Claims and Teachings - Ahmad The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 364
364 for a single people to the exclusion of all others as if the latter were not the creation of God or as if after creating them Al- mighty God had utterly forgotten them or thrown them away as useless and futile things. For instance, the Jews and the Christians to this day believe that all the Prophets and Mes- sengers that have appeared in the world have come only from a single branch of the great human family, viz. , the Israelites, and that God has always been so displeased with all the other nations of the world that even finding them in errors and ignorance, He has never cared for them in the least. Even Jesus Christ is reported to have said that he had been sent only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. A claim to Divinity, if we admit this claim in the case of Jesus for the sake of argu- ment, is wonderfully inconsistent with narrow and contracted views. Was Christ only the God of the Israelites, and was he not equally the God of other people, that ht? declared himself to have no concern about the guidance and reformation of other people ? In short, it is an essential doctrine of the Jewish and Christian faiths that all the Messengers of God were raised from among the Jews and that all the books were revealed only to members of a single tribe. According to the Christians, further, Divine revelation stopped with Jesus and the source of inspiration was for ever sealed after him. Beliefs similar to these are a)so entertained by the Arya Samaj. Like the Jews and the Christians who regard prophecy and revelation as the sole posses- sion of the house of Israel and consider other people unfit for the boon, the Arya Sarnajisfcs believe that Divine revelation never outstepped the limits of India, but that Almighty God always chooses four risliis from the land of the Aryas and reveals over and over again the same text of the Vedas through them