Twelfth Imam, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit discussion

Explanation about the Twelfth Imam and Jesus Christ

While I have alluded to this question before I want to provide even more clarity so that humans do not hold back from the doing of good and righteous deeds before God.

Many Shia await the return of the Twelfth Imam, sometimes called the Mahdi or Mehdi, who is believed to have gone into divine concealment as a child. I have even read with regret that there are militants in Iraq who think they or their leaders represent the Mahdi. This is untrue.

However, it is true that the Mahdi will return with Jesus Christ at the Day of Resurrection.

But please notice that the Twelfth Imam will return with Jesus on that time, not before that time. Jesus, the Mahdi, and the Jewish, Christian and Muslim saints will not return separately in advance of what Christians call the Second Coming and all agree will be the Day of Judgment and Resurrection. This is why the Lord God has left very clear teachings in the Torah, Bible and Qur’an by which the faithful are to improve the condition of humankind and manage their own lives in anticipation of the judgment and resurrection. The Twelfth Imam, Jesus Christ, and the saints who accompany Jesus do bring the new life to the faithful, but they do not come in advance of that time to repair the secular pre End of Times condition of humanity.

I am concerned that many people who have become overly consumed with the good news that will arrive for the faithful at the End of Times have somewhat “given up” on God’s instructions for goodness and improvement of humanity as it truly exists today, awaiting instead the Day of Resurrection. This is an error among some Christians and an error among some Muslims. I’ve written previously about “rapture” Christians to chastise them for their arrogance and willful misinterpretation of the scripture. Jesus himself warned that many who think they will be “saved” calling “Lord, Lord” will not be saved. However, I want to here address with friendship and love Muslims who await the Mahdi.

Those of you who believe in the Shi’i theology of the imamah, specifically the Twelver Imami, correctly understand that the Twelfth Imam will have the authority to interpret and implement the intention and will of God, and will have pure understanding of God’s will and plan. Knowing this, then, you also know that the Torah, Bible and Qur’an all agree that the full implementation of God’s will and plan can only take place at the actual Day of Resurrection. Until then all of humankind is to live in their state of imperfect but fully informed vessels who are to believe in God and perform charity among themselves.

This does not believe that only Jesus Christ, or the Twelfth Imam, can bring the goodness of life and the promise of the Kingdom of God, and that people should throw their hands up in despair at the state of the world, simply awaiting the “rapture” or some other apocalyptic event. That is actually in contradiction of all that is stated in the Torah, Bible and Qur’an. People should always “be ready” for the Day of Judgment but they should live the fullness of their lives and not wait for God or his messengers to “fix it.”

So what are people to do? It is not as though the world has been left alone. The Holy Spirit is active and continues to move among all believers (and even among the infidels and disbelievers) to bring people into a greater state of holiness and for the preparation of all for their personal judgment upon their individual deaths and for humanity’s eventual Day of Resurrection.

One passage ties all of this understanding together. It is Surah 78: 38 The Great Event:

The day on which the spirit and the angels shall stand in ranks; they shall not speak except he whom the Beneficent God permits and who speaks the right thing.

Why is the spirit mentioned by name here? To show that the Holy Spirit stands with all the people even to the end of days. It is at the End of Days, the Day of Resurrection, that God will permit those who speak “the right thing” to speak, and this includes the Twelfth Imam.

Look also at this passage in Surah 70: 4-5 The Ways of Ascent:

To Him ascend the angels and the Spirit in a day the measure of which is fifty thousand years. Therefore endure with a goodly patience.

Again the Spirit is mentioned by name as being on earth with angels, and they will ascend to God. What is the Holy Spirit doing here on earth? The Holy Spirit is bringing the life of God to all of humans even as the Holy Spirit did in the very beginning of humans:

So when I have made him complete and breathed into him of My spirit, then fall down making obeisance to him. And the angels did obeisance, all of them. (Surah 38: 72-73 Suad).

Just as God breathed the Holy Spirit into humans to bring them to life, so does God continue to send the Holy Spirit among all people in order that they remember what they are to do, even as temptation, sin and forgetting pull them away from God.

You read further that:

…these are they into whose hearts He has impressed faith, and whom He has strengthened with an inspiration from Him: and He will cause them to enter gardens beneath which rivers flow, abiding therein; Allah is well-pleased with them and they are well-pleased with Him; these are Allah’s party: now surely the party of Allah are the successful ones. (Surah 58: 22 The Pleading One).

It is clear that God sends his Spirit to those who become “strengthened with an Inspiration from Him” and into their hearts “He has impressed faith,” and they become the members of Allah’s party and are the “successful ones” in life and therefore eventually in judgment and resurrection.

You can actually read how the Holy Spirit arrives with the giving of the Qur’an:

And most surely this is a revelation from the Lord of the worlds. The Faithful Spirit has descended with it. Upon your heart that you may be of the warners. In plain Arabic language. (Surah 26: 193 The Poets).

Again the Lord reveals how this truly works, that God sends not only the words of instruction of the Qur’an but also the Faithful Spirit to work upon each heart.

Here it is very clearly instructed that people are to live the best lives that they can under the guidance of the Holy Spirit while awaiting the Day of Resurrection:

Possessor of the highest rank, Lord of power; He makes the inspiration to light by His command upon whom He pleases of His servants, that he may warn (men) of the day of meeting. (Surah 40: 15 The Believer).

Here the Lord demonstrates that his “command” is lightened, that is illuminated, by the “inspiration” that God makes and gives to “whom He pleases of His servants.”

So God reveals repeatedly throughout the Qur’an exactly “how” God performs his will, which is to provide the commandments and instruction, but also to provide the Holy Spirit to enter into the hearts of those who God wills (and those who believe and open to receiving) in order to illuminate and strengthen.

Let me take your attention back to the passage I cited above:

To Him ascend the angels and the Spirit in a day the measure of which is fifty thousand years. Therefore endure with a goodly patience. (Surah 70: 4-5 The Ways of Ascent).

The Lord informs that the ascension will take place “in a day the measure of which is fifty thousand years.” Has anyone pondered the meaning of the Lord God giving an actual measure in terms of years? Is not fifty thousand years the amount of time that it takes humans to ascend to God, who views from his infinite perspective that time as only “a day?” So why do people feel that the end of times and Day of Resurrection must come after only a few thousand years of human’s written knowledge of the Lord God? God has shown that the potential for humanity to ascend over a period of fifty thousand human years exists (but God does not say when in humanity's time is the beginning of the fifty thousand year measurement.) Who then is empowered to say that no, humanity must come to an end sooner, and that the ascension to God should take place on their own shorter timetables rather than the span specifically offered by God? God affirms that people should “endure with a goodly patience.” Humans are specifically told not to rush the ascension to God and not to be un-goodly.

So people should look forward to the Second Coming, the Return of Jesus Christ, and the return of the Twelfth Imam, and the saints, all of whom will speak in perfection and full permission of the completeness of the intention of God for humanity. But people are instructed to “endure with a goodly patience” and to live godly, good lives of charity. People are assured that the Holy Spirit dwells among all people to inspire and strengthen all who will listen and obey. People should live in goodness as though the ascension were “fifty thousand years from now” and therefore live full heartedly in a world that they make as good and godly as they possibly can in their day to day lives.