Where Did Jesus Die? — Page 209
Chapter Fourteen—A Paramount Prophecy 209 Moreover, we do not see any sense in making another man resemble Jesus, and then handing him over to the Jews. If God had lifted Jesus up to Heaven, what need was there of presenting the supposed substitute to the Jews? Did God want to console the Jews that they might boast they had killed Jesus and prove him a cursed one? Again, it is nowhere stated that the substitute ever tried to deny being Jesus Christ. He could easily have proved this and escaped. At least any of his friends or relatives, seeing he had disappeared, would have made a search for him. If this story is true, then Jews could not be justifiably condemned for believing Jesus to be an impostor and a false prophet. They did not see him soaring up to Heaven, and the substitute made to appear as Jesus, did not even deny being the Messiah, and the Jews crucified him believing that he was Jesus himself. The Jews, in this case therefore, will be excused in the sight of God for rejecting Jesus. But this is directly at variance with the gist of the verse under discussion, as it says that the Jews are under the curse of God because they say that they caused him to die on the cross. Besides this verse, there are many other verses in the Holy Quran which clearly show that Jesus died a natural death. For instance, we read in the Holy Quran, that when Allah will question Jesus, ‘Did you say to the people that they should take you and your mother for two gods besides Me,’ he would answer, ‘Glory be to Thee, it does not befit me to say what I had no right to say. . . I said to them naught but what Thou hadst commanded me: saying, 'Serve Allah my Lord and your Lord' and I was a witness over them as long as I was amongst them; but when Thou didst cause me to die,