Invitation to Ahmadiyyat — Page 98
98 is given such a description beforehand will at once recognize the age when it comes. The Holy Prophet s as has given exhaustive details of the time of the Promised Messiah and Mahdi as which make it very easy to identify. Even though people have concocted Traditions in this regard, they have failed to disfigure the description given by the Holy Prophet s as. Anyone who studies this description cannot help but affirm that the time for the coming of the Promised Messiah as has arrived. The General State of Religion at the Time of the Promised Messiah as I will now proceed to take up the signs one by one and show how there can be no time for the appearance of the Promised Messiah as other than the present. The first sign I will take up concerns the state of religion at the time of the Promised Messiah as. The state of religion at any given time can be described in two ways: (a) through numbers and statistics, or (b) by learning of the impact religion has on the lives of the people of that age. The Holy Prophet s as has described the time of the Promised Messiah as from both aspects. Concerning the apparent state of religions at that time, the Holy Prophet s as says that it will be a time of the dominance of Christianity. In a Tradition of S a hih al-Muslim it is related that most people at that time would be ‘Romans’. 5 It is the unanimous view of Muslim scholars that ‘Romans’ here stands for Christians because at the time of the Holy Prophet s as the Romans were the