The Eleventh Ray (11.Sua, Englisch)/The Fruits of Belief (meyve risalesi, Englisch)

[EMRE]

 

The Eleventh Ray

 

 

 

A Fruit of Denizli Prison

 

[This is a defence of the Risale-i Nur against atheism and absolute disbelief. It is our true defence in this imprisonment of ours, for it is only this we are working at. This treatise is a fruit and souvenir of Denizli Prison, and the product of two Fridays.]

 

S a i d N u r s i

 

 

 

The Fruits of Belief

 

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

 

And he languished in prison for a number of years more.1

 

According to an inner meaning of this verse, Joseph (Peace be upon him) is the patron of prisoners and prison is a sort of ‘School of Joseph.’ Since this is the second time the Risale-i Nur students have been sent to prison in large numbers, it is necessary to study and teach in this school, which has been opened to give this training, the brief summaries of a number of matters connected with prison that the Risale-i Nur proves, and to benefit from them thoroughly. We shall explain five or six of those summaries.

 

 

The First Topic

 

As is explained in the Fourth Word, everyday our Creator bestows on us the capital of twenty-four hours of life so that with it we may obtain all the things necessary for our two lives. If we spend twenty-three hours on this fleeting worldly life and neglect to spend the remaining one hour, which is sufficient for the five obligatory prayers, on the very lengthy life of the hereafter, it may be understood what an unreasonable error it is, and what a great loss to suffer distress of the mind and spirit as the penalty for the error, and to behave badly because of the distress, and to fail to rectify one’s conduct due to living in a state of despair, indeed, to do the opposite. We may make the comparison.

 

We should think of what a profitable ordeal it is —if we spend the one hour on the five obligatory prayers— each hour of this calamitous term of imprisonment sometimes becoming a day’s worship and one of its transient hours becoming many permanent hours, and our despair and distress of the spirit and heart in part disappearing, and its being atonement for the mistakes that led to the imprisonment and the cause of their being forgiven, and being trained and improved, which is the purpose of imprisonment; we should think of it being instruction and a pleasant and consoling meeting with our companions in disaster.

 

As is said in the Fourth Word, it may be compared how contrary it is to a person’s interests to give five or ten liras out of his twenty-four to a lottery in which a thousand people are taking part in order to win the thousand-lira prize, and not give a single lira out of the twenty-four for a ticket for an everlasting treasury of jewels, and to rush to the fomer and flee from the latter, —although the chance of winning the thousand liras in the worldly lottery is one in a thousand because there are a thousand people taking part, while in the lottery of man’s destiny which looks to the hereafter the chance of winning for the people of belief, who experience happy deaths, is nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand, as has been stated by one hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets and confirmed by incalculable numbers of truthful informers from among the saints and purified scholars as a result of their illuminations.

 

Prison governors and chief warders, and indeed the country’s administrators and the guardians of public order, should be grateful at this lesson of the Risale-i Nur, for the government and disciplining of a thousand believers who constantly have in mind the prison of Hell is far easier than that of ten who have no belief and do not perform the obligatory prayers, only think of worldly prisons, do not know what is licit and what is illicit, and are in part accustomed to living undisciplined lives.

 

 

A Summary of the Second Topic

 

As is well explained in A Guide For Youth from the Risale-i Nur, it is as definite and obvious that death will befall us as the night will follow today and winter, this autumn. Just as this prison is a temporary guest-house for those who continuously enter it and leave it; so the face of the earth is a hostel on the road of the swiftly travelling caravans which alight for one night then pass on. Surely death, which has emptied all the cities into the graveyard a hundred times over, has demands greater than life. The Risale-i Nur has solved the riddle of this awesome truth and discovered its answer. A short summary of it is this:

 

Since death cannot be killed nor the door of the grave be closed, if there is a way of being saved from the executioner of the appointed hour and the solitary confinement of the grave, it is a question, an anxiety, for man of greater importance than anything. Yes, there is a solution, and through the mystery of the Qur’an, the Risale-i Nur has proved it as certainly as two plus two equals four. A brief summary of it is as follows:

 

Death is either eternal annihilation, a gallows on which will be hanged both man and all his friends and relations; or it comprises the release papers to depart for another, eternal, realm, and to enter, with the document of belief, the palace of bliss. The grave is either a bottomless pit and dark place of solitary confinement, or it is a door opening from the prison of this world onto an eternal, light-filled garden and place of feasting. A Guide For Youth has proved this truth with a comparison.

 

For example; gallows have been set up in this prison yard, and behind the wall immediately beyond them a huge lottery office has been opened in the lottery of which the whole world has taken part. We five hundred people in this prison are certain to be summoned one by one without exception to that arena; to avoid it is not possible. Everywhere announcements are being made: “Come and receive your decree of execution, and mount the gallows!”, or: “Take the note for everlasting solitary confinement, and take that door!”, or: “Good news for you! The winning ticket worth millions has come up for you. Come and receive it!” We see with our own eyes that one after the other they are mounting the gallows. We observe that some are being hanged, while others are making the gallows a step, and moving onto the lottery office beyond the wall. Just at that point, which we know as though we have seen it from the certain information given by the high-ranking officials there, two groups have entered our prison.

 

One group are holding musical instruments, wine, and apparently sweet confections and pastries which they are trying to make us eat. But the sweets are in fact lethal, for satans in human form have laced them with poison.

 

The second group are carrying instructive writings, licit foods, and blessed drinks. They present them to us and all together say to us with great earnestness: “If you take and eat the gifts the first group gave you by way of testing you, you shall be hanged on these gallows before us like the others you have seen. Whereas if you accept the gifts we have brought you on the command of this country’s Ruler in place of them, and recite the supplications and prayers in the instructive writings, you shall be saved from execution. Believe as though you were seeing it that each of you shall receive the winning ticket worth millions in the lottery office as a royal favour. These decrees say, and we ourselves say the same thing, that if you eat those illicit, dubious, and poisonous sweets, you shall suffer terrible pains from the poison until you go to be hanged.”

 

Like this comparison, for the people of belief and worship —on condition they have happy deaths— the ticket for an everlasting and inexhaustible treasury will come up from the lottery of man’s destiny beyond the gallows of the appointed hour, which we always see. For those who persist in vice, unlawful actions, unbelief, and sin, however, there is a hundred per cent probability that on condition they do not repent, they will receive the summons to either eternal annihilation (for those who do not believe in the hereafter), or to permanent, dark solitary confinement (for those who believe in the immortality of man’s spirit, but take the way of vice) and eternal perdition. Certain news of this has been given by the hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets2 with their innumerable miracles, which confirm them; and by the more than one hundred and twenty-four million saints, who see in their illuminations the traces and shadows —as though on a cinema screen— of what the prophets have told, and put their signatures to it, affirming it; and by the more than thousands of millions of investigative scholars,3 interpreters of the law, and veracious ones who, with decisive proofs and powerful arguments, prove according to reason and absolutely certainly the things told by those two eminent groups of mankind, and have set their signatures to them. The situation then of someone who does not heed the news given unanimously by the decrees of these three vast and elevated communities and groups of the people of reality, who are the suns, moons, and stars of mankind and the sacred leaders of humanity, and does not take the straight path which they have pointed out, and disregards the awesome ninety-nine per cent danger, and abandons that way due to one person saying there is danger on it and takes another, lengthy, way — his situation is as follows:

 

The wretch who since he has abandoned, according to the certain news of innumerable well-informed observers, the shortest and easiest of the two ways, which with a hundred per cent certainty will lead to Paradise and eternal happiness, and has chosen the roughest, longest way, which is most fraught with difficulties and is ninety-nine per cent certain will lead to incarceration in Hell and everlasting misery, and leaves the short way because, according to the false information of a single informer, there is a one per cent chance of danger and the possibility of a month’s imprisonment, and chooses the long way, which is without benefit, just because it holds no danger, like drunken lunatics, —such a wretch has lost his humanity, mind, heart, and spirit to the extent that he ignores the terrible dragons which are seen from afar and are pestering him, and struggles against mosquitoes, attaching importance to them alone.

 

Since this is the reality of the situation, so that we avenge ourselves totally for this calamity of prison, we prisoners should accept the gifts of the second, blessed, group. That is to say, just as the pleasure of a minute’s revenge or a minute or two, or an hour of two, of vice, or this calamity, has put us in this prison for fifteen, five, ten, or two or three years, and made our worlds into a prison; so to spite it, we should avenge ourselves on this calamity by transforming an hour or two of our prison lives into a day or two of worship, and our two or three-year-sentences —through the gifts of the blessed group— into twenty or thirty years of permanent life, and our prison sentences of twenty or thirty years into a means of forgiveness from millions of years of incarceration in the dungeons of Hell. In the face of our transitory worlds’ weeping, we should make our everlasting lives smile. We should show prison to be a place of training and education, and each of us try to be well-behaved, reliable, useful members of our nation and country. While the prison officers, administrators, and governors should see that the men they supposed to be criminals, bandits, layabouts, murderers, depraved, and harmful to the country are students studying in this blessed place of instruction, and should proudly offer thanks to God.

 

 

The Third Topic

 

This is the summary of an instructive incident which is described in A Guide For Youth.

 

One time, I was sitting by my window in Eskishehir Prison during the ‘Republic Festival.’ Opposite me, the older girls of the High School were laughing and dancing in the schoolyard. Suddenly their condition fifty years hence appeared to me, as though on a cinema screen. I saw that of those fifty to sixty girl students, forty to fifty had become earth in their graves, and were suffering torments. While ten were ugly seventy to eighty-year-olds who were despised where they might have expected love because they did not preserve their chastity when young. This I observed with complete certainty and I wept at their piteable states. Some of my friends in the prison heard my weeping, and came and asked me about it. I told them: “Leave me alone for now, I want to be alone.”

 

Yes, what I saw was reality, not imagination. Just as the summer and autumn are followed by winter, so the summer of youth and autumn of old age are followed by the winter of the grave and Intermediate Realm. If there was a cinema which showed the events of fifty years in the future, the same as those of fifty years ago are shown in the present, and the people of misguidance and vice were to be shown their circumstances of fifty or sixty years hence, they would weep in horror and disgust at their unlawful pleasures and those things at which they now laugh.

 

When preoccupied with these observations in Eskishehir Prison, a collective personality which spreads vice and misguidance was embodied before me like a human satan. It said:

 

“We want to experience all the pleasures and joys of life, and to make others experience them; don’t interfere with us!”

 

I replied: Since you do not recall death and plunge yourself into vice and misguidance for pleasure and enjoyment, you should certainly know that due to your misguidance, all the past is dead and non-existent; it is a desolate graveyard full of rotted bodies. The suffering arising from those innumerable separations and the eternal deaths of those numberless friends inflicted on your head through the concern of your humanity and your misguidance, and on your heart if you have one and it is not dead, will soon destroy your insignificant drunken pleasure of the present. The future too, due to your unbelief, is a non-existent, black, dead, and desolate wasteland. And since the heads of the unfortunates who appear from there, sticking them out into existence while stopping by in the present, are struck off by the executioner’s sword of the appointed hour and thrown into non-existence, due to the concern of your intellect, it continuously rains down grievous worries on your unbelieving head, completely overturning your petty, dissolute pleasure.

 

If you give up vice and misguidance and enter the sphere of certain, verified belief4 and righteousness, you will see through the light of belief that the past is not non-existent and a graveyard that rots everything, but an existent, light-filled world which is transformed into the future and into a waiting-room for the immortal spirits who will enter palaces of bliss in the future. Since it appears thus, it affords not pain, but according to the strength of belief, a sort of paradaisical pleasure. The future, too, appears to the eye of belief not as a dark wasteland, but where banquets and exhibitions of gifs have been set up in palaces of everlasting bliss by the Most Merciful and Compassionate One of Glory and Bestowal, Whose mercy and munificence are infinite and Who makes the spring and summer into tables laden with bounties. Since, knowing he will be despatched there, a person observes this on the cinema screen of belief, he may experience in a way the pleasures of the eternal realm. All may do this according to their degree. That is to say, true, painfree pleasure is found only in belief in God, and is possible only through belief.

 

Being related to our discussion, we shall explain here by means of a comparison, which is included in A Guide For Youth as a footnote, only a single benefit and pleasure out of the thousands that belief produces in this world too. It is as follows:

 

For example, your beloved only child is suffering the pangs of death and you are thinking despairingly of your being eternally parted from him. Then suddenly a doctor like Khidr or Luqman the Wise arrives with a wondrous medicine. Your lovely and lovable child opens his eyes, delivered from death. You can understand what joy and happiness it would give you.

 

Now, like the child, millions of people whom you earnestly love and are concerned for are —in your view— rotting in the graveyard of the past and are about to be annihilated, when suddenly the reality of belief, like Luqman the Wise, shines a light from the window of heart onto the graveyard, which is imagined to be a vast place of execution. Through it, all the dead spring to life. On their declaring through the tongue of disposition: “We had not died and shall not die; we shall meet with you again,” you feel an endless joy, which belief gives in this world too, proving that belief in God is a seed that were it to be embodied, a private paradise would emerge from it, becoming the Tuba-tree of that seed. I told the collective personality this, and in its stubbornness, it said:

 

“At least we can live like animals, passing our lives in pleasure and enjoyment, and by indulging in amusement and dissipation not thinking about these difficult matters.”

 

I told it by way of an answer:

 

“You cannot be like an animal, for animals have no past and future. They feel neither sorrows or regrets at the past, nor anxiety and fear at the future. It receives perfect pleasure; it sleeps and rises and thanks its Creator. An animal held down to be slaughtered, even, does not feel anything. It wants to feel it as the knife cuts, but that feeling disappears as well, and it is saved from the pain. This means that a great instance of Divine mercy and compassion is not making known the Unseen, and veiling the things that will befall one. It is more complete for innocent animals. But, O man, your past and future emerge from the Unseen to an extent because of your reason, so you are entirely deprived of the unconcern of the animals due to the Unseen being concealed from them. The regrets and painful separations coming from the past, and the anxieties coming from the future reduce to nothing your insignificant pleasure; they make it a hundred times less than that which the animals receive. Since the reality is this, either throw away your intellect, become an animal and be saved, or come to your senses through belief; listen to the Qur’an, and receive pure pleasure a hundred times greater than that of the animals in this transitory world too.” Saying this, I silenced it.

 

Yet, that obdurate collective personality still turned to me and said: “At least we can live like those Westerners who are without religion.”

 

I replied: “You cannot be like the irreligious people of Europe, either. For even if they deny one prophet, they can believe in the others. If they do not know the prophets, they may believe in God. And even if they do not know God, they may possess certain personal qualities through which they find fulfilment. But if a Muslim denies the Prophet of the End of Time (Peace and blessings be upon him), who was the final and greatest of the prophets and whose religion and cause are universal, and if he abandons his religion, he will accept no other prophet and perhaps not even God. For he knows all the prophets and God and all perfections through the Prophet of the End of Time (Peace and blessings be upon him); they can have no place in his heart without him. It is for this reason that since early times people have entered Islam from all other religions, but no Muslim has become a true Jew, Magian, or Christian. Muslims who abandon their religion rather become irreligious, their characters are corrupted, and they become harmful for the country and nation.” I proved this, and the obstinate collective personality could find no further straw to clutch at, so it vanished and went to Hell.

 

My friends who are studying together with me in this School of Joseph! Since the reality is this and the Risale-i Nur proves it so clearly and decisively, like sunlight, that for twenty years it has broken the obstinacy of the obdurate and brought them to believe; we should therefore follow the way of belief and right conduct, which is easy and safe and beneficial for both our own worlds, and our futures, and our lives in the hereafter, and our country and nation; and spend our free time reciting the suras of the Qur’an that we know instead of indulging in distressing fancies, and learn the meaning from friends who teach them; and make up for the prayers we have failed to perform in the past, when we should have done; and taking advantage of one another’s good qualities, transform this prison into a blessed garden raising the seedlings of good character. With good deeds like these, we should do our best to make the prison governor and those concerned not torturers like the Angels of Hell standing over criminals and murderers, but righteous masters and kindly guards charged with the duties of raising people for Paradise in the School of Joseph and supervising their training and education.

 

 

The Fourth Topic

 

Again, there is an explanation of this in A Guide For Youth. One time, I was asked the following question by the brothers who assist me:

 

“For fifty days now —and now seven years have passed5 — you have asked nothing at all about this ghastly World War, which has plunged the whole world into chaos and is closely connected with the fate of the Islamic world, nor have you been curious about it. Whereas some religious and learned persons are leaving the congregation in the mosques and racing to listen to the radio. Is there some event more momentous than the war? Or is it harmful in some way to be preoccupied with it?”

