Page 72 - Eternity Has Already Begun

ETERNITY HAS ALREADY BEGUN

Then He asked, 'How long have you been here?' He replied, 'I have
been here a day or part of a day.' He said, 'Not so! You have been
here a hundred years. Look at your food and drink – it has not gone
bad – and look at your donkey so We can make you a Sign for all
mankind. Look at the bones – how We raise them up and clothe
them in flesh.' When it had become clear to him, he said, 'Now I
know that Allah has power over all things.' (Surat al-Baqara: 259)
It is clearly stated in the above verse that Allah, Who created
time, is unbound by it. Man, on the other hand, is bound by time
that Allah ordains. As in the verse, man is even incapable of know-
ing how long he stayed in his sleep. In such a state, to assert that
time is absolute [just like the materialists do in their distorted men-
tality], would be very unreasonable.

Destiny

Time's variable relativity reveals a very important reality: A pe-
riod of time of apparently billions of years' duration to us, may last
only a second in another dimension. Moreover, an enormous period
of time—from the world's beginning to its end—may not last even a
second, but just an instant in another dimension.
This is the very essence of destiny's reality—one that is not well
understood by most people, especially materialists, who deny it
completely. Destiny is Allah's perfect knowledge of all events, past
or future. Many, if not most, question how Allah can already know
events that have not yet been experienced, and this leads them to fail
to understand the authenticity of destiny. However, events not yet
experienced are not yet experienced by us only. Allah is not bound
by time or space, for He Himself has created them. For this reason,
the past, the future, and the present are all the same to Allah; for
Him, everything has already taken place and is finished.
In The Universe and Dr. Einstein, Lincoln Barnett explains how the
Theory of General Relativity leads to this insight. According to him,
the universe can be "encompassed in its entire majesty only by a cos-

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