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persons alleged to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the
record believed to be a revelation! Yet there is a lie, a false
statement, or a forgery somewhere. Elijah (or Elias) is said
to come before “that Prophet” (Mal. iv. 5, 6); Jesus (pbuh)
says, “John is Elijah”; John says, “I am not Elijah”, and it
is the sacred Scripture of the Christians which makes both
these affirmative and negative statements!
It is impossible to get at the truth, the true religion,
from these Gospels, unless they are read and examined
from an Islamic and Unitarian point of view. It is only
then that the truth can be extracted from the false, and
the authentic distinguished from the spurious. It is the
spirit and the faith of Islam that can alone sift the Bible
and cast away the chaff and error from its pages. Before
proceeding farther to show that the Prophet foretold by
the Baptist could be none other than Muhammad (pbuh) , I
must draw the serious attention of my readers to one or
two other important points.
It may, in the first place, be remarked that the Muslims
have the highest reverence and veneration for all the
John Prophets, particularly for those whose names are
mentioned in the Quran, like John (“Yahya”) and Jesus
(“?Isa”) ; and believe that the Apostles or Disciples of
Jesus (pbuh) were holy men and inspired by Allah. However,
as we do not possess their genuine and unadulterated
writings we consequently cannot for a moment imagine
the possibility that either of these two great Servants
of Allah could have contradicted each other. Another
important matter to be noted is the very significant silence
of the Gospel of Barnabas about John the Baptist (pbuh) .
This Gospel, which never mentions the name of Yahya,
puts his prophecy about the “more powerful Prophet”
into the mouth of Jesus Christ (pbuh) . Therein Christ, while
speaking of the Spirit of Muhammad (pbuh) as having been
created before that of other John Prophets says that it was