Jesus In India — Page 30
20 JESUS IN INDIA belly of the whale,¹ what resemblance could there be between the dead and the living, and vice versa? The truth is, that because Jesus, the Messiah, was a true prophet and he knew that God, who loved him, would save him from an accursed death. Therefore, on the basis of the divine revelation received by him, he had proph- esied in the form of a parable, and positively intimated that he would not die on the cross, nor would life depart from him on the accursed wood; on the contrary, like the prophet Jonah, he would only fall into a state of swoon. In the parable, Jesus, the Messiah, had also hinted that he would come out of the bowels of the earth and meet his people and, like Jonah, would attain honour among his people. Thus this prophecy was also fulfilled; for Jesus, the Messiah, came out of the bowels of the earth and went to those of his peoples who lived in the eastern countries like Kashmir and Tibet. These were the ten tribes of the Israelites who 721 years s☆2 before Jesus, the Messiah, had been taken captive and forced to leave Samaria by Shalmaneser, King of Assur. They eventually came to India and settled in various parts of the coun- try. And it was essential that Jesus, the Messiah, make this journey, for the divine object underlying his mission was indeed to meet the lost tribes of Israel who had settled in different parts of India. This was because, in reality, these were the lost sheep of Israel who had renounced their ancestral faith after settling in these parts, and most of them had become Buddhists, and gradually started 1. This is a misprint in the original Urdu, the word پُچھلی )whale) should have been زمین )earth). [J. D. Shams[ 2. Besides these, more Jews were also exiled to eastern countries as a result of Babylonian misfortunes. (Author)