“The man who might have changed the course of world history”-

By Herbert W. Armstrong, 'THE PLAIN TRUTH' December 1973

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HISTORIAL FACTS

The Sons of Solomon – Days of Emperor and Clown

The bar of the Addis Ababa Hilton hotel, built in 1969, is lighted by a stained-glass window. It is a fine work of art by a contemporary Ethiopian artist which tells, in neoprimitive panels that would do credit to Chartres, the story of the Queen of Sheba. The black queen and her attendance visit Jerusalem; they are received by King Solomon. They return to their homeland. The queen gives birth to a son, who is the ancestor of the present ruler of Ethiopia.

For the emperors are of the House of David. The fact is written into the Constitution of 1955: “The imperial dignity shall remain perpetually attached… to the line which descends without interruption from…the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon of Jerusalem.” It is very much a living force in Ethiopian life. In a culture where art counts heavily, where painters abound, it is a favourite theme. The artist of the Hilton’s stained glass worked in traditional forms, but much of Ethiopian painting today is extremely advanced. Abstract expressionists, whose technique certainly owes nothing to tradition, are quite as attached by the Sheba story as the painter of liturgical icons. And much inner logic is thus revealed; for Ethiopia is an Old Testament land, were the Song of Songs and the Ten Commandments are a living lyric and a living law and where the sons of Solomon are kings and prophets still.

This is the key to all that has happened there for the last two thousand years. Ethiopia is Canaan in the age of transistor. Its sovereign is the Conquering Lion of Judah. The genealogy is inscrutable and, from the literal-minded standpoint of western scholars, legendary. But as myths frequently are, it is important; it not only has a visible immediacy in Ethiopian life, but it also stands for two undoubted realities. Ethiopia is a land of Judaic origins – its present language and liturgy palpably reveal them. And while skeptical strangers may doubt that David is literally among his ancestors, Haile Sellassie is the son of a dynasty that can be traced back for fifteen hundred years with at least as much confidence as Elizabeth II’s ancestry can be traced to Edward the Confessor in the eleventh century.

Ethiopia’s civilization is the only one from the era of the Roman Empire that survived into modern times with unbroken political continuity or with substantial resemblance to its classical state. It survived owing to isolation almost as complete as Japan’s. The society that Menelek II, in the late nineteenth century hurriedly organized into the likeness of a European state was, and is, as surprising a relic of the ancient world as would be a Peru or a Mexico whose language, sovereignty, religion, and national consciousness were still in all important respects Incan or Aztec, untouched by alien rule.
The old civilization subsists in the mountains, the home of the dominant peoples of modern, as of ancient, Ethiopia. The modern territory, reaching a thousand miles from the Red Sea in the north to Kenya in the south, and a like distance from its border with the upper Sudan in the west almost to the Indian Ocean in the east, includes (but in no way coincides with) the much smaller heartland. The political frontiers were made in living memory. In ancient times, the bounds of Ethiopian rule were fluctuating and uncertain. Our knowledge of them comes from the accounts of travelers, and the place names they give are often unidentifiable. At times, the rule of the Lions of Judah reached much farther than that of their modern successors; at the other times it was confined to a province or two in the northern and central parts of the modern empire. When Ethiopia re-entered the European world a century ago, its vague limits enclosed an area less than a third of the present state.

The modern empire of Ethiopia is a very complex tapestry of races, languages, religions, and cultures. The official religion is Christian and the official language is Amharic, but probably fewer than half the people practice the one or speak the other. There are millions of Gallas and Somalis-peoples of related ethnic origins, some of them Christian but more often Moslem, and some of them pagan. There are Arabs in the east, and in the west Negroes, both Moslem although ethnically entirely different from one another. And each of the main groups is infinitely subdivided and mixed. No census has ever been taken; an ethnic census, let alone an ethnic history, of the peoples of the Ethiopian empire would be not only intricate but also impossible; statistics do not figure largely in Ethiopian ways of doing things. There was no adequate map of Ethiopia until the air age, and even now the business of map making is not complete. But in the highlands the living past, the ancient continuity, the long Amharic tradition, is palpable. The tourist can see it everywhere – in the churches as in the Hilton bar.

Topography explains it. The terrain is as strange as any in the world. The physical facts can be read on a relief map: a vast highland running north and south, more than five hundred miles long and about half as wide, rising up to fourteen thousand feet, surrounded by low-lying deserts, on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to the north and east and in the valley of the White Nile to the west. But no map can give the slightest indication of the reality. In the north the plateau rises in a few miles from sea level to eight thousand feet. And when the summit is reached, wonder at the change from desert to cool forests and rolling fields is lost in greater wonder at the huge peaks and valleys. The highland represents the most gigantic piece of erosion in the world, cut by innumerable gorges and valleys, many of them on the scale of the Grand Canyon. On spurs and mesas that rise from the canyons, even when their sides are vertical and their surfaces a few acres, there are fields and sometimes villages and churches. The landscape is sometimes lunar and sometimes infernal, but it is never merely earthly.

