The Grace of God
by Minister Louis Farrakhan
[Editor�s Note: The following timely article is taken from an article printed in the Final Call, Vol 1. No. 4]

Allah says in the Holy Qur�an that He created the heavens and the earth with truth. He says that everything that He created, whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth, glorifies God. Since you and I have never seen God, then how do we get acquainted with the unseen?

Allah created the heavens and earth from nothing. What is the power and force in the nature of God that allows him to create such a magnificent universe that defies the scholars and scientists to compare anything to the beauty of what He creates? There is nothing that any human being makes, fashions, colors or reproduces that equals the beauty of God�s creation.

The two most repeated attributes of God in the Holy Qur�an are contained in Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim: In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful. These two attributes, "beneficent" and "merciful," have a single root out of which they spring, and that root is love. Therefore in the New Testament, we get the words: God is love. How does God express His love?

He expresses His love in the quintessential beauty of His nature by what He creates and what He does for what He creates, and through what He creates.

God as a creator starts painting on the canvas of space out of the beauty of His own nature. He gives us the sun, moon, stars, galaxies, earth, mountains, flowers, and all kinds of different creatures.

When you look at the flower, insect and animal world, you see this huge array of creatures that manifest His infinite wisdom and power and His matchless beauty�the color only He can give in flowers. This is the beauty of His nature.

Allah not only creates a thing, but He nurtures what He creates and He sustains and maintains what He creates. So, He doesn�t just put something out there, He provides for it everything it needs to grow to its eventual perfection. That is a mighty God. Think about a God that has created everything that you see and provides for every creature, from the smallest all the way to the most magnificent, He has provided for that creature. That is a mighty God. What did we do to deserve this?

We just got here. All you had to do was to be here. You didn�t have to do anything for Him, He did it all for us. Here is a God that creates a worm and provides for the worm. But God just doesn�t create things haphazardly. He creates things, and for everything that He created there is a purpose; and in everything that He created is a lesson for all of us to study. So everything that God created is a messenger from Him.

The Qur�an says that in everything that God creates, there is a lesson for man, if man would be mindful. Solomon said, "Thou sluggard, go to the ant, study her ways and become wise." So here�s a creature God created that is under your foot, but God says study what is under your foot for in it is a lesson for you.

But man is arrogant and haughty. His lessons are all around him but he refuses to become a submissive and humble servant of God to learn from the things that are around him.

Your friends, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors, in all of them are lessons. You have to look at everything around you for this is the real book of God. It is not the book that people write with their hands. It is the book that God has put all over and around us, it is His creation.

Allah says in the Qur�an, "I created you in the womb." You don�t give the credit to your mother. He didn�t say that your mother or father created you. He said, "I created you in the womb." Who are your mother and father? They are the agents of His creation. He uses what He creates to bring about what He pleases.

When you were forming in the womb of your mother, not conscious, He provided for you. He forces your mother by the nature of the flesh to continue to eat and drink. If she wants to live, she has to continue to eat and drink and as she eats and drinks, you are growing in the womb feeding from what she eats and drinks.

Therefore, God must make you a wise woman, because what you eat, drink and think is the basis of the formation of what is growing within you. So you can�t make a good child until you make a good woman. You can�t make a good woman until you make a good man, because a good woman can be ruined by a no-good man. In fact, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that there is no such thing as a no-good woman. Every no-good woman that you see was made no-good by a no-good man.

Female and male are the highest manifestations of god�s wisdom. In fact the Bible calls us the glory of God, not "a" glory but "the" glory�greater than the sun, moon, stars and mountains and greater than anything that He created except the human being. The human being can rise from sperm floating in a bag of water to become master over what God has created.

God says "Not only did I create you in your mother�s womb, but before you knew you had a need, I knew your need and I provided your need." That is God�s Beneficence, Mercy, and Grace. The Qur�an keeps saying over and over again that "Little it is that you give thanks."

If you father scuffles and gives you a new pair of shoes, do you just take the shoes and go out in the street and scuffle and kick them and don�t even tell the man: "Thanks, Dad."

Your mothers nurtured you when you couldn�t help yourself. She changed your diapers when you couldn�t change yourself. She cleaned us when we couldn�t clean ourselves. You mean to tell me that we don�t want to say "thanks, mom," and show gratitude for a mother and a father that are the agents of God�s creation of us?

Whatever you feel about your mother and father or think they did wrong, you couldn�t even think the thought, unless you had them to bring you here to think about what they did wrong.

God didn�t raise you to be the judge of your parents; God raised you up to honor your parents. Whether they are in your sight worthy of honor or not, God requires it of all of us, not of some of us, but all of us, to honor our parents. God doesn�t put any requirement on that. For instance, to only honor the parent that worked hard and went out and cleaned white folks� floors and doors and did all these good things for you, you only honor them? No, that�s not correct.

If your mother is a junkie or a prostitute, she fell into that because of conditions, but you are to respect her for what God intended for her, even if she is not measuring up to what He intended.

It is the same with all of your fathers. Most of us don�t know anything about our father, but if you know where he is, show him respect, because without him you could not be. Little it is that you give thanks.

If you are not thankful for little things, you will find yourself being ungrateful to God, who is the Giver of all things. And when you get into trouble with God, you pay a very high price for being ungrateful.

