The Descent of the Messiah — Page 20
THE DESCENT OF THE MESSIAH which will be the time of the Promised Messiah-or punish it. " It should be noted that in Şahih Muslim and other books of the Ahl-e-Sunnah, as well as in the Ikmalud-Din of the Shiites, it is clearly written that the plague shall appear during the time of the Promised Messiah. In fact, in Ikmālud-Din, which is considered very authentic by the Shiites, the first four Ahādīth on page 348 pertain to the solar and lunar eclipses. It quotes Imam Baqir as saying that one of the Signs of the Mahdi is that, before he is established, i. e. widely accepted, there will occur solar and lunar eclipses within the month of Ramadan. ¹ As a further sign of his coming, it is written that before he is established, i. e. general- ly accepted, there will occur such a severe plague in the world that only two out of seven people in a house will survive and five will die. It is clear from these words that these two signs will ap- pear at a time when he will have been rejected by the world. The same two signs had appeared for Jesus, the Messiah-after he was rejected and was about to be crucified, the sun and moon were darkened and the plague broke out. It is written in this book that the occurrence of the lunar and solar eclipses in Ramadan and the outbreak of the plague on earth will be a miracle of the Prom- 1 The Messiah was put onto the cross on a Friday in the late afternoon. After enduring excruciating pain from the nails, he eventually fainted and was assumed dead. Suddenly, a dust storm swept across the land and obscured the light of the sun and moon, causing darkness to fall. This occurred on the tenth day of the month of Muharram while the Jews were fasting in preparation for their Passover, which was to occur the next day. In this state of fasting, the elders believed that they were performing a virtuous act by attempting to prove that the Messiah was cursed. Similarly, during the time of the Promised Messiah, when edicts of heresy and murder were passed against him, there were solar and lunar eclipses that occurred during the month of Ramadan, which is also a month of fasting. This was to establish a parallel between the two events. Just as Jesus metaphorically arose from the dead, in the same way, when it was believed that they had succeeded in killing this Messiah through two hundred edicts of heresy, he arose and stood up, and was thus called Imam Qā'im. (Author) 20