Topography has imposed, and still imposes, isolation and with it timelessness. There are some roads now, and Ethiopian Airlines efficiently connects the centers of population. But there are still many Ethiopians who live beyond the reach of any communication with the outside world except by foot or donkey, and their village life has changed in no detail from that of a thousand years ago. Until the last century, when the first continuous contacts with Europe began, what is now true of much of the country was true of all of it. The process of “opening up” the Ethiopian highlands has been uneven, as it has been incomplete; it is said that the first wheels that many Ethiopian countrymen ever saw were on airplanes, and while this may not be literally true, it accurately suggests the unsettling juxtaposition of the Neolithic and jet ages that the huge scale of the jagged land has bequeathed to Haile Sellassie’s empire.

There are other peculiarities of Ethiopian territory that have determined its past and baffle those who would shape its future. It is, at least in many places throughout the plateau, fertile and rich in natural pasturage. The society that developed there and subsisted in remarkably static form for several thousand years was pastoral and, until recently, partly nomadic. In the early seventeenth century a Portuguese Jesuit traveler noted that in the province of Gojam, in the highlands, cows meant wealth; they were driven from one pasture to another, their tribal owners practicing no agriculture and having no fixed home.

The tendency to use the land, rather than cultivate it beyond the point absolutely necessary for survival, persists, and with a growing population of people and animals, particularly the omniverous goats, a rich country, by reason of its very richness, has been turned into a poor one. And it is poor in other ways important in the twentieth century: apparently Ethiopia is almost devoid of mineral resources. Except for a little potash and a little gold, the sorts of raw materials that have attracted conquerors and supported modern economics are, so far as anyone yet knows, almost wholly absent. So far, nobody has found any oil.

But if today poverty preoccupies the baffled experts in economic development, it is elevation, and the isolation associated with it, that has been the most dramatic force in Ethiopian history. It has set the inhabitants of the highlands off from their neighbours in the rest of Africa and in Arabia. It saved them from successful invasion for thousands of years, until the Italians came with their road builders and their airplanes. Alan Moorehead has observed the ecological fact that became the decisive strategic fact in Ethiopian history: Moslem invaders from the lowland deserts found, when they tried to assault the infidel stronghold in the mountains, that their camels, the militarily indispensable means of transport, staggered and died on the high, cool plateau. There were many expeditions indeed, and many of them were partly successful, but there always remained some part of the plateau that was inviolate. Christianity and with it the Ethiopian state survived, surrounded by the Moslem world.

Ethiopia not only was the one place in Africa and western Asia where the ancient Christian church survived unconquered by the Moslem; it was also the place where Judaism survived. Visitors today are taken to see Jewish villages in the highlands, their physical human aspects indistinguishable from the surrounding Christian villages except that there is a synagogue instead of a church and the pottery is decorated with the Star of David. These are the falashas, who have tranquilly practiced their Jewish faith for several thousand years, unconquered by Moslems, undisturbed by Christians. They are the only Jews in the world whose ancestors were not touched by the Diaspora. There is no more startling testimony to the powerful conservative effect that the mountain ramparts have provided.

The highlands, sensational in their scenery, are highly salubrious. The ills of the desert and the jungle do not beset the inhabitants of the plateau. These are the people known as Amharas, or, in European usage, Abyssinians, entirely different from the other peoples of Africa and from their fellow citizens who surround them on the deserts and lowlands and the escarpment of the plateau. They are, for a people largely unserved by modern medicine, healthy and long-lived, and handsome, tough and vigorous. They form a very distinct group, usually readily distinguishable by appearance from the multitudinous types of other Africans: they tend to be very tall and very slender, with wiry bodies and thin but muscular limbs. Their faces are rectangular, with narrow thin noses and straight mouths, looking often like classical statutes or wall drawings from ancient Egypt. Geography has divided them among themselves, as it has separated them from their neighbours: communications are so difficult that frequently provincial divisions have almost, although not quite, destroyed the central government and reduced the empire to a chaos of warring chieftains. But the unifying force of the plateau has been stronger than the divisive forces of the gorges and mountains. The Amharas became, and long remained, the only nation aware of itself as a nation, in the western sense, in black Africa. They are by origin very mixed. Long before the Christian era one of the Hamitic groups, living in the high country west of the Red Sea, was conquered by Semites from Asia across the straits. At the time of conquest or soon after these Semites had been converted to Judaism and brought Jewish religion and culture with them to Africa. The prophets of the Old Testament came, and they stayed.