 

I replied to them: Life’s capital is very little and the work to be done is much. There are spheres one within the other like concentric circles, from the sphere of man’s heart and stomach, and that of his home and body, and that of the quarter in which he lives and his town, and his country and land, and the globe and mankind, to the spheres of animate beings and the world. Each person may have duties in each of those spheres, but the most important and permanent of these are those in the smallest sphere. While his least important and temporary duties may be in the largest sphere. According to this analogy, the largest and smallest are in inverse proportion. But because of the attractiveness of the largest sphere, it causes the person to neglect his important, necessary duties in the small sphere, busying him with unnecessary, trivial, peripheral matters. It destroys the capital of his life for nothing. It kills his precious life on worthless things. Sometimes, the one following curiously the struggles of the war comes to earnestly support one side. He looks favourably on their tyranny, and becomes a partner in it.

 

The Answer to the first point: Yes, an event more momentous than this World War and a case more important than that of world supremacy has been opened over the heads of everyone and especially Muslims, so that if everyone had the wealth and power of the Germans and English and sense as well, they would unhesitatingly spend all of it to win that single case. The case is this: relying on the thousands of promises and pledges of the universe’s Owner, Who has disposal over it, hundreds of thousands of the most eminent of mankind, and uncounted numbers of its stars and guides, have unanimously given news —and some of them have actually seen— that for everyone the case has opened by which they may either win, in return for belief, or lose, eternal properties as broad as the earth set with palaces and gardens. If they do not secure the document of belief, they will lose. And this age, many are losing the case because of the plague of materialism. One of the diviners of reality and investigators of truth observed in one place that out of forty people who died, only a few won; the others lost. Can anything take the place of that lost suit, even rule over the whole world?

 

Since we Risale-i Nur students know it would be pure lunacy to give up the duties which will win the case and abandon the wondrous lawyer who saves ninety per cent from losing it and the task which the lawyer employs us in, and become involved with peripheral trivia as though we were going to remain in the world for ever, we are certain that if each of us had intelligence a hundred times greater than what we have, we still would use it only on this task.

 

My new brothers here in this calamity of prison! You have seen the Risale-i Nur the same as my old brothers, who entered here together with me. Citing them and thousands of students like them as witnesses, I say, I prove, and have proved, that it is the Risale-i Nur that wins that supreme case for ninety people out of a hundred, obtains for them certain, verified belief, which is the document and warrant that has won the case for twenty thousand people in twenty years. It has proceeded from the miraculousness of the All-Wise Qur’an and is the leading lawyer at this time. Although these eighteen years my enemies and the atheists and materialists have duped some members of the government with their exceedingly cruel plots against me, and have had us sent to prison to have us done away with — in the past as now, they have been able to cause harm to only two or three of the one hundred and thirty pieces of equipment in the steel fortress of the Risale-i Nur. That means, to obtain it is sufficient for those who want to engage a lawyer. Also, fear not, the Risale-i Nur cannot be banned! With the exception of two or three, its treatises are circulating freely among the deputies serving the Government of the Republic, and its leaders. God willing, at some time happy governors and guards will distribute those lights to the prisoners, like bread and medicine, and so make the prisons into truly effective places of reform.

 

 

The Fifth Topic

 

As is described in A Guide For Youth, there is no doubt that youth will depart; it will change into old age and death as certainly as the summer gives its place to autumn and winter, and the day changes into evening and night. All the revealed scriptures give the good news that if fleeting, transient youth is spent on good works, in chastity and within the bounds of good conduct, it will gain for the person immortal youth.

 

If, on the other hand, youth is spent on vice, just as murder resulting from a minute’s anger leads to millions of minutes of imprisonment, so quite apart from being called to account in the hereafter, and the torments of the grave, and the regrets arising from their passing, and sins, and the penalties suffered in this world, the unlawful pleasures of youth contain more pain than pleasure; every youth with sense will corroborate this from his own experience.

 

For example, the pains of jealousy, separation, and unreciprocated love transform the partial pleasure to be found in illicit love into poisonous honey. If you want to know how they end up in hospitals due to illnesses resulting from their misspent youth, and in prison due to their excesses, and in bars and dens of vice and the graveyard due to the distress arising from their unnourished hearts and spirits not performing their right functions, go and ask at the hospitals, prisons, bars, and graveyards. More than anything, you will hear the weeping and sighs of regret at the blows youths have received as the penalty for abusing their youth, and their excesses, and illicit pleasures.

 

Foremost the Qur’an, with numerous of its verses, and all the revealed scriptures and books, give the glad tidings that if spent within the bounds of moderation, youth is an agreeable Divine bounty and sweet, powerful means to good works, which yields the result of shining, immortal youth in the hereafter.

 

Since the reality is this, and since the bounds of the licit are sufficient for enjoyment, and since an hour of unlawful pleasure leads sometimes to a punishment of one, or ten, years’ imprisonment; surely it is absolutely necessary to spend the sweet bounty of youth chastely, on the straight path, as thanks for the bounty.

 

 

 

The Sixth Topic

 

[This consists of a single, brief proof of the pillar of belief, ‘Belief in God,’ for which there are numerous decisive proofs and explanations in many places in the Risale-i Nur.]

 

In Kastamonu a group of high-school students came to me, saying: “Tell us about our Creator, our teachers do not speak of God.” I said to them: “All the sciences you study continuously speak of God and make known the Creator, each with its own particular tongue. Do not listen to your teachers; listen to them.

 

“For example, a well-equipped pharmacy with life-giving potions and cures in every jar weighed out in precise and wondrous measures doubtless shows an extremely skilful, practised, and wise pharmacist. In the same way, to the extent that it is bigger and more perfect and better stocked than the pharmacy in the market-place, the pharmacy of the globe of the earth with its living potions and medicaments in the jars which are the four hundred thousand species of plants and animals shows and makes known to eyes that are blind even —by means of the measure or scale of the science of medicine that you study— the All-Wise One of Glory, Who is the Pharmacist of the mighty pharmacy of the earth.

 

“To take another example; a wondrous factory which weaves thousands of sorts of cloth from a simple material doubtless makes known a manufacturer and skilful mechanic. In the same way, to whatever extent it is larger and more perfect than the human factory, this travelling dominical machine known as the globe of the earth with its hundreds of thousands of heads, in each of which are hundreds of thousands of factories, shows and makes known —by means of the measure or scale of the science of engineering which you study— its Manufacturer and Owner.

 

“And, for example, a depot, store, or shop in which has been brought together and stored up in regular and orderly fashion a thousand and one varieties of provisions undoubtedly makes known a wondrous owner, proprietor, and overseer of provisions and foodstuffs. In just the same way, to whatever degree it is vaster and more perfect than such a store or factory, this foodstore of the Most Merciful One known as the globe of the earth, this Divine ship, this dominical depot and shop holding goods, equipment, and conserved food, which in one year travels regularly an orbit of twenty-four thousand years, and carrying groups of beings requiring different foods and passing through the seasons on its journey and filling the spring with thousands of different provisions like a huge waggon, brings them to the wretched animate creatures whose sustenance has been exhausted in winter, —by means of the measure or scale of the science of economics which you study— this depot of the earth makes known and makes loved its Manager, Organizer, and Owner.

 

“And, for example, let us imagine an army which consists of four hundred thousand nations, and each nation requires different provisions, uses different weapons, wears different uniforms, undergoes different drill, and is discharged from its duties differently. If this army and camp has a miracle-working commander who on his own provides all those different nations with all their different provisions, weapons, uniforms, and equipment without forgetting or confusing any of them, then surely the army and camp show the commander and make him loved appreciatively. In just the same way, the spring camp of the face of the earth in which every spring a newly recruited Divine army of the four hundred thousand species of plants and animals are given their varying uniforms, rations, weapons, training, and demobilizations in utterly perfect and regular fashion by a single Commander-in-Chief Who forgets or confuses not one of them —to whatever extent the spring camp of the face of the earth is vaster and more perfect than that human army, —by means of the measure or scale of the military science that you study— it makes known to the attentive and sensible, its Ruler, Sustainer, Administrator, and Most Holy Commander, causing wonderment and acclaim, and makes Him loved and praised and glorified.

 

“Another example: millions of electric lights that move and travel through a wondrous city, their fuel and power source never being exhausted, self-evidently make known a wonder-working craftsman and extraordinarily talented electrician who manages the electricity, makes the moving lamps, sets up the power source, and brings the fuel; they cause others to congratulate and applaud him, and to love him. In just the same way, although some of the lamps of the stars in the roof of the palace of the world in the city of the universe —if they are considered in the way that astronomy says— are a thousand times larger than the earth and move seventy times faster than a cannon-ball, they do not spoil their order, nor collide with one another, nor become extinguished, nor is their fuel exhausted. According to astronomy, which you study, for our sun to continue burning, which is a million times larger than the earth and a million times older and is a lamp and stove in one guest-house of the Most Merciful One, as much oil as the seas of the earth and as much coal as its mountains or as many logs and much wood as ten earths are necessary for it not to be extinguished. And however much greater and more perfect than this example are the electric lamps of the palace of the world in the majestic city of the universe, which point with their fingers of light to an infinite power and sovereignty which illuminates the sun and other lofty stars like it without oil, wood, or coal, not allowing them to be extinguished or to collide with one another, though travelling together at speed, to that degree —by means of the measure of the science of electricity which you either study or will study— they testify to and make known the Monarch, Illuminator, Director, and Maker of the mighty exhibition of the universe; they make Him loved, glorified, and worshipped.

 

“And, for example, take a book in every line of which a whole book is finely written, and in every word of which a sura of the Qur’an is inscribed with a fine pen. Being most meaningful with all of its matters corroborating one another, and a wondrous collection showing its writer and author to be extraordinarily skilful and capable, it undoubtedly shows its writer and author together with all his perfections and arts as clearly as daylight, and makes him known. It makes him appreciated with phrases like, “What wonders God has willed!” and “Blessed be God!” Just the same is the mighty book of the universe; we see with our eyes a pen at work which writes on the face of the earth, which is a single of its pages, and on the spring, which is a single folio, the three hundred thousand plant and animal species, which are like three hundred thousand different books, all together, one within the other, without fault or error, without mixing them up or confusing them, perfectly and with complete order, and sometimes writes an ode in a word like a tree, and the complete index of a book in a point-like seed. However much vaster and more perfect and meaningful than the book in the example mentioned above is this compendium of the universe and mighty embodied Qur’an of the world, which is infinitely full of meaning and in every word of which are numerous instances of wisdom, to that degree —in accordance with the extensive measure and far-seeing vision of the natural science that you study and the sciences of reading and writing that you have practised at school— it makes known the Inscriber and Author of the book of the universe together with His infinite perfections. Proclaiming “God is Most Great!”, it makes Him known. Uttering phrases like “Glory be to God!”, it describes Him. Acclaiming Him with words like “All praise be to God!”, it makes Him loved.

 

“Thus, hundreds of other sciences like these make known the Glorious Creator of the universe together with His Names, each through its broad measure or scale, its particular mirror, its far-seeing eyes, and searching gaze; they make known His attributes and perfections.

 

“It is in order to give instruction in this matter, which is a brilliant and magnificent proof of Divine unity, that the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition teaches us about our Creator most often with the verses, Sustainer of the Heavens and the Earth,6 and, He created the Heavens and Earth.”7 I said this to the schoolboys, and they accepted it completely, affirming it by saying: “Endless thanks be to God, for we have received an absolutely true and sacred lesson. May God be pleased with you!” And I said:

 

“Man is a living machine who is grieved with thousands of different sorrows and receives pleasure in thousands of different ways, and despite his utter impotence has innumerable enemies, physical and spiritual, and despite his infinite poverty, has countless needs, external and inner, and is a wretched creature continuously suffering the blows of death and separation. Yet, through belief and worship, he at once becomes connected to a Monarch so Glorious he finds a point of support against all his enemies and a source of help for all his needs, and like everyone takes pride at the honour and rank of the lord to whom he is attached, you can compare for yourselves how pleased and grateful and thankful and full of pride man becomes at being connected through belief to an infinitely Powerful and Compassionate Monarch, at entering His service through worship, and transforming for himself the announcement of the execution of the appointed hour into the papers releasing him from duty.”

 

I repeat to the calamity-stricken prisoners what I said to the schoolboys: “One who recognizes Him and obeys Him is fortunate even if he is in prison. While one who forgets Him is wretched and a prisoner even if he resides in a palace.” Even, one wronged but fortunate man said to the wretched tyrants who were executing him: “I am not being executed but being demobilized and departing for where I shall find happiness. But I see that you are being condemned to eternal execution and am therefore taking perfect revenge on you.” And declaring: “There is no god but God!”, he happily surrendered up his spirit.

 

Glory be unto You! We have no knowledge save that which You have taught us; indeed, You are All-Knowing, All-Wise.8

 

 

The Seventh Topic

 

[The fruit of a Friday in Denizli Prison]

 

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

 

The command of the Hour [of resurrection] will be like the glance of an eye, or briefer.9 * The creation of you all and the resurrection of you all is but like that of a single soul.10 * So look to the signs of God’s mercy, how He gives life to the earth after its death; He it is Who will raise the dead to life, and He is Powerful over all things.11

 

The prisoners in Denizli Prison who were able to have contact with me, read the lesson in the Sixth Topic I had at one time given in the tongues of the sciences to the high school pupils in Kastamonu, who had asked me: “Tell us about our Creator,” and having acquired a firm belief, they felt a longing for the hereafter. They requested of me: “Teach us also about the hereafter so that we won’t be led astray by our souls and the satans of these times, and they will not again be the cause of our being sent to prison.” So in the face of this request of the Risale-i Nur students in Denizli Prison and the readers of the Sixth Topic, need arose for an explanatory summary of the pillar of belief in the hereafter, as well, and I offered them a brief summary of various passages from the Risale-i Nur.

 

In the Sixth Topic we asked the heavens and the earth about our Creator, and they described Him to us as clearly as the sun in the tongues of the sciences. Now, in the same way, we shall ask firstly our Sustainer, Whom we have learnt about, about the hereafter, then our Prophet, then the Qur’an, then the other prophets and holy scriptures, then the angels, and then the universe.

 

In the first stage, we ask God about the hereafter. He replies through all the envoys He has sent, and His decrees, and all His Names and attributes: “Yes, the hereafter exists, and I shall send you there.” The Tenth Word has proved and elucidated with twelve brilliant, decisive truths the answers about the hereafter of a number of Names. Deeming those explanations to be sufficient, here we shall point them out briefly.

 

Yes, since there is no sovereignty that does not reward those who obey it and punish the rebellious, an eternal sovereignty which is at the degree of absolute dominicality rewarding those who form a relation with it through belief and submit to its decrees, and its punishing rebellious disbelievers who deny its proud sovereignty will be in a manner fitting for its mercy and beauty, its dignity and glory. Thus, the Names Sustainer of All the Worlds and Just Monarch reply to our question.

 

Also, we see as clearly as the sun, as daylight, a general mercy and all-embracing compassion and munificence on the face of the earth. For example, every spring that mercy adorns all the fruit-bearing trees and plants like houris; it fills their hands with every sort of fruit and they hold them out to us, saying: “Help yourselves, and eat!” So does it give us sweet, healing honey to eat from the poisonous bee, and dresses us in the softest silk by means of a handless insect. It deposits for us in a handful of tiny seeds pounds of food, making those tiny stores into reserve supplies. Such a mercy and compassion surely would not execute these lovable, grateful, worshipping believers which they nurture so kindly. They rather dismiss them from their duties in this worldly life to bestow on them still more brilliant instances of mercy, and in so doing the Names of All-Compassionate and Munificent answer our question.

