Ahmadiyyat - The Renaissance of Islam — Page 97
TfIE RENAISSANCE OF ISLAM 97 church or the powerless Greek church [Leaves of Healing, 25 August 1900, p. 7]. Being provoked by his reviling of Islam and the Holy Prophet, peace be on him, and his eagerness to destroy Islam and the Muslims, Ahmad confronted him with the following challenge in September 1902: I am surprised at the attitude of some Christian missionaries who have studied philosophy, physics, astronomy, etc. , and yet invite people to accept a weak human being as God. Recently there has appeared in the United States of America a man, apostle of Jesus, whose name is Dowie. He claims that Jesus in his capacity of God has sent him into the world to invite people to the doctrine that there is no God besides Jesus. But what kind of a God is he who could not safeguard himself against the Jews, who was betrayed by a treacherous disciple against whose mischief he proved helpless, He ran to a fig tree to eat of its fruit and did not know that it bore no fruit; when he was asked when would the Day of Judgment arrive, he confessed his ignorance of it. He became accursed, which means that his heart had become impure and had turned away from God and that he had been cast away from God and His mercy. He climbed towards heaven because the Father was very far from him, even by millions of miles, and this distance could not be overcome unless he ascended to heaven in his physical body. What a contradiction is here! On the one hand he asserts: 'The Father and I are one'; and on the other he journeyed over millions of miles to meet Him. If the father and son were one why did he have to endure the fatigue of such a long journey? The father was where he himself was, as both were one. Then on whose right hand did he sit?. Now we address ourselves to Dowie who deifies Jesus and calls himself his apostle and says that the prophecy mentioned in Deut. 18:15 is fulfilled in his advent and that he is himself Elijah and the apostle of this age. He does not know that his artificial god was never conceived of by Moses, and that Moses repeatedly admonished the children of Israel that they must not deify any creature, whether man or animal, neither in heaven nor on earth. He reminded them that God had spoken to them, yet they had not seen Him; and that their God was above having a shape or a body.