lord...(Jeremiah 8:7).

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They shall mingle themselves with the seed of men but they shall not cleave one to another as iron is not mixed with clay...(Daniel 2:40-45).

 

THE FOUR ANGELS

All living things are created out of the Four primary elements and the Four invisible qualities of the Natural World. Between Water and Air is the invisible quality of Moist. Between Fire and Earth is the opposite quality of Dry. Between Air and Fire is the quality of Hot. Between Earth and Water is the opposite quality of Cold. The invisible qualties are revealed in the visible elements.

Humanity was created out of the mixture of both the visible elements and the invisible qualities of Nature, and Man was created out of that. As there are Four directions in which Humanity dwells, there are also Four levels of Human Consciousness. The whole it together, the world of Nature and the world of Man, comprises the Angelic realm.

And after these things I saw Four angels (the sum of all historical events, both natural and human) standing on the Four corners of the earth, holding the Four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.

And I saw another angel ascending from the East, having the seal of the Living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the Four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea.

Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of God on their foreheads.

And I heard the number of them sealed, and there were sealed 144,000 of all the tribes of the children of Israel...(Revelation 7:1-4).

One must be able to visualize with the mind's eye the constant interchange between the Invisible Presence of God--the Transcendent One who is clearly understood and revealed in the karmic flow of all natural and human events--and the collective state of human consciousness itself, in order to comprehend the meaning of the term angel and its use in the Hebrew scriptures. One can visualize it on the Tree of Life. The Logos (the Word of God) is the Highest Angel. The Logos is those forces and dimensions of the Living Universe that reveal themselves to the intelligent mind in intelligent forms. This is the same which revealed itself to the mind of the early Church in the composite form of the Christ Mystery. To the later Kabbalists it was the Metatron, the same angel who went before the children of Israel to show them the way that they should go (Exodus 23:20-24; 24:10-13). To the Asvins, the earliest bearers of this Light to the regions of India, it was originally revealed in the joint personalities of Agni and Indra--but also in the sum of all the other gods and goddesses (for what are these gods but personifications of the forces of nature and the moral principles and ideas that inhabit the universe). Each of these gods--angels when their powers are discovered to be directly associated with the course of human history--reveal themselves in conjunction with the overspreading, world-wide and universal dimensions of the Great Tree out of which all of Creation appeared. (These are the powers and principalities, the thrones and dominions--the Elohim that inhabit the natural world). One does not have to go far into the stories and oral traditions, or through many pages of the world's sacred texts to discover it. Thus back out of Egypt--back up into the higher planes of the World Mystery--came Isis, Osiris, and Horus in the figures of Mary, her Egypto-now-Jewish consort, and the Christ child--the Sun of Righteousness. (Malachi 4:2)...

As the Angel (the Mind of the Universe) descended (or as it reascended out of the primal life-forms hundreds of thousands of years ago) to assume the proportions and shape of human life, the human species took on the angelic form, as it is written: And He made the stars also. (Genesis 1:16). These stars are the first order of humanity, as it is also written: When the morning stars sang together. (Job 38:7). And though it is obvious that these ancient sons and daughters of God came with multiple physical (racial) characteristics (we will leave it to others to determine if the individual races sprang from one proto-race with a genetic code triggered for all the diversity that we now observe in the human family, or if each emerged from the womb of Mother-Earth separately, and in different locations), it is also evident that humanity, in its purely physical sense, is a single species, sharing the very same genetic code. More importantly though, in Adam/Manu/Christ we are gathered out of the realm of differences and transformed into a single Celestial Race, possessed of a single spirit and a single soul. It is at this point in history--about six thousand years ago--that the words began to have their effect which say: Let Us make man in Our image:

And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea (their own emotions), over the fowl of the air (their intellectual faculties), over the cattle (their earthly physical and sensual qualities), and over all the earth (over their own individual selves), and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth (over their lowest inclinations and most subtle desires)...(Genesis 1:26-31).

