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The Lord
And The Prophet Of The Covenant
The last book of the Canonical Jewish
Code of the Bible bears the name of "Malachai,"
which looks to be more a sur- name than a proper noun. The
correct pronunciation of the name is Malakh, which means
"my angel" or "my mes- senger." The
Hebrew word, "mal'akh," like the Arabic
"malak," like the Greek term
"anghelos" from which the English name
"angel" is derived, signifies "a
messenger," one commissioned with a message or news
to deliver to some- body.
Who this Malakhi is, in what period of
the Jewish his- tory he lived and prophesied, is not known
either from the book itself or from any other portion of
the Old Testament. It begins with the words: "The
'missa' of the Word of Yahweh the El of Israel by the hand
of Malakhi," which may be translated: "The
discourse of the Word of Yahweh God of Israel, by the hand
of Malakhi." It contains four short chapters.
The oracle is addressed, not to a king
and his courtiers, but to a people already settled in
Jerusalem with the Temple and its services. The sacrifices
and oblations are of the meanest and worst kind; the sheep
and cattle offered at the altars are not of the best
quality; they are blind, lame, and lean animals. The
tithes are not regularly paid, and if at all paid are of
the inferior material. The priests, too, natu- rally,
cannot devote their time and energy to perform their
sacred duty. For they cannot chew the beefsteaks and
roasted mutton-chops of the lean old, crippled sacrifices.
They cannot live on the scanty tithes or insufficient
stipends. Yahweh, as usual with this incorrigible people,
now threatens, now holds out promises, and at times
complain.
This discourse, or oracle, seems to have
been delivered by the Prophet Malakhi in about the
beginning of the fourth century before the Christian era,
when the people of Israel were also tired of Yahweh; and
used to say: "The Table of the Lord (Yahweh) is an
abomination, and His meal is con- temptible" (Mal. i.
12). "He who doeth evils is good in the eyes of
Yahweh, and He is pleased with them; or, where is the God
of the judgment?" (Mal. ii. 17).
The Book of Malakhi, notwithstanding its
being of a post captivitatem date, is, however, written in
a seemly good Hebrew style. To say that this
"misa," or discourse, has come down to us intact
and unadulterated is to confess ignor- ance of the
language. There are several mutilated sentences, so that
it is almost impossible to understand the exact sense they
intend to convey.
The subject of our discussion in this
article is the famous prediction couched in Mal. iii. 1.
The prophecy runs thus: -
"Behold, I send My Messenger, and
he shall prepare the way before Me; and suddenly shall
come to his temple the Adon whom ye are seeking, and the
Messenger of the Covenant whom ye desire. Behold, he
cometh, says the Lord of Hosts" (Mal. iii. 1).
This is a well-known Messianic prophecy.
All Christian Saints, Fathers, Popes, Patriarchs, Priests,
monks, nuns, and even the Sunday-school children, will
tell us that the first messenger mentioned in the text is
St. John the Baptist, and the second messenger, whom their
vernacular versions have rendered "Angel of the
Covenant," is Jesus Christ!
A definite determination of the subject
of this prophecy is of extreme importance, because the
Christian Churches have ever since believed that two
distinct persons are indi- cated therein; and the author
of this erroneous belief is a singularly remarkable
blunder of St. Matthew's. One of the characteristic
features of the First Gospel - Matthew - is to show and
prove the fulfillment of some particular state- ment or
prediction in the Old Testament concerning nearly every
event in the life of Jesus Christ. He is very careless to
guard himself against contradictions, and less scrupulous
in his quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures. He is cer-
tainly not well versed in the literature of his own
language. I had occasion to refer in the preceding article
of this series to one of his blunders concerning the ass
upon which Jesus mounted. This is a most serious point
directly touch- ing the authenticity and the validity of
the Gospels. Is it possible that the Apostle Matthew
should himself be ignorant of the true character of the
prophecy of Malakh, and ignor- antly ascribe to his master
a misquotation which would natu- rally put to question his
very quality of a divinely inspired Prophet? Then, what
should we think of the author of the Second Gospel - of
St. Mark - who ascribes the passage in Malakh-l to Isaiah?
