Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part V — Page 75
S IGN S OF T HE T RU E FAIT H 75 by rejecting miracles altogether, so has the other gone to the opposite extreme by employing extreme exaggeration regarding miracles—both sides having abandoned the middle path. It is evident that without mir- acles there would be no sure and categorical Sign for the existence of God Almighty, but if miracles are said to be of the kind just described, they deprive one of all the fruits of faith, so that faith can no longer be called faith, and it leads one to the verge of idolatry. Hadrat ‘ I s a , may peace be upon him, has strangely been the target of the ignorant. During his lifetime, the irreligious Jews called him a disbeliever, a liar, a deceiver, and an impostor, and denied his spiritual exaltation. When he died, he was deified by those who were dominated by the disposition to worship man, whereas the Jews continued to deny even his spiritual exaltation. Now, against this came the doctrine of his physical ascent to heaven and it became widely publicised that he ascended bodily to the heavens, as if to say that the previous Prophets were exalted to heaven spiritually after death, but Hadrat ‘ I s a , while yet alive, went to sit in heaven with his physical body, along with his clothes and all his bodily necessities. This was a hyperbolic response concocted to counter the antago- nism and rejection of the Jews with which they denied spiritual exal- tation, yet this reply was entirely illogical because the Jews had no concern with bodily ascension whatsoever. It was a doctrine of their shariah [religious law] that those who die on the cross are accursed, disbelievers, and faithless; they are not spiritually exalted towards God Almighty. The doctrine of the Jews was that upon death, the soul of every believer is carried to heaven by angels and the doors of Heaven are opened for him, but the soul of a disbeliever is not raised to heaven. A disbeliever is accursed and his soul goes downwards. Since Hadrat ‘ I s a was put on the cross, and also because some of the disagreements in their religious verdicts, the Jews had declared Hadrat ‘ I s a , may peace be upon him, to be a disbeliever; since, in their view, he had been killed through crucifixion and it was clearly decreed in the Torah that who- ever is thus killed on the cross is accursed; therefore, on the basis of