Lecture Sialkot — Page 3
L ECTURE S IALKOT 3 most appropriate teaching. It guided to the same God as did the Torah. But, after the Messiah as , the god of Christians was transformed into another god who was nowhere mentioned in the original teachings of the Torah, nor did the Israelites have any inkling of such a god. Belief in this new god disturbed the entire dy- namics of the Torah, and its teachings regarding deliverance from sin and attainment of piety and pu- rity became corrupted. Deliverance from sin came to depend simply upon the belief that the Messiah as had courted death by crucifixion for the salvation of man- kind and that he was 'God' himself. Many other timeless commandments of the Torah were also vio- lated and the Christian faith underwent such a change that even if the Messiah as himself were to return, he would fail to recognize it. It is most astonishing that the people who had been enjoined to follow the Torah, so brazenly flouted its commandments. For instance, it is nowhere written in the Gospels that though the eat- ing of pork was made unlawful in the Torah, yet I [the Messiah] make it lawful for you; or that though the Torah prescribes circumcision, I repeal this com- mandment. How could it be lawful to introduce into religion what had not been uttered by Jesus as ? Never- theless, as it was inevitable that God would establish a universal religion, namely Islam, it was the deteriora- tion of Christianity that heralded this faith.