This new being (Adam), though of the earth themselves, was able to look back into the whole realm of life from which (they themselves) emerged to see the intricate and metaphysical connections that existed between heaven and earth and the human spirit; and between the animal realm on earth and the intellectual, emotional, and physical characteristics of the human spirit. But more: this Adam was now capable of realizing that humanity itself was still divided into several psychological levels or spheres of intelligence and behavior. Some in the human family were fixed in their states of mind like the stars in heaven. Through further observation (and from their own now-higher point of view), they were able to see that some were more alike in their behavior to the various kinds of fowls and flying creatures that dwelt in the earth (see Genesis 15:11; Jer.7:33). And some were attended by a deeper emotional quality, like the creatures that dwelt beneath the surface of the waters. And all, it seemed, shared the qualities of the four-footed beasts that dwelt among them. Some were strong and gentle, some noble, some swift of thought and foot, some sluggish and slow. Some were wise, some cunning and crafty. Some were ravenous and viscious, selfish and tyrannical. Some were hunters, some were not. Those that were not were acceptable as a sacrifice upon God's altar. All of them, however, the entire natural order, the gentle and the cruel alike, were ordained by God for God's own creative purposes--for purposes that God has been explaining to humankind through the shamans of the earth, and through the seers and the prophets since the time of Adam.

This Adam/Manu, was now possessed of a gift from above, and a mission to humanity. The gift was spiritual sight and inner reasoning (the transcendent world was opened to their field of view). The mission, or ministry if you will--in keeping with Adam's down-to-earth, and humble sense of their own place in the center of the universe--was an understanding of also being called to be priests of the Most High, prophets and teachers of the highest philosophy, thus intermediaries between the Mind of God and the mind of humanity...

In keeping with the emerging Tao of Wisdom and Understanding (being able now to witness or envision the fierceness of God in the elements of nature, as well as in the behavior of the other tribes and peoples of the earth) Adam was ordained to teach and practice a form of active pacifism that was first characterized in the figure of Abel, and which is brought to perfection in the Mystery of Christ. This perfection would be completed at the same time and in the same place as the Great Circle was complete, when all the children of (this second) Adam returned once again to the meaning of the words: Let Us create man in Our image. These words are only now having their fullest effect. Thus we find ourselves with the ability to discover once again that the angelic order--which still exists, and which still reveals itself on the plain of human events--contains separate orders within itself, as Paul says: For one star differeth from another in glory (1 Corinthians 15:41). It includes all of those in our time who are to be heirs of salvation (the new angelic order of Man), as well as all the terrible powers and principalities of the East that God has reserved for Himself against the day of battle and war:

To make all men see what is the Fellowship of the Mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things in Jesus Christ...(Ephesians 3:9).

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Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation?...(Hebrews 1:14).

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And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels,

In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that (profess to know God, and who pretend to the teachings of the Gospels, but who do not obey them):

Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the Presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his Power...(2 Thessalonians 1:5-9; Isaiah 66:15-18).

Thus when the Four angels were released in the 20th century it was the collective social, political, as well as technological forces of humanity that were released. The 20th century has been an explosion of these spiritual realities.

To construct the symbolic number, 144,000--the number of all those who have been sealed in the process (all those into whose world view the Holy City is descending in the symbolic form of a Cube inside of a Square on the Tree of Life...Revelation 21:10-16)--one multiplies the cube of the Mystery of the Tree of Life (10 X 10 X 10 = 1,000...recall, the number 1,000 symbolizes the mind coming to spiritual perfection) by the 12 tribes of Israel by the 12 signs of the great Solar Year through which the Universal Nation has passed day by day, year by year, jubilee by jubilee (out of the judgment wars of the East), on its way to spiritual perfection here in the West...

The Center of the Mystery X 12 Tribes X 12 Signs = 144,000...Revelation 7.

THE HYMN OF THE INITIATES

Day and night will I offer my praise, and at all the appointed times which God has prescribed.

When Daylight begins its rule, when it reaches its turning point, and when it again withdraws to its appointed abode;

When the watches of Darkness begin, when God opens the storehouse thereof, when He sets that Darkness against the Light, when it reaches its turning point, and when it again withdraws in face of the Light;

When Sun and Moon shine forth from the Holy Height, and when they again withdraw to the glorious abode;

When the formal Seasons come on the day of the New Moon, when they reach their turning points, and when they yield place to one another, as each come round anew...

