by Master Elijah Muhammad

        In these days and times we are living, we’d better not look at the clock as much as we
look at our feet, to see if they are prepared to run. I don’t want you to be like the people of
Noah, Lot or like the slowness of Israel in getting out of Egypt. They had to go around that
night and put up a blood sign over the door to warn them to flee. We’re up 4,000 years from
that time. We should have more knowledge and wisdom to do a better job.

       With the world of Christianity crumbling under your feet, and falling out of the sky and
falling on the battle field of nations, if you cannot wake up and get prepared to fly for self
what will wake you to flying to yourselves if the time we’re living in will not awaken you? I
don’t know what could come.

       The Holy Qur’an teaches us to fly for refuge in Allah. We can try playing with this
warning like the people of Noah, like the people of Lot, but we will meet with grave
consequences. Let us try to shun all of the mishaps that we possibly can. We want to build
for self. You say “We’re going to be destroyed. The cities of the nations are going to be
shaken from their foundation,” that’s right, but if you look in the book, you will find that it’s
prophesied that you must rise up and rebuild the wasted cities. You have it there. If we got
to rebuild the wasted cities, let us go practice now how to build for ourselves. You cannot
boast that you have your own if you don’t know how to build and master your own.

       We cannot get together haphazardly. We cannot get together hating one brother and
loving another. We’ve got to wholly love all the brothers. I cannot give you Reverends too
much sympathy, because the church is what we want to destroy. Christianity is our slave
master’s. Just remember that. It’s our slave master’s. It is the tool which the slave masters
handed over to us when he considered himself freeing us. He gave you something to enslave
your brains. That is where you are tied up at; it’s in your brains, from the slave master. You
boast and fight for Christianity more than the founder of Christianity. They have just about
given up. They know they’re fighting a losing battle.

       Allah will remove the modern made religion called Christianity. The very foundation of
that religion is murder. Take a look at the cross. It’s the sign of a murder. If you will follow
a murderer for life, what life could he give you if he’s a murderer? He put up his sign for you
and I to worship. If we’re going to worship a sign of a murderer or worship a murderer, then
what are we looking for? Death. We are looking for death.

      Oh Reverend, it’s a shame that he deceived you like this. I’m not coming to make fun of
you, but I’m coming here to make you wise to the murderer. It’s up to you to believe it or let
it alone. He says to you and me that, “I’ve taken Jesus and I killed him. I’ve hung him up on a
cross. Now nigger, come on and worship it, because I’m going to do you the same way.” He’s
doing it. I don’t want to argue with you. I just want to tell you outright that you see any man
or woman worshipping the cross, calling it the sign that leads them to their salvation, they
should be taken and put in the insane asylum. That’s no sign of life, that’s a sign of death.
See how far you’re off? You are off from the knowledge of what you are given.

       If a man gives you that cross and then tells you that you’re following Jesus to Heaven,
you ought to bust his face open. The enemy has molded you into death. “My church, my
denomination…,” Your church is hell and your denomination is hell. They do not have any
respect over in that church for the members, nor anyone that will visit. Fight back, they
hung you on trees. They say they hung Jesus on the tree. You should be clear on this,
because they do hang you. “Be like Jesus,” he says. Ask him, “for what? For you to hang me
and nail me to the cross like you did him?” But, no. He has made you love death and worship
the murderer. When you tell him about us, “Are you one of them?” That’s what he will say, or
“You done left the church?” You should not have never been in it. Oh, slave house with a
cross, a sign of imprisonment, suffering and finally death. The church now is getting hungry.

       The Muslim is getting fat. That’s right. You have the Bible; wherein, it teaches you that, but
you didn’t know who it was talking about. “We shall eat, but ye shall be hungry.” Christians,
I’m so sorry for you. The worst of all, Christianity leads you to seek a Heaven in the sky, off
the earth, where are your food and clothes, at, where is your shelter at. They teach you to
look in the sky for yours. Tell him, “I’m already sheltered by that canopy, I don’t need to pray
to go to it, it was built for our service.”

        What can you do with his religion, to aid you, in getting for yourself that which he has
gotten of this Earth for himself, which is good homes, money, friendship. How are you going
to get it now, when the trumpet of life is sounding and it doesn’t carry a cross. It’s against
the cross. It has come to destroy the cross. This is exactly what Islam is here for, to give you
a sign that is worthwhile. Look at our sign, the Sun, Moon and Star. It corresponds with what
you live under daily and nightly. Your sign, the cross, corresponds with that which we find
over in the grave. There are so many graves expensively built, and putting a cross on it.

        Have you ever studied the cross? If the cross means that we are at crossroads with each
other, that’s right. That means that the cross is at the cross roads with the Crescent; yet, the
cross cannot get along without our Crescent. They must have the Sun, Moon and Star. If you
remove that away from them, they all will go crazy at once. Remove that cross from us and
we’ll all be free at once. It was made to enslave people. That’s the sign of physical
enslavement and death. That’s the cross you’ve been deceived to follow.

       You follow Jesus. “He was hung on a cross” they say. He was not hung on the cross.
Allah told me that he made a cross out of himself. He stretched forth his hands like that of a
cross and let the deputy Sherriff stab him to death very quickly through his heart. He didn’t
die on the cross. The deputy sheriff that was sent out after him, he wanted to make a quick
death of it, because he did not see where he was guilty of the crime laid against him. So he
told him, “If you let me kill you I will kill you so quick you’ll never feel it, then I’ll get twice
the reward for you since you know you’re going to die and you came for that purpose. I will
kill you so quick that you will never feel it.” And he did so. He plunged his sharp knife
through his heart and the man was dead instantly. Well, if I die I hope I die the death of a
Muslim.

[Excerpt from Theology of Time lecture series]