after our Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and that his law is to remain in force until the Day of Resurrection and will never be abrogated. This is a faulty line of reasoning, for the point of Jesus’ descent, peace be upon him, is not that he will come down as a prophet with a new dispensation that abrogates ours. Neither these ḥadiths nor any others contain such a claim. On the contrary, the authentic reports here, in the Book of Faith, and elsewhere state explicitly that he will descend as a just arbiter, ruling by our law and reviving those aspects of it that people will have abandoned….” End of Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s words.
I say: In our own day, some ignorant writers and half-educated scholars deny the descent of Jesus, peace be upon him, relying on nothing but their own ideas and speculations. They impugn the sound ḥadiths or twist them with false interpretations. A Muslim, however, is duty-bound to believe whatever the Prophet—Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him—has authentically conveyed, for that forms part of faith in the unseen to which Allah granted His Messenger access.
Al-ʿAllāmah al-Saffārīnī said: “He will affirm the law of our Prophet Muḥammad—Allah bless him and grant him peace—for he is a messenger to this community, as has been mentioned. By Allah’s command he will already have learned the rulings of this law while he is in heaven before he descends.”
He continued: “Some scholars have alleged that when our master Jesus son of Mary, peace be upon him, descends, moral responsibility (taklīf) will be lifted. This is untenable, for the reports state that he will confirm and renew the rulings of this sharia, since it is the final dispensation and our Prophet Muḥammad—Allah bless him and grant him peace—is the last of the messengers. The world will not persist without obligation; its very continuance depends upon the presence of taklīf, until the time comes when the name of Allah is no longer uttered on earth. Al-Qurṭubī mentioned this in his Tadhkirah.”
He added: “As for the length of his stay and his death, it is related in the ḥadith of Abū Hurayrah, recorded by al-Ṭabarānī and Ibn ʿAsākir, that the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said: ‘Jesus son of Mary will descend and remain among the people for 40 years.’ In the narrations of Imām Aḥmad, Ibn Abī Shaybah, Abū Dāwūd, Ibn Jarīr, and Ibn Ḥibbān the wording is: ‘He will stay for 40 years, then he will die; the Muslims will perform the funeral prayer over him and will bury him beside our Prophet…’