The Mirror of the Excellences of Islam — Page 64
PREFACE 63 [Mary the Truthful], who, as all agree, is dead, has been mentioned together with him as: كَانَا يَا كُنِ الطَّعَامَ : 1 Meaning that they both used to eat food when they were alive. The reason for this emphasis was that in His eternal knowledge, He knew very well that a grave tribulation would befall mankind dur- ing the Latter Days because of the belief that the Messiah is alive, and that tribulation would be very harmful to Islam. Therefore, He decided from the very beginning and clearly disclosed that the Messiah had died. Some naive people surmise that the verse: إنِّي مُتَوَفِّيكَ 2 merely contains the promise of the Messiah's death, which only indi- cates that God Almighty will cause him to die at any given time, but not that He has already caused him to die. Such people do not consider that God Almighty had already conveyed the news of the fulfilment of this promise when He mentioned the words [When You caused me to die'] spoken through the mouth of the Messiah himself. Moreover, it is also worth considering that a promise of God Almighty in the words that ‘I am about to do such and such a thing' indicates that the promise is about to be fulfilled soon without delay-not that the promise of rafa [exaltation] should be fulfilled immediately but the promise of causing death has yet to be fulfilled despite the lapse of nearly 2,000 years! O readers! By making the aforementioned statements at this time, 1. Surah al-Ma'idah, 5:76 [Publisher] 2. Surah Al-e-Imran, 3:56. [Publisher] 3. Surah al-Ma'idah, 5:118 [Publisher]