Even though we are the best of His creatures, you must never turn away from God, because if you turn away from Him, you turn away from the source of your and my evolution into Him.

To my Christian Brothers and Sisters who are present, Jesus was not an accident. Jesus was a man grateful to his Father. He was a man who was so in tune with God, he stayed so in the light of his Father that he became the light of the world. This Jesus figure was evolved by God up into Himself, which is where all of us should become as human beings. We are to evolve into God.

So, God will manifest in us and through us, for the human being is the glory of God and is God�s vicegerent to take God�s place on Earth. This is our domain, to rule and govern it, but we cannot govern it unless we evolve into God. We must never turn away from Him, because to turn away from Him is like the planet turning away from the light of the sun, then we are in the dark and whenever we are in the dark, we suffer what darkness brings.

Darkness brings the cessation of labor. As the Qur�an says, the night is for man to rest or sleep and the day He made for man to rise up again. There is a spiritual day where we make progress, and there is a night where we just go to sleep.

Just look at us. We are not in the day, we are a people who are walking in darkness, gross darkness. Darkness covers Black people, not only here in America, but in Africa and throughout the world.

Have we turned away from God? Yes, because if we were in the Light of God, we would manifest God�s light as we would be evolving into Him. Jesus said, "I and my father are one." Do you know what that means? I in the father, the father in me, I in you and you in me: what is he saying?

He is saying that God�s greatest grace is to give man guidance and wisdom to grow man into Himself, man is no longer man, but becomes a reflection of God.

Thus, God is in man and man is in God and I and God become one. How do you become one with God? Submit your will entirely to do God�s Will, then God starts working in you, through you, so that as you walk, God is walking. If you talk God�s Will, God is talking. When you act God�s Will, God is acting. It is no longer God and a prophet, but it is God and extensions of God. This is why the Qur�an says over and over, "We created the heavens and the earth and we ordered the stars and raised the mountains." We did this. We who? It is not we ants and bees, it is we human beings acting on the Will and carrying out the wisdom of God, acting in concert with God as the agents of God.

When we turn away from God, we don�t evolve, we degenerate from God to man to beast to serpent. This is where we are now.

Sisters and Brothers, this is not what God created. This is the handling of the white man and his world. God made us to evolve to perfection that He might be made manifest in and through us. But who is manifest through our actions today? It is not God. We are Satan�s handiwork. We are carnal-minded, low-life and non-productive people.

Beavers do more work than Black people. Beavers build more for their children than we build for ours. Birds build nests, foxes have holes, but these sons of men have no place to lay their heads.

If the white man doesn�t provide for Black people, we don�t have the mind to provide for ourselves. We are in bad shape and we are not God�s creation. We are the handiwork of our slavemasters.

When God sees His creation degenerate, then God�s Grace comes into existence. He doesn�t leave you like you are. The Qur�an puts it like this: "If God were to punish man for his sins, not one soul would be left alive on the earth." That means you and I, reverend, are supposed to be the spiritual guides of the people, but the reverend and I stand in need of God�s mercy, of His Forgiveness.

Well, if we stand in need of His mercy, what about the people? There is nobody in here, out there, around here, in Mecca, Rome or any holy city that doesn�t need God�s Forgiveness or His mercy. We need it and we really don�t deserve it, yet out of that love, that beauty in His nature, He says, "I am not going to leave you like you are, but I am going to raise one up from your midst, just like I do the clouds. I raise clouds up from the earth by the power of the sun and the moon, having an attracting power on the water of the earth and it draws the water up in a fine mist that the naked eye cannot detect."

As that mist forms with other mist, it forms what is called clouds. Then the cloud gets heavy with water, then God blows the cloud with winds over a dry, dead earth. And when the cloud distills and water falls to the earth, the seeds germinate, burst and swell, sending a root down and a shoot up and then the dry, dead earth comes to life. That is God�s mercy. He does the same with human beings.�

In the Qur�an it reads like this, "O men, call to mind the favor of Allah to you. Is there any creator besides Allah, who provides for you from the heavens and the earth? There is no God but He. How are you then turned away?"

God asks a question, because after he sends warning, the people are turned away from that warning, but out of His grace. He raises someone to turn you back. And if you reject that one, He gives you time and then He shows you in His signs that he is with the one that He has chosen.

And when you become so dark in the heart, due to envy, that envy produces hatred and hatred produces murder and the Grace of God is sought out to be murdered, then God removes His Grace and brings down His wrath on the people.

I respectfully say to you that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said to us, "Let Israel serve as a lesson for us Black people in America." Why?

Look at the Jews. They say that they are the chosen of God. If you look in the Qur�an, in Surah two, and throughout the Qur�an, God brought them favor after favor and grace after grace. After He guided them, they turned back. Then He turned mercifully to them and guided them and raised them back up; and then they turned back again. Then, He turned mercifully to them and raised them up and, finally, He turned them to that which they turned themselves and His wrath came down upon the people.

Brothers and Sisters, Allah saw our condition. The condition of Black people in America is not a good condition. No one in this audience can argue with us that white people didn�t bring us here to make us citizens. No one in this audience can argue and say that white people have treated us fairly. At this very moment, there is no justice in them for us as a people.

Would God see us, the original people of the earth, in this shameful condition and not be merciful to us?

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