The mixture of Hamite and Semite produced the language called Geez, and a flourishing civilization and empire whose seat was at Axum, a town in the modern province of Tigre in northern Ethiopia, whose splendor and sophistication rivaled ancient Rome’s. Axum is the Rome of Ethiopia, and Geez’s linguistic place has striking similarity to that of Latin in modern Europe. The languages of modern Ethiopia include two major ones, Amharic and Tigrine, along with many dialects, all descended from Geez in much the way that French and Italian are descended from Latin. Geez is the language of the Church. Like Rome, Axum had in the first millennium of the Christian era a wide empire which bequeathed to the twentieth century not only language but law and a strong cultural traditional. It was converted to Christianity in the same century, the fourth that saw Constantine’s conversion, and Constantine himself proclaimed the legal equality of the citizens of Axum with those of Rome. Like Rome, the empire began to decline and fell on evil days in second half of the millennium, beset by similar internal troubles and by the same vigorous and hostile competitor, Islam. The Roman Empire governed then from Byzantium, maintained a brilliant though gradually fading existence for a thousand years after the old capital in Italy had fallen to barbarian hands, but it finally collapsed in division and decay and disappeared in 1453. Ethiopia, similarly isolated in its mountains, underwent a comparable devolution, but its core survived.

Compared to Rome, little is known of Axum in its days of greatness or of the later empire in its days of decadence and isolation, but there are artifacts to indicate the milestones. Coins record the conversion as the cross appears on them in Ezana’s reign and shows that he bore, like Haile Sellassie, the title of King of Kings. In the remains of great palaces, on huge stones in the deep, dark cellars, Christian crosses are carved, stunning evidence of an uninterrupted continuity with churches built fifteen hundred years afterward. The most famous and conspicuous monuments of Axum are the steles, startling monoliths. The largest of them is sixty feet tall and is carved to resemble a tower, with outlines of doors and windows cut into it. There are many others; a little distance from the village, there is a field of them, slender, white, upright stones ten or twenty feet high, rising among the corn tilled by modern farmers. It is one of the most striking sights in Ethiopia.

Not much is known about the cult the steles represented, but the remains have exerted a strong fascination for the Ethiopians. They identify them with the civilization of ancient Sheba. (Axum is today their Holy City). The imperial regalia are kept there, and the emperors are crowned on an ancient, crude stone seat in the shadow of the tallest stele. It is the most tangible of the numerous tokens of a very long-lived continuity.

The isolation of Ethiopia, singularly complete, was the result of two historical forces that complemented geography and lasted in all-important ways until the second half of the nineteenth century, with one curious interruption. The two forces were Christian heresy and the might of Islam. Early Christianity was both flexible and factious. Its doctrines were inchoate: only gradually were the definitions of orthodoxy achieved and accepted. One of the great issues of Christian doctrine was, as it still is, the conflict about the Trinity. It is a difficult doctrine, which conceives a single God in three Persons, one of whom shares the attributes of humanity while remaining divine. Some modern western Christians, like the Unitarians, simply refuse to accept the complexities of the Trinity and insist that Christ was wholly human. Fifteen hundred years ago the same difficulties led to an opposite belief: that Christ was wholly divine. This view was rejected by the Council of Christianity at Chalcedon in 451, but some of the most important Christian provinces persisted in the heresy. They included Egypt and the provinces bordering it, including Ethiopia. The dissenting church came to be called, by westerners, Coptic; a word some scholars say is a European corruption of the word “Egyptic”. The obstacles to contact with the rest of Christendom, never quite total, were enormous.

Islam was to be an even more formidable barrier isolating Ethiopia. Moslem power extended over most of Arabia; it engulfed and destroyed the Jewish and Christian civilization there and crossed the Red Sea into territories near Ethiopia. In the year 642 Egypt fell to the Moslem conquerors, and Ethiopia was divided from the rest of Christendom, confined, without access to the sea, by its highland ramparts….

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“Thy Kingdom Come’ – Catch a Fire

Word of the late governor’s strange boy Ras Makonnen spread rapidly but discreetly through the network of liqe kahnat (chief priests) in the provinces, and it is said that they arranged several secret meetings with him to question and perhaps catch him in what they supposed might be blasphemous mischief or pagan magic.

