Page 776 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

He directs the whole affair from heaven to earth. Then it will again ascend to Him on a Day whose length is
a thousand years by the way you measure. (Surat as-Sajda: 5)
In the style used in many verses of the Qur’an, it is clearly shown that time is a perception. For example,

God speaks of a number of believers (The Companions of the Cave) whom He put into a deep sleep for over
300 years. Later, when He woke them up, these people thought that they had been asleep for a very short
time; they could not imagine how long they had been asleep:

So We sealed their ears with sleep in the cave for a number of years. Then We woke them up again so that we
might see which of the two groups would better calculate the time they had stayed there. (Surat al-Kahf: 11-
12)
That was the situation when we woke them up so they could question one another. One of them asked, "How

long have you been here?" They replied, "We have been here for a day or part of a day." They said, "Your Lord
knows best how long you have been here..." (Surat al-Kahf: 19)
The situation referred to in the verse below is an important proof that time is a psychological percep-
tion:

Or the one who passed by a town which had fallen into ruin? He asked, "How can God restore this to life
when it has died?" God caused him to die a hundred years then brought him back to life. 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 God has power over all things." (Surat al-

Baqara: 259)
As we see, these verses clearly reveal that time is relative and not absolute. This means that time
changes according to the perceptions of the perceiver; it is not a concrete existent that exists on its own

apart from the perceiver.

The Relativity Of Time Explains The Reality Of Destiny

As we see from the account of the relativity of time and the verses that refer to it, time is not a concrete
concept, but one that varies depending on perceptions. For example, a space of time conceived by us as mil-
lions of years long is one moment in God's sight. A period of 50 thousand years for us is only a day for
Gabriel and the angels.

This reality is very important for an understanding of the idea of destiny. Destiny is the idea that God
created every single event, past, present, and future in "a single moment". This means that every event,
from the creation of the universe until doomsday, has already occurred and ended in God's sight. A signifi-

cant number of people cannot grasp the reality of destiny. They cannot understand how God can know
events that have not yet happened, or how past and future events have already happened in God's sight.
From our point of view, things that have not happened are events which have not occurred. This is because
we live our lives in relation to the time that God has created, and we could not know anything without the
information in our memories. Because we dwell in the testing place of this world, God has not given us

memories of the things we call "future" events. Consequently, we cannot know what the future holds. But
God is not bound to time or space; it is He Who has already created all these things from nothing. For this
reason, past, present and future are all the same to God. From His point of view, everything has already oc-

curred; He does not need to wait to see the result of an action. The beginning and the end of an event are
both experienced in His sight in a single moment. For example, God already knew what kind of end
awaited Pharaoh even before sending Moses to him, even before Moses was born and even before Egypt be-
came a kingdom; and all these events including the end of Pharaoh were experienced in a single moment in
the sight of God. Besides, for God there is no such thing as remembering the past; past and future are al-

ways present to God; everything exists in the same moment.
If we think of our life as a filmstrip, we watch it as if we were viewing a videocassette with no possibil-

774 Atlas of Creation Vol. 3