The Review of Religions (English), March 1920
The most remarkable thing about Ahmad’s[as] prophecies is their most clear fulfilment. They are so clearly fulfilled that there remains no doubt as to their truth.
They refer to striking events, are given in striking words, and meet with striking fulfilment. For instance, while describing the world-war in one of his prophecies he said:
زار بھی ہوگا تو ہوگا اُس گھڑی باحالِ زار
i.e., in that dreadful hour, even the Tsar of Russia would be reduced to a pitiable plight. Now, mark how tragic, how painful and how pitiable was the fate which the mighty Tsar of all the Russia met with in fulfilment of this prophecy.
His tragic end moved the whole world to pity and a poet thus addressed the ex-Tsar Nicholas:
“But yesterday they hailed thee puissant Tsar;
The lands o’er which thou heldest Imperial sway
The sun spans not in one o’erarching day,
Swift journeying from East to West afar.
Now hast thou dropped like to a falling star
Whereat men gaze awhile, then turn away;
Who’ll stand agape at one man turned to clay,
Whilst roar un-surfeited the guns of war?
Unhappy king, thou didst but lose thy crown
A little ’ore thy time. Death levels all,—
One rank marshals serf and king and clown.
But stern was Fate that bade thee thus descend
From lofty throne, and like a criminal
Be led away to meet thy tragic end!”
L. C. R. (Pioneer, Allahabad)
It was in a poem that Ahmad[as] announced his prophecy and the words of the poet quoted above are a fitting testimony to the truth of the prophecy. Read this testimony and see how true the prophecy turned out to be. But as if the personal experiences of the Tsar were not enough to fill the measure of his misery, his family was made to suffer even a more ignominious death. A Paris telegram dated 4 February 1919 said:
“The Petit Parisien publishes new details of the murder of the Russian Imperial family, according to which the Grand Duchesses were violated under the eyes of their own parents before being killed.”
A London telegram, dated 30 December 1918 said, “Speaking in the Chamber M Pichon stated that Prince Lyoff told him that the ex-Tsar’s family were tortured all night long before being finally killed. Each member of the family who were assembled in one room, was placed in a chair and prodded with bayonets and then murdered. The room next day was a pool of blood.”
We now take another prophecy of Ahmad[as].
In the course of a paper read before a Religious Conference held at Lahore on 3 and 4 December 1907, Ahmad[as] announced the following prophecy:
“In the same book, the Barahin-i-Ahmadiyya, which has already been referred to as having been published twenty-five years ago, will be found a promise given [to] me by Almighty God that if people did not accept His way, He would send the plague upon them, and death would work havoc on all sides, earthquakes would come and terrible disasters would overtake the world. In accordance with this prophecy, the plague has spread in this country and 95 earthquakes have also come, and Almighty God has further informed me beforehand that a new kind of epidemic to which the people of this country are strangers will also make its appearance, and men will wonder as to what Almighty God wills to bring about.”
Further on, in the same paper, Ahmad[as] repeated the prophecy saying:
“To me have been given the miracles which cannot be wrought by any human power and are solely the work of God. The disastrous earthquakes which have upset vast tracts of land, and the plague which is cutting off human life like a scythe in a ripe field of corn are only two of the signs which have been given to me. Long before their appearance, I published in my work the Barahin-i-Ahmadiyya that disasters were about to overtake the country, and now we are in their midst. But this is not all. Far heavier disasters are yet in store for the world. New kinds of pestilences will make their appearance and they will strike terror into the hearts of the people.”
How terribly the prophecy about the new kind of epidemic, which was to be different from the plague that was already prevailing and which was to strike terror into the hearts of the people, has been fulfilled is well known to men all over the world. The following is but a faint description of the horrors of the epidemic which swept all over the world in striking fulfillment of Ahmad’s[as] prophecy:
The medical correspondent of the Times, in the issue of that paper on 18 December said:
“Though estimates of deaths over the whole world from any single epidemic are difficult to form, there seem to be reasonable grounds for believing that 6,000,000 persons have perished of influenza and pneumonia during the past 12 weeks. Business has been interfered with by the epidemic in every country in the world, and enormous losses both in earning power and in trade have been suffered.
“The cost of the ‘influenza war’ cannot be reckoned, but that it is colossal does not admit of doubt. This plague, then, generally regarded with equanimity, it would seem, five times more deadly than war. It has been estimated that the war caused the death of 20,000,000 persons in 4 and half years. In the same period, at its epidemic rate, influenza would have killed 108,000,000.
