According to the Islamic teachings, God’s spiritual plan has been to create religions for mankind to worship God, but when mankind started to unite and become big groups, so developed the need for One religion for everyone. To ensure that this happened, God sent His final religion Islam. But still not everyone turned to Islam!
If we turn to all the religions, we see a similar pattern. Each religion believes that it will be victorious in the latter days and that a Prophet or person will return to bring about that victory.
So all the major religions promise the advent of a divine personage who would usher in a new era of hope for mankind and unite them under one divine flag. This is the promised land which one day they all aspire to reach, govern and command. But how can this be? Whilst they are all unanimous in their belief that one divine personage will certainly come as the saviour of the human race, but when it comes to his identity, they could not disagree more with each other. Each is expecting a different person, under a different name and title; each is expecting him to belong exclusively to their own religious order. We see for instance that the Jews are awaiting the coming of the ‘Messiah’. They rejected the claim of Jesus Christ, may peace be upon him, and still await their saviour who will usher in the glory of the One God under the banner of Judaism. He will successfully lead the Jewish armies to victory over all others and establish the kingdom on earth.
The Christians on the other hand are also awaiting the second coming of the ‘Messiah’, but this will be the ‘Son of God’ descending in glory from heaven to earth in a human form. He will then make Christianity dominate over all others. Many Muslims also are awaiting the ‘Messiah’, but this ‘Messiah’ who will also descend from heaven to earth in a human form, will be a Muslim and will proceed to kill Christians for foolishly believing in his first coming and not accepting Islam. To aid him in this massacre of the disbelievers will be the Imam Mahdi. Both will go around forcing everyone to accept Islam or be killed! What happens to the Qur’anic teaching of ‘there is no compulsion in religion (2:257), is conveniently forgotten, likewise, the concept that no Prophet can come after the Holy Prophet Muhammad, may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, seems to have been dismissed with the fact that the second coming of the Prophet Jesus, may peace be upon him, will be coming after the Holy Prophet?
Likewise, we have the re-advent of Krishna for the Hindus, who will be making the whole world worship idols, or the re-advent of the Buddha for the Buddhists who will either be teaching that there is no God, as some sects of Buddhism teach, or that Buddha himself is God! Finally, we turn to the Zoroastrians who believe that there will be a re-advent of Zoroaster teaching that there are two Gods, the God of Light and God of Darkness.
This is the crazy scenario that is being predicted. What will happen in the Latter Days if all these people that are predicted to come, do come? Each will fight each other for supremacy. Each will try to enforce their concept of God(s) on the others. How could this be the spiritual plan of One God? Instead of unity, it will only cause more disunity, more hatred and more senseless killing in the name of religion!
The only reasonable solution is the one presented by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, who claimed that all these second comings, that all the different religions have foretold, are all relating to the spiritual coming of one person, not the physical coming of many. He claimed to be that person. He was the Promised One awaited by all the religions and has come to unite all the religions. Therefore, he is the divine personage who everyone has been waiting for and he will usher in a new era of hope for mankind and unite them under one divine flag.
Signs of the Latter Days
If the Promised One has really come, then it means that we should be in the Latter Days, but what about the signs of the Latter Days, have they been fulfilled?
The Holy Bible relates about the signs of the Latter Days in Matthew 24, verses 6-7:
“And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that ye be not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines, and pestilences and earthquakes in divers places.”
In the last century, we have had two world wars, which certainly fulfils the part of ‘nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom’. Likewise, with the invention of television and the printing press, etc. we certain are now more aware of what is happening around the world. Therefore, we are constantly hearing of ‘famines, pestilences (Aids etc.) and earthquakes’.
The Bible also mentions about Gog and Magog or Ya’juj and Ma’juj in the Holy Qur’an, that these two would make their appearance in the Latter Days. These two great powers represent ‘the Soviet Union and ‘the West’. Both have come into great ascendancy in the last Century. The Soviet Union or Communism, teaches atheism, whilst ‘the West’ teaches materialism. Both these teachings pull mankind away from God. Hence the battle between the Second Coming of the Messiah and Gog and Magog. God has brought communism to an end and whilst materialism is still going strong, if we look towards the great Western Countries of America and the Europe, externally they seem strong, but internally their moral decline is slowly destroying these countries. Hence, the only answer for these two great powers is to turn to God through the acceptance of the second coming of the Messiah.
There is also in the Bible the mention of the Anti-Christ or Dajjal in the Islamic teachings. The Anti-Christ means just that, that it is against God. Now both of the great religions depict this battle in the Latter Days between the Anti-Christ, the Dajjal and the Second Coming of the Messiah. They both depict that this power struggle will be between Christianity and Anti-Christianity, therefore, we can understand it to mean that it will happen at the time when Christianity will be a powerful and dominate force. Now it is interesting to note that the Holy Prophet Muhammad, may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, instructed his followers to turn to the first ten verses of Surah Kahf (Chapter 18 of the Holy Qur’an) when they confront the menace of the Dajjal. The first ten verses of this chapter contain a refutation of Christianity. For instance, one of the verses relates “And that it may warn those who say. Allah has taken unto Himself a son”. This seems to indicate that the Holy Prophet warned the Muslims that the Dajjal was Christianity, whose teaches was against God (that God has a son etc.)
Of course, the general understanding is that the Anti-Christ or Dajjal will be some kind of powerful individual, a kind of superman with great powers or the Devil risen for the final battle of mankind! But if we examine some of the sayings of the Holy Prophet then we can come to a different understanding, one more realistic. For instance, the Holy Prophet has said that “The Dajjal is a large party”, “will spread over the whole world”, “a party which keeps moving from one part of the world to another the goods and material in which it trades” (all Taj). These descriptions apply to Christian propagandists today. They transport their books from one part of the world to another, promoting business activities wherever they go.
It is true that the Dajjal has other signs. He was to be one-eyed and was to have with him a donkey of inordinate size. Clouds of smoke were to be seen in front of the animal and behind it. These descriptions are symbolic and indicate that the Dajjal will be a group of men devoid of spiritual vision and that the donkey of the Dajjal symbolises the railway and modern transport, inventions made in Christian countries. When the steam train whistles, the sound resembles the braying of a donkey. It uses fire and water as fuel and clouds of smoke are before it and behind it. Christian propagandists use it for transporting themselves to different parts of the world.
Therefore, we understand that with the second coming of the Messiah, he will remove the false teachings of Christianity and instead bring the true teachings of God. This will be the battle between the Anti-Christ or Dajjal and the Second Coming of the Messiah.