The age-old dream of the human caravan is not to send astronauts in their orbit in outer space.. it is to send its individuals - every single individual in his orbit of self-realization. It is high time that this dream be thus reinterpreted. It is also the sacred duty of every man and woman to help intelligently reorientate human endeavour towards the culmination of this pilgrimage.

Mahmoud Muhammad Taha - Answers to the questions of Mr. John Voll - 17.7.1963

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The Return of Christ

The Prophecy of the Coming of the Messiah in the New Testament

The New Testament is full of prophecies of the coming of the Final Messiah, so much so that the first Messiah hardly prophesied anything except this glorious coming. The basic prayer of Christians, as taught by Jesus Christ, are really a prayer for the coming of the final Messiah, where it says, “our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” The coming of the Kingdom of the lord is really the fulfillment of human succession to the earth; and concurrence of the Lord’s will in Heaven with His will on earth really means that all human beings shall embrace the same religion, thereby submitting to the same single will of the Lord to which those in Heaven submit.
With reference to human succession to the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, which means the human adoption of the qualities of the Lord, the New Testament says, “ But when the son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all the nations, and he shall separate them one from another as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the king say unto them on his right hand, Come blessed of my father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 25, verses 31-34).
As to the coming of the expected Messiah following the state of bewilderment and confusion in the world, which we witness today, the New Testament also says, “And there shall be signs in sun and moon and stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, in perplexity for the roaring of the sea and the billows; men fainting for fear and for expectation of the things that are coming on the world, for the power of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall they see the son of man coming in a cloud with powers and great glory” (Luke 21, verse 21).
But the final Messiah is a man, and his perfection is in his humanity, which aspires to the Lord’s qualities, and actually achieves and personifies them. That is the coming of the Heavenly Kingdom unto the earth. Such personification is referred to as the coming of the Messiah in a “cloud”, i.e. a body originating from water, and “force” with which he comes is in fact the force of effective, straightforward thinking, the force of the intellect and moral character.