At one of these meetings the boy is said to have made it plain that he was well acquainted with the rare manuscripts of Abba Aragawi and the other Coptic monks known as the ‘Nine Saints’, who entered Ethiopia in 480 A.D. and founded the first monasteries in Tigre province. He also revealed that he was acquainted with the occult applications of Urim and Thummim and the mezuzah, as well as the use of the magic words gematria and notarikon in Egyptian necromancy and also of the magical names Adonay, El and Elohe. He exhibited familiarity with the cabbalistic doctrines, the writings of Gilgamesh, the pagan rituals surrounding the worship of Isis, of the serpent Arwe, and of the Abyssinian gods of Earth (Meder), Sea (Beher) and War (Mahrem), as well as the arcana of astrology and numerology. But most importantly, Tafari exhibited to the priests his understanding of the central messages in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Egyptian Book of Two Ways.

In the ancient Egyptian, or Coptic language, the word for magician meant ‘scribe of the House of Life’. Men so styled were known as kindly wise men, not evil tricksters, and the requests for spells to ward off malevolence that people sought from them were a facet of everyday existence. However, there were several formal ritual that were reserved for ceremonies of the utmost seriousness, among them the Heb-Sed Festival, in which, after he had reigned for thirty years, the pharaoh would travel to Sakkarah, some thirty miles from the Great Pyramid. There, in a holy place flanked by immense monuments, the aged pharaoh would run, jump, wrestle, dance and become miraculously rejuvenated, newly endowed with the vigor of an adolescent. There was also the ritual known as the ‘Breaking of the Red jars,’ in which red clay bowls from Thebes and human figurines fashioned in Sakkarah were smashed in meticulous sequence to repel or destroy the ruler’s enemies.

These rituals were performed under the supervision of senior Coptic magicians, the very same order of men who were once bidden by the pharaoh to match their sorcery with Moses and Aaron in a contest of enchantment, to determine whether or not they were actually speaking with the authority of God’s Word in demanding that the Egyptians let the Israelites go free. For the Egyptians believed that with the proper sequence of rites and incantations performed in the House of Life, there was no limit to the magical possibilities.

At the core of the conjury was the Word. To say or write the proper word was to make it so. Names, of course, were of the utmost significance in ancient Egypt. All Egyptians had many different names, only one of which was their real name – and, if possible, this was never revealed to anyone. Spells could only be effective, no matter how artfully crafted, if they were cast against a person under his true name. It was said of a man as powerful as the pharaoh that ‘even his mother does not know his name’.

No one, Tafari told the priests, knew his true name. At one point, an old abmnet (abbot) allegedly asked to examine Tafari’s palms. He saw that there were stigmata there, and that the lifeline circled back upon itself in an emblem of infinity. Tafari whispered a word in the abbot’s ear and all colour drained from the old man’s face. He left the room, apparently in shock, refusing to return or to speak with his colleagues.

Tafari concluded his final session with these scholars and holy men by recounting, as vividly as if he had witnessed the events himself, the story of how King Solomon of Jerusalem had come to know and woo Queen Makeda of Sheba. For uncounted hours, or so it is maintained, the holy men listened with rapt attention, astounded by the young boy’s intimate familiarity with these ancient events, without the slightest interruption on their part.

The boy spoke slowly, careful not to skip over any details, whether it concerned the aspect of a sunrise on a give day and the weather that followed, the architecture and interior design of the palaces and the squalor of slaves’ hovels, the stinging, chafing dust in the city streets and the heat waves shimmering up from the vast desert basins in the late afternoon, or the dress, speech, manner and even diet of one of the venerable figures who appeared in his narrative. Descriptions of emotions were handled with particular respect, the complexities of various key events were unhurriedly unraveled, and all of it was deftly woven into a tapestry of utterly arresting discourse.

Tafari explained that the ravishing and wealthy Queen Makeda had learned of the great King Solomon from the Ethiopian merchant prince Tamrin, who owned almost four hundred ships and caravans numbering five hundred camels. After returning from a trading voyage to Jerusalem, where he had delivered large quantities of ebony, red gold and sapphires to the Hebrew king, Tamrin told Makeda of his majestic temple and palace, and of his goodness and righteousness as a judge over his subjects.

Enthralled, Makeda decided she must visit the great king and set out, Tamrin acting as her captain, with a caravan of eight hundred camels, innumerable attendants and a massive baggage train. Upon her arrival in Jerusalem, she was welcomed into the palace by Solomon, who overwhelmed her with his hospitality and enlightened her with his wisdom. Solomon persuaded her to turn away from the worship of the sun and Makeda became a follower of the one true God, the God of Israel, He Whose Name Should Not Be Spoken.

