Malfuzat – Volume III — Page 249
249 afterwards? The prayers of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, were the most accepted by God. ” The Prerequisites for the Acceptance of Prayer The Promised Messiah as said: “There are four prerequisites for the acceptance of prayer; only then is a prayer accepted in one’s favour. The very first condition is righteousness. In other words, the person to whom a request for prayer is made must be righteous. It was the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, who possessed the most excellent and most perfect form of righteous- ness. He possessed the highest level of piety. The principle in righteousness is for man to leave behind his inherent human nature and become so absorbed in God’s divinity just as wooden planks are nailed to a wall and become one and the same. Nothing ought to stand between a servant and God. All matters can be classified into three categories. Firstly, there are those which are self-evidently certain, and that is to say, it can clearly be observed that particular things are either good or bad. Secondly, there are those that are theoretically certain, which means that one cannot have the same degree of certainty in their respect, but they can still appear to be either good or bad, in theory. Thirdly, there are matters which are ambigu- ous, or in other words, there is a possibility that a certain thing could be bad. Hence, a righteous person is one who saves themselves even from this possibility and doubt, and who progresses forward through all three of these stages. There is a statement of Hazrat Umar ra that in order to be saved from doubt and uncer- tainty, he would give up nine things out of ten. Doubts ought to be dispelled. In reality, our opponents have witnessed so many examples of divine support and signs that if they possessed righteousness, they would never turn away. Just look at the testimony of Karim Bakhsh, who wept profusely and stated in his old age, when death was nigh, that a saint named Gulab Shah had told him long ago that Jesus has been born in Qadian and he will come to Ludhiana, and you shall see how vehemently the Muslim clerics will oppose him; his name will be Ghulam Ahmad. One may observe how this prophecy made by the saint is so very clear. Hundreds of people have testified to the fact that Karim Bakhsh is a man who adheres to religious injunctions such as Prayer and fasting, and always speaks the truth, as detailed in my book Izala-e-Awham. Now, does righteousness dictate that one reject this testimony? Once I was composing a few couplets on the subject of righteousness, and one of the verses p. 228