THE WORD OF GOD — From the Scriptures

THE WORD OF GOD From The Scriptures Qaf. By the glorious Quran! Indeed, they are astonished that a warner should have come to them from among themselves. So these deniers of the truth say, ‘This is indeed a strange thing, to come back to life after we have died and become dust? That is most improbable!’ We know very well what the earth takes away from them: We hold a book which records all things. But they denied the truth when it came to them, so they are in a state of confusion. (50: 1-5) The history of the prophets shows that their contemporaries were not ready to accept them. It was only in later times that people readily accepted their status as prophets. The reason for this is that the prophet appears to his contemporaries as ‘a person just like themselves’. They find it surprising that one whom they have always treated as their equal should suddenly become great and start advising them. But, as time passes, a history of greatness becomes attached to the prophet’s name. So, he starts appearing to succeeding generations as a ‘person greater than themselves.’ That is why, in later periods people did not find it difficult to accept the prophetic status of a prophet. In other words, to the people of the early days, the prophet was a controversial figure, while to the people of later times he acquired the aura of an established personage. The people of the earlier period had to undertake a journey in consciousness in order to fill the gap between them and the prophet, while in the later period, this gap would have been filled by history itself. In the eyes of those who entertain doubts about the prophet-hood of God’s messenger, everything about him becomes doubtful — even those beliefs that are already enshrined in tradition. However, nothing T HE 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 A.D. 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