The Tenth Word
Conclusion
The preceding Twelve Truths confirm, complement, and support each other. All together as if 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 Nuqta (Point), I elaborated this truth. Here, I will summarize it and present various comparisons.42 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. 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, by virtue of balance or 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, 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 commands 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, it would be as difficult for them as to create an entire spring.
All that we have explained so far is derived from the radiation of the wise Qur’an. So, let us listen to more of what it has to say:
For God is the final, conclusive argument. (6:149)
Look upon the imprints of God’s Mercy, how He revives the earth after its death. He it is Who will revive the dead [in the same way]. He has full power over everything. (30:50)
He has coined for Us a comparison, having forgotten his own origin and creation, saying: “Who will revive these bones when they have rotted away?” Say: “He Who produced them in the first instance will revive them. He has full knowledge of all creation.” (36:78)
O humankind, keep from disobedience to your Lord in piety. The violent convulsion of the Last Hour is an awesome thing. The day you see it, every suckling woman will forget her suckling-babe, and every pregnant one will drop her burden. You will see humans as drunk, yet they are not drunk. Dreadful will be the doom of God. (22:1-2)
God, there is no deity 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 the earth quakes with a violent quaking destined for it and throws up its burdens, and human cries out: “What is the matter with it?” That day it will proclaim its tidings because Your Lord has inspired it. That day humans will come forth in scattered groups to be shown their deeds. Whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it, whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it. (99:1-8)
The sudden, mighty strike! What is the sudden, mighty strike? Would that you knew what the sudden, mighty strike is! The day whereon humans will be like moths scattered about, and the mountains will be like carded wool. Then the one whose scales are heavy [in faith and good deeds] will be in a pleasing life. But the one whose scales are light will have his home in a bottomless pit. What enables you to perceive what it is? It is a raging Fire! (101:1-11)
To God belongs the unseen of the heavens and the earth. The affair of the Hour is as the twinkling of an eye, or even quicker. God has full power over everything. (16:77)
Listening to these and other similar verses, we should say: “We so believe and affirm.”
I believe in God, His angels, His Books, His 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.43 God will resurrect those in the graves. I bear witness that there is no deity 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. Amin.
O brother (or sister) who is 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 (Avicenna) judged that the Resurrection could not be understood through rational criteria; we must believe in it. Also, scholars 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 in one attempt. Thanks to the All-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 Supreme 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 tried to follow this approach in this Word.
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi
42 This is included in al-Mathnawi an-Nuri (Seedbed of the Light), The Light, 2007. (Tr.)
43 Munkar and Nakir are the two angels who interrogate the dead in the Intermediate Realm (between this and the next) about their beliefs and deeds in this world. (Ed.)