Lecture Lahore

Lecture Lahore

Background

During his visit to Jhelum in January 1903, in one of his sittings with his followers, the Promised Messiah(as) expressed the idea that one of these days he was planning to go to Lahore and deliver lectures, so that the people of Lahore could listen to the message from him personally and the doubts and misgivings created by misguided Maulavis could be gently removed and the path of rectitude would be shown to them. In order to fulfil this mission, he first planned to visit Lahore in March but because of the cases brought against him by his opponents in Gurdaspur, he could go to Lahore only in August 1903. The Promised Messiah(as) delivered his first lecture on August 21, 1903, in which he gave the reasons why a religion was needed and also spoke on the truth of his mission. In the second lecture delivered on August 28, 1903, attended by about two thousand people, the Promised Messiah(as) again adduced powerful arguments in support of his advent as the Promised Messiah and Mahdi.

The Book

The fourth lecture which appeared in this book under the caption Lecture Lahore was delivered on September 3, 1903, at a place behind Data Ganj Bakhsh, known as “Mandwah Melah Ram.” The misguided Maulavis, true to their colour, did their best to prevent people from attending this lecture but when the carriage of the Promised Messiah(as) arrived at the venue of the meeting, people found themselves going towards the meeting and the lecture was heard by about ten to twelve thousand people.

The topic of the lecture was “Islam and Other Religions of This Country.”

Specimen of Writing

In the Holy Quran God describes His attributes thus: Proclaim: He is Allah, the Single; Allah, the Self Existing and Besought of all. He begets not, nor is He begotten; and there is none like unto Him (112:2-5). This means that our God is One in His Being and in His Attributes. No other being is eternal and everlasting and self-existing like His Being, nor are the attributes of any being like His attributes. A person’s knowledge needs a teacher and yet is limited. God’s knowledge needs no teacher and is unlimited. A person’s hearing is dependent upon air and is limited, but God’s hearing is inherent and is unlimited. A person’s sight is dependent upon the light of the sun or some other light and is limited, but God’s seeing is by His inherent light and is unlimited. The power of man to create is dependent upon some matter and needs time and is limited. God’s power to create is neither dependent on any matter nor does it need time and is unlimited. All His attributes are without equal and as He has no equal in His Being, no one is His equal in His attributes. If one of His attributes were to be defective, all His attributes would be defective and therefore his Unity cannot be established unless He were without any equal in His attributes as He is without any equal in His Being. He is not anyone’s son, nor is anyone His son. He is Self-Sufficient and needs neither father nor son. This is the Unity which the Holy Quran teaches and which is the basis of our faith.1

We cannot say how many such cycles the world has gone through and how many Adams may have appeared in their own times, but it is certain that, since God is the Eternal Creator, the world must also be eternal as a species, though not in its forms and manifestations. Here, too, the Christians have erred, for they believe that God was eternally idle before He created heaven and earth some six thousand years ago.

Surely no sensible person would accept this. But the Holy Quran tells us that God is the Eternal Creator Who, if He so wills, may destroy the heaven and earth billions of times and create them anew just as before. God has informed us that the present human race originated from Adam, our common ancestor who came after the previous ‘races’, and this human race has an age of seven thousand years, and that these seven thousand years are to God just as seven days are to man. It has been decreed by the Divine law that every ‘race’ has a life span of seven thousand years, and it is to highlight this fact that the seven days have been ordained for man. Thus, the time ordained for the children of Adam is seven thousand years, five of which had already passed by the time of our Holy Prophet(sa), as shown by the numerical value of the words of Surah al-‘Asr. By now six thousand years of this era have gone and a thousand years remain. It has been prophesized, not only by the Holy Quran but by many earlier scriptures, that the last Messenger who will appear in the likeness of Adam, and will be named the Messiah, will appear at the end of the sixth millennium, just as Adam was born towards the end of the sixth day. All these signs should suffice for a man of understanding.2