 

Also, we see before our eyes that a hand of wisdom works in all creatures on the face of the earth and a justice is in force with its measures, nothing superior to which the human mind can conceive of. For example, a pre-eternal wisdom inscribes in man’s faculty of memory, which is one instance of wisdom in his thousands of faculties and physical systems and is as tiny as a miniscule seed, his entire life-story and the numerous events which touch on him, making it into a small library. He then places it in the pocket of his mind as a note from the register of his actions which will be published for his judgement at the Great Gathering, in order to continuously remind him of this. And an eternal justice places on all creatures their members with the finest balance, and makes all of them —from the microbe to the rhinoceros, and the fly to the simurgh bird, and from a flowering plant to the flower of the spring, which opens thousands of millions of flowers in the spring— with a beauty of art and balance with no waste within a mutual proportion, equilibrium, order and beauty; it gives all living creatures their rights of life with perfect balance, and makes good things produce good results and bad things, bad results; and since the time of Adam it has made itself felt forcefully through the blows it has dealt to rebellious and tyrannous peoples. Certainly and without doubt, just as the sun cannot be without the day, so that pre-eternal wisdom and eternal justice cannot be without the hereafter. The Names of All-Wise and Sapient, Just and Equitable would never permit the awesome injustice, inequity, and unwisdom of oppressed and oppressor being equal in death, and thus they decisively answer our question.

 

Also, since whenever living creatures seek their natural wishes, which are beyond their power, through the tongues of their innate abilities and essential needs, which is supplication of a sort, all their needs are given to them by a most compassionate, hearing, kind unseen hand; and since six or seven out of ten of human supplications, which are voluntary, especially those of the prophets and the elect, are accepted in a way contrary to the normal course of things; it is understood certainly that behind the veil of the Unseen is one who listens and hears the sighs of the suffering and prayers of the needy, and replies to them; he sees the least need of the smallest living being and compassionately replying by action, gratifies it. There is no possibility of doubting therefore that the one who includes in his supplication all the most important, general supplications of man, the most important of creatures, which are connected with all the Divine Names and attributes and are for immortality; and takes behind him all the other prophets, who are the suns, stars, and leaders of mankind, making them exclaim: “Amen! Amen!”; and for whom benedictions are recited several times every day; and to whose supplication all the members of his community rejoin: “Amen! Amen!”, indeed, in whose supplication all creatures take part, saying: “Yes, O Lord! Do give what he asks! We too want what he seeks!” — of all the causes necessitating resurrection under these irresistible conditions, only a single supplication of Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) for immortality in the hereafter and eternal happiness would have been sufficient reason for the existence of Paradise and creation of the hereafter, which are as easy for Divine power as the creation of the spring — stating this, the Names of Answerer of Prayer, All-Hearing, and All-Compassionate answer our question.

 

Also, since as clearly as the sun is shown by daylight, behind the veil is One Who has disposal over the universal death and revivification in the alternation of the seasons on the earth; and a pen of power inscribes the mighty globe with the ease and orderliness of a garden or even a tree, and the splendid spring with the facility and symmetrical adornment of a flower, and the species of plants and animals as though they were three hundred thousand books displaying three hundred thousand samples of resurrection, all one within the other and intermingled and mixed up together yet without disarrangement or disorder, all resembling each other yet without confusion, error, or fault; perfectly, regularly, and meaningfully; and since despite this vast profusion that One works with boundless mercy and infinite wisdom; and since He has subjugated, decorated, and furnished the vast universe for man like a house, and appointing him His vicegerent on earth, committing to him the supreme trust, from the bearing of which the mountains, sky, and earth shrank, and has raised him to the rank of commanding officer over other living beings, honoured him with the Divine address and conversation, and since He has thus bestowed on man this supreme station and in all the revealed decrees promised him eternal happiness and immortal life in the hereafter; certainly and without doubt He will open up that realm of bliss for ennobled and honoured man, which is as easy for His power as the spring, and bring about the resurrection of the dead and Last Judgement —stating this, the Names of Granter of Life and Dealer of Death, Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent, and All-Powerful and Knowing reply to the question we asked of our Creator.

 

Yes, if one considers the power which every spring raises to life identically the roots of all the trees and plants and creates the three hundred thousand plant and animal samples of the resurrection of the dead, and if one visualizes the thousand year period of each of the communities of Moses and Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon them), and they are pictured in the imagination, it will be seen that the two thousand springs12 display a thousand samples of resurrection and a thousand evidences. It is to be blind and unreasonable a thousand times over to consider bodily resurrection difficult for such a power.

 

Also, just as relying on Almighty God’s thousands of promises, the twenty-four thousand prophets, who are the most renowned of mankind, have unanimously proclaimed and proved through their miracles that eternal happiness and immortality in the hereafter are true; so innumerable people of sainthood have put their signature to the same truth through their illuminations and unfoldings. Since this is so, surely this truth is as clear as the sun, and those who doubt it are crazy.

 

Yes, the ideas and judgements of one or two experts in a science or art concerning their science refute the opposing ideas of ten men who are not experts in it, even if they are experts in their own fields. Similarly, two people making a positive statement about a subject, for example, proving the crescent moon of Ramadan on the day it is uncertain, or claiming: “there is a garden on the earth where coconuts resembling cans of milk are grown” defeat a thousand deniers, and win the case. For the one making the positive statement has only to point out the place where the coconuts are found to easily win. Whereas the one who denies it can prove his case only by searching the whole face of the earth and demonstrating that the coconuts are not to be found anywhere. So one who makes a report of Paradise and the realm of bliss and asserts that they exist wins his case by only demonstrating through illumination a shadow or distillation of it, like in the cinema, while those who deny it can only win by proving their denial by seeing the whole universe and all time from pre-eternity to post-eternity, and demonstrating it. It is because of this that the investigative scholars have agreed on the rule “on condition they are not inherently impossible, denials which are not specific but look to the whole universe like the truths of belief, cannot be proved,” and have accepted it as a fundamental principle.

 

In consequence of this definite truth, while the opposing ideas of thousands of philosophers should not cast the slightest doubt, or even suspicion, on even a single truthful report concerning the questions of belief, you may understand what a lunacy it is to fall into doubt at the denials of a handful of philosophers who concerning the pillars of belief understand no further than their eyes see, have no heart, are blind, and have grown distant from spiritual matters. For the pillars of faith have been agreed upon by one hundred and twenty thousand expert scholars and truthful reporters with their positive assertions, and innumerable specialists in the field of reality and investigative scholars.

 

Also, we see with our own eyes as clearly as daylight both in ourselves and all around us a comprehensive mercy and all-embracing wisdom and constant bestowal of grace. We observe too the traces and manifestations of an awesome sovereignty of dominicality, a precise and lofty justice, and a proud and glorious government. Indeed, the wisdom which attaches instances of wisdom to a tree to the number of its fruits and flowers; and the mercy which bestows bounties and favours on every human being to the number of his faculties, members, and feelings; and the proud, yet gracious justice which deals blows at rebellious peoples like those of Noah, Hud, and Salih (Peace be upon them) and the ‘Ad, Thamud, and people of Pharoah, and protects the rights of the least living being; and the verse:

 

And among His signs is this, that heaven and earth stand by His command; then when He calls you, by a single call, from the earth, behold, you [straightway] come forth13

 

all state the following with a majestic conciseness:

 

Just as at the summons of their commander and the sound of the bugle, the disciplined soldiers stationed in two barracks spring to arms and their duties; so whenever the bugle-call of Israfil (Peace be upon him) summons those lying in death in the vast heavens and in the earth, which are like two orderly barracks for the soldiers of the Pre-Eternal Monarch, obedient to His command, they will immediately don the uniforms of their bodies and rise up. Proving and demonstrating this is the same situation displayed by the beings in the barracks of the earth in the spring at the trumpet-blast of the Angel of Thunder, and from it is understood the infinite grandeur of the sovereignty of dominicality. As is proved in the Tenth Word, it is certainly therefore utterly impossible that the realm of the hereafter and arena of the resurrection and Great Gathering, which are most definitely demanded by that mercy, wisdom, grace, and justice, should not be inaugurated, and for that infinitely beautiful mercy to be transformed into ugly cruelty, and for that boundless perfection of wisdom to be turned into infinitely faulty futility and purposeless wastefulness, and that sweet grace to be transformed into bitter treachery, and that finely balanced and equitable justice to be turned into severe tyranny, and that utterly powerful and majestic eternal sovereignty to decline, and with the resurrection not occuring for it to lose all its splendour, and for the perfections of its dominicality to be marred by impotence and defect. This would be completely unreasonable and a compounded impossibility, outside the bounds of possibility and false and precluded.

 

For all those with intelligence would surely understand what a cruel unkindness it would be, having nurtured man so solicitously and given him through faculties like the heart and intellect a sense of longing for eternal happiness and everlasting life in the hereafter, to despatch him to eternal non-being; and how contrary to wisdom it would be, having attached hundreds of purposes and instances of wisdom to only his brain, to waste through endless death all his faculties and his abilities with their thousands of purposes thus making them devoid of all use, purpose and result; and how utterly opposed to the splendour of that sovereignty and perfect dominicality it would be, by not carrying out His thousands of promises, to demonstrate —God forbid!— His impotence and ignorance. You may make an analogy with these for grace and justice. Thus, the Names of Most Merciful, All-Just, All-Wise, Munificent, and Ruler answer with the above truths the question we asked our Creator about the hereafter, and prove it as indubitably and clearly as the sun.

 

Moreover, we observe that prevailing over everything is a vast and comprehensive preservation which records in their seeds, on the tablets of the World of Similitudes, in their memories, which are tiny samples of the Preserved Tablet, and particularly in the faculty of memory, which is a tiny library in man’s brain which is at the same time very large, and in other mirrors, physical and non-physical, in which they are reflected, the numerous forms of all living creatures and all things, and the notebooks of the duties they perform in accordance with their essential natures, and the pages of their deeds pertaining to the glorifications they perform towards the Divine Names through the tongues of their beings; it inscribes them in these, and records and preserves them. Then, when the time comes —every spring, which is a flower of Divine power— they display to us all those immaterial inscriptions in physical form, proclaim to the universe with millions of tongues within that supreme flower, and with the strength of millions of examples, evidences, and samples, the wondrous truth of resurrection expressed in the verse:

 

When the pages are spread out.14

 

It proves most cogently that foremost man, and all living beings and all things, were created not to topple over into nothingness, to fall into non-existence, to be annihilated, but to win immortality through progressing, and permanence through being purified, and to take up the eternal duties required by their innate capacities.

 

Yes, we observe every spring that the innumerable plants which die in the doomsday of the autumn, and all the trees, roots, seeds, and grains in the resurrection of the spring recite the verse When the pages are spread out. Expounding each in its own tongue one meaning of the verse, one facet of it, with examples of the duties it performed in previous years, they all testify to that vast preservation. They display in everything the four vast truths of the verse,

 

He is the First, and the Last, the Evident, and the Inward,15

 

and instruct us with the ease and certainty of the spring.

 

The manifestations of these four Names occur in all things from the most particular to the most universal. For example, through manifesting the Name of First, a seed, the source of a tree, is a precise programme of it and a small receptacle containing the faultless systems of the tree’s creation and all the conditions of its formation, thus proving the vastness of Divine preservation.

 

Then, together with the tree’s seeds, its fruit manifests the Name of Last; they are coffers containing the indexes of all the duties the tree has performed in accordance with its nature and the principles of its second life, thus testifying at a maximum level to Divine preservation.

 

The tree’s physical form, which manifests the Name of Evident, is a finely proportioned, skilfully decorated garment. Like a seventy-hued robe of the houris which has been embroidered with gilded motifs, it demonstrates visibly the vast power, perfect wisdom, and beautiful mercy within Divine preservation.

 

As for the machinery within the tree, which manifests the Name of Inward, it is a regular, miraculous, faultless factory and workbench, a balanced cauldron of food which leaves unnourished none of its branches, fruits, or leaves, thus proving as brilliantly as the sun the perfect power, justice, and beautiful mercy and wisdom within Divine preservation.

 

Similarly, in respect of the annual seasons the globe is a tree. Through the manifestation of the Name of First, all the seeds and grains entrusted to Divine preservation in the season of autumn are small collections of the Divine commands concerning the formation of the tree of the face of the earth, which when it is enrobed in the garment of spring, puts forth millions of branches and twigs, and fruits and flowers. So too those seeds are lists of the principles proceeding from Divine Determining, and the tiny pages of the tree’s deeds of the previous summer, and the notebooks of its tasks, which demonstrate self-evidently that they function through the infinite power, justice, wisdom, and mercy of a Glorious and Munificent Preserver.

 

Then the end of the annual tree of the earth is —in the second autumn, its depositing in those tiny containers all the duties it has performed, all the glorifications it has recited before the Divine Names in accordance with its creation, and all the pages of its deeds that it will publish the following resurrection of spring,— its handing them over to the hand of wisdom of the Glorious Preserver and reciting the Name of He is the Last before the whole universe in innumerable tongues.

 

The evident face of the tree is, —by its opening three hundred thousand universal sorts of blossoms, which demonstrate three hundred thousand examples and signs of the resurrection of the dead; and its spreading out innumerable tables of mercifulness, providence, compassionateness, and munificence; and its offering banquets to living beings,— its reciting the Name of He is the Evident with tongues to the number of its fruits, flowers, and foods, and offering praise and laudation, and showing as clearly as daylight the truth of When the pages are spread out.

 

The inner face of this majestic tree is a cauldron and workbench running precisely and in orderly fashion incalculable numbers of regular machines and finely balanced factories, which cook thousands of pounds of food out of one ounce and offer it to the hungry. It works with such precision and balance that it leaves no room for chance to interfere. Like some angels who glorify God with a thousand tongues, with the inner face of the earth it proclaims the Name of He is the Inward in a hundred thousand ways, and proves it.

 

Just as in respect of its annual life, the earth is a tree and makes the Divine preservation within those four Names a key to the door of resurrection, so in respect of its worldly life, it is again a well-ordered tree, whose fruits are sent to the market of the hereafter. It is a place of manifestation of those four Names and mirror to them so broad, and road leading to the hereafter so lengthy, our minds are incapable of comprehending and describing it; we can only say this much:

 

As the hands of a weekly clock which count the seconds, minutes, hours, and days resemble each other and prove each other, and one who sees the movement of the second hand is bound to assent to the movement of the others; so the days, which count the seconds of this world, which is a vast clock of the Glorious Creator of the Heavens and Earth, and the years, which count its minutes, and the centuries, which show its hours, and the ages, which make known its days, all resemble and prove each other. So too the Name of Preserver and those of He is the First, and the Last, the Evident, and the Inward inform us through innumerable signs that as certainly as the morning of this night will come, and this winter’s spring, so will the everlasting spring and eternal morning come of the dark winter of this transitory world, thus answering with the above truths the question of resurrection concerning which we asked our Creator.

 

Also, since we see with our eyes and understand with our minds that man is the final and most comprehensive fruit of the tree of the universe.. and in respect of the Muhammadan (Peace and blessings be upon him) Reality is its original seed.. and the supreme sign of the Qur’an of the universe.. and he is its Throne Verse bearing the Greatest Name.. and the most honoured guest in the palace of the universe.. the most active functionary empowered over the other inhabitants of the palace.. the official charged with overseeing the income and expenditure, and the planting and cultivation of the gardens in the quarter of the earth in the city of the universe.. and is its most noisy and responsible minister, equipped with hundreds of sciences and thousands of arts.. and an inspector and sort of vicegerent of the Monarch of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, under His close scrutiny, in the region of the earth in the country of the universe.. and one with disposal over it whose actions, particular and universal, are all recorded.. who has undertaken the Supreme Trust, from which the heavens and earth and mountains shrank.. and before whom are two roads, on one of which he is the most wretched of living beings, and on the other, the most fortunate.. and he is a universal bondsman charged with most extensive worship.. the place of manifestation of the Greatest Name of the Monarch of the universe and a comprehensive mirror of all His Names.. a special addressee of His, with the best understanding of His Divine addresses and speech.. the most needy of the living beings of the universe.. and is a wretched living creature who has innumerable desires and goals, numberless enemies and things that harm him, despite his infinite poverty and impotence.. is the richest in regard to abilities and potentialities.. the most suffering in respect of the pleasures of life, whose enjoyment is marred by ghastly pains.. and a wondrous miracle of the power of the Eternally Besought One and marvel of Divine power who is the most needy and wanting, and worthy and deserving of immortality, and seeks and beseeches eternal happiness with endless prayers, and if all the pleasures of this world were given him, his desire for immortality would not be satisfied, and who loves to the degree of worshipping Him the One Who bestows bounties on him, and makes Him loved and is loved.. and all of whose faculties, which encompass the universe, testify that he was created to go to eternity.. and through the above twenty universal truths is bound to Almighty God’s Name of Truth; and whose actions are continuously recorded by the All-Glorious Preserver’s Name of Preserver, Who sees the most insignificant need of the tiniest animate being, hears it plaint and responds in action; and being related to the whole universe whose deeds are written down by the “noble scribes” of that Name and who more than anything else receives its attention..

