The claim reinterprets the awaited "return of Jesus" as fulfilled metaphorically in the movement's founder rather than literally in the first-century Jesus. It thus supports the community's central affirmation about Ghulam Ahmad and distinguishes Ahmadi teaching both from other Muslims and from Christians. As with the movement's other distinctive doctrines, this article presents the belief as the community holds it, noting that it is not shared by mainstream Islam. Three distinct positions on Jesus's end thus exist side by side.
Mainstream Muslim tafsir on Quran 4:157, informed by hadith, generally holds that Jesus never died at all but was raised bodily and alive to heaven, to descend again in person near the end of time. Christianity holds that he died by crucifixion, was bodily resurrected on the third day, and ascended, to return in the same manner. The Ahmadi position differs from both: Jesus neither escaped death entirely nor was resurrected after dying, but survived the cross, lived out a natural life, and died of old age, so that his prophesied "return" is fulfilled not by his own reappearance but by the coming of a figure in his spiritual likeness, which Ahmadis identify with Ghulam Ahmad.