An Introduction to Financial Sacrifice — Page 23
23 sacrifice an anna or two annas, it will be a question of parting with one’s whole property in an instant. " 43 THE INCREASE IN DEMAND FOR FINANCIAL SACRIFICE AFTER THE PROMISED MESSIAH AS "Some people raise the objection that the Promised Messiah as said that whoever gives even a paisa every three months is an Ahmad i , why is it that now an anna 44 out of a rupee is the required Chanda for each month? Such people don’t realize that the Holy Qur’an has said that the Jam a ‘at of the Messiah will be like a bud in the beginning and then it will keep growing, that is to say, it will progress in sacrifices and will grow stronger. It is wrong to imagine that the Jam a ‘at will be larger in the beginning and will then become less, rather it says that it will be weak and will grow stronger, which means that its faith will grow stronger. If someone is afraid that this amounts to dishonouring the faithful people of the Promised Messiah’s as time, he should know that it may be that the people who come afterwards do not have such faith as they did. The Promised Messiah as said: ‘How well it would be if every one of the Ummah were like N u rudd i n. ’ Yes it is possible that people of such sincerity may not come in the future, but these prominent personalities, who served as the pillars of the Jam a ‘at , were but a few and it is possible that time may not produce their like. But overall the faith and sacrifice of the Jam a ‘at is on the increase. True, hypocrites are also on the increase, and they existed even at the time of the Promised Messiah as , and he has even mentioned of them, but they were not prominent at that time because the level of sacrifice was so minor that the sacrifice made by a sincere one could 43 Speech Majlis-e-Mush a warat April 21, 1946, Al-Fa d l Rabwah , April 10, 1962. 44 An Anna was one sixteenth (1/16) of a Rupee.