Page 261 - Demo

257he explained to them how he would be delivered andkilled. Thereupon Peter began to reprove and admonish him not to repeat the same words about his passion and death. According to this story of St. Matthew, Peter was perfectly right when he said, “Master, be it far from thee!” If it be true that his confession, “Thou art theMessiah,” pleased Jesus (pbuh) , who conferred the title of “Sapha” or “Cepha” on Simon, then to declare that “the Son of Man” wasto suffer the ignominious death upon the Cross was neither more nor less than a flat denial of his Messianic character. ButJesus (pbuh) became more positive and indignantly scolded Peter, saying: “Get thee behind me, Satan!” what follows this sharp rebuke are most explicit words of the Master, leaving not a modicum of doubt that he was not “the Messiah” or “the Son of Man.” How to reconcile the “faith” of Peter, recompensed with the glorious title of “Sapha” and the power of the keysof Heaven and of Hell, with the “infidelity” of Peter punished with the opprobrious epithet of “Satan,” within half an hour’s time or so? Several reflections presentthemselves to my mind, and I feel it my bounden duty to put themin black and white. If Jesus (pbuh) were “the Son of Man” or “theMessiah” asseen and foretold by Daniel,Ezra,Enoch, and the other Jewish prophets and divines, he would have authorized his disciples to proclaim and acclaim him as such; and he himself would have supported them. The fact is that he acted the very reverse. Again, if he were the Messiah, ortheBarnasha, he would have at once struck his enemies with terror, and by the aid of his invisible angels destroyed the Roman and Persian powers, then dominant over the civilized world. But he did nothing of the sort; or, like Muhammad (pbuh) , he would have recruited some valiant warriors like “Alī, Omar, Khālid, etc., and not like Zebedees and Jonahs, who vanished, like a frightened spectre when the Roman police came to arrest them.