 

As required by the above twenty truths, most certainly and without any doubt there will be a resurrection and judgement for man, and in accordance with the Name of Truth, he will receive reward for his above duties and punishment for his faults, and in accordance with the Name of Preserver, he will be questioned and called to account for his actions, all of which have been recorded, and the doors will be opened of the feasting halls of everlasting bliss in the eternal realm, and of the prison of eternal misery; man, who has been an officer with command over numerous species of beings in this world, and has intervened in them and sometimes thrown them into confusion, will not enter the soil never to be questioned concerning his actions, nor lay down in concealment not to be roused. For to hear the buzz of the fly and to answer it actively by giving it its rights of life, and not to hear the prayers for eternity made through the tongues of the above twenty truths of innumerable human rights which reverberate through the heavens and earth like thunder, and to transgress all those rights, and for a wisdom which as is testified to by the order of the fly’s wing wastes not even such a wing, to waste utterly man’s abilities, which are bound by those truths, and his hopes and desires, which reach out to eternity, and the many bonds and truths of the universe which nourish those abilities and desires, would be such an injustice and so impossible and such a tyrannical ugliness that all beings which testify to the Names of Truth, Preserver, All-Wise, All-Beauteous, and All-Compassionate reject it, declaring it to be utterly impossible and precluded. Thus, in reply to our question to our Creator about resurrection, the Names of Truth, Preserver, All-Wise, All-Beauteous, and All-Compassionate, say: “Just as we are truth and reality, and the beings that testify to us are true, so the resurrection of the dead is true and certain.”

 

And since... I was going to write more, but since the above is as clear as the sun, I have curtailed the discussion.

 

Thus, making an analogy with the matters in the above examples and “sinces,” through their manifestations and reflections in beings, all Almighty God’s hundred, indeed a thousand, Names which look to the universe prove self-evidently the one they signify; so too do they demonstrate the resurrection of the dead and hereafter, and prove them definitively.

 

Also, just as through all His decrees and the scriptures He has revealed and most of His Names, by which he is described, our Sustainer gives us sacred and decisive answers to the question we asked our Creator; so He causes it to be answered through His angels, and in another fashion through their tongue:

 

“There have been hundreds of incidents unanimously attested to since the time of Adam of your meeting both with spirit beings and with us, and there are innumerable signs and evidences of our existence and worship and that of the spirit beings. In agreement with each other, we have told your leaders when we have met with them that we travel through the halls of the hereafter and in some of its apartments, and we always say this. We have no doubt that the fine, eternal halls that we have wandered through, and the well-appointed decorated palaces and dwellings beyond them await important guests, in order to accommodate them. We give you certain news of this.” They reply to our question thus.

 

Also, since our Creator appointed Muhammad the Arabian (Peace and blessings be upon him) as the greatest teacher, best master, and truest guide, who is neither confused nor confuses, and sent him as His last envoy, before anything, in order to progress and advance from the degree of ‘knowledge of certainty’ to those of ‘vision of certainty’ and ‘absolute certainty,’ we should ask this master the question we asked of our Creator. For just as that Being, through his thousand miracles, which were a mark of our Creator’s confirmation, and as a miracle of the Qur’an, proved that the Qur’an is true and God’s Word; so, through its forty aspects of miraculousness, as a miracle of his, the Qur’an proves that he was true and God’s Messenger. The reality of resurrection which they prove —one, the tongue of the Manifest World, claimed it throughout his life, confirmed by all the prophets and saints, and the other, the tongue of the World of the Unseen, claims it with thousands of its verses, confirmed by all the revealed scriptures and truths of the universe,— is as certain as the sun and daylight.

 

Yes, a question like resurrection, which is the most strange and awesome matter and beyond the reason, could only be solved through the instruction of two such wondrous masters, and understood.

 

The reason the early prophets did not explain resurrection in detail like the Qur’an was that at that time mankind was still at a primitive stage of nomadism. There is little detailed explanation in preliminary instruction.

 

And since the angels inform us that they have seen the hereafter and the dwellings of the eternal realm, evidences testifying to the existence and worship of the angels, spirits, and spirit beings, are also indirect evidence for the existence of the hereafter.

 

And since after Divine unity the thing Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) most constantly claimed and asserted throughout his life was the hereafter, certainly all his miracles and proofs which point to his messengership and veracity in one way testify indirectly to the existence of the hereafter and that it will come.

 

And since one quarter of the Qur’an is about resurrection and the hereafter and it tries to prove it with thousands of its verses, and gives news of it, all the proofs and evidences of the Qur’an’s veracity prove indirectly the existence of the hereafter, and its being thrown open.

 

Now see how firm and certain is this pillar of belief!

 

 

A Summary of the Eighth Topic

 

[in the Seventh Topic, we questioned numerous levels of beings about the resurrection of the dead, but curtailed the discussion because since the replies given by the Creator’s Names afforded such powerful certainty, they left no need for further questions. Now in this Topic are summarized a hundredth of the benefits of belief in the hereafter, including those which result in happiness in this world and in the next. The Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition leaves no need for further explanation concerning the happiness of the hereafter, so we refer the subject to the Qur’an. And leaving the explanations of worldly happiness to the Risale-i Nur, here we shall describe in summary form three or four out of hundreds of results of belief in the hereafter which look to man’s individual life and social life.]

 

The First

 

Just as, contrary to other living beings, man has relations with his home, so he has relations with the world, and just as he has relations with his relatives, so by nature he has earnest relations with mankind. And just as he desires temporary permanence in this world, so he passionately desires immortality in the realm of eternity. And just as he strives to meet the need of his stomach for food, so he is by nature compelled to strive to provide for the stomachs of his mind, heart, spirit, and humanity. He has such hopes and desires that nothing apart from eternal happiness can satisfy them. As is mentioned in the Tenth Word, even, when small, I asked my imagination: “Do you want to live for a million years and rule the world but then cease to exist, or to live for ever but have an ordinary and difficult existence?” I saw that my imagination wanted the latter, feeling pain at the first, and said: “I want to live for ever, even if in Hell!”

 

Thus, since the pleasures of this world do not satisfy the imaginative faculty, which is a servant of human nature, man’s comprehensive nature is certainly attached to eternity. For man, therefore, who despite being afflicted with these boundless hopes and desires as capital has only an insignificant faculty of will and absolute poverty, belief in the hereafter is a treasury of such strength and sufficiency; is such a means of pleasure and happiness, source of help, refuge, and means of consolation in the face of the endless sorrows of this world, and is such a fruit and benefit that if the life of this world were to be sacrificed on the way of gaining it, it would still be cheap.

 

Its second fruit and benefit, which looks to man’s personal life

 

This is a consequence of great importance which is explained in the Third Topic, and about which is a footnote in A Guide For Youth.

 

Man’s greatest and most constant anxiety is his entering the place of execution that is the graveyard, the same as his friends and relations have entered it. Wretched man, who is ready to sacrifice his very soul for a single friend, thinks of the thousands, millions, or thousands of millions of friends who have been eliminated and have parted for all eternity, and suffers torments worse than Hell. Just at that point belief in the hereafter comes, opens his eyes, and raises the veil. It tells him: “Look!” He looks with belief, and seeing that those friends have been saved from eternal death and decay and are awaiting him happily in a luminous world, he receives a pleasure of the spirit that intimates the pleasures of Paradise. Sufficing with the explanations and proofs of this consequence in the Risale-i Nur, we cut this short here.

 

A third benefit pertaining to personal life

 

Man’s superiority over other living beings and his high rank are in respect of his elevated qualities, comprehensive abilities, universal worship, and his extensive spheres of existence. However, the virtues he acquires like zeal, love, brotherhood, and humanity are to the extent of the fleeting present, which is squeezed between the past and the future, which are both non-existent, and dead, and black.

 

For example, he loves and serves his father, brother, wife, nation, and country, whom he formerly did not know and after parting from them, will never see again. He would very rarely be able to achieve complete loyalty and sincerity, and his virtues and perfections would diminish proportionately. Then, just as because of his intelligence, he is about to fall headlong from being the highest of the animals to the lowest and most wretched, belief in the hereafter comes to his assistance. It expands the present, as constricting as the grave, so that it encompasses the past and future and is as broad as the world, and shows the bounds of existence to stretch from pre-eternity to post-eternity. Thinking of his father being in the realm of bliss and world of spirits and the fraternity of his brothers continuing to eternity, and knowing that his wife will be a beautiful companion in Paradise also, he will love and respect them, be kindly and assist them. He will not exploit the important duties which are for relationships in that broad sphere of life and existence for the worthless matters of this world, with its petty hatreds and interests. His good qualities and attainments will advance to the degree he is successful in being earnestly loyal and truly sincere, and his humanity will increase. Although he does not receive the pleasure from life that a sparrow receives, he becomes the most eminent and happy guest in the universe, superior to all the animals, and the best loved and most acceptable servant of the universe’s Owner. This consequence has also been elucidated with proofs in the Risale-i Nur, so here we suffice with this.

 

A fourth benefit of belief in the hereafter, which looks to man’s social life

 

A summary of this result is set forth in the Ninth Ray of the Risale-i Nur, it is as follows:

 

Children, which form a quarter of mankind, can live a human existence only through belief in the hereafter, and sustain their human capacity. They otherwise live only childish, empty existences, blunting their grievous pains with trifling playthings. For the effect of the constant deaths around them of children like themselves on their sensitive minds, and weak hearts which in the future will nurture far-reaching desires, and their vulnerable spirits, makes their minds and lives into instruments of torture. But then, through instruction in belief in the hereafter, in place of their anxieties, and the playthings behind which they hid so as not to see those deaths, they feel a joy and expansion, and say: “My brother or my friend has died and become a bird in Paradise. He is flying around and enjoying himself better than we are. And my mother has died, but she has gone to Divine mercy. She will again take me into her embrace in Paradise and I shall see her again.” They may live in a state befitting humanity.

 

It is only in belief in the hereafter that the elderly, who form another quarter of mankind, can find consolation, in the face of the close extinction of their lives and their entering the soil, and their fine and lovable worlds coming to an end. Those kindly, venerable fathers and devoted, tender mothers would otherwise feel such a disturbance of the spirit and tumult of the heart that the world would become a despairing prison for them and life, a ghastly torture. But then belief in the hereafter says to them: “Don’t worry! You have an immortal youth; a shining, endless life awaits you. You will be joyfully reunited with the children and relatives you have lost. All your good deeds have been preserved and you will receive your reward.” It affords them such solace and joy that were they to experience old age a hundred times over all at the same time, it would not cause them despair.

 

One third of mankind is formed by the youth. With their turbulent emotions, the youths are not always able to control their bold intelligences and are overcome by their passions. If then they lose their faith in the hereafter and do not recall the torments of Hell, it puts in danger the property and honour of the upright people in society, and the peace and self-respect of the weak and elderly. One youth may destroy the happiness of a contented home for one minute’s pleasure, then pay the penalty in prison for four or five years, degenerating into a wild animal. If belief in the hereafter comes to his assistance and he swiftly comes to his senses, saying: “It’s true the government informers can’t see me and I can hide from them, but the angels of a Glorious Monarch who has a prison like Hell see me and are recording all my evil deeds. I am not free and independent; I am a traveller charged with duties. One day I too will be old and weak.” He suddenly starts to feel a sympathy and respect for those he wanted to cruelly assault. This too is explained with proofs in the Risale-i Nur, so deeming that sufficient, we here cut it short.

 

Another important section of mankind are the sick, the oppressed, the disaster-stricken like us, the poor and the life prisoners; if belief in the hereafter does not come to their aid, death, of which they are continuously reminded by illness, unavenged wrongs, the arrogant treachery of the oppressor, from whom they cannot save their honour, the terrible despair of having lost their property or children in serious disasters, the distress at having to suffer the torments of prison for five or ten years because of a minute or two, or an hour or two, of pleasure — these surely make the world into a prison for such unfortunates, and life into agonizing torment. But if belief in the hereafter comes to their assistance, they suddenly breathe freely, and according to the degree of their belief, their distress, despair, anxiety, anger, and desire for vengeance abate, sometimes partially, sometimes entirely.

 

I can even say that if belief in the hereafter had not helped me and some of my brothers in this fearsome calamity of our being imprisoned for no reason, to stand it for one day would have been as grievous as death and driven us to resign from life. But endless thanks be to God, despite suffering the distress of my brothers, whom I love as much as my life, as well as my own, in addition to the weeping and sorrow of thousands of copies of the Risale-i Nur and my gilded, decorated, valuable books, which I love as much as my eyes, and although I could never stand the slightest insult or to be dominated, I swear that the light and strength of belief in the hereafter afforded me the patience, endurance, solace, and steadfastness; indeed, it filled me with enthusiasm to gain greater reward in the profitable, instructive exertions of this ordeal, for as I said at the beginning of this treatise, I knew myself to be in a good medrese or school worthy of the title of ‘Medrese-i Yusufiye’ (School of Joseph). If it was not for the occasional sickness and irritability arising from old age, I would have worked at my lessons even better and with greater ease of mind. However, we have strayed from the subject; I hope it will be forgiven.

 

Also, everyone’s home is a small world for him, and even a small Paradise. If belief in the hereafter is not at the basis of the happiness of that home, the members of the family will suffer anguish and anxiety to the extent of their compassion, love, and attachment. Their paradise will either turn into Hell, or it will numb their minds with amusements and dissipation. Like the ostrich, who sees the hunter but can neither fly nor escape and sticks its head in the sand so as not to be seen, they plunge their heads into heedlessness so that death, decline, and separation do not spot them. They find a way out by temporarily blocking out their feelings in lunatic fashion. Because, for example, the mother trembles constantly at seeing her children, for whom she would sacrifice her soul, exposed to dangers. While the children all the time feel sorrow and fear at being unable to save their father and brother from unceasing calamities. Thus, in the upheavals of this worldly life, the supposedly happy life of the family loses its happiness in many respects, and the relations and closeness in this brief life do not result in true loyalty, heartfelt sincerity, disinterested service and love. Good character declines proportionately, and is even lost. Whereas if belief in the hereafter enters that home, it illuminates it completely, and its members have sincere respect, love, and compassion for each other, are loyal and disregard each other’s faults, in the measure not of their relations, closeness, kindness, and love in this brief life, but of their continuation in the realm of the hereafter, in everlasting happiness, and their good character increases accordingly. The happiness of true humanity starts to unfold in that home. Since this too is elucidated with proofs in the Risale-i Nur, we cut this short here.

 

Towns are also households for their inhabitants. If belief in the hereafter does not govern among the members of that large family vices like malice, self-interest, false pretences, selfishness, artificiality, hypocrisy, bribery, and deception will dominate, displacing sincerity, cordiality, virtue, zeal, self-sacrifice, seeking God’s pleasure and the reward of the hereafter, which are bases of good conduct and morality. Anarchy and savagery will govern under the superficial order and humanity, poisoning the life of the town. The children will become troublemakers, the youth will take to drink, the strong will embark on oppression, and the elderly start to weep.

 

By analogy, the country is also a household, and the fatherland, the home of the national family. If belief in the hereafter rules in these broad homes, true respect, earnest compassion, disinterested love, mutual assistance, honest service and social relations, unhypocritical charity, virtue, modest greatness, and excellence will all start to develop.

 

It says to the children: “Give up messing around; there is Paradise to be won!”, and teaches them self-control through instruction in the Qur’an.

 

It says to the youth: “There is Hell-fire; give up your drunkenness!”, and brings them to their senses.

 

It says to the oppressor: “There is severe torment; you will receive a blow!”, and makes them bow to justice.

 

It says to the elderly: “Awaiting you is everlasting happiness in the hereafter far greater than all the happiness you have lost here, and immortal youth; try to win them!” It turns their tears into laughter.

 

It shows its favourable effects in every group, particular and universal, and illuminates them. The sociologists and moralists, who are concerned with the social life of mankind, should take special note. If the rest of the thousands of benefits and advantages of belief in the hereafter are compared with the five or six we have alluded to, it will be understood that it is only belief that is the means of happiness in this world and the next, and in the lives of both.

 

Deeming sufficient the powerful replies to the frail doubts concerning bodily resurrection described in the Twenty-Eighth Word of the Risale-i Nur and in others of its treatises, we merely make the following brief indication:

 

The most comprehensive mirror of the Divine Names lies in corporeality. The richest and most active centre of the Divine aims in the creation of the universe lies in corporeality. The greatest variety of the multifarious dominical bounties lies in corporeality. The greatest multiplicity of the seeds of the supplications and thanks man offers to his Creator through the tongues of his needs again lies in corporeality. And the greatest diversity of the seeds of the non-physical and spirit worlds also lies in corporeality.

