THE WORD OF GOD

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 AD 610 and 632. It is a book that brings glad tidings to humankind, 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 INEVITABLE HOUR In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful The Inevitable Hour! What is the Inevitable Hour? And what will make you realize what the Inevitable Hour is? The tribes of Thamud and ‘Ad denied that disaster would strike them: the Thamud were destroyed by a terrible storm of thunder and lightning; and the ‘Ad were destroyed by a furious wind which God let loose against them for seven nights and eight days unremittingly, so that you could have seen its people lying prostrate as though they were the hollow trunks of palm-trees which had fallen down. Do you see any vestige left of them now? Pharaoh and those before him and the inhabitants of the overthrown cities persistently committed grave sins. They defied their Lord’s messenger, so He seized them with an ever-tightening grip. But We bore you away in the Ark, when the waters rose high, so that We might make it a reminder for you and so that attentive ears might retain it. (69: 1-12) Some deny the Hereafter openly, while there are others who may not explicitly deny the Hereafter, but who in their heart of hearts attach importance solely to worldly affairs. That is why there is no difference between the way of life of these people and that of those who make open denials. In essence, these two groups are the same. In the eyes of God, both of them are rejecters of the Hereafter—one group rejecting it by word of mouth and the other doing so in practice. When a single blast is blown on the trumpet, and the earth and the mountains are lifted up and then crushed with a single blow, on