When too, the month begin; on their feasts and on Holy Days, as they come in order due, each as a memorial in its season; I shall hold it as one of the laws engraven of old on the tablets to render God as my tribute--the blessings of my lips...

In the formal weeks of years, in the several seasons thereof, and when, at the Jubilee, the series of weeks begins...yea, throughout my life, I shall hold it as one of the laws engraven of old on the tablets to offer God as my fruits--the praises of my tongue...

With the coming of Day and Night I shall come ever anew into God's covenant; and when Evening and Morning depart, shall observe how He sets their bounds. Only where God sets bounds--the unchangeable bounds of His Law--will I too set my domain. The Dead Sea Scriptures, edited by Theodore Gaster, p.137.

Following the ordinances of Heaven one arrives at last not only at the symbolic number of every soul who has come out of the East to the Western ends of the earth in these times, but of every soul who has ever--throughout the entire lifetime of the Holy Nation--found their lives in the Mystery of Christ and the Tree of Life. Ye are ALL my witnesses, saith the Lord. (Isaiah 43:10; 44:8)...

Thus those who are coming to perfection can see how the Black Angel was not released upon the world for judgment alone (solely as a force for social instability and political retribution against the Western world, or as a drain upon its energies and resources as some would have it), but it has a been instead an indispensible minister of moral righteousness, and of Christ-Consciousness to the Western world as well. For we will all agree again that the Awakening that is occurring in America (as well as elsewhere), could not have happened at all without the presence of the Black Angel--indeed, without the slave and Jim Crow experience and the Civil Rights period that followed it, and the strength and character of soul that flowed from it. These events energized the antiwar movement that followed close afoot, and the entire counter-cultural experience that emerged from it all.

There was definetly A new wind blowing. From the Highlanders Community to the streets of every major city in the country went the words: We shall overcome, We are not afraid. And what of the Indigenous Peoples and American Indian Movements? These were a long time coming as well. And the (real) environmental movement? (Blacks have hardly concerned themselves with it yet). The whole of it was an explosive outflow of the creative and healing energies of the Holy Spirit--a "calling out" and preparation for the Birth that is still to come. The 50s and 60s, and the years that followed, were an expression of Her own heart, the work of Her own hands. She was giving form to the Child that will soon appear (Revelation 12:1,2), the Child that was forming in secret, in the hearts of all who are being called to this wonderful event. The music is Her's, the love of Life, the quest for simplicity, and even the technology that shall soon be placed in the hands of those who can be trusted with it. She has taught us to love one another with a degree of love that was not possible before these times. The entire emerging spiritual order, and the sense of universal wholeness, as well as the revelations in every field of study that now attend it, are the fruit of Her labors. She has accompanied us, and has been instructing us through the entire ordeal of these times, caring for us in ways that only a Great Mother can. These things were just the beginning, however, just the first stirrings, and shall hardly compare to the energies that shall be released upon the earth once this Child is born. (It is only the spirit of antichrist and the powers of the Western Corporate State that stand in the way...Ready to devour the Child as soon as it is born).

So we must go further, and ask: Who could have come to this present and collective state of mind without the participation of every other (for evil as well as for good)? Likewise, If one is Black they must ask themself: How could I have possibly come to my own present state of spiritual awareness without the American experience? Without this personal experience with the spirit of antichrist in the earth--a mantle that the white man has been made to wear? And what of the Terrible judgment, the Divine Fire that is about to fall from heaven on top of him, if he will not repent of his evil deeds?...

Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;

But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. (Genesis 19:17-29).

Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed...(Luke 17:28-30).

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But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye be in all holy conversation and holiness...

Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for a new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness...(2 Peter 3:10-14).

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And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her my people, that ye be not partakers with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues...

(And) her plagues shall come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her... (Revelation 18:4-8).

Indeed, how could any of us know anything at all of oppression, injustice, the subtle nature of wickedness, spiritual rebellion, pride, vainglory, the wayward quest for empire, and even of the many ways in which the Scriptures can be misinterpreted and misused, or of how God will rise up against any future attempts by man to recreate the world in his own image, unless God had showed them to us, and if He had not also raised up a particular culture in the earth to show it in? One that must also make an atonement for all of its great historic transgressions...

