Mirza Ghulam Ahmad would have made modern economists proud with his skill at the art of prophecy.  A prickly fellow who had just discovered the printing press, he started his career off by predicting the death of the father of a girl he wanted to marry, but no one else shared that desire.  Included in that compound death prediction was the death of the girl’s betrothed if he dared to marry her, and that his ‘heavenly bride’ would be his in the end.  So, the elderly father died, the girl got married to Sultan Beg, who would just not die — he even served in World War I (6 years after MGA’s death), and came back in one piece.

Hit and miss!

Then, he set upon a Christian priest by the name of Atham, predicting his death within a certain number of months and Atham lived.  Another victim, a Hindu pandit, Lekh Ram, was also on the receiving end of these prophecies, having been given a lifespan of 6 years, and the portly pandit had the misfortune of being stabbed and murdered within that time period.

Hit and miss!

The British government had had enough, and Hindu-Muslim and Hindu-Christian relations in the Amritsar area of Punjab were being affected.  They brough MGA and Maulvi Batalvi, MGA’s erstwhile confidant and good friend and subsequent nemesis, into a court and asked them to sign a declaration stopping this killing prophecy nonsense.

Our Mirza was deeply saddened and he tried his best to obey the law, but this death prediction brought in a lot of followers from the superstitious corners of Punjab and had an eerie effect on the targets (hmmm . . . death threats are considered criminal for a reason).  So, he outsourced his death-wishes overseas.  At that time, outsourcing was inverted, East-to-West, and he had the good fortune to have a young man by the name of Muhammad Ali, and this chap wrote brilliant English.  MGA was so fond of this lad that he twice advertised for a suitable girl for his English-writing secretary – something he never ever did for anyone else.

So, our Mirza and Muhammad Ali scoured the papers for mention of foreign death-wish victims, and found two: John Alexander Dowie in the U.S.A.; and John Hugh Smyth-Pigott of the U.K.  Both of them were a bit eccentric, with multiple confusing claims, and some claim on Divinity itself — in a nutshell, similar to Mirza Ahmad.

This was late 1902.  Dowie was asked to respond to a challenge with detailed conditions within 7 months, which he did not.  Smyth-Pigott was told he would die within Mirza’s lifetime – period!  No conditions, nothing – rather unusual for a professional hedging prophecier – and it was even signed ‘THE PROPHET’.  Dowie died in 1907, Mirza in 1908 and Smyth-Pigott in 1927.  Very few of Mirza’s followers have heard of Smyth-Pigott, and the original publication has never been reprinted, nor even acknowledged.  After 107 years, you can view it here, thanks to the Internet.

Hit and miss!