 

By analogy with this, since hundreds of universal truths are centred in corporeality, in order to multiply corporeality and make it manifest the above truths on the face of the earth, with awesome activity and speed, the All-Wise Creator clothes the successive caravans of beings in existence and sends them to that exhibition. Then he discharges them and sends others in their place, constantly making the factory of the universe run. Weaving corporeal products, He makes the earth into a seed-bed of the hereafter and Paradise. In fact, in order to gratify man’s physical stomach, he listens to and accepts the prayer for immortality his stomach makes through the tongue of disposition, affording it the greatest importance, and in order to answer it, prepares in corporeality incalculable numbers of innumerable sorts and kinds of artistic foods and precious bounties, all affording different pleasures. This demonstrates self-evidently and without doubt that in the hereafter, the most numerous and various of the pleasures of Paradise will be corporeal, and that the bounties of the eternal abode of bliss, which everyone wants and is familiar with, will be corporeal.

 

Is it at all possible that the Most Compassionate All-Powerful One, the All-Knowing and Munificent One, Who accepts the prayer offered through the tongue of disposition by the common stomach, and gratifying it with infinitely miraculous physical foods, always replies in fact, intentionally and without chance, would not accept the numerous, general prayers of man —who is the most important result of the universe, the Divine vicegerent on earth, and the Creator’s choice being and worshipper— which he offers through the supreme stomach of humanity for universal, elevated corporeal pleasures in the eternal realm, which he always desires and with which he is familiar and which by nature he wants; that He should not respond in fact with bodily resurrection, and not gratify him eternally? Should He hear the buzz of the fly, and not hear the crashing thunder? Should He equip a common soldier to perfection, and ignore the army, giving it no importance? To do so would be impossible and absurd.

 

Yes, in accordance with the explicit statement of the verse:

 

There will be there all that the souls could desire, all that the eyes could delight in,16

 

man will experience in Paradise in fitting form the physical pleasures with which he is most familiar and samples of which he has tasted in this world. The rewards for the sincere thanks and particular worship each of his members, like the tongue, eye, and ear, offers, will be given through physical pleasures particular to those members. The Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition describes the physical pleasures so explicitly, it is impossible not to accept the apparent meaning, and to make forced interpretations of them.

 

The fruits and results of belief in the hereafter, then, show that just as the reality and needs of the stomach, one of the human members, are decisive evidence for the existence of food; so the reality and perfections of man, and his innate needs and desire for eternity, and his abilities and potentialities, which demand the above-mentioned consequences and benefits of belief in the hereafter, are certain evidence for the hereafter and Paradise and eternal physical pleasures, and they testify to their certain existence. Similarly, the reality of the universe’s perfections and its meaningful creational signs, and all its truths connected with the above human truths are evidence for the certain existence of the realm of the hereafter, the resurrection of the dead, and the opening up of Heaven and Hell. This has been proved so brilliantly in the Risale-i Nur, and particularly in the Tenth, Twenty-Eighth (both Stations), and Twenty-Ninth Words, and the Ninth Ray, and the Supplication of the Third Ray, that they leave no room for doubt. Referring readers to them, we cut short this long story here.

 

The Qur’anic descriptions of Hell are also so clear and explicit they leave no need for further description. Only, referring to the Risale-i Nur detailed explanation of one or two points which dispel one or two flimsy doubts, we shall set forth a very brief summary.

 

F i r s t P o i n t : The thought of Hell and the fear it induces does not dispel the pleasures of the above fruits of belief. For boundless Divine mercy says to the fearful man: Come to me! Enter the door of repentance, then the existence of Hell will not frighten you, but make known completely the pleasures of Paradise, and avenge you and all creatures whose rights have been transgressed, and give you enjoyment. If you are so submerged in misguidance you cannot extricate yourself, the existence of Hell is still immeasurably better than eternal annihilation, and is also a sort of kindness for the disbelievers. For man, and even animals with young, receive pleasure at the pleasure and happiness of their relatives, offspring, and friends, and in one respect are happy.

 

Therefore, O atheist! Because of your misguidance, you will either tumble into non-being at your eternal execution, or you will enter Hell! As for non-existence, which is absolute evil, since it consists of the annihilation together with yourself of all your relatives, forbears and descendants, whom you love and at whose happiness you are to an extent happy, it causes pain to your spirit, heart, and inner nature severer than a thousand Hells. For if there was no Hell, there would be no Paradise. Through your disbelief, everything falls into non-existence. If you go to Hell and remain within the sphere of existence, those you love and your relatives will be happy in Paradise, or will be the recipients of compassion in some respects within the spheres of existence. This means you should support the idea of Hell existing. To oppose it is to support non-existence, which is to support the elimination of innumerable friends’ happiness.

 

Yes, Hell is an awesome, majestic, existent land which performs the wise and just function of being the place of incarceration of the Glorious Sovereign of the sphere of existence, which is pure good. It performs numerous other functions, besides that of prison, and fulfils many purposes and carries out many duties connected with the eternal realm. It is also the awe-inspiring habitation of many living creatures like the Angels of Hell.

 

S e c o n d P o i n t : There is no contradiction between the existence and ghastly torments of Hell, and infinite mercy, true justice, and wisdom with its balance and absence of waste. Indeed, mercy, justice, and wisdom require its existence. For to punish a tyrant who tramples the rights of a thousand innocents and to kill a savage animal who tears to pieces a hundred cowed animals, is for the oppressed a thousandfold mercy within justice. While to pardon the tyrant and leave the savage beast free, is for hundreds of wretches a hundredfold pitilessness in place of that single act of misplaced mercy.

 

Similarly, among those who will enter Hell is the absolute disbeliever. For through his disbelief and denial he both transgresses the rights of the Divine Names, and through denying the testimony of beings to those Names, he transgresses their rights, and by denying the elevated duties of glorification of creatures before the Divine Names he violates their rights, and through denying their being mirrors to and responding with worship to the manifestation of Divine dominicality, which is the purpose of the universe’s creation and a reason for its existence and continuance, he transgresses their rights in a way. His disbelief is therefore a crime and wrong of such vast proportions it may not be forgiven, and deserves the threat of the verse,

 

God forgives not [the sin of] joining other gods with Him.17

 

Not to cast him into Hell would comprise innumerable instances of mercilessness to innumerable claimants whose rights had been transgressed, in place of a single misplaced act of mercy. Just as those claimants demand the existence of Hell, so do Divine dignity and majesty, and tremendousness and perfection most certainly demand it.

 

Yes, if a worthless rebel who assaults the people says to the proud ruler of the place: “You can’t put me in prison!”, affronting his dignity, if there is not a prison in the town, the ruler will have one made just to throw the ill-mannered wretch into it. In just the same way, through his disbelief the absolute disbeliever affronts seriously the dignity of Divine glory, and through his denial offends the splendour of His power, and through his aggression disturbs the perfection of His dominicality. Even if there were not many things necessitating the functions of Hell and many reasons for and instances of wisdom in its existence, it is the mark of that dignity and glory to create a Hell for disbelievers such as that, and to cast them into it.

 

Moreover, even the nature of disbelief makes known Hell. Yes, just as if the true nature of belief was to be embodied, it could with its pleasures take on the form of a private paradise, and in this respect gives secret news of Paradise; so, as is proved with evidences in the Risale-i Nur and is also alluded to in the previous Topics, disbelief, and especially absolute disbelief, and dissembling, and apostasy, are the cause of such dark and awful pains and spiritual torment that if they were to be embodied, they would become a private Hell for the apostate, and in this way tell of the greater Hell in concealed manner. The tiny truths in the seed-bed of this world produce shoots in the hereafter. Thus, this poisonous seed indicates that particular tree of Zaqqum, saying: “I am its origin. For the unfortunate who bears me in his heart, my fruit is a private sample of that Zaqqum-tree.”

 

Since disbelief is aggression against innumerable rights, it is certainly an infinite crime and deserves infinite punishment. Human justice considers a sentence of fifteen years imprisonment (nearly eight million minutes) to be justice for a one minute’s murder, and conformable with general rights and interests. Therefore, since one instance of disbelief is the equivalent of a thousand murders, to suffer torments for nearly eight thousand million minutes for one minute’s absolute disbelief, is in conformity with that law of justice. A person who passes a year of his life in disbelief deserves punishment for close on two million million eight hundred eighty thousand million minutes, and manifests the meaning of the verse,

 

They will dwell therein for ever.18

 

However...

 

The All-Wise Qur’an’s miraculous descriptions of Heaven and Hell, and the proofs of their existence in the Risale-i Nur, a Qur’anic commentary which proceeds from the Qur’an, leave no need for others.

 

As is shown by numerous verses like,

 

They reflect on the creation of the heavens and earth, saying: “O our Sustainer! Indeed You have not created this in vain; glory be unto You; and protect us from the torment of the Fire!”19 * O our Sustainer! Avert from us the torment of Hell; indeed its torment is a grievous affliction, * And evil it is as a resting-place and abode,20

 

and indicated by foremost God’s Noble Messenger (Peace and blessings be upon him) and all the prophets and people of reality always repeating in their supplications, “Preserve us from Hell-fire! Deliver us from Hell-fire! Save us from Hell-fire!”, which due to their revelations and illuminations for them was certain, the most momentous question facing mankind is to be saved from Hell. Hell is also a vast, awesome, and supremely important truth of the universe which some of the people of illumination and witnessing and those who investigate the realities have observed, and seeing some of its distillations and shadows, have cried out in terror: “Preserve us from the Fire!”

 

Yes, the confrontation and interpenetration of good and evil in the universe, and pain and pleasure, light and darkness, heat and cold, beauty and ugliness, and guidance and misguidance are for a vast instance of wisdom. For if there was no evil, good would not be known. If there was no pain, pleasure would not be understood. Light without darkness would lack all importance. The degrees of heat are realized through cold. Through ugliness, a single instance of beauty becomes a thousand in-stances, and thousands of varying degrees of beauty come into existence. If there was no Hell, many of the pleasures of Paradise would remain concealed. By analogy with these, in one respect everything may be known through its opposite and a single truth produce numerous shoots and become numerous truths. Since these intermingled beings pour from this transitory realm into the eternal realm, surely just as things like good, pleasure, light, beauty, and belief are poured into Paradise; so harmful matters like evil, pain, darkness, ugliness, and disbelief flow into Hell, and the floods of this continuously agitated universe are emptied into those two pools. Referring you to the ‘Allusive Points’ at the end of the wondrous Twenty-Ninth Word, we curtail this discussion here.

 

My fellow students here in this School of Joseph! The easiest way to be saved from that dreadful, everlasting prison is to profit from our worldly prison, and besides being saved from the many sins we are bound to refrain from, by repenting for our former sins and performing the obligatory worship, to make every hour of our prison life here the equivalent of a day’s worship. This is the best opportunity we may have to be saved from that eternal prison and to win luminous Paradise. If we miss this opportunity, our lives in the hereafter will weep the same as our lives here are weeping, and we shall receive the slap of the verse,

 

He has lost this world and the hereafter.21

 

It was the Feast of Sacrifices while this ‘station’ was being written

 

One fifth of mankind, three hundred million people, together declaring: “God is Most Great! God is Most Great! God is Most Great!”; and in relation to its size the globe broadcasting to its fellow planets in the skies the sacred words of God is Most Great!; and the more than twenty thousand pilgrims performing the Hajj, on ‘Arafat and at the Festival, together declaring: “God is Most Great!” are all a response in the form of extensive, universal worship to the universal manifestation of Divine dominicality through God’s sublime titles of Sustainer of the Earth and Sustainer of All The Worlds, and are a sort of echo of the God is Most Great! spoken and commanded one thousand three hundred years ago by God’s Noble Messenger (Peace and blessings be upon him) and his Family and Companions. This I imagined and felt and was certain about.

 

Then I wondered if the sacred phrase has any connection with our matter. It suddenly occurred to me that foremost this phrase and many others of these marks of Islam like There is no god but God, All praise be to God!, and Glory be to God!, which bear the title of “enduring good works,” recall particular and universal points about the matter we are discussing, and infer its realization.

 

For example, one aspect of the meaning of God is Most Great! is that Divine power and knowledge are greater than everything; nothing at all can quit the bounds of God’s knowledge, nor escape or be saved from the disposals of His power. He is greater than the things we fear most. This means He is greater than bringing about the resurrection of the dead, saving us from non-existence, and bestowing eternal happiness. He is greater than any strange or unimaginable thing, so that, as explicitly stated by the verse,

 

Your creation and your resurrection are but as a single soul,22

 

the resurrection of mankind is as easy for His power as the creation of a single soul. It is in connection with this meaning that when faced by serious disasters or important undertakings, everyone says: “God is Most Great! God is Most Great!”, making it a source of consolation, strength, and support for themselves.

 

As is shown in the Ninth Word, the above phrase and its two fellows, that is, God is Most Great!, and Glory be to God!, and All praise be to God!, form the seeds and summaries of the ritual prayers —the index of all worship— and in order to corroborate the meaning of the prayers, are repeated in the tesbihat following them. They provide the powerful answers to the questions arising from the wonderment, pleasure, and awe man feels at the strange, beautiful, extraordinary things he sees in the universe, which cause him to offer thanks and to feel awe at their grandeur. Moreover, at the end of the Sixteenth Word, it is described how at the festival a private soldier and a field marshal enter the king’s presence together, whereas at other times the soldier has contact with the field marshal only through his commanding officer. Similarly, somewhat resembling the saints, a person making the Hajj begins to know God through His titles of Sustainer of the Earth and Sustainer of All the Worlds. With its repetition, it is again God is Most Great that answers all the feverish bewildered questions that overwhelm his spirit as the levels of grandeur unfold in his heart. Furthermore, at the end of the Thirteenth Flash, it is described how it is again God is Most Great that replies most effectively to Satan’s cunning wiles, cutting them at the root, as well as answering succinctly but powerfully our question about the hereafter.

 

The phrase All praise be to God also reminds us of resurrection. It says to us: “I would have no meaning if there was no hereafter. For I say: to God is due all the praise and thanks that have been offered from pre-eternity to post-eternity, whoever they have been offered by and to whom, for the chief of all bounties and the only thing that makes bounty true bounty and saves all conscious creatures from the endless calamities of non-existence, is eternal happiness; it is only eternal happiness that can be equal to that universal meaning of mine.”

 

Yes, every day all believers saying at least one hundred and fifty times after the obligatory prayers: All praise be to God! All praise be to God!, as enjoined by the Shari‘a, and its being the expression of praise and thanks which extend from pre-eternity to post-eternity, can only be the advance price and immediate fee for Paradise and eternal happiness. They offer thanks since bounties are not restricted to the fleeting bounties of this world, which are tainted by the pains of transience, and see them as the means to eternal bounties.

 

As for the sacred phrase, Glory be to God!; with its meaning of declaring God free of all partner, fault, defect, tyranny, impotence, unkindness, need, and deception, and all faults opposed to His perfection, beauty, and glory, it recalls eternal happiness and the realm of the hereafter and Paradise within it, which are the means to His glory and beauty and the majesty and perfection of His sovereignty; the phrase alludes to them and indicates them. For, as has been proved previously, if there was no eternal happiness, both His sovereignty, and His perfection, glory, beauty, and mercy would be stained by fault and defect.

 

Like these three sacred phrases, In the Name of God and There is no god but God and other blessed phrases are all seeds to the pillars of faith. Like the meat essences and sugar concentrates that have been discovered recently, they are summaries of both the pillars of belief, and the truths of the Qur’an. The three mentioned above are both the seeds of the five daily prayers, and they are the seeds of the Qur’an, sparkling like brilliants at the beginning of a number of shining suras. So too are they the true sources and bases of the Risale-i Nur, many of whose inspirations first came while I was reciting the tesbihat following the prayers; they are the seeds of its truths. In respect of the sainthood and worship of Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him), these phrases are the invocations of the Muhammadan (PBUH) way which, following each of the five daily prayers, more than one hundred million believers repeat together in a vast circle of remembrance. Their beads in their hands, they declare Glory be to God! thirty-three times, All praise be to God! thirty-three times, and God is Most Great! thirty-three times.

 

You have surely understood now the great value of reciting thirty-three times after the five daily prayers, in such a splendid circle for the remembrance of God, each of those three blessed phrases, which as explained above, are the summaries and seeds of both the Qur’an, and belief, and the prayers. You have understood too the great reward they yield.