At length, the virgin queen announced her desire to take all that she had learned back to her own people, but Solomon, feeling amorous toward Makeda, persuaded her to linger another season to ‘complete her instruction in wisdom’. On her last night in her palace, there was a farewell banquet of nprecedented splendor, after which Solomon requested to lie with her. She declined, entreating that he swear not to take her by force. He complied, on the stipulation that she takes nothing more from him on that night. She agreed, and so Solomon satisfied himself with her slave. But during the night, she arose to get a drink of water from the cistern in the sleeping chamber, and Solomon, who had been feigning sleep in order to observe her, insisted she had broken her oath by taking such a precious substance in so dry a land. Thus, she had no choice but to submit to his lust.

The following morning, Solomon gave her a ring upon which was engraved the seal of the Lion of Judah, instructing her to give it to her firstborn male child, and then to send the boy to him for his education when he came of age. During the long journey back to Ethiopia, Makeda gave birth to a boy she named Ebna Hakim, meaning ‘son of the wise man’.

Growing up in Sheba, Ebna was continually teased by his companions because of his illegitimate birth. By the time he reached his teens he could endure no more ridicule and mortification. Angry and confused, he summoned the courage he had previously lacked and questioned his mother about his unknown father. Pleased, she told him of Solomon, producing the ring for him.Elegant in its bold simplicity, it was unlike any that Ebna had ever seen. Initially he resisted when Makeda sought to slip it on his finger, but he eventually accepted the ring and put it on. Its effect on him was unsettling, as if a surge of jagged, burning energy were suddenly coursing through him. Embarrassed that his mother could see him so discomfited, he tried to curb his anxiety, but the turmoil in his spirit would not be assuaged, and his hand was shaking furiously as he fumbled to pull off the ring. Light-headed and perspiring heavily, he held it out to Makeda, but she refuse to take it back. It is a man’s ring and a king’s gift, she told her son, and then she send him to his father to study.

When Ebna presented himself before the king, he was rebuffed at first, much to his chagrin and astonishment, since Solomon believed him to be an impostor. ‘I will know my son’, he thundered, ‘by the ring he wears!’ Ashamed, Ebna produced the ring, and his father’s anger gave way to sorrow. ‘You are fearful of its power,’ said Solomon, ‘yet its power comes from you. You must learn to embrace your destiny.’

Ebna spent many happy years in Solomon’s court but eventually decided to return to ‘ the mountains of his mother’s land.’ The king, disappointed that he would not be his successor (since Solomon’s eldest son, Rehoboam, was rather frivolous-minded), permitted him to go on the condition that he take withhim the most erudite sons of his personal counselors to teach the Hebrew Law in Ethiopia. Ebna was agreeable to this, but the counselors and their sons objected, and believing they would be beyond the reach of God’s special grace and protection if they left Israel.

Enraged by their impudence, Solomon placed the counselors’ sons under a sacred ban. They capitulated but plotted vengeance. Azarias (also known as Eleazar), son of the high priest Zadok, (Ezekiel 44: 15) hatched a plot to steal the Ark of the Covenant and take it clandestinely to Ethiopia to ensure Jehovah’s proximity. The plan was carried out without Ebna’s knowledge.

When Solomon realized what had taken place, he sent his cavalry to overtake the caravan, but Jehovah, displeased with Solomon’s debauchery and his vanities, befuddled the king’s horsemen and caused the travelers to move so swiftly that they arrived at their destination months ahead of schedule.
Thus, the Ark found a new, permanent home in Ethiopia, with Jehovah’s blessing, Tafari explained to the priests at the close of his monologue, and Ebna, wearing Solomon’s ring upon his finger, became Emperor, taking the name Menelik.

At first humbled by the force and the beauty of Tafari’s recital, the priests gradually grew jealous and greatly suspicious of the wealth of uncanny detail th which the youth had embellished the biblical stories. They demanded to know the sources of his information. Instead of replying to the question, Tafari addressed a monk who had served in the Cathedral of Azum, where the Ark is kept. Tafari described to him in hushed tones the kedusta kedussan, the Holy of Holies or inner sanctum where the tabbot – the Ark – is kept, and then recited various inscriptions written upon it. Close to fainting with the shock of what Tafari was disclosing, the monk is said to have covered his ears to shut out these blasphemous revelations, and he and the rest of the priests hurriedly dispersed.

Later, they made a solemn pact among themselves to do everything within their means to keep the young Tafari from ever gaining power in the land. He was too dangerous, dangerous beyond belief….

