existence of the hereafter, and that men will be sent there and the universe’s Creator will bring it about in accordance with His certain promise. Similarly, affirming through illumination and witnessing in the form of ‘certainty at the degree of knowledge’ the reports of the prophets, the one hundred and twenty-four million saints have testified to the hereafter’s existence. And through the manifestations they display in this world, all the names of the universe’s All-Wise Maker self-evidently necessitate an everlasting realm. So too the infinite pre-eternal power and the boundless eternal wisdom which allowing nothing to be vain and purposeless every year in the spring, raise to life with the command of “‘Be!’ and it is”(36:83, etc.) the incalculable corpses of the dead trees on the face of the earth, making them manifest life after death, and revivify three hundred thousand species of plants and animals as thousands of samples of the resurrection of the dead. These observedly necessitate the existence of the hereafter, as does the eternal mercy and perpetual favour which with perfect compassion and in wondrous fashion provide the livelihoods of all living beings needy for sustenance and in a brief time in spring display their uncountable sorts of adornment and decoration; they too necessitate the existence of the hereafter. Together with man, the most perfect fruit of the universe and its Creator’s most loved creature, who of all beings is the most closely concerned with the beings in the universe, and the clear indications and certain evidence of his intense, unshakeable, constant desire for immortality and his hopes which extend to eternity – all these prove so decisively that after this transient world there will be an eternal world, a realm of the hereafter and everlasting happiness that they self-evidently necessitate acceptance of the hereafter’s existence.1
Since the most important thing the All-Wise Qur’an teaches us is belief in the hereafter, and since this belief is thus powerful and it yields such hope and solace that if a person was overwhelmed by old age a hundred thousand times over, the consolation arising from this belief would be
The ease of reporting a definite matter and the difficulty in denying it may be seen in the following comparison: if one person says: “There is a wondrous garden on earth whose trees produce fruits which are cans of milk,” and another says: “There isn’t,” the one claiming it only has to point out where it is or some of its fruits in order to easily prove it. Whereas the one denying can only prove his denial by seeing and showing the whole face of the earth. In just the same way, even if one disregards the hundreds of thousands of signs, fruits, and marks of Paradise which those who give news of it have indicated, the testimony of two truthful witnesses to its certain existence is sufficient; while the one who denies it can only prove his denial after observing the infinite universe and infinite, unending time, and seeing it and investigating it exhaustively; only then can he demonstrate its non-existence. And so, my elderly brothers, you may understand just how powerful is belief in the hereafter.