Page 43 - Spirit of Islam-May'17
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THE WORD OF GOD
From The Scriptures
The Quran is the book of God. It has been preserved in its entirety since
its revelation to the Prophet of Islam between 610 and 632 CE. It is a book
that brings glad tidings to mankind, along with divine admonition, and
stresses the importance of man’s discovery of the Truth on a spiritual and
intellectual level.
Translated from Arabic and commentary by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
The Rocky Tract
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
Alif Lam Ra.
These are the verses of a clear Book, the Quran. A time will surely
come when those who are bent on denying the truth will wish that
they had surrendered themselves to God, so leave them to eat and
enjoy themselves and let them be beguiled by vain hopes; for soon
they will realize [the truth]. We have never destroyed a township
without a definite decree having been issued; no people can forestall
their doom, nor can they delay it. (15: 1-5)
The freedom enjoyed by man will last only for the duration of the
period of testing. This is a very critical issue. If a man seriously thinks
this problem over, he will feel that the period which is going to end
tomorrow has, as it were, ended today itself. This thought will shake
him terribly. But man lives his life in ‘today’. He does not pay attention to
‘tomorrow’. Reality lies exposed before him, but he remains engrossed
in wishful thinking. He seeks out some imaginary supports of his own
devising and thinks that they will help him on the Day of Judgement.
But such wishful thinking will not come to his rescue when the period
of testing is over and God’s angels come to take him away from the
world of trial to the world of retribution.
At a time like this, he starts remembering the occasions when he had
tried to reject a genuine argument by mouthing false words; when he
had ignored the voice of his conscience and followed the desires of
the self; when purely out of self-interest he had ignored the divine
preacher of truth, in spite of seeing glimpses of God in him. When he
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