Gems of the Promised Messiah & Imam Mahdi (as) – The Truth About the Wrath of God Almighty
No one should misconstrue here the wrath of God to mean that (God forbid) God becomes irritated. Rather, it means that man falls away from the Most Holy and Pure God on account of his own sins. Alternatively, it may be understood by the example of a man who is sitting in a room which has four doors – if he opens those doors, the radiance and the light of the sun will keep coming in, but if he shuts all the doors, the entry of the light will cease as a consequence.
In short, it is absolutely true that it is the divine norm that when man does something, his action elicits a natural reaction from God Almighty, like the man who had unfortunately shut all four doors. The act of God in response to it was that the place became all dark. Making it dark would be considered the wrath of God. [1]
Do not take God’s wrath to be like the wrath of a human being because God is God and a man is a man. God does not work in the same way human beings do. God listens but does He need air to hear like a human? Is His hearing similar to a human where hearing is clearer on the side that the wind is blowing from? Or the eyesight – a human being cannot see unless there is light from the sun, the moon, or a lamp – is God also dependent on light [to be able to see]? Thus, to be able to see something for a man is different from God. The understanding of its true nature should be consigned to God.
The criticism that the Aryas, etc., have about God being called wrathful in the Holy Qur’an – it is an obvious error on their part. They should have checked other references in the Holy Qur’an. It is clearly written there that:
[2] عَذَابِيٓ أُصِيبُ بِهِۦ مَنۡ أَشَآءُ ۖ وَرَحۡمَتِي وَسِعَتۡ كُلَّ شَيۡءٖ
God’s mercy encompasses everything. Their difficulty is that they do not believe in the mercy of God in the first place. According to their religious doctrine, even if someone manages to attain salvation with the utmost difficulty, he will have to depart from there eventually.
Therefore, remember it well that the word of God Almighty is not susceptible to any objection. As God is free from any flaw, so is His word free from any error.
ENDNOTES
1. From Badr: God’s wrath and God’s mercy are unique as is His hearing and seeing. One should believe it. And it behoves a believer to consign the understanding of its true nature to God. (Badr, vol. 7, no. 1, p. 7, dated 9 January 1908)
2. ‘I will inflict My punishment on whom I will; but My mercy encompasses all things.’ – The Holy Qur’an, 7:157.
Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as), Malfuzat – Volume X (Tilford, Surrey: Islam International Publications Ltd., 2022), 56-58.