 

[The First Topic at the beginning of this treatise forms an excellent lesson about the obligatory five daily prayers. Then, although I did not think of it, involuntarily the end here became an important lesson about the tesbihat following the prayers.]

 

Praise be to God for His bounties.

 

Glory be unto You! We have no knowledge save that which You have taught us; indeed You are All-Knowing, All-Wise.23

 

 

The Ninth Topic

 

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

 

The Messenger believes in what has been revealed to him from his Sustainer. As do the men of faith. Each one [of them] believes in God, His angels, His Books, and His Messengers. “We make no distinction [they say] between one and another of His Messengers...” [to the end of the verse]24

 

An awesome question and a state of mind arising from the unfolding of a vast Divine bounty were the causes of my explaining a universal, lengthy point about this comprehensive, elevated and sublime verse. It was like this: it occurred to my spirit: why does one who denies a part of the truths of belief become a disbeliever, and one who does not accept a part of them cannot be a Muslim? Surely belief in God and the hereafter dispels the darkness like the sun. Also, why does a person who denies one of the pillars and truths of belief become an apostate, falling into disbelief, and by not accepting it, quit Islam? Whereas if he believes in the other pillars of belief, it should save him from absolute disbelief?

 

T h e A n s w e r : Belief is a single truth, which, composed of its six pillars, cannot be divided up. It is a universal that cannot be separated into parts. It is a whole that cannot be broken up. For each of the pillars of belief proves the other pillars with the proofs that prove itself. They are all extremely powerful proofs of each other. In which case, an invalid idea that cannot shake all the pillars together with all their proofs, cannot in reality negate any one of the pillars, or even a single of their truths, and cannot deny them. Under the veil of non-acceptance one might only, by shutting his eyes, commit ‘obstinate unbelief;’ he would by degrees fall into absolute disbelief and lose his humanity, and go to Hell, both physically and mentally. In this station then, with God’s grace, we shall explain this supreme matter in six Points in the form of brief summaries, just as in the Fruits Of Belief when proving the resurrection of the dead, the other pillars of belief’s proofs of resurrection were propounded in the form of brief summaries.

 

FIRST POINT

 

Belief in God proves with its own proofs both the other pillars and belief in the hereafter, as is shown clearly in the Seventh Topic of the Fruits Of Belief. Yes, is it at all possible and can reason accept that a pre-eternal everlasting sovereignty of dominicality, a post-eternal Divine rule, which administers the boundless universe as though it was a palace, a city, or a country; and makes it revolve in balanced and ordered fashion; and changes it with wisdom; and equips and directs all together particles, planets, flies, and stars as though each was a regular army, and continuously drills them within the spheres of command and will in a lofty manoeuvre; and employing them in duties makes them act, and causes them to roam and travel, and to parade worshipfully; —is it at all possible that that eternal, everlasting, enduring rule would not have an eternal seat, a permanent and everlasting place of manifestation; that is, the hereafter? God forbid! That means the sovereignty of Almighty God’s dominicality and —as is described in the Seventh Topic— most of His Names and the proofs of His necessary existence, require the hereafter and testify to it. So see and understand what powerful support this pole of belief has, and believe in it as though seeing it!

 

Also, just as there could be no belief in God without the hereafter; so —as is explained with brief indications in the Tenth Word— is it at all possible and could reason accept that God, the True Object of Worship, should create the universe, in order to manifest His Godhead and fitness to be worshipped, as an embodied book every page of which expresses a book of meanings and every line of which states a page of meanings, and as an embodied Qur’an all the creational signs and words, and even points and letters of which are miracles, and as a magnificent mosque of His mercy the inside of which is decorated with numberless inscriptions and adornments, and in every corner of which are species of beings each preoccupied with the worship dictated by its nature —is it at all possible He should create it in this way and not send masters to teach the meanings of that vast book, and commentators to expound the verses of that Qur’an, and not appoint prayer-leaders to that huge mosque to lead all those worshipping in their myriad ways, and that He should not give decrees to those masters, commentators, and leaders of worship? God forbid, a hundred thousand times!

 

Also, is it at all possible and could reason accept that the Most Compassionate and Munificent Maker, Who in order to display to conscious beings the beauty of His mercy and the goodness of His compassion and the perfection of His dominicality, and in order to encourage them to praise and thank Him, creates the universe as a banqueting hall, exhibition, and place of excursion in which are displayed infinite varieties of delicious bounties and priceless, wondrous arts, is it at all possible that He should not speak with those conscious beings at the banquet and not inform them by means of envoys of their duties of thanks for the bounties, and their duties of worship in the face of the manifestations of His mercy and His making Himself loved? God forbid, a hundred thousand times!

 

Also, is it at all possible that although the Maker loves His art and wants others to love it, and as is shown by His having taken into account the thousand pleasures of the mouth, wants it to be met with appreciation and approval, and has adorned the universe with priceless arts in a way that shows He wants through all His arts both to make Himself known, and loved, and to display a sort of His transcendent beauty, is it at all possible that He should not speak to men, the commanders of living beings in the universe, through some of the most eminent of them, and send them as envoys, and that His fine arts should not be appreciated and the exquisite beauty of His Names not be valued, and His making Himself known and loved be unreciprocated? God forbid, a hundred thousand times!

 

Also, is it at all possible or reasonable that the All-Knowing Speaker Who answers clearly by act and deed through His infinite bounties and gifts, which indicate intention, choice, and will, at exactly the right time, all the supplications of living beings for their natural needs, and their desires and recourse through the tongue of disposition, that He should speak by deed and by state with the most insignificant living creature and remedy its woes and heed its troubles with His bounties, and know its needs and meet them, then not meet with the spiritual leaders of men, who are the choicest result of the universe, His vicegerent on earth, and the commanders of most of the creatures on the earth? Although He speaks with them and with all living beings, should He not speak with men verbally and send them scriptures, books, and decrees? God forbid, innumerable times!

 

That is to say, with its certainty and innumerable proofs, belief in God proves belief in the prophets and sacred scriptures.

 

Also, is it at all possible or reasonable that in response to the One Who makes Himself known and loved through all His creatures and seeks thanks by deed and state, Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) should have known and made known, loved and made loved that Glorious Artist through the Qur’anic reality, which brings the the universe to tumult, and with his declarations of “Glory be to God!” “All praise be to God!” and “God is Most Great!” should have caused the globe to ring out so that it could be heard by the heavens, and have brought the land and seas to ecstasy; and that in one thousand three hundred years he should have taken behind him numerically a fifth of mankind and qualitatively a half of it, and responded with extensive, universal worship to all the manifestations of the Creator’s dominicality; that in the face of all the Divine purposes he should have called out with the Qur’an’s suras to the universe and the centuries, and taught them and proclaimed them; that he should have demonstrated the honour, value, and duties of man; and that he should have been confirmed through his thousand miracles — and that he should not have been the most choice creature, the most excellent of envoys, and the greatest prophet? Is this at all possible? God forbid! A hundred thousand times, God forbid!

 

That is to say, with all its proofs, the truth of “I testify that there is no god but God” proves the truth of “I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.”

 

Also, is it at all possible that the universe’s Maker should cause creatures to speak with one another in myriad tongues, and that He should listen to their speech, and know it, and Himself not speak? God forbid!

 

Also, is it at all reasonable that He should not proclaim through a decree the Divine purposes in the universe? That He should not send a book like the Qur’an which will solve its riddles and provide the true answers to the three awesome universally-asked questions: “Where do they come from?”, “Where are they going?”, and “Why do they follow on caravan after caravan, stop by for a while, then pass on?” God forbid!

 

Also, is it at all possible that the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition, which has illuminated thirteen centuries; every hour is uttered with complete veneration by a hundred million tongues; is inscribed through its sacredness in the hearts of millions of hafizes; in effect governs through its laws the greater part of mankind and trains, purifies, and instructs their souls, spirits, hearts, and minds; and forty aspects of whose miraculousness is proved in the Risale-i Nur and explained in the wondrous Nineteenth Letter, which demonstrates an aspect of its miraculousness towards each of forty classes of men, and as one of the thousand miracles of Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) is proved decisively to be the true Word of God; —is it at all possible that it should not be the word and decree of the Pre-Eternal Speaker and Eternal Maker? God forbid! A hundred thousand times, God forbid!

 

That is to say, with all its proofs, belief in God proves that the Qur’an is the Word of God.

 

Also, is it all possible that the Glorious Monarch Who continuously fills and empties the earth with living beings and inhabits this world of ours with conscious creatures in order to make Himself known and worshipped and glorified, should leave the heavens and earth empty and vacant, and not create inhabitants suitable to them and settle them in those lofty palaces, that in His most extensive lands he should leave the sovereignty of His dominicality without servants, functionaries, envoys, and majesty; without lieutenants, supervisors, spectators, worshippers, and subjects? God forbid! To the numbers of the angels, God forbid!

 

Also, is it at all possible that the All-Wise Ruler, the All-Knowing and Compassionate One, should write the universe in the form of a book; inscribe the entire life-stories of trees in all their seeds, and write in the seeds of grasses and plants all their vital duties, and record precisely the lives of conscious beings in their memories, as tiny as mustard seeds, and preserve with innumerable photographs all the actions and events in all His dominions and all the eras of His sovereignty, and create mighty Heaven and Hell and the supreme scales of justice for the manifestation and realization of justice, wisdom and mercy, the basis of His dominicality, then not have written down the acts of men connected with the universe, nor have their deeds recorded so they may meet with reward or punishment, nor write their good and bad deeds on the tablets of Divine Determining? God forbid! To the number of letters inscribed on them.

 

That is to say, with its proofs, the truth of belief in God proves the truth of both belief in the angels, and belief in Divine Determining. The pillars of belief prove each other as clearly as the sun shows the daylight, and daylight shows the sun.

 

SECOND POINT

 

All the teachings and claims of foremost the Qur’an, and all the revealed books and scriptures, and foremost Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him), and all the prophets, are based on five or six points. They have continually striven to teach and prove those basic teachings. All the proofs and evidences which testify to their messengership and truthfulness look to those bases, corroborating their veracity. And those fundamentals are belief in God and belief in the hereafter and in the other pillars of belief. That is to say, it is not possible to separate the six pillars of belief. Each proves all of them, and requires them, and necessitates them. The six are a whole, a universal, which cannot be broken in parts and whose division is outside the bounds of possibility. Like the Tuba-tree whose roots are in the heavens, each branch, fruit and leaf of that mighty tree relies on its universal, inexhaustible life. A person unable to deny that powerful life which is as clear as the sun, cannot deny the life of a single of its leaves, attached to it. If he does deny it, the tree will refute him to the number of its branches, fruits, and leaves, and silence him. Belief, with its six pillars, is similar to this.

 

At the beginning of this ‘Station,’ I intended to expound the six pillars of belief in thirty-six points, as six ‘Points,’ each with five sub-sections. I also intended to reply to and explain the awesome question at the beginning. But certain unforeseen circumstances did not permit this. I reckon, the first Point being sufficient, for the intelligent no need remained for further explanation. It was understood perfectly that if a Muslim denies one of the pillars of belief, he falls into absolute disbelief. For in the face of the summary explanations of other religions, Islam expounds and elucidates them completely, and the pillars of belief are bound together. A Muslim who does not recognize Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) and does not assent to him, will also not recognize God, or His attributes, and will not know the hereafter. A Muslim’s belief is based on such powerful, unshakeable and innumerable proofs that there is no excuse for denial; they quite simply compel the reason to accept them.

 

THIRD POINT

 

One time, I said “All praise be to God!,” and searched for a bounty that would be equal to its infinitely broad meaning. Suddenly, the following sentence occurred to me:

 

“All praise be to God for belief in God, and for His unity, and necessary existence, and attributes, and Names, to the number of the manifestations of His Names from pre-eternity to post-eternity.”

 

I looked and saw it was completely appropriate. As follows....

 

 

The Tenth Topic

 

A Flower of Emirdag

 

[An extremely powerful reply to objections raised against repetition in the Qur’an.]

 

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

 

Due to my wretched situation, this Topic is confused and graceless. But I knew definitely that beneath the confused wording was a most valuable sort of miraculousness, though unfortunately I was incapable of expressing it. But however dull the wording, since it concerns the Qur’an, it is both worship in the form of reflection, and the shell of a sacred, elevated, shining jewel. The diamond in the hand should be looked at, not its torn clothes. Also, I wrote it in one or two days during Ramadan while extremely ill, wretched, and without food, of necessity very concisely and briefly, and including many truths and numerous proofs in a single sentence. Its deficiencies, then, should be overlooked!25

 

My True, Loyal Brothers! While reading the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition in Ramadan, whichever of the thirty-three verses I came to that in the First Ray describe the allusions to the Risale-i Nur, I saw that the page and story of the verse also look to the Risale-i Nur and its students to some extent — in so far as they have a share in the story. Particularly the Light Verses in Sura al-Nur, just as they point to the Risale-i Nur with ten fingers, so the Darkness Verses following it point directly at those opposing it; these afford a further share. Quite simply, I understood that this ‘station’ rises from particularity to universality and that one part of that universality is the Risale-i Nur and its students.

 

Indeed, in regard to the breadth, exaltedness, and comprehensiveness that the Qur’an’s address receives from firstly the extensive station of the universal dominicality of the Pre-Eternal Speaker, and from the extensive station of the one addressed in the name of mankind, indeed of all beings, and the most extensive station of all mankind’s guidance in all the centuries, and from the station of the most elevated comprehensive expositions of the Divine laws concerning the regulation of this world and the hereafter, and the heavens and the earth, and pre-eternity and post-eternity, and the dominicality of the Creator of the universe, and of all beings, this Address displays such an elevated miraculousness and comprehensiveness that both its apparent and simple level, which flatters the simple minds of ordinary people, the most numerous group the Qur’an addresses, and its highest level, partakes of it.

 

Addressing every age and every class of people, in its stories and historical narratives, it does not recount one part or one lesson from them, but points out elements of a universal principle, as though it was newly revealed. Particularly its often repeated threats of the wrongdoers, the wrongdoers, and its severe expositions of calamities visited on the heavens and the earth, the punishment for their wrongdoing —through these and the retribution visited on the ‘Ad and Thamud peoples and on Pharaoh— it draws attention to the unequalled wrongs of this century, and through the salvation of prophets like Abraham (PUH) and Moses (PUH) gives consolation to the oppressed believers.

 

Indeed, all past time and the departed ages and centuries, which in the view of heedlessness and misguidance form a fearsome place of non-existence and a grievous, ruined graveyard, the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition shows to every century and class of people in the form of living instructive pages, strange worlds, living and endowed with spirits, and existent realms of the Sustainer which are connected with us. With an elevated miraculousness, it sometimes conveys us to those times, and sometimes brings those times to us. Infusing with life the universe, which in the view of misguidance is lifeless, wretched, dead, and a limitless wasteland revolving amid separation and decease, with the same miraculousness this same Qur’an of Mighty Stature raises to life those dead beings, makes them converse with one another as officials charged with duties and hasten to the assistance of one another; it instructs mankind, the jinn, and the angels in true, luminous, and pleasurable wisdom.

 

For sure, then, it acquires sacred distinctions, like there being ten merits in each of its letters, and sometimes a hundred, a thousand, or thousands of merits; and if all men and jinn were to gather together, their being unable to produce the like of it; and its speaking completely appropriately with all mankind and all beings; and its all the time being inscribed with eagerness in the hearts of millions of hafizes; and its not causing weariness through its frequent and numerous repetitions; and despite its many obscure passages and sentences, its being settled perfectly in the delicate and simple heads of children; and its being agreeable like Zamzam water in the ears of the sick, the dying, and those distressed by a few words; and its gaining for its students happiness in this world and the next.

 

Its smoothness of style, which, observing exactly its interpreter’s being unlettered, allows for no bombast, artificiality, or affectedness, and its descending directly from the heavens, demonstrate a fine miraculousness. So too it shows a fine miraculousness in the grace and guidance of flattering the simple minds of ordinary people, the most numerous of the classes of men, through the condescension in its expression, and mostly opening the clearest and most evident pages like the heavens and earth, and teaching the wondrous miracles of power and meaningful lines of wisdom beneath those commonplace things.

