How to be Free from Sin — Page 4
4 opposed to one another. And it stands to reason that when these two attractions reach their pinnacle in the final days of the world, they must confront one another, for neither can gain supremacy without destroying the other. When two sides are equal in power and glory, they inevitably clash. Not only has this been foretold in all the books of the Prophets, but reason also demands that when two powerful and opposing attractions come into collision, one of them must vanquish the other or both must be annihilated. In keeping with the description found in the books of the Prophets, it so happened that when a thousand years had passed after Jesus as —the period in which, according to the prophecies, Satan had remained in shackles—an evil force began to assert itself upon the earth. This was the time when Islam began to decline in respect of its noble princi- ples; its spiritual progress came to a halt, and its worldly conquests ceased. Islam was born in an age when Satan lay bound in chains—and so it must have been, for this is what all the Prophets, till John the divine, had foretold— and its downfall began when Satan was re-leased after 1000 A. D. , and Islam ceased to progress any further. Thereafter, all kinds of satanic activities took root and the tree of evil began to grow upon the earth, until some of its branches pervaded the East, some reached the farthest settlements of the West, and some spread over the North and South. Just as external evens have shown the period of Satan’s imprisonment to be a thousand years, the period of his freedom is also a thousand years, as fore- told by the Prophets, and it comes to an end at the turn of