Many of us are losing daily, hourly. We’re losing self-respect, self-worth. We’re losing our minds, we’re losing our families. We’re losing our loved ones. This loss is to bring grief upon the community that we may reflect again on The Time and act according to The Time.
Grammatical Correctness in Language
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was not known as an English-language “scholar”; some say he didn’t speak well, but I was with him one day and he taught me a very profound English lesson.
In The Problem Book of The Supreme Wisdom Lessons, which details the condition of Black people in a mathematical way, we are told to put our Mathematical Theology to work to secure benefit for ourselves, which are money, luxury, good homes and friendship in all walks of life. We are also told that if we don’t speak the Language well, we will not be successful.
Every discipline has its language, every skill has its language, and if we do not speak the language of our discipline or our skill well, we are not successful in communicating. Every time, every era has a language that is peculiar to that time. If you do not speak The Language of The Time, then you are not communicating properly, and you will not be successful. So in sitting with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad one morning, he said, “Brother, the English language basically is not spoken well when you speak and do not use grammatical correctness.”
In grammar, there must be subject and verb agreement: if the subject is in the present, then the verb, or the action, must be in the present, otherwise you don’t have subject and verb agreement. You are not speaking grammatically correct, and it impairs your success. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that as you use language to communicate your ideas, communicate your thoughts, you must speak in a way that your words, your thoughts, your ideas are clearly perceived by the one or ones to whom you are speaking. The less possibility there is for misunderstanding what you’re trying to communicate, the better it is that people will understand us.
What was Elijah Muhammad saying? The verb in the grammatical construction of the language represents the action; in other words, the “tense.” The word “tense” here means: Is it Present? Is it Past? Is it Future? Is it Present Perfect? Is it Past Perfect? Or, is it Future Perfect? These are the different tenses that you understand if you’ve studied grammar. But if you haven’t studied grammar, don’t worry about it; we’ll break it right down.
Look at the sentence “I am here”–the subject “I” is in Present tense because the verb “am” (be) is in Present tense. However, if I said: “I was here and I am here,” I would not be speaking grammatically correct. So what is Elijah Muhammad saying? If you and I live in The Present, our Action should be Present Tense. But if our actions belong to a Time gone by, then we are in the present, acting out the past–there is no “subject and verb agreement,” therefore we are not communicating properly and we are not speaking correctly. And when there is a lack of communication, there is a breakdown in social relationship.
The word “tense” has to do with time. When we are “out of time,” we increase t-e-n-s-ion (tension). When we increase tension because we are out of step with time, then we increase stress. And where there is tension and stress in our relationship because we are out of step with time, there is a cleavage (definition: “the act of a division or split”) apart, rather than a cleavage together.
“By the time, surely man is in loss. …” so Time is The Criteria. You are not a “slave,” but if your actions reflect slave mentality, then you’re not communicating properly and you begin to lose. If slavery was over, according to White folks words, with the “Emancipation Proclamation,” and we today in The Present are still looking to the Caucasian to provide us with our necessities of life, food, clothing, shelter, employment, education, then that action that we are involved in is an action that belongs to the past, to an era gone by.
You are in the present, but your actions are not proper; therefore, you are communicating well with the Caucasian, but you are not communicating well with one another because you are not speaking well.
Become Servants of Righteousness, not Sin
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said to us that it was divinely prophesied that we would serve America 400 years. We bear witness the 400 years of our servitude to America is up, and if it is up, we must adopt an action that corresponds to the time. If the Scripture teaches we will go into bondage to serve Satan and follow the path of sin and iniquity, and The Time given to Satan’s rule is up and The Time given to our service of Satan and sin and iniquity is up, then The Time demands another action: We must stop serving Satan and start serving The Lord of The Worlds.
We must stop being servants of sin and we must start serving ourselves in righteousness.
Now does that seem so strange or farfetched? If we have run out of the time given to evil to hold sway over the people, and the evil is steadily losing, how can we come into our own, following an out-of-date activity? Evil is an out-of-date activity because it will not permit us to communicate properly to one another. We cannot do evil to one another and communicate to one another. The Time given to evil is over, so doing evil will not bring results, it will bring deterioration, loss, ruin, disgrace and death. If our actions can be judged as evil, and we are out of The Time given to evil, then we are not communicating correctly.
Either we’ve got to go out with the evil world, or we’ve got to change our actions to be in harmony with The World of Righteousness that is coming in.
Now, God has not sentenced you and me to death, God has sentenced to death The Wicked–but we are practicing wickedness. The longer we persist in the practice of evil, the more the fate of the wicked becomes our fate. If God’s Truth and Righteousness condemns something that we are practicing, though we like it, we’ve got to give it up. We may like evil deeds, but if The Word of God in The Time of Right condemns the action that belongs to the old world and to the past, then we have got to make up our minds to correct our conduct by The Standard of Time.
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