The Advent of the Fifteenth Century after Hijra — Page 8
is God and may suffer no visible harm. The divine mercy may be pleased to overlook his aberration, inasmuch as such a claim is not likely to mislead or confuse any sensible person. The case is entirely different where a person claims to be the recipient of divine revelation. If his claim is false and he persists in it deliberately, he might become the cause of the error and misguidance of a large number of people. God Almighty has, therefore, set forth in these verses His firm and clear warning that an impostor would not escape His wrath and His chastisement. . Since the time of the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, there have appeared many false claimants of the receipt of divine revelation and in no single instance has any of them escaped the doom that is pronounced in these verses. In every case divine judgment has overtaken the offender and he has been visibly ruined. . Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was the constant recipient of divine revelation over a period well beyond thirty years. The revelation vouchsafed to him carried within itself numberless proofs of its genuineness and truth. It was replete with grand prophecies, spiritual insights, knowledge of things divine hidden and overt, glad tidings and warnings for friend and foe and spiritual guidance at the highest level. . His life was exposed to every hazard. He had been condemned as an infidel, an apostate from Islam. Leading Muslim divines had declared that his assassination would be a highly meritorious act and that whoever compassed his death would thereby prove himself worthy of paradise. Yet not only did he enjoy complete immunity from divine chastisement, which is appointed as the portion of an impostor, he marched from triumph to triumph all through his life and was obviously one who was greatly favoured by God within the meaning of the final verse of Surah Fatihah. Far from being exposed to divine wrath for his alleged daring impostures, as was imagined and alleged by his opponents, he had been bestowed a divine guarantee of security (Tadhkirah, p. 149) in the same words in which the Holy. Prophet, peace be upon him, had been guaranteed security, namely: Allah will safeguard thee against harm by people (5:68); a guarantee that was as completely fulfilled in his case as it had been fulfilled in the case of his revered master the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him. Not only was his physical security fully 8