Malfuzat – Volume I — Page 248
248 Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad so wills, they will lose the courage themselves to reprint the book. "¹ 2 May 1898 On Eid day, in Qadian under the banyan tree towards the east, after the Eid prayer, the Promised Messiah, on whom be peace, delivered the following address in the gathering that was held about the plague: The Temporary World i. e. All of you gentlemen are aware that Allah the Most Eminent has stated in the Holy Quran, and the Holy Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, has stated in the Hadith, that a time has gone by when nothing existed; no hu- mans, animals, beasts and birds, the heaven and earth, everything on the earth and in heaven. There was God alone. This is the Islamic belief: there was nothing with God. Allah the Exalted has informed us by means of the Holy Quran and the Hadith that another time is yet to come where nothing will exist with God. That era is a most terrifying one, but it is obligatory upon every believer and Muslim to have faith in it, and one who does not believe in the dawn of that era is not a Muslim but a disbeliever and faithless. Just as one is com- manded to believe in heaven and hell, the Prophets, peace be upon them, and the holy scriptures, in the same manner, one must believe in the hour on which the trumpet will be blown and all will be reduced to nothing. This is the way and custom of Allah. Three Arguments in Support of the Hereafter Allah the Exalted has employed three methods so that we may understand the nature of the time just mentioned above. Firstly, God has granted man with an intellect and if he makes use of this faculty even slightly and reflects, the mind is able to grasp very clearly that the brief life of man sits between two kinds of non- existence and can never be everlasting. Analogical reasoning can enable one to learn about things which are not present. If an individual reflects, for example, as to the whereabouts of their forefathers, they are left with no choice but to accept that everyone must follow the same course. Foolish is the one who has thousands of examples before them but they do not take a lesson therefrom and fail to un- 1 Risalah al-Indhar, pp. 37-38