Ahmadiyyat or The True Islam — Page 154
154 of the former, surely it would be right to expect that God would aid and defend His righteous servant ap- pointed by Him, and thus demonstrate to the world which of the two had been appointed by Him and which of them was an impostor. This would be a clear mani- festation of God’s attribute of Ownership and Master- ship. This challenge was sent to Dr. John Alexander Dowie and was also published in English and American papers. In the challenge the Promised Messiah as wrote: 'I am about seventy years of age, while Dr. Dowie (as he himself states) is about fifty-five and thus as compared with me he is still a young man. But since the matter is not to be settled by age, I do not care for this great disparity in years. The whole matter rests in the hands of Him Who is the Lord of heaven and earth and Judge over all judges. He will decide it in favour of the true claimant. ' 'Though he may try as hard as he can to fly from the death which awaits him, yet his flight from such a contest will be nothing less than death to him; and calamity will certainly overtake his Zion, for he must bear the consequences either of the acceptance of the challenge or its refusal' (Vide The New Commercial Advertiser of New York ). This challenge was widely published in Ameri- can papers. We know of as many as 32 papers which published this challenge and it is possible that it might also have been published in others. Some of these papers commented on it, saying, that the proposed mode