And how else could those in the Black Community who hold a racially exclusive view of themselves, learn of their own lack of knowledge and understanding of divine matters, of their own inabilities to discover the essence of the Word of God, of their own inabilities to express compassion and love for others, especially for the lost white man, in the most excellent way that Christ and so many others in our time have shown us...

Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!

And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, and it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.

For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind:

But the tongue can no man tame; it is unruly, evil, full of deadly poison.

There with we bless God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.

Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not be so.

Doth a fountain send forth at the same time sweet water and bitter?

Can a Fig Tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain yield both salt water and fresh.

Who is wise and endued with knowledge among you? let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.

But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.

This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.

For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.

And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace...(James 3:5-18).

And at the same time, how else could those members of the main-line Baptist-African-American-Black and White liberal coalition learn of its own transgressions, of its own (lethal) attachments to the ways of the world---to the ways of Ba'al? The American Civil Rights Movement, while it was inciting a spiritual revival in the human heart, and the mind of Christ in the remnant of this generation, was also moving in ways that were opposite to the teachings of Christ. In its own zeal to effect a measure of economic justice and righteousness in the earth, in its own determination to (push through or break down the barriers that God had set up between the blessed poor of the earth and the system of things that oppressed them), it has also helped to lead God's children into the great state of frustration, confusion and disorder everyone finds themself in today.

Against God's commandment to Come out from among them, and be ye separate (2 Corinthians 6:14-18), the Civil Rights Movement lost sight of the end of things, and invested all of its rhetoric and its energies, pressing in, trying to become an integral part of the American political and economic order. With their eyes on a prize that will turn out in the end to be no prize at all, the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement sought full and active participation with the Unfruitful works of Darkness. In the process they allowed the spirit of Darkness to co-opt and assimilate not only the language of equality and justice, but the energies of the people themselves. How? By allowing the sons of Darkness year after year, election by election, to work their worldly charms in the life of the Church. By allowing the sons of Darkness to enter the houses of worship, and in their quest for power to stand in the pulpits, to join hands with the congregation, and to express God's words in worldly religious ways that are clearly contrary to God's word itself. (We love the rhetoric and the slogans, the intrigues of politics, but we have little taste for real solutions. They can be dangerous)...

And he said unto me, Son of man, the place of My Throne, and the place of the Soles of My Feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Isael for ever, and My Holy Name, shall the house of Israel no more defile, neither they nor their kings, by their whoredom, nor by the carcasses of their kings, in their high places.

In their setting of their threshold by my thresholds, and their posts by my posts, and the wall between me and them, they have even defiled My Holy Name by their abominations that they have committed: wherefore I have consumed them in mine anger.

Now let them put away their whoredom, and the carcasses of their kings, far from me, and I will dwell in the midst of them for ever...(Ezekiel 43:7-9).

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These are spots in your feast of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, twice dead, plucked up by the roots...(Jude 11-13).

Thus by forgetting that these are the leaders and the practitioners of the very same political order that drove the indigenous peoples of this land from their rightful homes and enslaved the African soul to begin with (all in the name of God if we remember right), and that later freed its slaves as an act of political expediency only (and then allowed them to be placed back in bondage again, to the masters of capitalism and industry), and the same that is now by right of self-impunity and force of arms attempting to extend its ways and its base of power throughout the rest of the world. By giving up sons and daughters into their service we have brought all the words that God has spoken through the prophets upon us, and the curse is continually poured out:

NEW YORK'S BLACK CHURCHES ARE DRIVEN BY TWO IMPULSES--THE SCRIPTURAL MANDATE TO LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AND THE HARSH TRUTHS OF LIFE OUTSIDE THEIR SANCTUARY

By Charles W. Bell

Reeling from the crises that sent most institutions and businesses fleeing, New York's black churches have launched a crusade to save their crumbling communities and struggling flocks.

