Islam - The Summit of Religious Evolution — Page 121
121 them power and success. Secondly, if a person deliberately concocts a message and attributes it to God, not only is he refused help by God; he is discomfited, disgraced and destroyed by Him. In summary, the Quran points to the advent of a Messenger in the latter days who would rejuvenate the message of Islam. The latter day messenger will be in the spirit of the Holy Prophet 5 and also states the fate of false claimants. Muslims unanimously agree that this verse foretells the advent of Mahdi/Messiah in Islam. This concept has been dealt in detail earlier in this chapter. Hence only supporting evidence from the traditions of the Holy Prophet shall be discussed here: The Mahdi is none other than the Messiah 27 How would it be with you when the son of Mary we will descend among you and you will have a leader raised from among you? 28 These two Traditions make it obvious that the Messiah himself would be the Mahdi. He would lead the followers of the Holy Prophet and would be one of them, not an outsider. To think that the Messiah and the Mahdi are two different persons is wrong. It means that a follower of the Holy Prophet will rise for the purpose of revivifying the world, but initially will not have the rank of a prophet. Then the promise relating to the second coming of Jesus will be fulfilled in his person and he will announce himself as the Promised Messiah. The Tradition, therefore, tells us that the Promised One will start his career as a Muslim reformer who will become invested with the office of Messiah. Divine prophecies have to employ metaphors. They would convey very little otherwise. The Holy Prophet (on whom be peace and blessings of God) said: 29 "The Umma can never die which has met me at one end, and the Messiah, son of Mary, at the other. " Firstly, the above tradition corroborates God's promise about Islam being the final and everlasting law for all mankind. The Holy Prophet is quoted as saying that Jesus, son of Mary, will appear in the Prophet's followers towards the end of time. Jesus' advent after the Holy Prophet, as stated in the above tradition is metaphorical because it has been shown earlier that Jesus died a natural death like all other prophets. Moreover, according to the Quran, it is God's inviolable law to bring dead to life again before the Day of Judgement. 30 From the Biblical example of Elijah's second coming which was a spiritual rather than a physical event, (Chapter V) one can easily conclude that the Holy Prophet is referring to the second spiritual advent of Jesus: 31 My Ummat is like the rain. I do not know whether the better part of it is the earlier one or the later. In the above tradition, the Holy Prophet is quoted as comparing earlier Muslims to the latter Muslims. This tradition read in conjugation with the previous one implies that the rejuvenation of Islam in the latter days would be imminent. The Quran and the Prophet of Islam have also foretold the decline of Islam in the middle ages and then its revival in the later days. Thus we read in the Quran: 32