Elucidation of Objectives — Page 10
Tau di h-e-Mar a m 10 when the son of Mary descends among you? Who will be this son of Mary? Indeed, he will be none other than your own Im a m, your Mentor, who will be born among you. In this H ad i th , the Holy Prophet sa has unequivo- cally stated that you should never be led into imagining that the Messiah son of Mary will himself descend in person. Actually, the name son of Mary has been used metaphorically; in reality he will be your Im a m from among your own people and, in character and tempera- ment, he will be a living similitude of the son of Mary. People who believe in old tales misinterpret this H ad i th to mean that when the Messiah descends from the skies he will have resigned his office as Prophet and dis- owned the Gospels. He will accept Isl a m, practise the teachings of the Holy Qur’ a n, observe the five daily prayers and call himself a Muslim. But they fail to explain why he should suffer such relegation. In short, our Muslim brethren unilaterally admit that at the time of his Second Coming, the Son of Mary will be a Mus- lim by faith, will proclaim himself as one, and will have completely forgotten about his earlier station as a Prophet. It is an insurmountable difficulty indeed into which our brethren have managed to land themselves by treating a metaphor as literal truth. This is why they had to resort to proposing the removal of a Prophet from his Prophetic station. There was, however, an easy way out of this self-made difficulty, if only they had accepted