From Adam to the Messiah

FROM ADAM TO THE MESSIAH country, Iraq, the only people to accompany him were his wife, Sarah and his nephew Lot, although they were later joined by his two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Even after great missionary effort on the part of Jesus, the priests and religious authorities who heard his teachings did not follow him, and even his twelve friends temporarily forsook him at the moment of truth. This was an unhappy lot of most of the prophets. The ties of kith and kin sometimes brought a handful of followers to the more fortunate, but as often as not, would-be prophets were forced by the inattention and insensitivity of those around them to live out their lives in solitude and persecution. This verse of the Quran aptly sums up common attitudes to prophethood throughout the history of humanity: “Alas for the servants! They laugh to scorn every prophet that comes to them.”5 In God’s sight, the prophets stand head and shoulders above the human race. It is extraordinary that they are the very ones to whom the least historical importance has been attached. History has exhaustively chronicled the lives of kings and soldiers, but not a single prophet’s life has been given its due place in the annals of history. Aristotle (384322 B.C.), born one thousand years after the Prophet Moses, was unfamiliar with Moses’ name. The reason is not far to seek: most of the prophets were rejected by their peoples; their homes were demolished; they were treated as outcasts from society; they appeared so unimportant that no one deemed it necessary even to mention them.