If one wants to find out about the truth of the promised Messiah, yes, there are some criteria provided, but how one can make sure that these criteria do really apply upon the promised Messiah? Now this is very easy and not at all difficult. If you read the criteria as mentioned in the Holy Quran, you’ll be surprised to find a very specific order and scientific treatment of this question. It’s the most beautiful book that could ever be revealed to man. In no other book you find such scientific and complete and orderly treatment of fundamental questions which are facing humankind. So the Holy Quran begins first with the past of a prophet. He has a present, he has a past and he has a future. All three things. And if the people who know the past, they are not told of any argument which relates to the past of a prophet, they would not be well provided with sufficient argument because they may not live long enough to see his immediate present or his future. For them, the moment the claim is made, whatever is available is just the past. So a very important fundamental argument has to be provided regarding the past. The Holy Quran begins with that. It says, tells the Holy Prophet to tell them, فَلَقَدْ لَبِسْتُ فِيكُمْ أُمُرًا مِّن قَبْلِهِ أَفَلَا تَعْقِلُونَ If you are wondering at my claim and you are blaming me for forgery against Allah. Have you not seen my past? It is a blameless past. Almost 40 years had passed since and his claim was made at a ripe mature age of 40 or about thereof. And in the childhood, a man cannot, however clever he is, imitate things to a degree that all the people around are befooled or act in a manner that he befools others about his reality. Child is an open book to everybody and everybody knows his trends, his thoughts, his actions, his tendencies. Everything is open. So the childhood has passed before everybody. Then the youth is the age of hot blood. In every manner, it cannot contain itself, its desires and it cannot in reality lead a life of hypocrisy, particularly when hypocrisy is not required. In a rotten society when there are no laws, when there is pride in having wines and women, when pride is taken in destroying others and usurping others’ properties, what need of hypocrisy is there? None whatsoever, because they are not evils, they are things of pride. Yet a prophet does not participate in those things. I mean the would-be prophet. So there is no hypocrisy about him, no requirement of any hypocrisy about him. Then he enters the ripe age where wisdom overtakes the sentiments and throughout his his career he is clean and innocent. What suddenly happens to him one night that the one who never attributed wrongly things to ordinary human beings begins to attribute things to his creator and he’s not made like that. His whole previous character belies these things. Now this argument about the character according to the holy Quran only applies to the past and this is the most beautiful part of this argument. Once a claim is made then the era of hatred begins and once the era of hatred begins everybody would point to one fault or the other. So no neutral opinion can be obtained after the claimant has made the claim. So the holy Quran never challenges about the conduct of the prophet after the claim has been made, that is the beauty of the book. It says you had a right to point out to the flaws to the defects in character to the immoralities before he had made the claim because then you had neutralized and then he had an a neutral life before you, simple and clean and apparent in every respect. So if not a single blemish can be thrown upon his previous life then after the hatred begins then you have no right then to start alleging things against him or concocting things against him. That is unreal, unrealistic and in fact most abominable idea for anyone who is hating someone and then alleging things against him. While he had an opportunity before the hatred began to find out his defects and even after the challenge is thrown still he cannot point out to a single incident where he was found to be at fault. So when the challenge is thrown it is not thrown only to the unwary eye. People could have said well previously we we did not want to say things about him we knew that happened and that happened and that happened but there was no need to but now we can tell you at that time he was caught stealing at that time he was behaving like this at that time he was being dishonest so a host of allegations could have cropped up regarding to the past because the people who observed his life were living none comes that is the beauty of this heaven. So when this happens then Allah tells us in a way that you forfeit your right to speak about his character because the time when his character was naked that was the time for you to object to it. So that is the argument as I said which relates to the past and the argument about the present is mentioned in that verse of the holy Quran which I quoted in one of the earlier sessions here وَلَوْ تَقَوَّلَ عَلَيْنَا بَعْضُ الْأَقَابِينَ لَأَخَذْنَ مِنْهُ بِالْيَمِينَ ثُمَّ لَقَطَانَ مِنْهُ الْوَقِينَ فَمَا مِنْكُمْ مِنْ أَحَدٍ أَنْهُ حَاجِزِينَ of that I have I have made enough explanation in the previous so you can join that with this and put it in order that is about the to me when the claimant has made the claim and as long as he lives that is what I call his presence and during his lifetime his efforts have to be frustrated and annihilated and so much so that the world should be able to see and judge that this man had no support from Allah and he had on the other hand some sort of support from some people so that support of no avail to him either this or he should have been totally rejected as a as a madman these are the two treatments possible to a false claimant of prophethood so if they do not happen in the lifetime of a prophet then nobody has a right to say that he’s a liar and also about that as I supported this argument by another verse of the holy quran according to the holy quran no man has a right to reject anyone anyone’s claim that he has received allah’s revelation on uh on by itself on principle nobody has a right because the moment he makes this right acquires this right to declare that somebody is definitely a liar allah has not spoken to him immediately he is in virtual and he’s virtually making either of the two claims now this analysis has to be fully understood either he’s saying that allah cannot speak to any person without calling me a witness and because i was not there when allah spoke allah should have spoken to him i should have been there so as i was never called to witness by allah so he’s a definitely he’s definitely a liar either this claim is to be made by him that allah cannot move without his presence or he should make a claim like allah that he is omniscient he knows everything whatever goes so it is his personal knowledge that allah did not speak to him otherwise this is such an absurd claim you say allah is talking to me and somebody say i tell you definitely he’s a liar this cannot happen all that you can reasonably say is we don’t know we don’t believe because somehow we are not satisfied but we don’t know that’s all beyond that the holy quran does not give anybody a right to go so this is the interesting situation in which we find the enemies of a claimant of prophethood the moment he makes the claim that allah has revealed to me and appointed me to such and such office immediately they begin to deny and say he’s a liar he is an imposter it cannot happen how do they know their position is like two madmen somebody once visited an asylum for madmen and he found two one person sitting underneath a tree so he said who are you he said i am a prophet of god allah has sent me so on the top of the tree there was someone sitting he said he’s a liar i never sent him you see so they become everything and god is left out entirely when they say he is not sent by god in in reality they are claiming we never sent him we know so he’s not sent from god you’re neither here nor there what right have you to interfere and this is exactly what was said by the person who belonged according to the holy quran to the people of pharaoh who had quietly and slyly accepted hazzat moses when he saw people designing against him and plotting for his murder and things this is what he said we don’t know whether he has positively told a lie or not we can’t know we we are not in a position to judge so either of the two things are possible that is the most logical approach either he is a liar or he’s a truthful person there’s no third possibility so if he is a liar what has it got to do with you don’t believe him believe in him that’s all but leave him alone because if he’s a liar against him will be his life allah is not going to punish you for his life so what is wrong with you what is hurting you but if he’s right he’s honest and he’s truthful then you will have it then you will certainly have had it and you will be destroyed so prophets are treated in their presence like this like this and it also sows the seed for that claim in the holy quran it is allah’s job to destroy such people then not the job of the people who are addressed but the one but the job of the one who is supposed to have sent him it is just like what happens in the world governments if somebody comes to you and claims that i am i belong to to police and he has the police costume and uniform on him and he says that i have brought this order from the headquarters so you come with me now if you do not believe in him what you will do you will report his case to the police because you think he’s an imposter if you believe in him you will follow him there is no third possibility but to be on the safe side you have not started beating him you’ll not start beating him because if he happens to be from the police then you’ll have it so that is exactly the argument put forward by the person from moses people now from pharaoh’s people he said behave sensibly at least don’t interfere this is not your job the job of the one who has sent or who has not sent that’s all so you have to know but if you have someone the government has not sent him and government is in the picture of what is happening and the government keeps quiet about it then it is the fault of the government either that government is paralyzed or it should be understood that the government has accepted his position as its representative that is the only logical conclusion so in this case somebody does not have to report to allah in this case allah knows that and they do not know but to make things easy for them hazrat masih maud alaihissalaatu wassalaam even suggested a complaint lodged against hazrat to allah that oh allah if you do not know we tell you that an imposter is born and he should be destroyed this is exactly what hazrat masih maud alaihissalaatu wassalaam has written in one of his challenges he says you say i have been planted by the british i claim i have been planted by allah and you think allah doesn’t know it and so he’s not destroying me and unnecessarily without your right without any wisdom behind this action you are taking it to yourself to destroy me and approve me so the fundamental thing is either allah has sent me or he has not sent me so i suggest a better way start praying to allah start prostrating to him and make human cry against me that oh allah an imposter has come and nobody destroys him then it is it is possible in principle for a child to become a companion in the sight of allah and it is also possible for an adult not to be counted among companions in the sight of allah doing a so so-called claimant to profitability but i assure you that i have been planted by allah so if you go on prostrating before allah and crying to him you may your rub your wipe your foreheads out by rubbing on the ground you may destroy and and shed the entire what would you call no no no okay eyelids not eyelids eyelashes that’s right that was the word missing me if by crying excessively your eyelashes are shed eyelashes are shed and the halka what is that this you know the halka is is the round thing in which the eye encased in fact no no no socket i thought it that’s right that’s better and your sockets get rotted by crying excessively even then allah will not listen to you and allah will make me prosperous before your eyes because i have been planted by allah and not by anybody else this is the claim and this is in fact the most logical challenge that could be thrown by a prophet or a claimant to the non-believers he has suggested the right way you say he has not sent me and i say he has sent me so go to him and put your complaint lodge your complaint before him in his court against me so that is also an argument or a branch of the same argument which i mentioned earlier it belongs to the presence so ultimately he dies he leaves departs this earth for his creator ultimately goes to him and people of new generations begin to appear so there has to be a argument a last lasting argument of eternal value for them to apply to the future of the prophet as well so that nobody can say that we were not there in the history we don’t know what happened so for them the holy quran mentions in two places an argument of lasting nature one is khatab allahu la aglibanna ana wa rusuli allah has made it imperative upon himself that he and his prophets would positively become victorious none can change this verdict this decree of allah what a forceful declaration by allah so that is a challenge thrown for the future and forever this is why when jesus christ came and he was opposed according to the holy quran allah do you know what allah promised him from now on you will go on gaining ground and the jews your opponents would go on losing ground until a time is going to come that forever and forever you will gain an ascendancy upon the jews which will never be reversed that was the eternal argument and the same argument applies in fact to every prophet that once the inception of that message has taken root it has come into being since then it is always one result when the two sides come to clash victory of the one who has sent by allah and the defeat of the other who is opposed to him victory in what sense the message goes on increasing and gaining more ground and those who want to suppress the message they may kill a few they may gain some temporal ground but in reality as far as the faith goes they are always defeated if they have not accepted their generations begin to accept those who are prominent in opposition sometimes their children become prominent in support of the same value and same claim so this is which is the eternal message for all people to come for all time to come to prove to them that this is godly phenomena not a worldly phenomenon and elsewhere i described the other verse of the same nature which is that we are decreasing their ground their ground is narrowing and they think they will become victorious how can it happen that one party is losing ground and other party is gaining ground and the one which is losing ground it claims that we will become victorious it’s not possible it’s most illogical it is like what happened with one of our family members Mir Muhammad Ahmad Sahib once he told us a very interesting thing when he was a student during the war days the buses in lahore were thoroughly packed and there was always if the seat was available there was a bad rush for that seat to occupy that seat so he detected he was standing in the bus he detected a seat vacant and he rushed for it but by the time he sat somebody had already sat i had occupied that seat so he sat on the lap of that person so he thought he had detected it first so addressing him he said i occupied this seat first he said how come it then i have become below come below you and then you are on top of me if you occupied the seat first then you should have been below and i should have been on the top so this is impossible this cannot happen the same is the situation here the person who is losing ground has no right to claim that he will become victorious so sometimes sometimes people get confused they say so far Ahmadiyyat has not become victorious and you say the holy quran has said we point out to them that it is not the time factor which is indicative it is a phenomena is positive phenomena whose style never changes that by the passage of time it it is always one side which is gaining ground and it is always the other side which is losing ground so whether victory occurs after 1000 years or 2000 years one thing is certain that as long as this phenomena is not reversed the victory would belong to this side which is gaining ground if that verse had not occurred in the holy quran some people might have got confused about the ultimate victory of islam because the enemies of Ahmadiyyat forget the point that islam was made for the entire world and it has not become victorious so far as the world is concerned even as put against single religions it has not gained ascendancy so the opponents of islam could take exactly the same attitude towards muslims as non-Ahmadis are taking towards us and said look here 1400 years have passed since it’s a long time a very long time in fact and the holy quran made the claim in another place the same verse ends up differently so 1400 years have passed and you have not become victorious against only the against even the christians in india you are in minority in china you are in minority against buddhists alone you are in minority against atheists you are in minority and you say what is the meaning of this then this verse comes to help islam is always on the spread and if it ceases to cease to be on on the spread then it has lost something and that is the time when allah must save islam by sending someone so the characteristics of islam are retained within islam by that movement which is come to rectify things and that is Ahmadiyyat the attributes of islam regarding this claim have entirely been transferred to Ahmadiyyat and it is they now who can claim so this is the most important evidence or a group of evidence of evidence which we find in the holy quran pertaining to all three tenses the past the present and the future
