For example, one part of the meaning of God is Most Great! is that God's power and knowledge are greater than and exalted above everything. Nothing can leave the sphere of His knowledge, and nothing can escape or be delivered from the grasp of His power. He is greater, too, than the greatest things that we fear, and greater than the resurrection he brings about, the salvation from annihilation he bestows upon us, and the eternal felicity with which he endows us. He is greater than every wondrous and incomprehensible object or act, for according to the explicit meaning of the verse,
Your creation and your resurrection İs but as a single soul,⁹ the gathering and resurrection of the whole human race is as easy for His power as the creation of a single soul. It is on account of this truth that when faced with great misfortunes and afflictions people repeat, as if it were a proverb, "God is Most Great! God is Most Great!" thus gaining consolation, fortitude and support.
In the Ninth Word it was shown that this phrase, together with its two companions is like the seed and the essence of the five daily prayers, which in turn are like an index of all the forms of worship. These three phrases occur within the prayers and in the recitations that follow them in order to emphasize and strengthen the sense of the prayers. They are, too, like powerful and convincing answers given to the questions that arise in man as a result of the wonderment, pleasure and awe that he experiences from the numerous remarkable, beautiful and great phenomena that he beholds in the cosmos and induce those three states within him.
We explained, too, at the end of the Sixteenth Word, that just as on festive occasions an ordinary infantryman will enter the presence of a king together with a marshal, but grant him the respect due to his rank at all other times, so too during the Hajj, everyone becomes to some degree like the saints, and begins to know God by His titles of Sustainer of the Earth and Sustainer of All the Worlds. As those degrees of majesty begin to reveal themselves to his heart, he answers all the repeated and fervent questions that overwhelm his spirit simply by repeating "God is Most Great!"
At the end of the Thirteenth Flash, it was also explained that the decisive answer to be given to the most threatening stratagems of the Devil so as to cut them at the root is God is Most Great! so too the phrase All praise be to God! is a brief but convincing answer to any question about the Hereafter, and a pointer to resurrection. For it tells us: "I have no meaning if there is no Hereafter. I convey this sense, that 'from whomever and to whomever praise and thanks have gone forth, from pre-eternity to post-eternity, all of it in reality belongs to Him.' The foremost of all bounties, that which makes of them true bounties and saves all conscious beings from the innumerable catastrophes of annihilation, can therefore be rione other than eternal felicity. It is also eternal felicity which corresponds to my general sense."
Now every believer says "All praise be to God! All praise be to God!" in obedience to sacred law, at least one hundred and fifty times a day. The phrase has the sense of an extensive, indeed infinite expression of thanks and praise, from pre-eternity to post-etemily, and is therefore like a pnce paid in advance, a fee offered in expectation, for eternal felicity and Paradise. It cannot in any way be restricted to the brief bounties of this world, which are stained and polluted with transient pain. Rather thanks and praise are offered for them only insofar as they anticipate and are a bridge to eternal bounties.
As for the sacred phrase Glory be to God!, it means to proclaim God Almighty free from and exalted above the possession of a partner, defect, shortcoming, injustice, powerlessness, merciless-ness, need, craftiness, and indeed all failings contrary to His Glory, Beauty, and Perfection. Thus it points to etemal felicity, the Hereafter and Paradise, because it is these that demonstrate the splendour of His Glory, Beauty, and perfect Sovereignty. As already proven, if there was no eternal bliss. God's Sovereignty, Perfection, Glory, Beauty, and Compassion would be disfigured by the stain of defect and lack.
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9. Qur'an, 31:28.