Their targets are drugs, crime, AIDS, hunger, homelessness, teen homicide and pregnancy, unemployment, illiteracy and spirit-sapping despair. For churches, the battle has important social, economic and theological implications.

"The (black) church is the institution of last resort," says the Rev. William Howard, a Baptist newly elected as the first black president of the New York Theological Seminary.

"Churches should cause things to happen--housing, safe streets and so on--but just preaching about problems wont solve them, as pastors know very well."

"If the black church can't save the community," says the Rev. Gary Simpson of the landmark Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Bed-Stuy..."I don't know who will..." The New York Daily News.

Of course there is George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative:

In that ye have brought into my sanctuary strangers, uncircumcised in heart, and uncircumcised in flesh (in the deeds of their hearts), to be in my sanctuary, to pollute it, even my house, when ye offer My bread, the fat and the blood, and they have broken My covenant because of all your (their) abominations.

And ye have not kept the charge of mine holy things: but ye have set keepers of my charge in my sanctuary for yourselves...(Ezekiel 44:5-15).

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And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king (the political leaders) which ye have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.

Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king (and now a president) over us;

That we may also be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles...(1 Samuel 18-20).

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Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished. Nevertheless...the seed of the righteous shall be delivered...(Proverbs 11:21).

It does not seem appropriate to end a letter on such a note to one who loves and obeys God, and who labors over others as you do, Kadijah. In light of the serious social and psychological conflicts that are aflicting many young black men in our time, perhaps this from a young black man I met several years ago who intrigues us with his theory on rap music and the hip-hop movement in America. In the article he was writing he planned to relate this phenomenon to the theme of the half-animated movie version of Joel Chandler's Song of the South. The conflicts began in the South, he said, in the relationship between the completely subjugated (but so much wiser) black male and his Southern (but spiritually and intellectually inferior) white oppressors. The young black male is personified in Brer Rabbit who hip-hops his way through the story, but who must be ever on guard against the wiles and lesser mentalities of Brer Bear and Brer Fox. In his attempts to keep them mollified and at a safe distance from himself and his family, Brer Rabbit must constantly sacrifice his sense of self in their presence, ever depleting his sense of his own manhood. It tears at his soul to do so, but to confront them in any way at all is to do so at the peril of one's life. The Civil Rights Movement and its ensuing events freed up these pent up hostilities and emotions, particularly in Northern cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Chicago and, as the flame ignited, in Los Angeles and other places.

In the film Brer Rabbit is caught and tied up by Brer Bear and Fox, who now decide his fate. "Please," Brer Rabbit pleads (drawing on centuries of experience; he knows these two can be tricked), "what ever you do to me, please don't throw me in the (shudder) briar patch." A light goes on above their heads, and sure enough they decide to throw Brer Rabbit in the briar patch. This briar patch (this Crown of Thorns as it is), represents the death and resurrection of the black man, the death of his old fearful regard for the white man and his oppresive culture, and the resurrection of his own true nature--his own Christlike nature (more divine, and closer to truth than any southern white man could ever hope to be). Brer Rabbit appears on the far side of the briar patch...hip-hop, hip-hop...with renewed courage, and with a determination never to be caught and trapped by these two crackers again. "Don't you know," he chides them, " that I was born in that briar patch." "It is my true nature to be free, to be my own man--my own Divine Man." His thoughts will be his own now, not the white man's. His lyrics will come from somewhere deep within himself, regardless of what others think or say about them. And if there is any inherent evil in the black soul, then the (young) black man (and the young black woman) will work it out on his (their) own terms, and find it in himself (themselves) without being told how to define that evil. "We will descend into ourselves, work our way through our own lower impulses and attain our own catharsis. And we will return to the center on our own, when we (or God) decide, as true men and not slaves. Hip-hop, hip-hop...

GOD FINALLY GIVES SHOUT-OUT BACK TO HIS NIGGAZ

SOUTH BRONX, NY__The Lord Almighty finally responded to nearly two decades of praise in hip-hop album liner notes Monday, when he gave a shout-back to all His loyal niggaz.

