Prayer Is a Kind of Death — Essence of Islam Vol. 2

14 Sep, 2026 Essence of Islam 0

Essence of Islam Book Cover by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (AS)

Introduction

In this discourse from Essence of Islam (Volume 2), Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (AS), the Promised Messiah and Mahdi, expounds upon Prayer Is a Kind of Death, presenting profound spiritual insights and scriptural verities.

Book Series: Essence of Islam (Volume 2)
Author: Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian (AS)
Section: Part 5: Prayer
Navigation: Book Table of Contents | « Previous: Divine Determination and Acceptance of Prayers | Next: Three Conditions for Acceptance of Prayer »

When you stand up in prayer, you should know it for certain that your God has the power to do all that He wills. Then your prayer will be accepted and you will behold the wonders of God’s power that we have beheld. Our testimony is based on seeing and is not a mere tale. How should the supplication of a person be accepted and how should he have the courage to pray at the time of great difficulties when according to him he is opposed by the law of nature, unless he believes that God has power over everything? You should not be like that. Your God is One Who has suspended numberless stars without any support and Who has created heaven and earth from nothing. Then would you think so ill of Him as to imagine that your objective is beyond His power? Such thinking will frustrate you. Our God possesses numberless wonders, but only those observe them who become wholly His with sincerity and fidelity. He does not disclose His wonders to those who do not believe in His powers and are not faithful to Him.
[Kashti Nuh, Ruhani Khaza’in, vol. 19, p.21]
[Essence of Islam, Vol. 2, p. 213]

So far as God Almighty has bestowed upon me the knowledge of prayer I conceive that there are three conditions for the acceptance of prayer. First, a supplicant should be perfectly righteous, for only that one is acceptable to God Almighty who makes righteousness his habit and adheres firmly to all the paths of righteousness and who is trustworthy and pious and true in his promises and is filled with the personal love of God. Secondly, his resolve and attention should be so firm and strong that he should be ready to lay down his own life for the revival of another and should be ready to enter himself into the grave to pull another out of it. His accepted servants are dearer to God Almighty than an only child, who is also handsome, is dear to its mother. When God, the Merciful and Benevolent, sees that one who is accepted of Him and is true to Him has, for the sake of saving the life of another, subjected himself to spiritual labours and disciplines to a degree that his own life is in danger, He finds it disagreeable that He should let him perish in that condition. Then for his sake He forgives the sin in respect of which the other person had been seized. If he is afflicted with a fatal disease or is in the grip of some other calamity, then by His power He creates means for his deliverance. Very often it happens that He is determined to ruin or destroy a person, but through the latter’s good luck someone who has a good standing before God intervenes with his earnest supplications so that the record that had been prepared and completed for his chastisement has to be destroyed, for
[Essence of Islam, Vol. 2]
[Essence of Islam, Vol. 2, p. 213]

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Introduction