Invitation to Ahmadiyyat — Page 289
289 Zion and declared that Christ would descend in that town. Many wealthy people, eager to have the first glimpse of Christ on his Second Coming, paid large sums to buy land and build houses in Zion where Dowie lived like a king. Soon his followers exceeded 100,000 and missionaries were appointed in all Christian coun - tries. Dowie was a staunch enemy of Islam and always had some - thing nasty to say about it. In 1902 he published a prophecy saying that unless all Muslims accepted Christianity, they would meet with death and destruction. When the Promised Messiah as learnt of this, he at once responded by publishing an announcement in which, after enumerating the beauties of Islam, he said that it was quite unnecessary to destroy millions of people just to prove the truth of Christianity. Instead, he, as the Promised Messiah as , was willing to enter into a prayer-duel with Dowie, which would easily distinguish between the true religion and the false one and help people to determine the truth. 12 This announcement was published in September 1902 and was publicised so widely that newspapers in Europe and America kept writing about it from December 1902 to the end of 1903. About forty of them sent their copies to Qadian. Such wide publication meant that the news of prayer-duel reached about two-and-a-half million people. Dowie, instead of responding to the challenge, started curs - ing and attacking Islam even more vehemently. On February 14, 1903, he wrote in his paper, ‘I pray to God that Islam will soon disappear from the world. O God, accept this prayer of mine. O God, destroy Islam. ’ On August 5, 1903, he wrote in his paper: ‘The black spot on the mantle of man [Islam] will meet its end at the hands of Zion. ’ Seeing that Dowie was in no mood to give up his hostility, the