Claims and Teachings - Ahmad The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 425
425 /. The above. vision -contained a prophecy of the new era which was to have, as it;Were, a>new race. with a ; pew Adam i-t is hardly necessary for me /to warn the reader ,against ; a literal interpreta- tion of the, vision. It^clid notinean that Ahmad was to become Jiteually God and w-as to create literally a new heaven and a new eartib. It only represents in a symbplical form the final, stage of spiritual progress to jwhich Ahmad had risen without actually becoming God. He had attained to that ultimate stage in which ipne. at'tains to;perfect spirituail union with : God, when one has <no;d0sire or intention of Jiis own. , when one's will becomes i^en-. tic;al:)with Gro. d's will and, when one ? s actions and ; desires are /really God % actions and, desires. . The creation pf a ; new;. -heaven iand a new earth by Abmad meant that as -a result -of Ahmad's ; advent,. a complete change will come over the world and a new era will dawn^upder such altered conditions that one will be per- fectly justified in saying that there was now a new earth. and a ?new heaven. That ne,w earth and that new heaven are now in. the process of formation in accordance with Ahmad's prophecies ,an<3 as a result of; his advent, and Ahmad's vision published in 1892 is. now being fulfilled, There is to be not only a new earth. buti also a new heaven ; for now men will come to have such -knowledge of things heavenly as they had never before and men will enjoy^heavenly : blessings in abundance as a consequence of <their acceptance of Ahmad. It will not be out of place to give here an extract from a. let. ter of our. present Head wbich he wrote to his predecessor, Hazrat Maulawi Noor-ud-Din, the first successor of the Promised Messiah, from Mecca where he had gone on pilgrimage in the /year 1931. As ; the letter contained an important prophecy, ; Hazrat Khalifatul-iMasih I, ^ caused, it to be. published in a local , paper, the Badr, dated the 9th January 1912 Vol. XII, No. 27.