JOURNEY TOWARDS FINAL DESTINATION

JOURNEY TOWARDS FINAL DESTINATION T HE well-known American evangelist Billy Graham (born 1918) narrates one of his life’s experiences. Once, he received an urgent message from an American statesman who wanted to meet him at the earliest. On receiving this message, Billy Graham cancelled his appointments and immediately set out to meet this man. When he arrived at the statesman’s palatial home, he was immediately taken to a room, where Billy Graham and the statesman sat on chairs facing one another. Then, in a serious tone, the statesman said to Billy Graham: “You see, I am an old man. Life has lost all meaning. I am ready to take a fateful leap into the unknown. Young man, can you give me a ray of hope?” (The Secret of Happiness, Billy Graham, 1955, p.2) This is a common question. Every man and woman — consciously or unconsciously — has this question in his or her mind. This is the first concern of every human being. To find the real answer we have to try to understand the Creation Plan of God. God is the Creator of this world. And only by gaining an understanding of the Creator’s Plan can we get the right answer to the question. Man and the present world: a mismatch? The Quran, the preserved book of God, gives an answer to this question. According to the Quran, man is born as an eternal being, but his life span is divided into two parts: the pre-death period and the post-death period. The pre-death period is very short, and the post-death period is eternal. Everyone feels that they have enormous desires, but they are not able to fulfil them. The reason is that the present world is a imperfect world with many kinds of limitations. This means that there is a contradiction between man’s nature, which seeks fulfilment of his desires, and the world, which is incapable of fulfilling man’s desires. Man, by nature, wants a world where his personality can find total fulfilment, but the present world fails to provide such fulfilment. Sir James Jeans in his book, The Mysterious Universe, has rightly pointed out this fact in these words: