Invitation to Ahmadiyyat — Page 277
277 foretold death and destruction in the land, and it did not take long to manifest. Hardly a month had passed after the stoning of Sahibzadah Sahib when Kabul found itself in the grip of a chol - era epidemic. The population was overwhelmed with fear and it was generally felt that the pestilence had come as punishment from God for the foul murder of an innocent man. An impar - tial observer, Frank A. Martin, who was for many years Engineer- in-Chief to the Government of Afghanistan, wrote in his book, Under the Absolute Amir (1907) , 4 that this epidemic was quite unexpected. Considering earlier epidemics in Afghanistan and the rate at which they had followed one another, a new epidemic could have been ruled out for several more years. The sudden outbreak of cholera was, thus, a special sign of God, the news of which he had already given to His Messenger 28 years earlier. The wonder of it is that, in order to reinforce the prophecy, God had informed Sahibzadah Syed Abdul Latif of it beforehand, and he had told people that he saw a great calamity coming after his martyrdom. The epidemic touched every household in Kabul. It spared neither the poor nor the rich, nor those who adopted all kinds of preventive measures. It particularly targeted the people who had played a part in the stoning of Sahibzadah Sahib and their close relatives. In this manner, after many years, God’s revelation was fulfilled word for word. He demonstrated the truth of His Messenger with terrible signs and opened the way for the insightful to believe. The question is, could it be the work of a man to foretell these events at a time when he had no followers whatsoever, and to claim that a time would come when he would have a large following that would spread to other countries, and that two of his law-abiding