Deliverance from the Cross — Page 126
they were forced to adopt an attitude of defence of their own beliefs and doctrines. Hazrat Ahmad's successful championship of Islam was acknowledged even by some of his bitterest opponents. Jesus had indicated that the signs of his second coming would be earthquakes, plagues, epidemics, wars and rumors of wars, etc. All these signs have been manifested, which means that the second advent of Jesus has come about in the person of someone who came in the power and spirit of Jesus. The Muslims were looking forward to the advent of the Mahdi-Messiah in the beginning of the fourteenth century of the Islamic era. That century is now drawing to a close; the Mahdi-Messiah must have appeared at its beginning. Hazrat Ahmad was the only one who claimed that the prophecies predicting the appearance of a divinely inspired teacher in the latter days had been fulfilled in his advent. The Holy Prophet had defined the functions of Mahdi Messiah, as the revival of the faith of Islam, the establishment and strengthening of the law of Islam, the spread of virtue, the suppression of vice, and the exposition of the myth of the death of Jesus upon the cross. By the time of his demise in 1908 he had set in motion such strong currents aimed at the achievement of every one of these objectives that the remarkable success already resulting therefrom guaranteed their progressive and full consummation in the coming years. Thus, his advent fulfilled all the prophecies with 126