Invitation to Ahmadiyyat — Page 287
287 religion. This was strange because in the New Testament the disci - ples are said to have made all kinds of oaths. In Christian nations, nobody is appointed to high office without taking an oath. Even the King has to take an oath. Judges, MPs, high civil and military officers, all have to take oaths. Witnesses in court have to take an oath. In fact, Christian courts restrict oath-taking to Christian witnesses while non-Christian witnesses only say, ‘I declare before the ever-present and ever-seeing God,’ etc. Hence, this excuse on the part of A tham was ridiculous and was only meant to avoid taking the oath, for he had already witnessed fearful sights that had convinced him that if he took the oath he would be destroyed. That A tham refused to take the oath using lame excuses becomes clearer from the fact that, among Christians, no important reli - gious office is given to anybody unless he takes the oath of loyalty. Protestant Christians ( A tham was a Protestant) have to take two oaths, one of loyalty to the Church and another of loyalty to the State. All this was put before A tham but he offered no reply. The cash reward offered to A tham was raised from Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 4,000, and even the condition of a year of waiting was dropped and A tham could claim the cash reward as soon as he took the oath, but he could not do it when he knew in his heart that for fifteen months he had been concealing the true state of his mind out of fear of his fellow Christians. He did not take the oath and spent the rest of his days in silence. He gave up speaking or writing against Islam and stopped preaching Christianity. In this manner, the truth of the Promised Messiah’s as prophecy became clearer than ever. A tham recanted his belief in the godhood of Jesus and his views about the truth of Islam were made abundantly clear by his refusal to take the oath. (This was despite the fact that during