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Haile Selassie’s Visit to Jamaica: April 21st – 24th, 1966

On the Thursday afternoon of April 21, 1966 Emperor Haile Selassie touched Jamaican soil for the first time. And there was not a sector of the society missing from the welcome party which was on hand at the Norman Manley Airport (Palisadoes as it was then). It was a time of history making for the Rastafarians who worship him as a god – The King of Kings, The Lion of Judah was here on a three day state visit.

When the plane landed, Rastafarians rushed onto the tarmac with enthusiasm as they eagerly waited to get their first glimpse of the man who had transformed their lives. The Emperor stood on the steps of the Ethiopian airline which had just brought him from Trinidad and Tobago, his emotions stirring as he absorbed the warm reception that he was being given by the Jamaican people. And he wept.

There were flags, robes, regalia; and when the Emperor and his entourage left the airport there were the smiling faces of welcome along the royal route.
During the visit the Emperor addressed the members of both Houses of Parliament. At special function held at the University of the West Indies, the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred on him.

JLP spokesman, Senator Hector Wynter, recalls last year that as liaison officer to the acting P.M. Donald Sangster he was responsible for the arrangements for the Emperor’s visit. On one occasion at King’s House, just before the Emperor met some 30 Rastafarian leaders, Senator Wynter asked Selassie through his interpreter to tell the Rastafarians that he is not God. To this the Emperor replied: “Who am I to interfere with their beliefs.”

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How Did The Visit Affect Jamaicans?

It has been said that there was significant decline in the number of persons who held strong beliefs in the Rastafarian faith. Many dreadlocks were disappointed that Haile Selassie looked normal and quite simple, and he did not have hair that touched the ground. There are those who still believe, however, that he was the greatest man to have visited Jamaica and that Jamaica will never again see such a day as the day Emperor Selassie came.

Members of the Ethiopian World Freedom Charter comment that this was the only time that there has been such a gathering in Jamaica where peace and order maintained through very little effort, and hold steadfast the view that Haile Selassie is the Eternal God whom they shall worship forever.
Haile Selassie’s visit however added something positive to Jamaica. On behalf of the people of his country he donated a Secondary School named in his honour.

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Has Africa Truly Honoured Emperor Haile Sellassie I?

TO: The Honourable Salim Ahmid Salim,
The Secretary General,
The Organisation of Africa Unity,
P.O.B. 3243
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Blessed Love and Greetings Hon Secretariat:
I write, to the distinguish Heads of State or their Representative of the Organisation of Africa Unity (O.A.U.) of our beloved and free Africa, proclaiming firstly my blessed greetings to you all in the Name of the Father, The Son, and The Holy One of Creation as it was in the beginning is now and forever shall be, a world without end, Selah. Glory be always unto our Blessed Trinity who have enabled me to write unto you this day.

It is with a heart full of deep concern that I present this letter to you expressing a few issues of concern pertaining to the total liberation of all Africans both at home and abroad. In the Words of our Beloved Emperor, H.I.M. Haile Sellassie, the first, “Until all Africans are free none is truly free…” Our unity is indeed Our Strength and our strength is wholely dependent on our collectiveness, in mind and actions….

Regretably, I have not heard any recent development(s) by this Organization concerning the agitation for Repatriation and Reparations for all Africans for the injustice of over four (400) hundred years of slavery. It is this ignorance that I seek to be enlightened from and is infact my first concern. Does the O.A.U. publish regular bulletins – perhaps by the internet – on recent developments pertaining to this issue or does it have respective Agents(cy) or Public Relation Officers posted throughout the regions where information can be readily obtained? If any of these is so, would I be asking too much for you to write or send me this vital information so I can readily be informed. As a member of a prominent African group of people, it will be most appreciated.

As one of the many African movements within the diaspora, we continue to liberate and heal the minds of black people from the scourge and torture of colonialism. But we need the strength and support of Mother Africa. Years of mere resistance to white supremacy culture will ultimately wear us down, but given the hope and evidence of agitation for International Justice for all black peoples we will continue to resist even for another one hundred years. Still we dearly ask our African leaders how long must we wait for our freedom, redemption, and international repatriation from all slave grounds?! If it was Africa we were captured from, then it is in Africa and only Africa they must set us truly free! It is for this reason that I personally cry out to you. Beloved Leaders of Africa: PLEASE agitate and demand the justice for REPATRIATION before Reparations. Reparations given to Africans outside of Africa is also another INJUSTICE and will only benefit the economies of the colonial world to the detriment of AFRICA. Reparations is an African victory and it is from Africa that all should receive and claim their natural Birthright, as AFRICANS! In short, we who will be repatriated home will be the evidence for the reparations of slavery’s injustice.