(Mark i. 2). Jesus is reported by Matthew (xi. 1-15), and
this too is followed or copied by Luke (vii. 18-28), to
have declared to the multitude that John the Baptist was
"more than a Prophet," that it was he
"about whom it was written: Behold, I am sending My
Angel before thy face, and he shall prepare thy way before
thee;" and that "none among those born by women
was greater than John, but the least in the kingdom of
heaven is greater than he." The corruption of the
text of Malakh is plain and deliberately made. The
original text tells us that Yahweh Sabaoth, i.e. God of
Hosts, is the speaker and the believers are the people
addressed, as can be readily seen in the words "whom
ye are seeking ... whom ye desire." God says:
"Behold, I send My Messenger, and he shall prepare
the way before My face." But the Gospels have
interpolated the text by effacing the personal pronoun of
the first person singular, and inserted "before
thee" (or "thy face," as in Hebrew) twice.
It is generally believed that Matthew wrote his Gospel in
the then vernacular Hebrew or Aramaic in order to prove to
the Jews that God, addressing Jesus Christ, said:
"Behold, I send My messenger (Angel) [such is the
version in Matthew xi. 10] before thee, and he shall
prepare thy way before thee;" and wishes to show that
this angel or messenger was John the Baptist. Then a
contrast between the Prophets John and Jesus is left to
Prophet Jesus, who describes John as above every prophet
and greater than the sons of all human mothers, but the
least in the Kingdom of Heaven - of which Jesus is meant
to be the King - is greater than John.
I do not believe for a second that Jesus
or any of his disciples could have made use of such
language with the object of perverting the Word of God,
but some fanatical monk or an ignorant bishop has forged
this text and put into the mouth of Jesus the words which
no prophet would speak.
The traditional idea that the Messenger
commissioned to prepare or repair the way before the
"Adon" and the "Messenger of the
Covenant" is a worshiper and subordinate of the
latter, and therefore to conclude that two distinct
persons are predicted is a creation of the ignorance
concerning the importance of the mission and the magnitude
of the work assigned to that messenger. He is not to be
supposed as a pioneer or even an engineer appointed to
construct roads and bridges for the passing of a royal
procession. Let us there- fore pore over this subject more
deeply and in a courageous, impartial, and dispassionate
manner.
1. In the first place, we must well
understand that the Messenger is a man, a creature of
human body and soul, and that he is not an Angel or a
superhuman being. In the second place, we should open our
eyes of wisdom and judg- ment to see that he is not
dispatched to prepare the way before another Messenger
called "Adon" and the "Messenger of the
Promise," but he is commissioned to establish a
straight, safe, and good Religion. He is commissioned to
remove all the obstacles in the way between God and His
creatures; and to fill up all the gaps and chasms in this
grand path, so that it may be smooth, easy to walk on,
well lighted, and protected from all danger. The Hebrew
phrase, "u pinna derekh," means to say that the
Messenger "will put straight and clear the worship or
the religion." The verb "darakh" of the
same root as the Arabic "daraka," means "to
walk, reach, and comprehend;" and the substantive
"derekh" signifies, "road, way, step,"
and metaphorically "worship and religion." It is
used in this spiritual sense all through the Psalms and
the Prophets. Surely this high Messenger of God was not
coming to repair or reform a way, a religion for the
benefit of a handful of Jews, but to establish a universal
and an unchangeable religion for all men. Though the
Jewish religion inculcates the existence of one true God,
still their conception of Him as a national Deity of
Israel, their priesthood, sacrificial rites and cere-
monies, and then the non-existence of any positive
articles of belief in the immortality of the soul, the
resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, the eternal
life in heaven or hell, and many other deficient points,
make it absolutely unfit and insufficient for the peoples
of diverse languages, races, di- mates, temperaments, and
habits. As regards Christianity, it, with its meaningless
seven sacraments, its beliefs in original sin, the
incarnation of a god - unknown to all previous reli- gious
and mythological literature - and in a trinity of indivi-
dual gods, and finally because it does not possess a
single line in scripto from its supposed founder, Jesus
Christ, has done no good to mankind. On the contrary, it
has caused divi- sions and sects, all inbued with bitter
feelings of hatred and rancor against each other.
