GOD, PROPHETHOOD AND LIFE AFTER DEATH

Indeed, believing in God is no different from believing in one’s own self. It is no more difficult for man to accept the existence of God than it is for him to accept his own existence. Belief in God is doubtless an extraordinary feat of the imagination, but it is no more extraordinary than believing in man. Once one has accepted one such extraordinary phenomenon, what is there to prevent one from accepting another? A Likeness of Prophethood “This is London, here is the latest news.” These words are uttered by a news reader sitting far away from us in London. We cannot hear him directly, but the moment we switch on our radio sets, the voice comes over so loud and clear that the distance between the broadcasting station and our home seems to have shrunk. This purely physical phenomenon gives us an idea of prophethood. As in the radio, the prophet provides a link between us and God’s ‘broadcasting station’. The prophet ‘picks up’ words coming from God Himself and relays them to us. But for the prophets, we would not be able to hear the words of God. So prized are radios and transistors for the information and entertainment they bring to people that there is hardly a home in the entire world without one. How wonderful it would be if people were to realise the importance of divine ‘broadcasts’, and listen to the prophets with the same rapt attention. They would be influenced and would follow them sincerely. The functioning of prophethood is not any more difficult to understand than the workings of a radio. One is powered by electricity, the other by the sheer divine revelation. A Likeness of Life After Death People are conscious of what is visible, audible, tangible and interpret them through the senses. They feel they know as much about it as is humanly possible to know, and do not suspect that another world might exist in their midst—of which they know nothing. Switch on the television and you see a hitherto unseen ‘world’ on its screen. Darting figures, a hubbub of voices, rows of houses, mountain scenery—visual and auditory inputs that make their impact on viewers. We direct the movements of machines in outer space by remote control, so why should we have any difficulty in accepting that there is a God who controls the universe?