Ahmadiyyat - The Renaissance of Islam — Page 179
THE RENAISSANCE OF ISLAM 179 Muhammad Sadiq Sahib, a disciple of the Promised Messiah, immediately wrote to Mr Piggot inviting him to accept the true Messiah who had appeared at Qadian. Mr Piggot ignored t~is letter and continued to proclaim his own God- head. The Promised Messiah then issued a challenge to Mr Pigg6t and announced that if Mr Piggot accepted the chal- lenge God would humiliate him and demonstrate that his claim was false. The Sunday Circle of 14 February reproduced the challenge in the following terms:. . . Then follows the terrible warning of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. The jealousy of God, he says, has been roused on account of the insult offered to His sacred name and to His messengers by the haughty assertion of a man who calls himself God and the Lord of earth and heaven, and my True Holy Perfect and Mighty God has commanded me to warn him of the punishment that awaits him. If he does not repent of this irreverent claim he shall be soon annihi- lated, even in my lifetime, with sore torment proceeding from God and not from the hands of man. This warning of punishment is from the God of earth and heaven. Hisjealousy shall consume the pretender, so that no one may defile the earth again with such false and arrogant claims. Piggot made no response to this challenge, but became completely silent and never thereafter repeated his claim of divinity. He retreated to his country hide-out in Somerset and was forgotten by everyone. Yet, he was overtaken by divine wrath and the latter part of his life brought ruinous disgrace upon him. It was established that he was living in adultery and was defrocked by the Church. Mr C. T. Baker-Carr, in an article on 'Bogus Messiah', printed in the Evening News of 1 February 1955, said: In July 1904, a very attractive girl called Ruth Annie Preece went to live with Smyth Piggot and his wife, whom he had married on August 14,1886. Miss Preece was one of three sisters whose father had left them comfortably provided for. A year later there came news of the birth at Agapemonie (Abode of Love) of a child.