What evidence is there for the claim of the Promised Messiah (as)?

There are many. One especially clear proof is a sign in the heavens that no human being can bring about: an eclipse of the moon and of the sun in the same Ramadan on precisely foretold days, which took place in 1894, a few years after he had declared himself the awaited Mahdi.

There are many reasons for the claim of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as), the Promised Messiah, such as his pure life before the claim, which the last verse above names as a standard. One proof, though, is especially vivid, because no human being could have brought it about. It concerns the sun and the moon.

Among Muslims of all schools, a tradition about the Mahdi has been known for centuries. It names two signs in the heavens that have appeared for no one else. In Ramadan the moon is to be eclipsed on the first of its possible eclipse nights, and the sun on the middle of its possible eclipse days. A lunar eclipse can only occur on the 13th, 14th or 15th of the lunar month, and a solar eclipse only on the 27th, 28th or 29th. So the 13th and the 28th of Ramadan are meant. The Holy Qur’an, too, speaks in the first verses above of a darkened moon with which the sun is joined.

When Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as) declared that he was the awaited Mahdi, no such eclipse was in sight. Opponents publicly demanded this sign from him. In 1894 it came. The moon was eclipsed on the 13th of Ramadan and the sun on the 28th of Ramadan, and both could be seen across the same wide region, from Mecca to Qadian.

No one else who ever claimed to be the Mahdi could point to this sign in his own time. At the same time it shows that the ancient prediction, preserved by Muslims for centuries, cannot have come from human knowledge. Whoever loves the Holy Prophet Muhammad (saw) therefore has every reason to take this sign seriously.