The Second Station
of the Thirteenth Word
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
[A conversation held with some young people who, though surrounded by temptation, had not yet lost their power of reason.]
Being assaulted by the deceptive, seductive amusements of the present time, a group of young people were asking: “How can we save our lives in the hereafter?”, and they sought help from the Risale-i Nur. So I said the following to them in the name of the Risale-i Nur:
The grave is there and no one can deny it. Whether they want to or not, everyone must enter it. And apart from the following three ‘Ways’, there is no other way it can be approached:
First Way: For those who believe, the grave is the door to a world far better than this world.
Second Way: For those who believe in the hereafter, but who approach it on the path of dissipation and misguidance, it is the door to a prison of solitary confinement, an eternal dungeon, where they will be separated from all their loved ones.
Third Way: For the unbelievers and the misguided who do not believe in the hereafter, it is the door to eternal extinction. That is to say, it is the gallows on which both themselves and all those they love will be executed. Since they think it is thus, that is exactly how they shall experience it: as punishment.
These last two Ways are self-evident, they do not require proof, they are plain for all to see. Since the appointed hour is secret, and death may come any time and cut off his head, and it does not differentiate between young and old, perpetually having such an awesome and serious matter before him, unhappy man will surely search for the means to deliver himself from that eternal extinction, that infinite, endless solitary confinement; the means to transform the door of the grave into a door opening on to an everlasting world, eternal happiness, and a world of light. It will be a question for him that looms as large as the world.