Lecture Lahore — Page 46
46 Emissary in that age and will reject His Messenger who will come for their reformation. In this age, we have seen the fulfilment of all these signs. Every sensible person will realize that God has sent me at a time when all the signs that were written in the Holy Quran have been ful- filled. Although I have only quoted the Holy Quran, these signs have also been mentioned in the Traditions. Another sign of the time of the Promised Messiah recorded in the Holy Quran is: 31 i. e. , 'A day in the sight of God is like a thousand years ac- cording to your reckoning. ' Since the days are seven, we infer from this verse that this world is also meant to last seven thousand years, counting from the particular Adam whose descendants we are. We learn from the Holy Quran that other worlds have existed before us, though we do not know what kind of people inhabited them. But it seems that an era of the world lasts for seven thousand years—as a symbol of which the days have been fixed at seven, each standing for a thousand years. We cannot say how many such cycles the world has gone through and how many Adams may have appeared in their own times, but it is certain that, since God is the Eternal Creator, the world must also be eternal as a species, though not in its forms and manifestations. Here, too, the Christians have erred, for they believe that God was eternally idle before He created heaven and earth some six thousand years ago. 31 Al- H ajj, 22:48 [Publishers]