Did Jesus Redeem Mankind? — Page 138
138 on which Christianity prides itself and which finds so much prominence in the early stages of Christianity, was the miracle of the Prophet Jonas. Christians were a negligible quantity for a long time after the incident of the Cross. They would escape to one country to seek shelter and then to another. . Mostly they lived in hiding. For, whenever the people would get a scent of them, they would subject them to various kinds of tyrannies. Barring the early hardships they suffered at the hands of Jews in Palestine, they were persecuted mostly by pagan races, particularly the Romans. A Christian could not help asserting that the Messiah was the king of the world. But no sooner would he say this than the Romans would flare up and start tyrannizing them. The Jewish attack had slackened in those days; in fact, according to some evidence, it appears that whenever Christians would go in hiding,. Jews would follow suit. For, their religions had much in common, and the Jews had not yet been so much alienated with the Mosaic Law as they are at present but were in fact given to observing it. As we offer prayers and so do the nonAhmadis and we fast and the non-Ahmadis also fast and we go to the Haj pilgrimage and so the non-Ahmadis go to the. Haj and we believe in the Quran and so do the non-Ahmadis. . If one were to see the form, without going into the difference in beliefs, he would conclude that there was no difference between the Ahmadis and the non-Ahmadis. Similarly, the Jews believed in the Torah as much as did the Christians, and, the Jews were as much given to alms-giving as were the. Christians, and, as the Christians considered the teachings of the Torah of practical significance so did the Jews and, since the entire teaching appeared to be common to both, therefore whenever the Romans would get inflamed against Christians