By Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad, Khalifa IV (side note: on youtube he is mentioned as the 2nd Khalifa, hilarious)
**ANIMALS LIVE FROM DAY TO DAY with whatever life offers them. **They do not see to look back to their past nor to a dreamy future ahead of them. Man is an exception in the animal Kingdom. Seldom is his content with the present. Either he lives lost in the memories of the past or sutains himself with the hope that there are better days to come. Such hopes generally pertain to his economic, political or religious future. Is is to his religious hopes that we now turn our gaze.
All major religions promise the advent of a Divine personage who could usher 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. This is utopia, the meeting point of the hopes of all religions and this too, alas, becomes the parting of their ways. Only the dreams are shared not their realization. They are 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 cold not disagree more with each other.
Will he be Lord Krishna or Jesus Christ? Will he be Zoroaster or Buddha, or Confucius or Lao-tzu for that matter? Each is expecting a different person, under a different name and title; each is expecting him to belong exclusively to their own religion order. It is here that the gates one finds left open for the advent of the saviour begin to be shut again. They are seen shut from the vantage point of those who consider all other religions to be false except their own; while their gate, as seen by others, is also shut. All who had joined in the chorus, singing the songs of the advent of the a universal Redeemer, begin to sing their seperate song when it comes to his identity. Either he must somehow materialize out of their dreams, or they will accept none other. Alas, the latter is the only fate which they have carved for themselves. Why should God care for their pleasure if they care not for His? Let them create their saviour themselves out of the nothingness of their wild irrational hopes.
It is so intriguing to watch this wrangle on a global scale. After the dust of claims and conterclaims settles down, the only agreement the proponents of different religions reach is to continue to disagree even more vehemently. The Reformer they will accept has to be of their own faith and brand, or none other. Their talk is idle, their hopes are vain, their saviours dwell only in their dreams.
Can the Redeemer, whenever he comes, fulfil the hopes of all religions or will he meet those of only one? To whom will he actually belong, whose aspirations will he fulfil while all will be chanting by the fountain of hope:
"make them mine, make the mine, make them mine!" The question which finally emerges is wether a single person is promised or many, simulataneously. God has no contradiction in Him, hence He will either send one person with a single message, or none at all. What would happen to different warring factions of various religions at such a time, holding views divergent from the other? It is to this inherent contradiction in their attitudes that we shall now turn our attention.
THE WAY THEY ALL ENVISION the realization of their hopes in an impossible task. Take for example the case of the Jewish people, who have long been yearning for the advent of Christ. For thousand of years they have been striking their heads against the **Wailing Wall **and still do so, beseeching the Christ to come. Never do they realize that he has come and gone but not in the way they expected, nor in the manner and style they had assigned to his advent. Thus the gate they thought they had kept open lay practically shut and locked. How tantalizing it must be that the guest one so dearly awaits does not come though one sees no hurdle obstructing his path. In reality, all those who await the coming of any Divine guest are themselves responsible for placing impassable obstructions in his way. But somehow they remain unaware of what they do. If they could only realize that their expectations are impossible to be fulfilled they could at least rest in the sort of peace which follows despondency. The barriers help to relinquish hope and extinguished the flame of expectancy but only if they are recognized. If some people are oblivious to their existence, it is they who are to be blamed for their frustration. The Jewish people, for example, who await the advent of the Christ have not understood this hard, simple reality despite their wisdom. For them there is nothing but to weep and wail a wall of stones, beseeching the advent of a Messiah who can never come. For them, none will ever come.
...but they are not alone **in this inconsistency of being stupid and wise all at once. The case of all other religions who expect an ultimate Redeemer is no different from theirs. The actors are different of course, the acts are played in different garb, yet the drama remains the same. A Christ should have come to the aid of the Jewish people and did come but it was not the same Christ they were awaiting, so they failed to recognize him. They expected him to appear with a crown over his head seated on a royal throne. He would be a warrior Messiah, they believed, who would successfully lead the armies of the Israelites against the despotic rule of the Roman Empire. Two thousand years have passed since their rejection of Jesus (as) as Messiah, yet no Messiah of their expectation has come. History has changed the political geography of the world and the prophecy of the coming of the Christ has lost all revelance. There is no Judea or Palestine under the yoke of a Roman Empire from which the Jewish are to liberated. In fact, the Roman Empire which once ruled half of the world has completely disappeared from the map of the world. We still hear of **deliverance, but it is a deliverance from the Jews, not the Jews. Although there was nothing wrong in their belief that Christ would be born like any other human child to a human mother, yet they attached some supernatural preconditions to his birth which could not have been realized. Their belief about the bodily descent of Elijah (as) before the advent of the Messiah, is just the case in point which effectively blocked the passage of the Messiahthey awaited. So the Jewish position, vis-à-vis the advent of a Messiah, in reality turn out to be a denial of his advent altogether.