Man was created to shape his life in the ways of His Maker so that he would attain salvation. But was Man left alone to find his path of salvation - the path about which he had no knowledge at all?

The All-Merciful God could not leave Man to himself to find his way to salvation. The Prophets, the Chosen Ones, were invested with the task of guiding human beings unto the path of righteousness.

God has spoken to man, since He put him on this earth, through His prophets down to Jesus and on to the Holy Prophet of Islam, Just as He has, throughout, continued to manifest His attributes of creating, hearing and seeing.

"And there never was a people, without a warner having live' among them." - 35:24

The Holy Qur'an teaches that Divine Revelation was not confined to any particular people but that God had raised prophets among all peoples. "Man's soul" writes Mowlana Sultan Muhammad Shah in his Memoirs, "has never been left without a specially inspired messenger from the Soul that sustains, embraces, and is the Universe."

During the period of gradual development of human faculties, messengers of God, with their souls which had drunk deep at the Fountain of Divine Inspiration, came forward with the Divine Messages to cope with requisite needs of human aspirations and to quench their thirst for the knowledge of God the Most High.
This process has continued on earth from time immemorial. Many prophets have been born - as many as one hundred and twenty four thousand prophets were sent to this earth by God Almighty to guide mankind.

All Islamic schools of thought, acceptit as a fundamental principle, that for centuries, for thousands of years before the advent of Prophet Muhammad, there arose from time to time, messengers illumined by Divine Grace, for and amongst those races of the earth which had sufficiently advanced intellectually to comprehend such message. Thus, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and all the Prophets of Israel are universally accepted by Islam. Muslims, indeed know no limitation merely to the Prophets of Israel; they are ready to admit that there were  similar Divinely inspired messengers in other countries - Gautama Buddha, Shri Krishna and Shri Ram in India, the wise man of China and  many other sages and saints among peoples and civilizations, trace of which we have lost." (Memoirs)