"Right about now, I want to send a shout-out to each and every nigga who's shown Me love through the years," said the Lord. His booming voice descending from Heaven. "I got mad love for each and every one of you niggaz. Y'all real niggaz out there, you know who you are. Y'all was there for me, and it's about time I'm-a give some love back to God's true crew....All y'all niggaz be My niggaz," the Lord added.

As of press time, God had thanked nearly 7,000 of His niggaz, including those in New York's Bad Boy and Ruff Ryder posses, the No Limit soldiers and Cash Money Millionaires holdin' it down in New Orleans, Nelly and the whole St. Lunatics crew, Busta and the rest of the Flipmode Squad, His peeps from back in the day, and all the real ruffneck niggaz in lockdown. He also sent shout-outs to everybody in the Old School, as well as to Lil' Bow Wow and all the other new niggaz just coming up.

"Mad props to P. Diddy, Jay-Z, DMX, Lil' Kim, Mystikal, Eve, Ja Rule, Jadakiss, Trick Daddy, and Xzibit. And one love to Meth, RZA, GZA, Ghostface, and the rest of My real niggaz in the Wu-Tang Clan," the deity said. "These My beloved niggaz, with whom I am well-pleased."...

"God is the Original," Brooklyn-based rapper Mos Def said. "The world is ruled by the wealthy and the wicked, but all respect due to the Creator who made this world and who will one day bring justice to the wicked and the righteous alike."

Despite the overwhelmingly positive response among rappers, the Lord is drawing fire in certain circles for His use of the word "nigga." On Monday's Larry King Live, conservative activist Rev. Calvin Butts, a longtime ally of the Lord, blasted Him for His "shocking, unexpected use of the racially loaded N-word." Some concerned parties, including decency crusader C. Delores Tucker, Sen. Orin Hatch, and members of the San Francisco-based What About The Children Foundation, are calling for a boycott of church services until God issues an apology. Reacting to the controversy, many in the hip-hop community are rushing to the Lord's defense.

"The word 'nigga' means different things depending on how it's used and whose saying it," rap legend and Public Enemy frontman Chuck D said. "Judging from context, God obviously wasn't being derogatory. He was using 'nigga' as a blanket term of affection for all His true supporters on the rap scene. At one point, He said, 'I wanna give a shout-out to Ad-Rock, MC Serch, and My man Dan the Automator--all y'all is real niggaz in MY beloved sight.' Considering the fact that Ad-Rock and Serch are Jewish, and the Automator is Asian-American, it's clear God isn't talking about race here. He's just paying respect to all those who have paid respect to Him." The Onion (an on-line satirical journal)

Satire or not, the word still stands: In that day the first shall be last, and the last first, and there shall weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth."

But hey you niggaz! you aint altogether in the clear. It's not like you have to be told (you already know), you got a lot of making up to do yourselves. You have to apologize for your insensitivity to all the old folks and parents who you forced to suffer your adolescence, who had to listen to those insufferable lyrics and interminable rhythms for hours without end. You have to apologize for your duplicity in respect to womankind, and for the phyical disrespect you have shown for sexuality. Those of you who know better have to apologize to all of the impressionable young minds you exploited, and who got into a lot of soul-trouble because of it. You helped lay the foundation for a lot of dysfunction. (Of course, you might reason, these kids were heading in that direction anyway...and that's true, but you're partly responsible now). You can't out-thug the thugs, so overcome them with weapons they can not match--with love and compassion. That Dream still lives you know. And besides, there's a lot of planting and building to do and you can't get it done with your pants hanging down around your rear ends...And loosen up, get rid of that false persona, learn to laugh at yourselves a little. It's good for the soul. Atone for your anger, your self-obsessions, your own greed, and own up to your own violent ways. Quit shifting the blame. The true revolutionary attacks themself first. We'll be waiting on ya. There's a foundation to repair, true Love. Jah rules.

(Dear Kadijah), Give my love to all of your friends there. Please offer me to God in all of your prayers. Peace be unto you... I still remember the verse from the Holy Qur'an that you taught me:

By (the token of) Time (through the ages),

Verily man is in loss,

Except such as have Faith, and do righteous deeds, and join together in the mutual teaching of Truth, and of Patience and Constancy...(Sura CIII).

Please see:

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Symposium

 

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