The Messenger, then, was commissioned
with the abro- gating of both those religions and the
establishing of the ancient religion of Prophets Abraham
and Ishmael and the other Prophets, with new precepts for
all men. It was to be the shortest road to
"reach" God; the simplest religion to worship
Him, and the safest Faith to remain ever pure and unadul-
terated with superstition and stupid dogmas. The Messenger
was commissioned to prepare a road, a religion that will
conduct au who wish to believe in and love the One God
without having need of the leadership of hundreds of self-
appointed guides and pretenders. And above all, the Mes-
senger was to come suddenly to his temple, whether it be
the one in Jerusalem or the one in Mecca; he was to root
out all idolatry in those countries, not only by the
destruc- tion of idols and images, but also inculcating in
their former worshipers the faith in one true Allah. And
the accom- plishment of this stupendous task, namely, to
construct a new Path, a universal religion, that teaches
that between God and man no absolute mediator, no priest,
saint or sacrament, is at all permissible, has only been
done by a Prophet whose name is Muhammad al-Mustapha!
2. John the Baptist was not the
Messenger foretold by Malakhi The accounts given about him
by the four Evange- lists are very contradictory, but the
one thing that they together agree on is that he prepared
no way at all; for he was not accredited with a sacred
scripture: he neither founded a religion nor reformed the
old one. He is reported to have left his parents and home
while still a youth; he lived in the desert on honey and
the locust; and spent there his life until he was about
thirty years old, when he showed himself to the multitudes
on the banks of the River Jordan, where he used to baptize
the penitent sinners who confessed their sins to him.
While Matthew knows nothing of his re- lationship with
Jesus, or does not care to report it, Luke, who wrote his
Gospel, not from a revelation, but from the works of the
disciples of the Master, records the homage rendered by
John to Jesus when both in the wombs of their mothers
(Luke i. 39-46). He baptizes Jesus in the waters of the
River Jordan like everybody else, and is reported to have
said that he (John) was "not worthy to bow down to
untie the laces of the shoes" (Mark i. 7) of Jesus,
and ac- cording to the Fourth Gospel he (John) exclaimed
that Jesus was "the Lamb of God that takes away the
sins of the world" (John i. 29). That he knew Jesus
and recognized him to be the Christ is quite evident. Yet
when he was imprisoned he sends his disciples to Jesus,
asking him: "Art thou he who is to come, or should we
anticipate another one?" (Matt. xi. 3, etc.). The
Baptist was martyred in the prison because he reprimanded
an infidel Edomite, King Herod the Tetrarch, for having
married the wife of his own brother. Thus ends, according
to the narrative of the Evangelists, the life of a very
chaste and holy prophet.
It is strange that the Jews did not
receive John as a prophet. It is also stranger still to
find that the Gospel of Barnabas does not mention the
Baptist; and what is more, it puts the words said to have
been uttered by John concern- ing Christ into the mouth of
the latter about Muhammad, the Prophet of Allah. The
Qur'an mentions the miraculous birth of John under the
name of "Yahya," but does not refer to his
mission of baptism.
The description of his sermon is given
in the third chapter of Matthew. He seems to have
announced the approach of the Kingdom of Heaven and the
advent of a Great Messenger and Prophet of God who would
baptize the believers, not with water, "but with fire
and with the holy spirit."
