The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan: "I often wonder why the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said to me, �Brother, you don�t have to study.� His words frightened me because I know the value of study. But he told me, �Stand up and Allah will speak through you.�

"Some of us are favored by God in that way. This is what sets apart the prophet from the great historian who predicts and prophecies. The prophet does not need to study. It is the gift that God has given the prophet to see beyond what is presently seen. But the historian studies the cyclical nature of history and the cyclical nature of the struggle of the human being to achieve peace and security and fulfillment. As a consequence of that intense study, he can with fairly great exactitude prophesy. But those are rare cases and rare individuals. But for the most part, all of us have to study.

"I close this point with the words of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). He told his followers to seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. Don�t spare to go at any length to gain knowledge, even if you have to travel to far off places for knowledge, for that is what draws us closer to God. The more we know, the more we seek to know; the more we find God and love God and want to please God and be one with God.

"May Allah bless all of the Muslims, whether followers of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad or not, to be humbled enough at heart, to become students. Even those who are considered scholars by the world, those who have gained degrees of scholarship, let not those degrees arrogate to ourselves �that we know.� Let us be humbled enough to continue to study what we think we know. And the more we study, our thoughts will change and grow from what we thought and believe and understood yesterday to that which is closer to the thinking of Allah."

Brother Jabril: "Brother Minister, what is the value of the six written Lessons we were given? Why should we study them?"

Minister Farrakhan: "The value of those Lessons first, cannot be perceived, unless we properly understand who is giving the question and who is giving the answer.

"Once we have an appreciation of the value of Who the Author of the question is, then we can begin to assign greater value to each and every question and by understanding the value of him who was being questioned and the state of mind that he was in at the time of his answer to that question.

"Then we will learn that the questions are deeply profound, in that they stretch our minds from the past to the present into the future. If we start with the study of the answers given by one born to meet the Questioner, born to see and know the Questioner, then his answers have to be the basis of our beginning study of the course that would not just make us Muslims, in the common understanding of the meaning of Muslim, but make us into Gods, the very uncommon understanding of being a Muslim.

"So one must approach the study with deep honor and respect and love for the One Who came; Who studied forty-two years to deliver us; for the One Who broke the circle of the Gods to bring us into equality with those men�these very great scientists. When we begin to look at it in this manner, we can begin to perceive the value of the six Lessons, that Master Fard Muhammad, to Whom praises are due forever left with us, for us."

Brother Jabril Muhammad: "Why were we given, as the first Lesson, these twenty statements, called the �Actual Facts�? Why not real or true facts? Why �Actual Facts� and why should it begin like that? And how does this Lesson, called the �Student Enrollment� enroll us?"

Minister Farrakhan: "I think that Master Fard Muhammad wanted us to always begin our process of study and growth with that which is actual, in the sense of that which is presently real, and that which is true at the time we are studying what we are studying of the subject.

"The cells of the brain, as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us, were/are created by God to think rightly. One cannot think rightly except that the basis of our thought is on the actual or that which is factual. So the student must always search for the real, the truth; the actual facts�the way things are at the moment he or she begins their study.

"Some of those actual facts (in our Lessons) are not actual facts today. �What is the population of the Original Nation in the wilderness of North America and all over the Planet Earth?� �What is the population of the Colored People in the wilderness of North America and all over the Planet Earth?� Those were facts in those days (the early 1930s) but they are not actual facts today.

"So how do you ascertain what is actual today from what was actual yesterday? But we start with those �Actual Facts� to ground us in the time period of Master Fard Muhammad�s manifestation to His servant and from that point, our process of growth begins.

"Now how do we enroll? Well, whenever you go to any course of study, you first must know what it is you want to study. Then you must know who the professor or the teacher is of that course. Then you must go and sign up for such course and gather the materials for such course and then be in attendance in that classroom, so that you can grow in that chosen course.

"The moment we hear the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad two or three times, and we sign that form, we are acknowledging the Headmaster of the school. We are acknowledging the teacher of the course. We are acknowledging what the course is and we do want to sign our name, unfortunately, we were handicapped, so we didn�t know what our real name was but we signed our slave name.

"Then to make sure that we were serious, we had to declare our intention and then we received what can be termed as an entrance exam to complete the process of enrollment. Once we answered the ten questions and answers properly, we were accepted in the classroom as a student of a new Islam.

"These ten questions and answers are the rules of Islam, meaning that, they teach us principles that will guide our study and the application of what we study until we come to the point of graduation.

"May Allah bless us to be serious about our enrollment in this great class with such an illustrious Headmaster and magnificent teacher."

Before we go further, consider this: During all of the years I have interviewed Minister Farrakhan, only once did he have an idea of what I was about to ask him.

Look at the questions. Then think over the fact that his answers have always been immediate, impromptu, or spontaneous, without hesitation! Heavy! Deep!

More next issue, Allah willing.