Honourable Leaders of Africa I now make my must energetic protest! What is the meaning of this visa and immigration status being branded upon the returning descendants – a policy adopted form American imperialism? What was the cost Africa paid to Europe and the United States for our extortion and abduction? And now we are required to pay back our own ransom price; to pay up the price tab of the cost for mercenary! Is this JUSTICE! Do the Leaders of a new freed Africa know the magnitude of the reparations that are due to us all? How about twenty million pound sterling (£20,000,000.00) with interest accruing from 1834 as a legitimate example. Why just this month Britain began compensation payments to Nazi victim who sent money to Britain for safekeeping during World War II only to have it confiscated. One widow is slated to receive about £21,000 pounds sterling from the £900 pounds sterling deposited by her husband from that time. Imagine that!

What are the odds that third class citizens in Third World countries will likely be able to obtain these immigration fees; the “runaways” who had built the great city of Babylon with our blood, sweat, tears, and hands? Well by the Power of the Holy Trinity and His Grace, with our blood, sweat, tears, and hands some of us will earn and pay the ransom fee! Mother Africa be prepared for the “runaways” are coming home to rebuild the integrity of Africa even with only one eye, one arm, and one leg for we are over four hundred years supremely qualified. We bemoan what has impaired the judgement of our present Leaders – the wine of colonial imperialism. The price for our freedom should never have become a bargaining tool for we were sold into slavery for nought! This is an outrage and a disgrace to humanity. If my statement seems to be quite harsh, it is just the direct reflection of the realities that I am confronted with! Am I wrong?

Beloved Leaders of Africa, do not for once think that we in the diaspora donot know that the struggle for total freedom is a rigorous one. We already have a clear case example here in Jamaica. Given the opportunity to be an honourary member of the O.A.U. in 1966 as presented by H.I.M. Emperor Haile Sellassie, the first, on His visit, Jamaica refused and opted instead to be a servant of America – the O.A.S. The Head of State of the country is its former slave master, the British throne.

Black people have become the servant for all the other races. We know we are locked inside the deadly game of conspiracy here. We also know: that Africa and the whole world will not know peace until true justice is finally served; and that Mother Africa will never receive her full joy until her exiled sons and daughters return home. And only the voice, the united voice of AFRICA can truly free us all.

I must quickly turn to the last issue at hand. Earlier this year TIME Magazine Publications requested nominees for the greatest persons for this century. If we were dealing with a just world, Truth alone will declare such a person! But we are not dealing with a just world are we now. It will be no surprise to us if the white world honour their own. Even the devil honour its own… as the saying goes. They have been honouring their own for the past two thousand years. Why they even went as far as to present Our Lord and Savior to be a white man, deceiving the whole world, just to honour their own….
My truthful nominee is Our Beloved and Sacred Emperor of Ethiopia, H.I.M. Haile Sellassie, the first, - the Founder of the O.A.U; the Father and Deliverer of the New and Free Africa. I have enclosed the letter which I had sent to Time Magazine (i.e. a copy of it) so I need not to elaborate here, but I must ask our beloved Leaders these questions: Where was Africa’s vote when Ethiopia became a member of the League of Nations by the negotiation of Haile Sellassie I (then Ras Tafari Makonnen) in 1923; Where was Africa’s representatives at the Emperor’s coronation infront of the “world” audience in 1930; Where was Africa’s support when Rome began invading Ethiopia at Walwal in 1935; and also as Ethiopia pleaded for justice at the League in 1936, where was Africa’s cry?

It is said that only a freeman can liberate an enslaved one. Hence, it is therefore no surprise but quite fitting that the headquarters of the O.A.U. is located in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.

If this Organization have already learnt of Time Magazine request and have replied or is in the process of replying; or if the O.A.U. has already begun preparing a separate commendation on H.I.M. Haile Sellassie I for His enormous achievements throughout this century, to be presented later on this year, then I am pleading to you, PLEASE could I have this vital information on how to attain this presentation.

But if, and I stress the word IF, the O.A.U. have not yet done any such preparation of commendations for Emperor Haile Sellassie I for His vast accomplishments throughout the world, then I must implore the O.A.U to commence preparations immediately as one of the most sacred and honourable duty that this Organization must do to bestowe upon the Father of Africa and true Prince of Peace, Haile Sellassie I.

History is again being recorded by Europe’s pen. Let not Africa’s history be again entombed of her glorious achievements. Ethiopia and her Sovereign must be the hallmark of Africa’s glory for this century to be preserved for centuries to come. This must be one of Our Sacred duty! This along with the continuous duty of agitation righteously for Repatriation and Reparations.

