ON THE THRESHOLD OF PARADISE

My righteous servants shall inherit the land.”(i.e. the land of Paradise) (21: 105) This statement made in the Quran is recorded in detail in the Book of Psalms in the Bible; “The righteous shall inherit the land and dwell in it forever.” (Psalms, 37: 29) Studies show that in this vast universe our earth is a rare exception. In the vastness of space, there are huge stars in such multitudes that they outnumber the grains of sand on the sea-shore. But many of these stars are only balls of fire. It is a known fact that these stars have remained in the same condition for the last 13 billion years. In this apparently stagnant universe, only our earth is constantly changing and renewing itself. In an exceptional way, an evolutionary process is at work, for the earth continues to witness one stage after another. Ten billion years ago, the earth was just a fireball. But then it cooled down to become a temperate planet. Subsequently there was a phase of heavy rains which led to the growth of vegetation. Then came the animals. Lastly the humans appeared. After the appearance of human beings, the process of civilization set in on the earth. In the first phase man was only able to build a primitive world. But later, he became more and more successful at constructing a highly developed world. This human success goes hand in hand with a continuous evolutionary process. And it is but natural to believe that one more stage is in the offing—that of a perfect world. Paradise is the final stage of this evolutionary process, the perfect world where all types of limitations will come to an end. It is the eternal world man has been searching for, for thousands of years, in response to his natural urges. Paradise is not something mysterious: it is the final stage of the known evolutionary process. So far as animals are concerned, organic evolution is a baseless assumption. But the periodic evolution of the non-living world is a generally accepted fact. According to this natural law, the advent of Paradise is entirely understandable. Studies show that, approximately 10 billion years ago, our earth was a ball of fire, before it became the cool planet on which we live today. Then when man first came to inhabit the earth, there was a period of what we would now Paradise will only be found in a state of perfection in the world Hereafter. There man will find a life of joy, peace and happiness forever. There will be no necessity for physical labour; pleasant intellectual activities will suffice for the achievement of all desired goals