constant – in the sphere of contingency, that is, in beings, which constantly manifest life and death, existence and annihilation; it is the reality of time. Yes, time has a reality as does everything; the reality of what we call time, a mighty river flowing through the universe, is like the page and ink of power as it writes on the Tablet of Appearance and Dissolution.
None knows the Unseen save God.
S e c o n d Q u e s t i o n : Where will the Great Gathering and Last Judgement take place?
The Answer: The knowledge is with God alone. The elevated instances of wisdom the All-Wise Creator displays in all things, and His even attaching vast instances of wisdom to a single insignificant thing, suggests to the point of being plain that the globe does not revolve in a circle aimlessly and pointlessly, but revolves around something important; it depicts the circumference of a vast arena. It travels around a huge place of exhibition and hands over its immaterial produce to it; because in the future the produce will be displayed there before the gazes of men. That is to say, it will fill the circle, the circumference of which is a distance of approximately twenty-five thousand years. Syria will be like a seed, according to one narration;1 the arena of the Great Gathering will be expanded out of that region. All the immaterial produce of the earth is for now sent to the notebooks and tablets of the arena which is beneath the veil of the Unseen, and in the future when the arena is opened up, the earth will pour its inhabitants into it too. Its immaterial produce will also be transposed to the Manifest Realm from that of the Unseen. Yes, as though it were an arable field, a spring, or a measure, the earth has produced crops enough to fill that vast arena, and the creatures that will occupy it have flowed on from the earth; the beings to fill it have departed from the earth. That is to say, the globe is a seed, and the arena of the Great Gathering and what it holds, a tree, a shoot, and a store. Just as a point of light becomes a luminous line or circle on moving at speed, so with its rapid, purposeful motion, the earth describes a circle of existence, and together with that circle of existence and its produce, gives rise to the arena of the Great Gathering.
Say, the knowledge of it is with God alone.(67:26)
The Eternal One, He is the Eternal One!
S a i d N u r s i
al-Hakim, al-Mustadrak, ii, 440; Musnad, iv, 447; v, 3, 5.