Invitation to Ahmadiyyat — Page 128
128 prophecy of the Holy Prophet s as (that the time of the Messenger of the latter days will be marked by the conjunction of the lunar and the solar eclipses, the lunar eclipse occurring on the first and the solar on the second of the three dates on which they can occur; and that these signs have never appeared for anyone except the Mahdi), and accept the person whose claim preceded these signs. The other option is to abandon God and His Prophet who—God forbid—foretold a sign that was no sign at all and was unable to establish the truth of any claimant. Some people object to this, saying that the prophecy speaks of the lunar eclipse occurring on the first of Ramadan, and of the solar eclipse occurring in the middle of Ramadan, whereas the eclipses we speak about took place on the 13th and the 28th of the month, respectively. Even a little reflection will show that this objection is ill-founded and contrary to the words of the Hadith. It should be realized that the solar and lunar eclipses only take place on particular dates and there is no deviation from this law of nature until the world comes to an end. If this objection had any basis, then this prophecy might well be a sign of Doomsday but it cannot be a sign of the proximity of the end of the world or of the time of the Promised Mahdi. Furthermore, while such critics concentrate on the words ‘first night’ and ‘middle night’ of the month, they do not consider that the word used for the moon is qamar , not hil a l. Hil a l denotes the new moon while qamar is the name given to the moon once it has advanced into the fourth night. We find in the lexicon: 68 ٌ َل ال ا قَبْل َ ذَالِك َ فَھُو َ ھِ َّ ھْر ِ و َ اَم َّ َال ٍ اِلٰی اٰخِر ِ الش ي َ و َ ھُو َ قَمَر ٌ بَعْد َ ثَالَث ِ ل The Moon is called qamar after the first three nights and