Truth Prevails — Page 94
( 94 ) Again this also is a fact that the Promised Messiah made his first claim to this position in 1891. After he had put forth this claim, he remained in this world for seventeen years. But his term as a Mamur had started far earlier. To count the duration of his Mamuriat , we have to go to that early date; and counting from that date, after this claim, he lived for more than 23 years. In the case of Hazrat Khalifatul Masih II, the claim did not amount to Mamuriat. But even at that, we must bear in mind that even many years before he came to be the Khalifa, he had received an Ilham : “Those who follow you, shall remain dominant over those who deny you, and this shall remain true to the Day of the Qiyama ” ( Al-Fazal , November 2, 1937) It is very revealing to note here that in 1937 Hazrat Khalifatul Masih II put himself on a solemn oath, with a prayer for heavenly punishment, in case in the eyes of the Lord he was a liar in this claim that he did receive this Ilham. He said: “If this is a lie fabricated by me, I call for the curse of the Lord to fall on me!” Then, some time after he received this Ilham , he became Khalifatul Masih II, and he remained in that office for a long, long period of more than fifty years. Since the prophecy in regard to the Muslih Mau’ud held him to be an extraordinarily great and distinguished Khalifa of the Promised Messiah endowed with a Messianic breath, not as a Nabi , a Rasul , and a Mamur , after his Ilham bearing on his success as a Khalifa, and the discomfiture of those who stood opposed to him, he lived in this world not for 23 years, but for a little more than 60 years. After he put himself on oath on the validity of this Ilham , he lived for 28 years. Thus we feel we are perfectly justified in holding that the Ilham ‘I am the Promised Messiah, his like, and his Khalifa’, is in fact an exposition of the earlier Ilham , namely, ‘Those who follow you, they will remain dominant on those who deny you’ – an exposition given by the Lord God Himself. Similarly the Ilhams of the Promised Messiah, on the basis of which he put forth his claim that he was the Promised Messiah; and in which be announced that Jesus had long ago died his natural death; and which held him up as having come in the likeness of Hazrat Masih, was in fact no more than an exposition of the earlier, published in Barahin-i-Ahmadiyya , namely: ‘O Isa, I shall cause you to die, and I shall raise you toward Myself ’, and the exposition of another Ilham , namely, “You have close relationship with Isa, son of Mary, and you have the greatest resemblance with him in point of character and conduct, and real nature of the mind, and the times (at which the two of you have lived and worked). ” ( Izala-i-Auham , page 124,) The general sense in both cases is the same: – i) that Allah was about to cause Isa to die, and raise him up closer to Himself. ii) that you bear a very close resemblance to Isa, the son of Mary, in character, personality, pattern, and in point of time.