Deliverance from the Cross — Page 120
during his lifetime according to their tenor and many of which have found their fulfilment since his death, at their proper time. Some of them relate to the future and are either in the course of fulfilment or await fulfilment. It would take several volumes to set them forth in any detail together with their attendant circumstances. We draw attention, by way of illustration, only to one of them which lacked the grandeur and majesty of many of his other prophecies, and yet presents many extraordinary features to a discerning cyc. One of the revelations vouchsafed to him very early was: I shall carry thy message to the ends of the earth'. In the circumstances in which this revelation was conveyed to Hazrat Ahmad it sounded to his opponents as a fantastic boast. At the time he led an almost solitary life, was known to very few people, possessed very modest means and was almost entirely cut off from the rest of the world. Qadian, where he lived, was a small town in an outlying area of the Punjab, one of the backward provinces of India. It did not enjoy any of the amenities which were available to many other towns of its size. Its population did not exceed two thousand. It had a sub-post office, but no telegraph office and its nearest railway station was eleven miles distant with which it was not connected even by a metalled road. There was only an uneven dirt-track full of potholes negotiated by bullock-driven slow-moving country carts and springless one-horse contraptions which jolted along precariously and often came to 120