The Words | 33. Word | 708
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Twenty-Fourth Window

There is no God but He, everything will perish save His countenance,

His is the command and to Him shall you return ,28

Death is a proof of dominicality as much as life is a proof of it; it is a most powerful proof of Divine unity. As the verse,

Who creates death and life29

indicates, death is not non-existence, annihilation, non-being, an authorless extinction; rather, as is shown in the First Letter, it is a being discharged from service by an All-Wise Author, a change of residence, an exchange of bodies, a rest from duty, a being freed from the prison of the body; it is a wise and orderly work of wisdom. Indeed, just as the living face of the earth and the well-fashioned and living creatures upon it testify to the necessary existence and unity of an All-Wise Maker, so too with their deaths do those living beings bear witness to the eternity and unity of an Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One. Since it is proved and elucidated in the Twenty-Second Word that death is an extremely powerful proof of Divine unity and eternity, we refer the discussion to that Word and here only explain one important point. It is as follows:

Both with their existences do living beings point to the existence of a Necessarily Existent One, and with their deaths do those living beings testify to the eternity and unity of an Ever-Living Eternal One. For example, the face of the earth, which is a single living creature, points to its Maker with its order and circumstances; so too it points to Him when it dies. That is, when winter conceals the earth's face with its white shroud, it turns the gazes of men away from itself —their gaze moves to the past behind the corpse of that departing spring— and it shows them a far wider scene. That is to say, all the past springs of the earth, which were all miracles of power, inform them that new living springtime creatures of the earth will come, and since they all testify to the existence of those future wonders of Divine power, each a living earth, they testify brilliantly and powerfully and on a vast scale to the necessary existence, unity, everlastingness, and eternity of an All-Glorious Maker, an All-Powerful One of Perfection, an Ever-Living Eternal One; they demonstrate such brilliant proofs that whether one wants to or not they make one declare: "I believe in God, the One, the Unique!"

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28. Qur'an, 28:88.
29. Qur'an, 67:2

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