Conclusion
The preceding Twelve Truths confirm, complement, and support each other. As a single truth, they demonstrate the desired result. Can any doubt penetrate those twelve firm walls, each like steel or diamonds, and shake the belief in the Resurrection housed within them?
Your creation and your resurrection are as but a single soul (31:28) means that creating and resurrecting humanity or a single person are equally easy for the Divine Power. In Nukta (Point), I elaborated this truth. Here, I will summarize it and present various comparisons.30 For example, if the sun had free will and could manifest itself however it wished, as a light-giving object it could do so with the same ease in innumerable transparent objects or in one particle.31 Being transparent, the tiniest transparent thing equals the ocean’s surface in containing the sun’s image. By virtue of orderliness and its interrelated parts, a child can steer a battleship as easily as a toy boat. By virtue of obedience, a commander can order an army to move with the same “March!” issued to one soldier.
Imagine a balance so sensitive that it can weigh two walnuts, and so large that it can weigh two suns. If two walnuts or suns of equal weight were placed in these pans, the resulting equilibrium, the same power that lifts one walnut to the heavens and lowers the other to the ground, would move the suns with the same ease.
In this lowly, imperfect, and transient World of Contingency, and by virtue of such qualities as luminosity, transparency, orderliness and interrelatedness, obedience and balance (or equilibrium), all things become equal, and numerous things appear as equal to one thing. Given this, and by virtue of the luminous manifestations of the Absolutely Powerful One’s essential, infinite, and utterly perfect Power; the transparency of the inner dimension of things; the exact universal order dictated by Divine Wisdom and Destiny; the perfect obedience of things to His command of creation; and because the existence or non-existence of all things is equally possible, little and much, small and great are equal in respect to His Power. And so He will resurrect us with one trumpet blast, as if we were one person.
Furthermore, a thing’s degrees of strength and weakness are determined by the intervention of its opposite. Degrees of heat are determined by cold’s intervention, degrees of beauty by ugliness’ intervention, and degrees of illumination by darkness’ intervention. But if a quality or property is essential to something, that is, if it originates directly from itself and is almost identical with itself, its opposite cannot intervene in it. If its opposite could intervene, this would mean that opposites of the same qualities would have to be united in a single thing—something clearly impossible.
The Absolutely Powerful One’s Power is essential to His Divine Essence, originates from It directly, and is almost identical with It. Given this, and that It is also absolutely perfect, It cannot have an opposite to intervene in It. Hence the Lord of Majesty creates spring as easily as He creates a flower, and will resurrect and assemble humanity with the same ease as He resurrects one person. If material causes had to create just one flower, on the other hand, they would have to be able to create an entire spring.
All that we have explained so far is derived from the radiation of the Wise Qur’an. So, let’s listen to more of what it has to say:
For God is the final, conclusive argument. (6:149)
Look upon the signs and imprints of God’s Mercy, how He revives the soil after its death. He it is Who will revive the dead [in the same way]. He is powerful over all things. (30:50)
[Humanity] coins for Us a similitude, and forgets his own creation, saying: “Who will revive those bones when they have rotted away?” Say: “The One Who first produced them will revive them. He is Knower of every creation.” (36:78-79)
O humanity, fear your Lord. The quaking of the Hour is a mighty thing. The day you see it, every suckling woman shall forget her suckling-babe, and every pregnant one shall drop her burden. You shall see humanity as drunk, yet they are not drunk. Dreadful will be the doom of God. (22:1-2)
God, there is no god but He. Surely He will gather you all to a Day of Judgment about which there is no doubt. Who is more true than God in the words [He speaks] and the news [He gives]? (4:87)
The pious, purified will be in bliss and blessings. The wicked will be in blazing Fire. (82:13-14)
When Earth is shaken with its [final and terrible] earthquake and throws up its burdens, and humanity asks: “What is the matter with it?” That day it will proclaim its tidings because Your Lord has inspired it. That day humanity will come forth in scattered groups to be shown their deeds. Whoever does an atom’s weight of good shall see it, whoever does an atom’s weight of evil shall see it. (99:1-8)
The noise and clamor! What is the noise and clamor? Would that you knew what the noise and clamor is! The day whereon humanity will be like moths scattered about, and the mountains will be like carded wool. Then those whose scales are heavy [in good deeds] will be in a pleasing life. But those whose scales are light, shall plunge in the womb of a [bottomless] Pit. What will convey to you what that is like? A raging Fire! (101:1-11)
To God belongs the unseen of the heavens and Earth.
or even quicker. God is powerful over all things. (16:77)
Listening to these and other similar verses, we should say: “We so believe and affirm.”
I believe in God, His angels, books, Messengers, the Last Day, and Destiny in that whatever comes as good or evil [is recorded in His Knowledge and created by Him]. Resurrection is true, Paradise is true, the Fire is true, intercession [on the Last Day] is true, and Munkar and Nakir are true.32 God will resurrect those in the graves. I bear witness that there is no god but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.
O God, bestow blessings on the most graceful, noble and dignified, perfect and beautiful fruit of Your Mercy, which has blossomed throughout the universe like a blessed tree; on him whom You sent as a mercy for all worlds, and as a means for us to attain to the most adorned, fairest, brightest, and most exalted fruit of that “tree” extending into the Hereafter, that is, into Paradise. O God, save us and our parents from the Fire, and take us and our parents into Paradise with the purified, pious ones, for the sake of Your chosen Prophet. Amen.
If you are studying this treatise with an open mind, do not ask: “Why can’t I immediately understand this Tenth Word in all its details?” Do not become bored if you cannot understand it right away. Even such a master of philosophy as Ibn Sina judged that the Resurrection could not be understood through rational criteria. As it is beyond human reason, we must believe in it.
Also, almost all scholars of Islam consider it one of the revealed truths requiring belief and one that cannot be established through reason. Therefore, it is difficult for human reason to grasp such a profound and exalted issue. Thanks to the Merciful Creator’s Mercy and the Wise Qur’an’s radiation, I hope that this Tenth Word, if studied carefully and repeatedly, will convince your reason of the Resurrection’s truth and help secure belief in it.
One difficulty that human reason encounters here is that since the Resurrection and Great Gathering will occur through the manifestation of God’s Greatest Name, this event can be established rationally only by demonstrating His acts through His Greatest Name’s manifestation and the universal manifestations of other Names, as if proving the coming of next spring. We followed this approach in this Word.
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi
30 This treatise is included in Said Nursi’s Mathnawi Nuriya, which is available in English as Epitomes of Light. (Tr.)
31 In fact, the sun is manifested with the same ease in everything, without any one hindering any other.
32 Munkar and Nakir are the two angels who interrogate the dead about their beliefs and deeds in this world. (Ed.)