Do the Leaders of a freed Africa possess the courage, pride, and dignity to honour their own if not for Truth sake; to be enshrined in the pages of history for their integrity and justice that they stood for? Or should our history be condemned to silence again by Europe’s pen? Should the present leaders, the Administrators of Africa’s affairs be bemoaned, belittled, beknowned to be ones who had no courage, who failed even to attempt to preserve Africa’s glorious heritage?

I think not! I pray that the Almighty will give you strength to carry out these Sacred duties even as you all possess the courage to do so; even as He has strengthen me to write you this letter.

I am sending the O.A.U. a very belated gift for Our Liberation Day Celebrations (May 25th) and also for our Emancipation Day Celebration (August 1). I hope you will appreciate these words of inspirations that I had received. I pray that the Almighty will continue to bless and strengthen the O.A.U. so that the benefits of its Charter may one day be truly realized.

This is my second personal letter to the O.A.U. and I am encouraging other organizations to address you on these same matters as we press along for our Freedom, Redemption and International Repatriation.

I am eagerly and earnestly awaiting your early and most encouraging reply.

I remain,
Respectfully and Truthfully Yours,

Prophet GREG

* * * *

Britain pulls off a Rasta Stroke

Newly released secret Government papers have uncovered a bizarre story. They reveal a British Government plan to ask Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia to deny officially that he was a god.The colonial authorities hoped this statement would check the growth of the Rastafarian movement in Jamaica, then still a British colony, which they blamed for the spread of drug-taking and public disorder.

Two successive governors of Jamaica were anxious to attack the Rastas through their belief in the divine status of the Emperor, whose original title of Ras Tafari gave their religion its name. The first was Sir Hugh Foot (later Lord Caradon and brother of British MP Michael Foot). On August 16, 1956, he wrote directly to our ambassador in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, relying a request from the authorities in Montego Bay for ‘a refutation of the claim that Haile Selassie is God’.

Our man is Addis Ababa, Mr. Busk, evidently failed to reply and it was left to Foot’s successor, Sir Kenneth Blackburne, to prod the Foreign Office into action. On June 10, 1959, he wrote a long letter about the Ras Tafari movement to the Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd (whose son became Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Parliamentary Private Secretary).

Blackburne expressed optimistic hopes of getting the Moral Rearmament movement to convert the Rastas. Haile Sellassie did nothing to deny His Divinity. A few years later he paid a state visit to Independent Jamaica – and his plane was besieged on the tarmac by worshipping Rastafarians.

Since 1959 there has been little evidence of Rastas being converted to Moral Rearmament. But an awful lot of Bob Marley records have been sold.

* * * *

Universal Declaration Of Human Rights

On 10 December 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the full text of which appears in the following pages. Following this historic act, the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and “to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories.”

Preamble

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in the fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, therefore, THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims this
UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedom and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.

Article 4
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6
Everyone had the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charges against him.

Articles 11
1. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary of his defence.
2. No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14
1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15
1. Everyone has the right to a nationally.
2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16
1. Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
2. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
3. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17
1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right, includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
2. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21
1. Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
2. Everyone has the right to equal access to public services in his country.
3. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Articles 22
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23
1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for work.
3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and the family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25
1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
2. Motherhood and childhood are entitle to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26
1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27
1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedom set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29
1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
3. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

* * * *

Back of the Book

The first places that are mainly mentioned in the Bible are Cush (Ethiopia), Egypt, Babylonia, and the countries of the Fertile Crescent (Caanan). Therefore the original biblical cultures had to be Afrocentric. Then how is it that Europe has become so presumptuous in spiritual matters?
Whereas Sages appeared in the far east, they were born in the East ….. (Rev. 7:2). Honour your Father and Mother of the race, that your days maybe long upon the land which the Almighty gave to you… (Deut. 32: 7 & 8)

How can Rastafari be labelled as racist when in our enslaved ignorant past many had worship a “white Jeesus;” when all nations have embraced the Defender of our Faith? InI embrace race purity according to the Divine Principle that moves everyone ‘to return to his or her vine and fig tree, as the evils of Discrimination won’t allow different cultures to exist together.’

You cannot colour principle even as the Christ Principle is found in all nations. If therefore I change the skin colour of The Son of the Most High from a white lie to that of the Black Truth and you become very offensive, then you are indeed a racist promoting the evil doctrine of white supremacy; and WOE, WOE, WOE unto you if your skin is black!

The Truth has no friend, no home, no family. It stands alone, yet binds all unto Life Eternal. It is the fullness of the InI (John 17).
It is only Intelligent Beings that reason unto LIFE, for Life was created by INTELLIGENCE. Those without reasoning(s) are programmed to destroy …..

Prophet Greg.

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