 

By making known that it is also a book of prayer and summons, of invocation and Divine unity, which require repetition, it demonstrates a sort of miraculousness through making understood in a single sentence and a single story through its agreeable repetitions numerous different meanings to numerous different classes of people. Similarly, by making known that the most minor and unimportant things in ordinary, commonplace events are within its compassionate view and the sphere of its will and regulation, it demonstrates a sort of miraculousness in attaching importance to even the minor events involving the Companions of the Prophet in the establishment of Islam and codification of the Shari‘a, and both in those events being universal principles, and, in the establishment of Islam and the Shari‘a, which are general, their producing most important fruits, as though they had been seeds.

 

With regard to repetition being necessary due to the repetition of need, the repetition of certain verses which, as answers to numerous questions repeated over a period of twenty years, instructs numerous different levels of people is not a fault, indeed, to repeat certain sentences so powerful they produce thousands of results and a number of verses resulting from countless evidences, which describe an infinite, awesome, all-embracing revolution that, by destroying utterly the vast universe and changing its shape at Doomsday, will remove the world and found the mighty hereafter in its place, and will prove that all particulars and universals from atoms to the stars are in the hand and under the disposal of a single Being, and will show the Divine wrath and dominical anger —on account of the result of the universe’s creation— at mankind’s wrongdoing, which brings to anger the earth and the heavens and the elements, to repeat such verses is not a fault, but most powerful miraculousness, and most elevated eloquence; an eloquence and lucid style corresponding exactly to the requirements of the subject.

 

For example, as is explained in the Fourteenth Flash of the Risale-i Nur, the sentence,

 

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,

 

which constitutes a single verse and is repeated one hundred and fourteen times in the Qur’an, is a truth which binds the Divine Throne and the earth, and illuminates the cosmos, and for which everyone is in need all the time; if it was repeated millions of times, there would still be need for it. There is need and longing for it, not only every day like bread, but every moment like air and light.

 

And, for example, the verse,

 

And verily your Sustainer is Exalted in Might, Most Compassionate,26

 

which is repeated eight times in Sura Ta. Sin. Mim. Repeating on account of the result of the universe’s creation and in the name of universal dominicality, the salvation of the prophets whose stories are told in the sura, and the punishments of their peoples, in order to teach that that dominical dignity requires the torments of those wrongdoing peoples while Divine compassion requires the prophets’ salvation, is a concise, miraculous, and elevated miraculousness, for which, if repeated thousands of times, there would still be need and longing.

 

And, for example, the verse,

 

Then which of the favours of your Sustainer will you deny?,27

 

which is repeated in Sura al-Rahman, and the verse,

 

Woe that Day to the rejecters of truth!,28

 

in Sura al-Mursalat shout out threateningly to mankind and the jinn across the centuries and the heavens and the earth, the unbelief, ingratitude, and wrongdoing of those who bring the universe and the heavens and earth to anger, spoil the results of the world’s creation, and deny and respond slightingly to the majesty of Divine rule, and violate the rights of all creatures. If a general lesson thus concerned with thousands of truths and of the strength of thousands of matters is repeated thousands of times, there would still be need for it and its awe-inspiring conciseness and beautiful, miraculous eloquence.

 

And, for example, the repetition of the phrase,

 

Glory be unto You! There is no god but You: Mercy! Mercy! Save us, deliver us, preserve us, from Hell-fire!

 

in the supplication of the Prophet (PBUH) called Jawshan al-Kabir, which is a true and authentic supplication of the Qur’an and a sort of summary proceeding from it. It contains the greatest truth and the most important of the three supreme duties of creatures in the face of dominicality, the glorification and praise of God and declaring Him to be All-Holy, and the most awesome question facing man, his being saved from eternal misery, and worship, the most necessary result of human impotence. So if it is repeated thousands of times, it is still few.

 

Thus, repetition in the Qur’an looks to principles like these. Sometimes on one page, even, with regard to the requirements of the position and the need for explanation and the demands of eloquence, it expresses the truth of Divine unity perhaps twenty times, explicitly and by implication. It does not cause boredom, but affords it a power, and eagerness. It has been explained in the Risale-i Nur with proofs how appropriate, fitting, and acceptable in the eyes of rhetoric are the repetitions in the Qur’an. The wisdom and meaning of the Meccan and Medinan Suras in the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition being different in regard to eloquence, miraculousness, and detail and brevity is as follows:

 

In Mecca, the first line of those it was addressing and those opposed to it were the idolators of the Quraysh and untaught tribesmen, so a powerful and elevated rhetorical style was necessary, and a miraculous, convincing, persuasive conciseness. And in order to establish it, repetition was required. Thus, in most of the Meccan suras, repeating and expressing the pillars of belief and degrees in the affirmation of Divine unity with a most powerful, elevated, and miraculous conciseness, it proved so powerfully the first creation and the Resurrection, God and the hereafter, not only in a single page, verse, sentence or word, but sometimes in a letter, through grammatical devices like altering the positions of the words or sentences, making a word indefinite, and omissions and inclusions, that the geniuses and leaders of the science of rhetoric met it with wonder. The Risale-i Nur, and the Twenty-Fifth Word and its Addenda in particular, which prove in summary forty aspects of the Qur’an’s miraculousness, and the Qur’anic commentary, Isharat al-I’jaz, from the Arabic Risale-i Nur, which in wondrous fashion proves the aspect of the Qur’an’s miraculousness in its word-order, have demonstrated in fact that in the Meccan suras and verses are the highest styles of eloquence and the most elevated, concise miraculousness.

 

As for the Medinan suras and verses, since the first line of those they were addressing and who opposed them were the People of the Book, the Jews and Christians who affirmed God’s existence, what was required by eloquence and guidance and for the discussion to correspond to the situation, was not explanation of the high principles of religion and pillars of belief in a simple, clear, and detailed style, but the explanation of particular matters in the Shari‘a and its injunctions, which were the cause of dispute, and the origins and causes of secondary matters and general laws. Thus, in the Medinan suras and verses, through explanations in a detailed, clear, simple style, in the matchless manner of exposition peculiar to the Qur’an, it mostly mentions within those particular secondary matters, a powerful and elevated summary — a conclusion and proof, a sentence related to Divine unity, belief, or the hereafter which makes the particular matter of the Shari‘a universal and ensures that it conforms to belief in God. It illuminates the passage, and elevates it. The Risale-i Nur has proved the qualities and fine points and elevated eloquence in the summaries and conclusions, which express Divine unity and the hereafter, and come mostly at the end of verses, like:

 

Indeed, God is powerful over all things.29 * Verily God has knowledge of all things.30 * And He is the Mighty, the Wise.31 * And He is Exalted in Might, Most Compassionate.32

 

Explaining in the Second Beam of the Second Light of the Twenty-Fifth Word, ten out of the many fine points of those summaries and conclusions, it has proved to the obstinate that they contain a supreme miracle.

 

Yes, in expounding those secondary matters of the Shari‘a and laws of social life, the Qur’an at once raises the views of those it addresses to elevated, universal points, and transforming a simple style into an elevated one and instruction in the Shari‘a to instruction in Divine unity, it shows it is both a book of law and commands and wisdom, and a book of the tenets of faith and belief, and of invocation and reflection and summons. And through teaching many of the aims of Qur’anic guidance in every passage, it displays a brilliant and miraculous eloquence different to that of the Meccan suras.

 

Sometimes in two words, for example, in Sustainer of All the Worlds and Your Sustainer, through the phrase, Your Sustainer, it expresses Divine oneness, and through, Sustainer of All the Worlds, Divine unity. It expresses the Divine oneness within Divine unity. In a single sentence even it sees and situates a particle in the pupil of an eye, and with the same verse, the same hammer, it situates the sun in the sky, making it an eye to the sky. For example, after the verse,

 

Who created the heavens and the earth,

 

following the verse,

 

He merges the night into the day, and He merges the day into the night,

 

it says:

 

And He has full knowledge of all that is in [men’s] hearts.33

 

It says: “Within the vast majesty of the creation of the earth and the skies, He knows and regulates the thoughts of the heart.” Through an exposition of this sort, it transforms that simple, unlettered level and particular discussion which takes into account the minds of ordinary people, into an elevated, attractive, and general conversation for the purpose of guidance.

 

A Question: “Sometimes an important truth is not apparent to a superficial view, and in some positions the connection is not known when a concise phrase expounding Divine unity or a universal principle is drawn out from a minor, ordinary matter, and it is imagined to be a fault. For example, to mention the extremely elevated principle:

 

And over all endued with knowledge, One Knowing34

 

when Joseph (Peace be upon him) seized his brother through subterfuge, does not appear to be in keeping with eloquence. What is its meaning and purpose?”

 

The Answer: In most of the long and middle-length suras, which are each small Qur’ans, and in many pages and passages, not only two or three aims are followed, for by its nature the Qur’an comprises many books and teachings, such as being a book of invocation, belief, and reflection, and a book of law, wisdom, and guidance. Thus, since it describes the majestic manifestations of Divine dominicality and its encompassing all things, as a sort of recitation of the mighty book of the universe, it follows many aims in every discussion and sometimes on a single page. While instructing in knowledge of God, the degrees in Divine unity, and the truths of belief, with an apparently weak connection it opens another subject of instruction in the following passage, joining powerful connections to the weak one. It corresponds perfectly to the discussion and raises the level of eloquence.

 

A Second Question: “What is the wisdom in and purpose of *the Qur’an proving and drawing attention to the hereafter, Divine unity, and man’s reward and punishment thousands of times, explicitly, implicitly, and allusively, and teaching them in every sura, on every page, and in every discussion?”

 

The Answer: In order to teach concerning the most momentous matters in the sphere of contingency, and the revolutions in the universe’s history, and the most important, most significant, most awesome matters related to man’s duties, which —since he has undertaken the supreme trust and vicegerency of the earth— will lead to either his perdition or everlasting happiness, and in order to remove his countless doubts and to smash his violent denials and obduracy, indeed, to make man confirm those awesome revolutions and submit to those most necessary essential matters which are as great as the revolutions, if the Qur’an draws his attention to them thousands, or even millions of times, it is not excessive, for those discussions in the Qur’an are read millions of times, and they do not cause boredom, nor does the need cease.

 

For example, since the verse,

 

For those who believe and do righteous deeds are gardens beneath which rivers flow; they will dwell there forever,35

 

announces the good news of eternal happiness, and “saves from the eternal extinction of death, which every moment shows itself to wretched man, both himself, and his world, and all those he loves, and gains for them an everlasting sovereignty,” if it is repeated thousands of millions of times and given the importance of the universe, it still is not excessive and does not lose its value. Thus, in teaching innumerable, invaluable matters of this sort, and endeavouring to persuade, convince, and prove the occurrence of the awesome revolutions which will destroy the present form of the universe and transform it as though it was a house, the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition certainly draws attention to these matters thousands of times explicitly, implicitly, and allusively, and this is not excessive, but renews the bounty which is like an essential need, the same as the essential needs of bread, medicine, air, and light are renewed.

 

And, for example, as is proved decisively in the Risale-i Nur, the wisdom in the Qur’an repeating severely, angrily, and forcefully, threatening verses like,

 

For wrongdoers there is a grievous penalty.36 * But for those who reject [God] — for them will be the Fire of Hell.37

 

is that man’s unbelief is such a transgression against the rights of the universe and most creatures that it makes the heavens and earth angry and brings the elements to anger so that they deal blows on those wrongdoers with tempest and storm. According to the clear statement of the verses,

 

And when they are cast therein, they will hear the [terrible] drawing-in of its breath as it blazes forth * Almost bursting with fury,38

 

Hell so rages at those iniquitous deniers that it almost disintegrates with fury. Thus, through the wisdom of showing, not from the point of view of man’s smallness and insignificance before such a general crime and boundless aggression, but the importance of the rights of the Monarch of Universe’s subjects before the greatness of the wrongful crime and the awesomeness of the unjust aggression, and the boundless ugliness in the unbelief and iniquity of those deniers —in accordance with the wisdom of showing this, if repeating in His decree most wrathfully and severely the crime and its punishment, thousands, millions, or even thousands of millions of times, it still would not be excessive and a fault, because for a thousand years thousands of millions of people have read such verses every day, not with boredom, but with total eagerness and need.

 

Indeed, every day, all the time, for everyone, one world disappears and the door of a new world is opened to them. Through repeating There is no god but God a thousand times out of need and with longing in order to illuminate each of those transitory worlds, it makes There is no god but God a lamp for each of those changing veils. In the same way, in accordance with the wisdom of appreciating through reading the Qur’an the penalties of those crimes and the severe threats of the Pre-Eternal Monarch, which smash their obduracy, and of working to be saved from the rebellion of the soul, so as not to obscure in darkness those multiple, fleeting veils and renewed travelling universes, and not to make ugly their images which are reflected in the mirrors of their lives, and not to turn against them those guest views which may testify in favour of them, the Qur’an repeats them in truly meaningful fashion. Even Satan would shudder at imagining to be out of place these so powerful, severe, and repeated threats of the Qur’an. It shows that the torments of Hell are pure justice for the deniers who do not heed them.

 

And, for example, in repeating many times the stories of Moses (Peace be upon him), which contain many instances of wisdom and benefits, like the story of his Staff, and of the other prophets (Peace be upon them), it demonstrates that the prophethoods of all the other prophets are a proof of the veracity of the messengership of Muhammad (PBUH), and that one who does not deny all of them cannot in truth deny his messengership. For this purpose, and since everyone does not always have the time or capability to read the whole Qur’an, it repeats those stories in the same way as the important pillars of belief, in order to make all the long and middle-length suras each like a small Qur’an. To repeat them then is not excessive, it is required by eloquence, and teaches that the question of Muhammad (PBUH) is the greatest question of mankind and the most important matter of the universe.

 

It has been demonstrated decisively in the Risale-i Nur with many proofs and indications that through giving the highest position to the person of Muhammad in the Qur’an and including him in four pillars of belief and holding Muhammad is the Messenger of God equal to the pillar of There is no god but God, that the messengership of Muhammad (PBUH) is the greatest truth in the universe, and that the person of Muhammad is the most noble of creatures, and his universal collective personality and sacred rank, known as the Muhammadan Reality, is the most radiant Sun of the two worlds. His worthiness for this extraordinary position has also been proved. One of these proofs is this:

 

According to the principle of ‘the cause is like the doer,’ with the equivalent of all the good works performed by all his community at all times entering his book of good works; and the light which he brought illuminating all the truths of the cosmos; and his making grateful not only the jinn, mankind, and animate beings, but also the universe and the heavens and earth; and the supplications of plants, offered through the tongue of disposition, and the supplications of animals offered through the tongue of their innate need, and the righteous of his (PBUH) community every day bequeathing to him their benedictions and supplications for mercy and spiritual gains, whose millions —and together with spirit beings, even, millions of millions— of unrejectable supplications are accepted, as we actually witness with our eyes; and since each of the three hundred thousand letters of the Qur’an yield from a hundred to a thousand merits, only with regard to the recitation of the Qur’an by all his community, with infinite numbers of lights entering the book of his deeds; — due to all these, the One All-Knowing of the Unseen saw and knew that the Muhammadan (PBUH) Reality, which is his collective personality, would in the future be like a Tuba-tree of Paradise, and in accordance with that rank accorded him supreme importance in the Qur’an, and in His Decree showed the following of him and receiving of his intercession through adhering to his Illustrious Sunna to be one of the most important matters concerning man. And from time to time He took into consideration his human personality and human state in his early life, which was a seed of the majestic Tuba-tree.

 

Thus, since the truths repeated in the Qur’an are of this value, all sound natures will testify that in its repetitions is a powerful and extensive miracle. Unless, that is to say, a person is afflicted with some sickness of the heart and malady of the conscience due to the plague of materialism, and is included under the rule,

 

A man denied the light of the sun due to his diseased eye,

 

His mouth denied the taste of water due to sickness.

 

* * *

 

 

 

TWO ADDITIONS, WHICH FORM A CONCLUSION

 

TO THE TENTH TOPIC

 

THE FIRST: Twelve years ago I heard that a fearsome and obdurate atheist had instigated a conspiracy against the Qur’an, which was to have it translated. He said: “The Qur’an should be translated so that everyone can know just what it is.” That is, he hatched a dire plan with the idea of everyone seeing its unnecessary repetitions and its translation being read in its place. However, the irrefutable proofs of the Risale-i Nur proved decisively that “A true translation of the Qur’an is not possible, and other languages cannot preserve the Qur’an’s qualities and fine points in place of the grammatical language of Arabic. Man’s trite and partial translations cannot be substituted for the miraculous and comprehensive words of the Qur’an, every letter of which yields from ten to a thousand merits; they may not be read in its place in mosques.” Through spreading everywhere, the Risale-i Nur made the fearsome plan come to nothing. I surmise that it was due to the idiotic and lunatic attempts of dissemblers to extinguish the Sun of the Qur’an on account of Satan by puffing at it like silly children having taken lessons from that atheist, that I was inspired to write this Tenth Matter while under great constraint and in a most distressing situation. But I do not know the reality of the situation since I have been unable to meet with others.

