Looking at things from this angle, is there any doubt about the spread of the Lotus Sūtra, the true teaching of the Buddha, all over Japan and the world following the period of the disappearance of the True Dharma predicted in the Sūtra of the Great Assembly? The Sūtra of the Great Assembly was preached by the Buddha, but it is a quasi-Mahāyāna sūtra. It does not show the true way to cut the chain of life and death and attain Buddhahood. Therefore, we cannot claim it to be the true sūtra for those who have not heard the Lotus Sūtra. Nevertheless, does not the sūtra seem exactly like the Lotus Sūtra in describing the transmigration of beings born in the four modes of birth in the six base realms throughout the lives in the past, present, and future?

Moreover, it was in reference to the Lotus Sūtra that Śākyamuni Buddha declared in the second chapter on “Expedients,” “He would reveal His true intention,” and that the Buddha of Many Treasures attested it to be all true, and all the Buddhas throughout the universe declared it to be true by reaching the Brahma Heaven with their long, wide tongues. His never-lying tongue touching the highest heaven in the realm of form, Śākyamuni Buddha again declared to the King of the Brahma Heaven, Indra, the sun god, the moon god, the Four Heavenly Kings, and dragon gods: “In the fifth 500-year period, when all the teachings of the Buddha are about to disappear, Bodhisattva Superior Practice will be entrusted with the five ideograms of myō, hō, ren, ge, and kyō (Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma) as the cure for those slanderers and non-believers of Buddhism who suffer from white leprosy.” How could these words of the Buddha be false? Even if the earth turned upside down, high mountains crumbled, summer did not follow spring, the sun set in the east, and the moon fell on the earth, there would be no mistake about this.

Senji-shō, Selecting the Right time: A Tract by Nichiren, the Buddha’s Disciple, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Page 204-205