Deliverance from the Cross — Page 117
If this occurrence was to happen at all it could happen only on its predetermined dates. If Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad had announced his claim after the manifestation of this phenomenon it might have been thought that he had been influenced by that manifestation to put forward his claim. But the striking fact is that this concurrence not only happened on dates which conformed exactly with the prediction of the Holy Prophet, but that it happened almost exactly five years after the announcement of his claim by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. The eclipse of the moon normally occurs on the 13th, 14th or 15th night of a lunar month, and the eclipse of the sun on the 27th, 28th or 29th of the lunar month. The sign mentioned by the Holy Prophet, therefore, was that the moon would be eclipsed on the 13th night of a lunar month, and the eclipse of the sun on the 28th of the same lunar month, which will be the month of Ramadhan. This sign was to appear after and not before the advent of the Mahdi. It so happened that an eclipse of the moon occurred on Thursday night, the 13th of Ramadhan, 1311 Hegira (21 March 1894) and the eclipse of the sun occurred on the 28th of the same month of Ramadhan (6 April 1894), in exact accord with the prophecy of the Holy Prophet. The same phenomenon was repeated in the U. S. A. in 1895. This was an astonishing concatenation which not only was strong proof of the claim of Hazrat Ahmad but confirmed, in an extraordinary manner, the 117