at death’s door

AT DEATH’S DOOR moment, the world will be behind him, and in front of him will be the everlasting hereafter. he will be leaving a world he will never visit again and entering a world he will never be able to come out of. he will be removed from the field of action and taken to where he will have to face the eternal consequences of his actions while on earth. life is unreliable, whereas death is inevitable. We are alive only because we have not died as yet. Moreover, we do not know when death will come. Every moment, we are advancing toward death. We are closer to death than to life. People think that they are alive, but actually, they are dead. We have no idea when death will arrive. it can arrive at any moment. it keeps arriving at every moment, so it is more appropriate to say that it has already arrived rather than say it will arrive sometime in the future. This is why a saying of Prophet Muhammad tells us to count ourselves among the dead, or the ‘people of the graves’. (Musnad Ahmad, hadith no. 5002) death nullifies everything. it is the most severe event of our lives. if death were simply the end of life, it would not be that significant. if death only meant that we would no longer exist as beings that walk, see, and hear, it would, despite all its terrors, be simply an event that occurs at a particular moment rather than an issue with eternal implications. however, the fact is that death is not the end of our lives. instead, it is the beginning of a new and eternal life. death means entry into a world based on the eternal consequences of our actions in the life before death.