Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part V — Page 224
B AR Ā H Ī N-E-A H M ADIY YA — PART F IV E 224 and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diverse places. (See Matthew, chapter 24. ) It was with reference to this prophecy that I wrote those lines in Iz a la- e-Auh a m which have been published by the critic on page 5, column 1, line 26, of the paper mentioned above. Those lines are as follows: What kind of prophecies are these, that ‘there will be earth- quakes and pestilences and wars and famines!’ By citing these words of mine the critic draws the conclusion as if I have admitted that making prophecies about earthquakes is not anything great. Every reasonable person can understand that by these words I do not mean what the critic has understood by them. What was meant is that saying something casually, which is by no means extraordinary and which contains nothing unusual or supernormal, is not covered by the sense of the term ‘prophecy’. For instance, if someone predicts that there will be rains in the rainy season, this will not be called a prophecy, for it is the divine scheme of things that rains occur in these months. On the other hand, if someone predicts that this year there will be such torrential rains in the rainy season that springs will gush forth from the earth and the wells will get filled with water and start to flow like canals, and that nothing of the kind has been seen in the last hundred years; this would be called something extraordinary and a prophecy. It was on the basis of this principle that I criticized the prophecy in Matthew, chapter 24, observing that to say merely that earthquakes will occur, particularly in a country where earthquakes — even severe ones — are common, is not the kind of disclosure that could be called a prophecy or something supernormal. Now, it should be seen whether in each of those three announce- ments published in the country by me and which con tain a prophecy about an earthquake, there is also found just such an ordinary forecast