Islam - The Summit of Religious Evolution — Page 60
60 Similarly at the time of entering Islam, new believers used to take the oath of allegiance to the Prophet. Referring to this God says in the Quran: 72 Verily those who swear allegiance to thee indeed swear allegiance to Allah. The Prophet does service for God. The term God of the prophecy, therefore, applies to the Prophet of Islam rather than to anybody else. So does the expression mighty for he was able to subjugate all his enemies in his lifetime and to smash all opposition. The fourth name in the prophecy is everlasting Father. This also applies exclusively to the Prophet of Islam. It was he who unambiguously claimed a lasting character for his teaching. For he foretold the second coming of Christ, but the second coming of Christ was to be from among the Prophet’s own followers, not one whose coming could violate his spiritual dominion; thus the Quranic affirmation: 73 And We have not sent thee save as a bringer together of all mankind, a bearer of glad tidings and a warner, but most men know not. And they say, ‘When will this promise be fulfilled, if you speak the truth?’ Say, ‘For you is an appointed day from which you cannot remain behind a single moment nor can you get ahead of it. ’ All mankind refers to the universal and everlasting character of the Message of Islam. It is addressed to all nations in all ages. Disbelievers taunt the Prophet about the day promised here and ask him when it will be i. e. , when will the universal and everlasting character of Islam be demonstrated to the world? God's response is that the day will come as appointed. The day is also referred to elsewhere in the Quran: 74 He would plan the divine ordinance from the heaven unto the earth, then shall it go up to Him in a day the duration of which is a thousand years according to what you reckon. The Divine plan prophesied here is Islam. In the course of time, its influence will begin to decline. In a thousand years it will have ascended back to heavens. The special Divine support, which it enjoyed in the beginning, will disappear and its fortunes will be at the mercy of worldly forces. Thus the Quran foretells the initial decline and ultimate rise of Islam in the latter days. The same message is further detailed in the Hadith (tradition of the Holy Prophet), which state that the expansion of Islam was to go on for the first three hundred years after, which was to set in a period of decline. The decline was to go on for a period of one thousand years. Reading the two passages 73, 74 together, it becomes obvious that initially people will not believe in the universal and ever-lasting character of the Message of Islam. After one thousand three hundred years, new facts and conditions would emerge which would force the world to accept the universal character of Islam. The passages read together point to the second coming of the Messiah, whose advent has been promised in both the Bible and the Quran. The Holy Prophet’s traditions further explain this fact, which remind us that the second coming will take place in the person who will be a follower of the Prophet of Islam. As other earlier Prophets has also prophesied the advent of the Promised Messiah, his rise from among the followers of the Holy Prophet would prove conclusively that the spiritual dominion of the Prophet of Islam was everlasting and that there were to he no heavenly