“The visits of the raiding Gothas to London were but as a summer shower compared with the deluge of germs which we have just received. The air raids cost London hundreds of lives; the influenza has cost it upwards of 10,000.
“Never since the Black Death has such a plague swept over the face of the world; never, perhaps, has a plague been more stoically accepted.
“In India alone, over 3,000,000 deaths occurred. Bombay had 15,000 of these; Delhi, with a population of only 200,000, had 800 deaths a day. The Punjab lost 250,000 persons, South Africa suffered no less severely.
“In Cape Town 2,000 children were left destitute as a result of the disease, while the plague swept through the native areas like fire.
“The Commonwealth of Australia sent a ship to Samoa with help because the disease was affecting 80 percent of the natives.
“The white population were only able to feed the living and bury the dead. In New Zealand public services were stopped and business gravely disorganised.
“The ravages in Africa have been appalling, nor has Canada escaped. In Ontario and the Western Provinces no fewer than 108 doctors died of the epidemic, while total death rate in Ontario alone was 5,000 up to November.
“A large number of American Indians have perished. Europe as a whole has suffered in the same way. In Spain the epidemic was described as ‘truly awful.’ In Barcelona the death rate was credibly stated to be 1,200 daily. France has had her share, likewise Germany and Austria.”
Similarly, Ahmad[as] prophesied that great earthquakes will occur in different parts of the world, some of which will be of unprecedented severity. It is hardly necessary for me to point out how clearly and how terribly this prophecy has been fulfilled. The present generation has already witnessed numerous terrible earthquakes which have occurred in different parts of the world and many of them were so terrible that the world had not witnessed the like of them in ages gone by.
The following is a recent occurrence. A Mexico telegram dated 9 January 1920 says:
“Fresh earthquakes have occurred in the North West of Vera Cruz. Eight villages have been overwhelmed, and an immense lake now stretches over the devastated area.
“In the state of Pueblo, which has been devastated, the dead are officially estimated at 3,000. Scores of injured perished from starvation after the earthquake.”
Compare with these testimonies, the comments made on the American astronomer’s prophecy published in the November number of the Review of Religions.
In order to revive the said prophecy in the memory of our readers, we may quote here a few words from the said prediction. Professor Alberb Porta, the noted sunspot forecaster and discoverer of “Porta’s Weather Laws” announced:
“The whole world will be swept by the most terrific weather cataclysm experienced since human history began … There will be hurricanes, lightning, colossal rains … There will also be gigantic lava eruptions, great earthquakes, to say nothing of floods and fearful cold …
“Be warned in advance. Tremendous things are going to happen from December 17th to December 20th, 1919, and afterwards.”
Everybody knows how peacefully the days passed away, without witnessing even the faintest sign of what Professor Porta had predicted.
If the prediction had turned out to be true, it would have detracted nothing from the value of Ahmad’s[as] prophecies, but the failure of Professor Porta’s prophecy certainly serves to bring Ahmad’s[as] prophecies into relief and makes them shine the more brightly.
Mark what the London correspondent of the Civil & Military Gazette, Lahore, remarks about the Professor’s prophecy. He says:
“Somebody in America has been prophesying in more or less definite terms the immediate end of the world as a going concern, simply on the strength of a certain conjunction of the planets, or rather their convergence for once in a certain quadrant of the heavens.
“‘Old Moore’ and ‘Zadkiel’ – those old-established seers maintained as a paying institution by enterprising publishers – have been well aware that this convergence was impending. Their prognostications are so cautious and so regular a feature of the publishing season that they cease to excite apprehension, and remain in vogue merely as a kind of mild stimulus for illiterate minds and a source of amusement for the cynic. It only required an unknown professor from Michigan to wave his wand, or rather to exercise the awe that always attaches to the remote, and all the headlines began to dance accordingly.
“This was nothing more than an inevitable wave of cheap sensationalism following upon the spiritualism of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the interesting speculations of Dr Einstein and hardly less could be expected in an age when people have been so feasted with the horrors of war that they can hardly settle down to the puling way of peace.
“Possibly the deluded people who hearkened to such tales of evil were to be satisfied with a sunspot or a hurricane due to the continued attraction of so many planets in conjunction; but the more probable thing is that this kind of quackery will stay in fashion for a time, and repeated prophecies will adjust themselves to the facts by bland postponements after the event, as in the notorious manner of the prophet Baxter of a generation ago.
“The best comment for the moment is that of the Westminster Gazette in its stop press news, where it announced on Wednesday that this finality of things was ‘not yet confirmed.’”