The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 267
THE PROMISED MESSIAH AND MAHDI you may have to go through. You are bound to be persecuted in diverse ways, and many of your hopes will be denied to you, but in such cases you should not grieve, for the Lord your God shall put you through trials, to test whether or not you remain firm. If you desire that the angels in heaven should sing your praises, then take the beating many people shall give you, and rejoice, hear abuse and give thanks to the Lord; experience disappointments but do not break away from Him. You are the last people of God. Practise the good to an extent where it reaches its highest perfection. Everyone among you who relaxes and becomes lazy shall be thrown out of the community, as a dirty thing is discarded and thrown out. He shall die with regret in his heart, and he will not be able to injure God in any way. Lo and behold! With great joy I convey to you the glad tidings that your God does indeed really exist. Although all are His creatures, He selects. only those who select Him. He Himself comes to whosoever goes to. Him. He bestows honour upon those who honour Him. After you have straightened your hearts, and purified your tongues and eyes and ears, you come to Him, and He shall accept you. . In point of belief, all that God desires from you is just this that you hold that God is One, and that Muhammad, may peace and the blessings of God be upon him, is His Prophet, Khatam-al-Anbiya, and the greatest of them all. After him there is to be no other Prophet except one who shall be given the mantle of Muhammadiyyat as a burooz, since the servant is not separate from his master, nor a branch. different from its root. (Our Teaching, p 9-11) 5. I have, by the sheer grace of God, and not on account of any merit of my own, been accorded a full measure of the bounty that was bestowed before me on the Prophets and Messengers and the chosen ones of God. It would not have been possible for me to be granted this bounty had I not followed the ways of my lord and master, the pride of the Prophets, the best of mankind, Muhammad, the chosen one, peace be on him. Whatever I have been given I have been given by following him and I know through true and perfect knowledge that no man can reach God except by following the Holy 267