Fazl-e-Umar — Page 289
Fazle Umar 289 have been practically annihilated. 5) Suez Canal and Panama Canal “He has made the two bodies of water flow. They will one day meet. Between them there is at present a barrier; they encroach not one upon the other. Which then of the favours of your Lord will you twain deny? There come out from them pearls and coral. ” (Ch. 55:Vs. 20–23) “The two bodies of water” referred to in the preceding verse may be the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea on the one hand and the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean on the other, particularly the former two seas. The verse embodies a great prophecy which was remarkably fulfilled in the latter half of the nineteenth century when the Suez and the Panama Canals were constructed, the former linking the first two seas and the latter the mighty Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The world had to wait for thirteen long centuries to see the fulfilment of this prophecy, in an age of new and great discoveries and inventions in the material world. It was in the fitness of time that, concurrently, equally great discoveries should have been made in the spiritual world, the fulfilment of the above prophecy being one of them. Or “Albahrainay” (the two bodies of water) may signify the physical and spiritual sciences. In this sense of the word the verses would mean that the two sciences – natural laws and Divine revelation, were mistakenly considered to be at loggerheads, and a barrier seemed to have kept them apart, till, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the great Divine Reformer of the age, the founder of the Movement, succeeded in lifting that barrier and by his powerful writings unfolded the mighty truth that instead of being antago- nistic, these two sciences were corroborative of, and complementary to, each other, the one being the work of God and the other His Word. In this way the two seas were made to join each other. Curiously enough pearls and corals are found in both the Suez and Panama