Now, if John the Baptist were the
Messenger appointed by God to prepare the way before Jesus
Christ, and if he was his herald and subordinate, there is
no sense and wisdom whatever in John to go about baptizing
the crowds in the waters of a river or a pond and to
occupy himself with half a dozen disciples. He ought to
have immediately followed and adhered to Jesus when he had
seen and known him! He did nothing of the kind! Of course,
a Muslim always speaks of a prophet with utmost respect
and reverence, and I am not expected to comment further,
as an Ernest Renan or an indifferent critic would do! But
to say that a prophet whom they describe as a dervish
(Sufi) of the wilderness clad in the skins of animals, and
a dervish who comes forth and sees his "Adon"
and the "Angel of the Covenant," and then does
not follow and cleave to him, is ridiculous and
incredible. To think and believe that a prophet is sent by
God to pre- pare the way, to purify and clear the religion
for the coming of his superior, and then describing him as
living all his life in the desert among the animals, is to
tell us that he was constructing chaussees, causeways or
railways, not for men, but for beasts and genii.
3. Nor was John the Baptist the Prophet
Elijah or Elias, as Christ is made to have said. The
Prophet Malakhi, in his fourth chapter (verses 5, 6),
speaks of the coming of Elijah, which fact is foretold to
take place some time before the day of the Resurrection
and not before the Appearance of the Messenger in
question. Even if Christ had said that John was Elijah,
the people did not know him. What Jesus meant to say was
that the two were similar in their ascetical life, their
zeal for God, their courage in scolding and admonishing
the kings and the hypocrite leaders of the religion.
I cannot go on discussing this untenable
claim of the Churches concerning John being the Messenger
"to prepare the way." But I must add that this
Baptist did not abrogate one iota of the Law of Moses, nor
add to it a tittle. And as to baptism, it is the old
Jewish ma'muditha or ablution. Washing or ablution could
not be considered a "religion" or
"way" whose place has been taken by the famous
and my- sterious Church institution of the sacrament of
Baptism!
4. If I say that Jesus Christ is not
intended in the prophecy of Malakhi, it would seem that I
was advancing an argumentum in absurdum, because nobody
will contradict or make an objection to my statement. The
Churches have al- ways believed that the "Messenger
of the way" is John the Baptist, and not Jesus. The
Jews, however, accept neither of the two. But as the
person foretold in the prophecy is one and the same, and
not two, I most conscientiously declare that Prophet Jesus
is not, and could not be, that person. If Jesus was a god,
as he is now believed to be, then he could not be employed
to prepare the way before the face of Yahweh Sabaoth! If
Prophet Jesus were the Yahweh Sabaoth who made this
prophecy, then who was the other Yehweh Sabaoth before
whose face the way was to be prepared? If he were a simple
man, made of flesh and blood, and worshiper of the Lord of
Hosts, then the claim falls to the ground. For Jesus as a
simple human being and prophet could not be the founder of
the trinitarian Churches. Whichever form of the Christian
religion we may take, whether it be the Orthodox,
Catholic, Protestant, Salvationist, Quaker, or any of the
multitudinous sects and communities, none of them can be
the "way," the "religion" indicated by
Malakhi; and Prophet Jesus is not its founder or preparer.
So long as we deny the absolute Oneness of God, we are in
error, and Jesus cannot be our friend nor can he help us.
5. The person indicated in the prophecy
has three qualifications, namely, the Messenger of
Religion, the Lord Commander, and the Messenger of the
Convent. He is also described and distinguished by three
conditions, namely "he is suddenly coming to his
Mosque or Temple, he is looked for and sought by men, and
is greatly desired and coveted."
Who can, then, be this glorious man,
this Great Bene- factor of humanity, and this valiant
Commander who rendered noble services in the cause of
Allah and His religion other than Prophet Muhammad? - upon
whom may rest God's peace and blessing.
He brought to the world an unrivalled
Sacred Book, Al-Qur'an, a most reasonable, simple, and
beneficial religion of Islam, and has been the means of
guidance and conversion of millions and millions of the
heathen nations in all parts of the globe, and has
transformed them all into one universal and united
Brotherhood, which constitutes the true and formal
"Kingdom of Allah" upon the earth announced by
Prophets Jesus and John the Baptist. It is futile and
childish to com- pare either Jesus or John with the great
Messenger of Allah, when we know perfectly well that
neither of these two did ever attempt to convert a single
pagan nor succeeded in persuading the Jews to recognize
his mission
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