Christianity - A Journey from Facts to Fiction — Page 163
Christianity Today 163 support of God against all odds, if whenever they were ground through the mill of persecution, instead of being pulverised, they emerged on the other end even larger than before and more powerful and more respected, then of course the claim of such a claimant cannot be trivially waived. It is no longer the tall claim of a madman, or a fanciful cobweb of a daydreamer’s imagination. Ahmadiyyat has become a reality to be taken seriously on a much wider horizon than Christianity could ever have been taken towards the end of its first century. Here is the case of a Messiah as who was a fact of history and not the product of fiction, and here again is the case of a Messiah as whose re-advent was as realistic as was his first appearance as a commissioned Divine leader. It is entirely up to the people of this age to choose to live continuously in a world of legends and fancies and to keep eternally awaiting the promised reformers of their religions and creeds or to accept the hard realities of this life. On one thing we must agree, that many a religious leader has been elevated from the common human ranks to the ranks of deities. Many a time, religious leaders have been imagined to have ascended to heaven to await somewhere in the empty recesses of space for their second visit to the planet Earth. There is no reason why one should accept one such claim and reject another, because they are merely claims, without any positive, scientific proof to support their validity. Hence there is no option but to either accept them all, or to reject them in their entirety. This would be the only honest and just course of action. One thing however is certain, that once departed from their terrestrial existence, regard- less of the manner in which their followers believed them to have