The Tenth Word
Part four
He said: “Who will revive to these bones when they are rotted away?” Say: “He Who produced them in the first instance will revive them.” He has full knowledge of all creation. (36:78)
Recall the analogy used in the third comparison in the Ninth Truth of The Tenth Word. In sum: Someone assembles a huge army within one day before your eyes. If you were told that that one could reassemble and reorder with a blow of bugle a battalion whose members had dispersed for rest, and you replied that he could not, you would be regarded as crazy.
Similarly, the All-Powerful and All-Knowing, by His command Be! and it is, created all animate beings’ atoms and subtle bodily constituents out of nothing. He then recorded and assigned them to their places, as if they were an army, with perfect orderliness and balance. During every spring, He creates countless different species and groups of animate creatures, each of which resembles an army. Surely He can re-gather, with a blast on Israfil’s trumpet, all the fundamental atoms and original components that enjoyed mutual acquaintance through their collective submission to the body’s order—an order that exceeds that of any battalion. If you consider this improbable, are you not irrational?
In some of its verses, the Qur’an tells us what wonders God Almighty has performed here to convince our hearts of the wonderful acts He will accomplish in the Hereafter, and to prepare our minds to confirm them. Or it describes the amazing deeds He will perform in the future and the Hereafter by analogies with what we see here. One example is: Has man not considered that We have created him from (so slight a beginning as) a drop of (seminal) fluid? Yet, he turns into an open, fierce adversary (36:77), and the subsequent verses to the end of the sura.
The wise Qur’an establishes the Resurrection in seven or eight different ways. It first directs our attention to our own origin: “You see how you progressed—from a sperm drop to a blood clot suspended on the womb’s wall, from a suspended blood clot to a formless lump of flesh, and from a formless lump of flesh to a human form through several other stages. How can you, then, deny your second creation? It is just the same as the first, or even easier [for God to accomplish].”
Also, God Almighty refers to certain great bounties He has granted to us: He Who has made for you fire from the green tree (36:80). He means: “Does the One Who has bestowed such bounty upon you leave you free to behave as you wish and then enter the grave to sleep permanently without rising again?” He also means: “You see how dead or dried trees come to life again and grow green. Yet you deem it unlikely that wood-like bones will be revived? Further, is He Who created the heavens and the earth unable to create and re-create humanity, the fruit of the heavens and the earth? Does One Who governs a huge tree attach no importance to its fruit and leave it to others? Do you think He will leave humanity, the result of the Tree of Creation, to it own devices or to others, and thereby allow that Tree of Creation, all parts of which have been kneaded with wisdom, to go to waste?”
God also says: “The One Who will restore you to life at the Resurrection is the One before Whom the whole universe is like an obedient soldier. It bows its head submissively before the command of ‘Be!’ and it is. Creating spring is as easy for Him as creating a flower. It is He for Whose Power creating all animals is as easy as creating a single fly. No one should defy or challenge His Power by asking: “Who will give life to these bones?”
In: So, All-Glorified is He in Whose Hand is the absolute dominion of all things, and to Him you are being brought back (36:83), the Qur’an signifies: The All-Mighty controls everything and has the keys to everything. He alternates night and day, and winter and summer, as easily as turning the pages of a book. He is such an All-Powerful One of Majesty that, like closing one house and opening another, He closes this world and opens the next. Given this: To Him you will be brought back (36:83). He will revive you, take you to the Plain of Resurrection, and judge you in His majestic Presence.
Such verses prepare our minds and hearts to accept the Resurrection, because they show how it resembles several common things in our lives. Also, the Qur’an sometimes mentions God’s acts in the Hereafter in a way calling attention to their worldly parallels, so that no room is left for doubt and denial. Examples are found in the suras beginning with: When the sun is folded up (81:1); When the heaven is cleft open (82:1); and When the heaven is split asunder (84:1). In these suras, the All-Mighty describes the world’s destruction and the vast revolutions and the Lordly deeds during the Resurrection in such a manner that we see similar events in the world, i.e., during spring and autumn, and so can have some understanding of the awesome events being described. As even a brief analysis of these three suras would be too lengthy, I will point out only one verse as an example: When the scrolls (of the deeds of every person) are laid open (81:10).
This verse states that at the time of the Resurrection, everyone’s deeds will be revealed on a written page. At first glance, this appears rather strange and incomprehensible. But as the sura indicates, in addition to many other examples in spring’s general renewal of the events to occur during the Resurrection, the “laying of the scrolls open” has also a very clear parallel. Every fruit-bearing tree and flowering plant has its properties, functions, and deeds. It performs the kind of worship particular to it according to how it manifests Divine Names. Thus, all of its deeds (its life-cycle from germination to blossoming and yielding fruits) are recorded or inscribed in its each seed that will emerge next spring in another plot of soil. As with the tongue of shape and form, the trees or flowering plants [growing from seeds buried the previous autumn] eloquently point to the original tree’s or flowering plant’s life and deeds, they also spread out or lay open the pages of their deeds through their branches, twigs, leaves, blossoms, and fruits. Thus the One Who does this work before our eyes as manifestations of His Names the All-Wise, the All-Preserving, the All-Arranging, the All-Upbringing, and All-Subtle, is He Who says: When the scrolls (of the deeds of every person) are laid open.
You can pursue other issues of the Resurrection through this analogy. I will mention another example to help you: When the sun is folded up (81:1). Besides the brilliant metaphor in folded up (meaning “rolled” or “wrapped up”), the verse alludes to several related events:
First: The All-Mighty drew aside the veils of non-being, then of ether and the heavens, to bring forth from His Mercy’s treasury and show the world a jewel-like lamp—the sun—to lighten that world. After closing the world, He will wrap that jewel again in its veils and remove it.
Second: The sun may be considered an official charged with diffusing light and alternately winding light and darkness around the earth’s head. Every evening, it is ordered to gather up its commodity (light) and be concealed. Sometimes the sun does only a little business, because a cloud veils it or the moon might form a veil that prevents it from carrying out its task completely. Just as it so closes its account book to certain extent for a short, fixed time due to such reasons, at some [future] time, this official will resign from its post. Even if there were no reason for such a dismissal, the two spots on its face—now small and liable to grow—may grow to the point that the sun will take back, by its Lord’s command, the light that it wraps around the earth’s head. God will wrap that light around the sun’s own head, saying: “Come, you have no more duty toward the earth. Now, go to Hell and burn those who worshipped you and thus mocked with disloyalty an obedient official like you.” With its dark, scarred face, the sun announces the decree: When the sun is folded up (81: 1).
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi