The Staff of Moses | The Seventh Topic | 1
(1-6)
The Seventh Topic
[The Fruit of a Friday in Denizli Prison!
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. The command of the Hour [of resurrection] will be like the glance of an eye, or briefer9* The creation of you all and the resurrection of you all is but like that of a single soul.10 * So look to the signs of God's mercy, how He gives life to the earth after its death; He it is Who will raise the dead to life, and He is Powerful over all things.11
The prisoners in Denizli Prison who were able to have contact with me, read the lesson in the Sixth Topic I had at one time given in the tongues of the sciences to the high school pupils in Kastamonu. For they had asked me: 'Tell us about our Creator," and having acquired a firm belief, they felt a longing for the hereafter. They requested of me: "Teach us also about the hereafter so that we won't be led astray by our souls and the satans of these times, and they will not again be the cause of our being sent to prison." In the face of this request of the Risale-i Nur students in the prison and the readers of the Sixth Topic, need arose for an explanatory summary of the pillar of belief in the hereafter as well, and I offered them a brief summary of various passages from the Risale-i Nur.
In the Sixth Topic we asked the heavens and the earth about our Creator, and they described Him to us as clearly as the sun in the tongues of the sciences. Now, in the same way, we shall ask firstly our Sustainer, Whom we have leamt about, about the hereafter, then our Prophet, then the Qur'an, then the other prophets and holy scriptures, then the angels, and then the universe.
In the first stage, we ask God about the hereafter. He replies through all the envoys He has sent, and His decrees, and all His Names and attributes: "Yes, the hereafter exists, and I shall send you there." The Tenth Word has proved and elucidated with twelve brilliant, decisive truths the answers about the hereafter of a number of Names. Deeming those explanations to be sufficient, here we shall point them out briefly.
Yes, since there ¡s no sovereignty that does not reward those who obey it and punish the rebellious, an eternal sovereignty which is aí ihe degree of absolute dominicality rewarding those who form a relation with it through belief and submit to its decrees, and its punishing rebellious disbelievers who deny its proud sovereignty will be in a manner fitting for its mercy and beauty, its dignity and glory. Thus, the Names Sustainer of All the Worlds and Just Monarch reply to our question.
Also, we see as clearly as the sun, as daylight, a general mercy and all-embracing compassion and munificence on the face of the earth. For example, every spring that mercy adorns all the fruit-bearing trees and plants like houris; it fills their hands with every sort of fruit and they hold them out to us, saying: "Help yourselves, and eat!" So does it give us sweet, healing honey to eat from the poisonous bee, and dresses us in the softest silk by means of a handless insect, [t deposits for us in a handful of tiny seeds pounds of food, making those tiny stores into reserve supplies. Such a mercy and compassion surely would not execute these lovable, grateful, worshipping believers which they nurture so kindly. They rather dismiss them from their duties in this worldly life to bestow on them still more brilliant instances of mercy, and in so doing the Names of All-Compassionate and Munificent answer our question.
Also, we see before our eyes that a hand of wisdom works in all creatures on the face of the earth and a justice is in force with its measures, nothing superior to which the human mind can conceive of. For example, a pre-eternal wisdom inscribes in man's faculty of memory, which is one instance of wisdom in his thousands of faculties and physical systems and is as tiny as a miniscule seed, his entire life-story and the numerous events which touch on him, making it into a small library. He then places it in the pocket of his mind as a note from the register of his actions which will be published for his judgement at the Great Gathering, in order to continuously remind him of this.
---------------------------
9. Qur'an, 16:77.
10 Qur'an.31:28.
11. Qur'an. Ш50.
No Voice