(The following excerpts are from the historic address delivered by The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad at McCormick Place in Chicago July 15, 1962�the same address in which The Muslim Program was first introduced.)

I think the entire intelligent world knows and believes that it is face to face with the divine truth today. There is nothing to prevent the divine truth from going into the ears of those who do not know the truth. If God is with His word�backing the delivery of that word�it is written that nothing, regardless of the opposition against the delivery, can prosper, because it is incumbent upon Allah to raise all of those who are spiritually dead to the knowledge of themselves.

You should not be surprised, or hide your faces, or stop up your ears; you should have done that before He delivered the truth to the prophets of 2,000 and 4,000 years ago. It is too late now. You cannot make liars of those prophets, regardless to your disbelief, misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Almighty, God, Allah, will not allow you to make liars of the prophets.

It is not that I want you to know, believe, and honor me as a divine Messenger; that is immaterial to me. I am not here before you for great honor; I am not looking for that. ... I want you to submit to Allah and honor Him; that is what I want you to do. I want you to give praise to Allah. I want your to recognize and know that there is no God but Allah. He is one God; there is no trinity of gods.

For the last 6,000 years�especially in the last days�there have been many gods presented to the people of the world. Why? Because of the absence of God�the God of universal truth, the God of freedom, justice, and righteousness had not shown Himself in the past 6,000 years as being a God Who would destroy or alter that which He permitted. He permitted evil to rule for 6,000 years. He did not interfere with his rule. If he had interfered, or made Himself known, it would have prevented the successful rule of the devil. We all would have turned to the real God, if He had made Himself known.

God has been a mystery, and many of you teach that God is a mystery. But, the Book (Bible) teaches you and me that He would make Himself known in the "last days." The "last days" means in the last years of the world of evil. These things would take place in years, not 24-hour days.

If we have a point to start from, we will know what year the world will end. This has not been hidden from the knowledge of the scholars and scientists of religion. Some of them have learned the approximate year, but they do not know the day in that year.

Yesterday you did not hear a man talk like that. But today, the time is so close, it is nothing strange (anymore than it was in the days of Noah and Moses) to see me here, before you, teaching what I am teaching. ...

My father was a preacher, and I used to sit and watch him preach and faint in the pulpit. I used to say, "Some day God will help me to help him," I said the same thing when I was a boy of 10 years old, hauling kindling to peddle in the streets of Cordell, Ga. I had just missed witnessing the lynching of one of our 18-year-old young men on a willow tree.

I looked and said �with tears in my eyes, because I knew the young man�that if there was a God in heaven, I pray that He brings me up and makes me strong enough to deliver my people from their enemies.

It was a terrible sight to behold�a man who had never been before a court of justice, his body dangling from a tree limb. There was no friend for him there; no attempt to determine his innocence or guilt. He was judged by murderers, and shot to death in the midst of his own people.

My friends, these things have been going on for many years. Every since that English trader, John Hawkins, brought our fathers to the Western Hemisphere, they have suffered. Today, there are many�especially on the guilty side�who want to know what we want or what we think we should want.

We were your (the white man�s) slaves for 300 years, we were treated like your cattle.

You (the white man) had no more regard for our human rights than you did you own animals. You lashed the backs of our fathers and our mothers without any mercy. You killed them whenever you felt you wanted to see them fall. And, yet, you sweet-hearted with my grandparents.

The truth hurts. You went into my grandmothers and begot children by them and then put your own children on the slave blocks for sale. Today, you are still crossing over to our women. I only put this before you (the Caucasian race) to show you why we want to take leave of you.

Today, you (the Caucasian race) are tying to deceive your poor, once servitude slaves by telling them that you now are anxious to establish friendship. You say, "I will let you ride beside me on my best transportation. I also will let you work with me in my office, and I am going to put you in the government."

But what good is that going to do for us and our children in the future? Will this help us to make a great future for our people, and own what you have owned and still own, which is a place on this earth that we can call our own? ...

Hurry and join unto your own kind. The time of this world is now at hand.