Claims and Teachings - Ahmad The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 248
248 the person who, with the aid of this light, stands on a firm footing of certainty is attracted towards virtue. Between the earthly and heavenly attractions a struggle would naturally follow and each will try to overcome the other. The one shall be drawr ing a man to virtue, ;the other to vice, the one to the easfc and the other to the west. The more powerful the two opposite attractions grow, the more fearful shall the struggle be. It is a necessary consequence of great material progress that these two attractions should display their highest powers. When the world has attained the highest stage of material advancement the days of heavenly advancement are not far. It is certain that upon the heavens also preparations are, then, being made for a spiritual reformation. An attraction is produced upon heavens and the two concend with each other for supremacy. Dreadful is the day when neglect and vanity reign supreme upon earth, for it is the day of vengeance and the promised day of the great spiritual struggle. . That terrible struggle has been described in metaphori- cal language by the holy prophets of G-od. Some have represr ented it as the final struggle between the angles of heaven and the devils of the bottomless pit, at the close of which comes the end of the world ; while others have from crass ignorance taken it to be a physical struggle which shall be carried on with steel and gunpowder. The latter view is, no doubt, the result of misjudg r ment and superficial notions, and metaphorical words describing a spiritual contest have been misconstrued as meaning a physical war. " (Vol. . I R. K 1902. )