Historical Gleanings

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 29, 1873

Historical Gleanings.

THE RESURRECTION TAUGHT BY MAHOMET.

Some of the Orthodox may feel strengthened in their position respecting the separate existence of the soul in death, and its re-union with the body at the resurrection, by considering that Mahomet believed and taught the same doctrine. But since he cannot be charged with drawing his views very largely from the great source of truth, we should consider his adherence to the doctrine (did we hold it), a damage rather than a help to our cause. Among other things, the historian gives the following as one item of his belief:—

“At the blast of the trumpet, new worlds will start into being; angels, genii, and men, will arise from the dead, and the human soul will again be united to the body.—Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Vol. v., p. 117.”

Gibbon adds:—

“The intermediate state of the soul it is hard to decide; and those who most firmly believe her immaterial nature, are at a loss to understand how she can think or act without the agency of the organs of sense.”

Joined with the belief in the existence of disembodied souls, Mahomet taught the doctrine of eternal misery. These two doctrines are inseparable companions. How he regarded the nations of heretics, or infidels, around him, is thus described:—

“Their spiritual blindness, though excused by ignorance and crowned with virtue, will be scourged with everlasting torments; and the tears which Mahomet shed over the tomb of his mother, for whom he was forbidden to pray, display a striking contrast of humanity and enthusiasm.”—Id. p. 118.

A little further on in the views of Mahomet is seen an outcropping of the protest which human nature everywhere raises against the unnatural idea of everlasting torture for the sins of this life. In his case, as in the Roman Catholic superstition, it took the form of a purgatory from which, after a period of suffering of greater or less length, the chastened soul should issue forth into the bliss of Heaven. This privilege, subject, of course, to a like limitation in his creed, as in others which adopted this notion, was confined to his own followers. Concerning them he thus taught:—

“According as the shares of guilt or virtue shall preponderate, the sentence will be pronounced, and all, without distinction, will pass over the sharp and perilous bridge of the abyss; but the innocent, treading in the footsteps of Mahomet, will gloriously enter the gates of paradise, while the guilty will fall into the first and mildest of the seven hells. The term of expiation will vary from nine hundred to seven thousand years; but the prophet has judiciously promised, that all his disciples, whatever may be their sins, shall be saved by their own faith, and his intercession, from eternal damnation.”—Id.