 

SECOND ADDITION: After our release from Denizli Prison, I was staying on the top floor of the famous Shehir Hotel. The subtle and graceful dancing of the leaves, branches, and trunks of the many poplar trees in the fine gardens opposite me at the touching of the breeze, each with a rapturous and ecstatic motion like a circle of dervishes, pained my heart, sorrowful and melancholy at being parted from my brothers and remaining alone. Suddenly the seasons of autumn and winter came to mind and a heedlessness overcame me. I so pitied those graceful poplars and living creatures swaying with perfect joyousness that my eyes filled with tears. With this reminder of the separations and non-being beneath the ornamented veil of the universe, the grief at a world-full of deaths and separations pressed down on me. Then suddenly, the Light the Muhammadan (PBUH) Reality had brought came to my assistance and transformed my grief and sorrow into joy. Indeed, I am eternally grateful to the Muhammadan Being (PBUH) for the assistance and consolation which alleviated my situation at that time, only a single instance of the boundless effulgence of that Light for me, like for all believers and everyone. It was like this:

 

By showing those blessed and delicate creatures to be without function or purpose, and their motion to be not out of joy, but as though trembling on the brink of non-existence and separation and tumbling into nothingness, that heedless view so touched the feelings in me of desire for immortality, love of beautiful things, and compassion for fellow-creatures and life that it transformed the world into a sort of hell and my mind into an instrument of torture. Then, just at that point, the Light Muhammad (Peace and blessings by upon him) had brought as a gift for mankind raised the veil; it showed in place of extinction, non-being, nothingness, purposeless, futility, and separations, meanings and instances of wisdom to the number of the leaves of the poplars, and as is proved in the Risale-i Nur, results and duties which may be divided into three sorts:

 

The First Sort looks to the All-Glorious Maker’s Names. For example, if a master craftsman makes a wondrous machine, everyone applauds him, saying: “What wonders God has willed! Blessed be God!” Similarly, the machine congratulates the craftsman through the tongue of its disposition, through displaying perfectly the results intended from it. All living beings and all things are machines such as that; they applaud their Craftsman through their glorifications.

 

The Second Sort of the Instances of Wisdom looks to the views of living creatures and conscious beings. Beings each become an agreeable object of study, a book of knowledge. They leave their meanings in the sphere of existence in the minds of conscious beings and their forms in their memories, and on the tablets in the World of Similitudes, and in the notebooks of the World of the Unseen, then they depart from the Manifest World and withdraw to the World of the Unseen. That is, they leave behind an apparent existence, but gain many existences pertaining to meaning, the Unseen, and knowledge. Yes, since God exists and His knowledge encompasses everything, in the view of reality, in the world of believers there is surely no non-being, extinction, nothingness, annihilation, and transitoriness, while the world of unbelievers is full of non-existence, separation, nothingness, and transience. This is taught by the saying, which is on everyone’s lips, “For those for whom God exists, everything exists; and for those for whom He does not exist, nothing exists; for them there is nothing.”

 

IN SHORT: Just as belief saves man from eternal extinction at the time of death, so it saves everyone’s private world from the darknesses of annihilation and nothingness. Whereas unbelief, and especially if it is absolute unbelief, both sends man and his private world to non-existence with death, and casts him into infernal darknesses. It transforms the pleasures of life into bitter poisons. Let the ears ring of those who prefer the life of this world to that of the hereafter! Let them come and find a solution for this, or else let them enter belief and be saved from these dreadful losses!

 

 

 

Glory be unto You! We have no knowledge save that which You have taught us; indeed, You are All-Knowing, All-Wise.39

 

From your brother who is in much need

 

of your prayers and misses you greatly,

 

 

 

S a i d N u r s i

 

* * *

 

 

 

A Letter From Husrev40 to Üstad Bediuzzaman Said Nursi

 

Concerning the Tenth Topic

 

My Dear and Esteemed Master,

 

Endless thanks be to Almighty God that we have received ‘A Flower of Emirdag,’ the Tenth Topic of the Fruits of Denizli, which has ameliorated our grief at our two months’ separation and our distress at having been unable to communicate, and enumerates the virtues of the repetition of the Qur’an’s glorious, august, merciful and compassionate verses, which infuse our hearts with fresh life and breathe into our spirits a fresh breeze, and explains the necessity, significance, and reason for the repetitions, and is too a brilliant defence of the Risale-i Nur. In truth, the more we receive the scent of this flower, so deserving of praise and appreciation, the yearning of our spirits for it increased. Just as how in the face of the difficulties of our nine months’ imprisonment, the nine Topics of the Fruits Of Belief showed their beauty by contributing to our being released, so through pointing out the wonders of the concise miraculousness of the Qur’an, the Tenth Topic, their Flower, again exhibited their beauty.

 

Yes, my beloved Master, like the superb, delicate beauty of the rose makes the beholder forget the thorns on its stem, so this luminous Flower has made us forget the distress of those nine months; it has made it as nothing. The manner of its writing does not cloy those studying it; it astounds the mind. Of the many beauties it contains, by showing fully the value of the repetitions in the face of the treachery of ‘simplifying’ the Qur’an in people’s eyes by translating it, it has set forth its universal loftiness. The Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition being proved to be as fresh as though it was newly revealed, its followers adhering strongly to it every century and their perfect obedience to its commands and prohibitions; and its severe, awesome, and repeated threats to the oppressor in every century, and its compassionate and merciful regard for the oppressed; and among its threats which look to this century, the tyrants being made to cry out continuously for the last six or seven years at the heavenly hell which recalls a sample of deepest space; and the Risale-i Nur students being at the head of the oppressed this century; and their being delivered from their plights, personal and general, truly like the prophets of old found deliverance; and its pointing out the blows dealt to the irreligious, its opponents, and Hellish torments; and the Flower being concluded with two fine and subtle addenda; all these prompted this wanting student of yours, Husrev, to joyfully offer endless thanks. As I have mentioned to my dear Master, I have never experienced in my life the joy and happiness this beautiful Flower gives me, as I have told my brothers on numerous occasions. Almighty God placed on their feeble shoulders a great and heavy load. May God be pleased with our beloved Master, and may He make them smile eternally by lightening their load. Amen!

 

Yes, my dear Master! We are forever pleased at God, the Qur’an, His Beloved, the Risale-i Nur, and at you, our beloved Master, who is herald of the Qur’an. We in no way regret our following you. We harbour absolutely no intention in our hearts to do harm; we seek only God and His pleasure. As time passes, we increase our longing to meet God within the bounds of His pleasure. To refer to Almighty God without exception those who have done us evil and to forgive them, and to do good to everyone including those tyrants is a mark of Islam established in the hearts of the Risale-i Nur students. We offer endless thanks to God, Who proclaims this without our asking.

 

Your very faulty student,

 

H u s r e v

 

 

The Eleventh Topic

 

[Hundreds of the innumerable fruits, particular and universal, of the sacred tree of belief, one of which is Paradise, another, eternal happiness, and another, the vision of God, have been set forth with proofs and explanations in the Risale-i Nur. Referring further explanation of them to Siracü’n-Nur (The Illuminating Lamp), therefore, here shall be set out a few examples of its particular and special fruits, rather than its universal pillars.]

 

One of these: One day while reciting in a supplication: “O My Sustainer! In veneration of Gabriel, Michael, Israfil, and Azra’il, and through their intercession, preserve me from the evil of men and jinn,” I experienced an exceedingly pleasant and consoling state of mind on mentioning the name of Azra’il, which generally makes people tremble in fear. “All praise be to God!” I exlaimed, and began to feel earnest love for him. I shall point out extremely briefly only one particular fruit of the many of this particular aspect of the pillar of belief in the angels.

 

Another: Everyone’s most precious possession and the one over which they most tremble, is their spirit. I felt sure that to surrender it to a strong and trustworthy hand thereby preserving it from being lost and annihilated and from aimlessness, afforded a profound joy. Then the angels who record men’s actions came to mind; I saw that they yielded numerous sweet fruits like the previous one.

 

Another: Everyone tries earnestly to preserve through writing, poetry, or even the cinema, a worthwhile saying or deed, in order to immortalize it. Particularly if the deeds produce everlasting fruits in Paradise, they are even more anxious to preserve them. The recording angels hovering over men’s shoulders so that they may show their deeds in eternal vistas and continually gain their owners reward, seemed so agreeable to me, I cannot describe it.

 

Then, when ‘the worldly’ had isolated me from everything to do with social life and kept me from all my books, friends, assistants, and the things that console me, and I was being crushed by the desolation of exile and my empty world was tumbling down all around me, one of the many fruits of belief in the angels came to my assistance. It cheered up the universe and my world, filling it with angels and spirit beings, and making my world laugh for joy.41 It showed too that the worlds of the people of misguidance weep in desolation, emptiness, and darkness. While enjoying the pleasures of this fruit, my imagination plucked one of the numerous fruits of belief in the prophets, which resembles it, and tasted it. Then suddenly my belief that all the prophets of the past were as though living, and my assent to them, lit up those times and made my belief universal and expanded it, and set thousands of signatures to their teachings concerning belief in the Prophet of the End of Time (PBUH), silencing the Satans.

 

Then, a question occurred to me the decisive answer to which is included in the Thirteenth Flash, about the wisdom in seeking refuge with God from Satan. In meaning it asked me: “The people of guidance are assisted and strengthened by innumerable sweet fruits and benefits like these, the fine results of good deeds, and the Most Merciful of the Merciful’s compassionate succour and assistance, so why are they frequently defeated by the people of misguidance, and sometimes twenty or a hundred of them are routed?” While pondering over this, I recalled the mobilizations and angels in the Qur’an in the face of Satan’s feeble machinations, and Almighty God’s sending assistance to the people of belief. Since the Risale-i Nur has explained the purpose and wisdom of this with decisive proofs, we shall here allude to it only briefly.

 

Yes, sometimes in the face of a single vandal trying to set fire to a palace which a hundred men have made, the palace can remain standing only through a hundred men protecting it and by having recourse to the government and the king. For its existence is possible only through the existence of all its conditions and causes, but its non-existence and destruction may occur through the non-existence of a single condition. Just as the palace may be burnt to the ground by a layabout with a single match, so with some small actions, satans from among jinn and men cause vast destruction and terrible non-physical conflagrations. Yes, the basis and origin of all bad, evils and sins is non-existence, it is destruction. The non-existence and destruction are concealed beneath apparent existence. Thus, relying on this point, satans from among jinn and men and evil beings withstand an infinite force with an extremely weak force, driving the people of truth and reality to continually seek refuge at the Divine Court, and to flee to it. The Qur’an therefore mobilizes great forces for their protection. It gives for their use ninety-nine Divine Names, and commands them sternly to withstand those enemies.

 

From this answer became apparent the tip of a vast truth and basis of an awesome matter. It was like this: just as Paradise bears the crops of all the worlds of existence and produces the eternal shoots of the seeds grown in this world; so in order to display the grievous consequences of the innumerable terrible worlds of non-existence and nothingness, Hell scorches up the products of that non-existence, and among its other functions, that terrible factory cleanses the universe of existence of the filth of the world of non-existence. For now we shall not open the door of this awesome matter; God willing, it shall be elucidated later.

 

Another particular and example of the fruit of belief in the angels concerns the questioning angels, Munkar and Nakir;42 it is this: in my imagination I entered my grave, telling myself: “I am bound to enter here, the same as everyone else.” While taking fright at the bleakness and despair of the lonely, dark, cold, narrow solitary confinement of the grave, two blessed friends resembling Munkar and Nakir appeared. They began to debate with me. My heart and grave were broadened, illumined, and warmed; windows were opened up onto the world of spirits. I felt truly happy at that situation which I saw in the imagination then, and will see in reality in the future, and I offered thanks.

 

A medrese student who was studying Arabic grammar died and in replying to Munkar and Nakir’s question of “Who is your Sustainer?”, thought he was in his own medrese and said: “‘Who’ is the subject, ‘your Sustainer’ is its predicate; ask me something difficult; that’s easy.” It made both the angels, and the spirits who were present, and a diviner of graves who witnessed the incident, laugh, and brought a smile to Divine mercy. Being delivered from torment, the late Hafiz Ali, a martyr hero of the Risale-i Nur, died in prison while writing out and enthusiastically studying the treatise of The Fruits of Belief. Just as he replied in the grave to the questioning angels with the truths of The Fruits of Belief —as he had in court here—, so I and the Risale-i Nur students shall reply to those questions with the brilliant and powerful proofs of the Risale-i Nur, in the future in fact and now in meaning, and will cause the angels to confirm them and appreciate them and congratulate them; God willing.

 

Another small example of belief in the angels leading to worldly happiness is this: an innocent child who had learnt his lesson from the Ilm-i Hal, said to another child who was wailing at the death of his little brother: “Don’t cry, be thankful, because your brother has gone to heaven and is with the angels. He is enjoying himself there and having a better time than us. He is flying around like the angels, and taking a look at everything.” He turned his friend’s woeful tears into happy smiles.

 

Exactly like that weeping child, in the grim situation of this sorrowful winter I received news of two deaths. One was my nephew, the late Fuad, who had both come first in advanced schools, and had published the truths of the Risale-i Nur. The second was my late sister, called Hanim, a scholar who went on the Hajj and died while circumambulating the Ka‘ba. These deaths of two relatives made me weep, like that of the late Abdurrahman, which is described in the Treatise For The Elderly. Then, through the light of belief I saw in my heart that the innocent Fuad and righteous Hanim had as companions angels and houris in place of humans and had been saved from the perils and sins of this world. Feeling overwhelming joy instead of that searing sorrow, I congratulated both them, and Fuad’s father, Abdülmecid, and myself, and I offered thanks to the Most Merciful of the Merciful. This has been included here as a prayer for mercy for the two departed.

 

All the comparisons and allegories in the Risale-i Nur describe the fruits of belief that have as their consequences happiness in this world and the next. In respect of the happiness and pleasures of life they display in this world, those universal and extensive fruits give news that they will gain for man everlasting happiness, indeed, that they will produce shoots and develop in that way. Five of those numerous universal fruits have been written at the end of the Thirty-First Word as fruits of the Ascension, and five are included as examples in the Fifth Branch of the Twenty-Fourth Word.

 

We said at the beginning that each of the pillars of faith have numerous different fruits, even innumerable fruits, and that similarly, a single fruit of the totality of the fruits is vast Paradise, and another is eternal happiness, while another and perhaps the sweetest is the vision of God. Also some of the fruits of belief yielding happiness in both worlds, this world and the hereafter, have been well described in the comparison at the end of the Thirty-Second Word.

 

Evidence that belief in Divine Determining yields precious fruits in this world is the fact that the saying “those who believe in Divine Determining are saved from unhappiness” is widely known as a proverb. Two universal fruits of belief in Divine Determining are explained in the fine comparison at the end of the Treatise On Divine Determining, which is about two men who enter the lovely garden of a palace, and I myself in my own life have experienced thousands of times and understood that if one does not believe in Divine Determining, it destroys the happiness of this worldly life. But whenever, in grievous misfortunes, I looked from the point of view of Divine Determining, I saw that they were greatly lightened, and I would be astonished at how those who do not believe it can continue to live.

 

One of the universal fruits of the pillar of belief in the angels is alluded to in the Second Station of the Twenty-Second Word like this: supplicating Almighty God, Azra’il (Peace be upon him) said:

 

“Your servants will be vexed at me and complain about me when I carry out my duty of seizing the spirits of the dying.”

 

He was told in reply: “I shall make illnesses and calamities a veil to your duties, so my servants’ complaints will be directed at them and not at you.”

 

Azra’il’s duty is a veil in exactly the same way that the above are veils, so that unjustified complaints are not directed at Almighty God. For not everyone can see the aspects of wisdom, mercy, beauty, and advantage in death; they see its apparent face and start to object and complain. Azra’il was made a veil so that these unjustified complaints are not directed at the Absolutely Compassionate One. In exactly the same way, the function of all the angels, indeed of all apparent causes, is to be veils to the dignity of dominicality, so that the dignity and holiness of Divine power and comprehensiveness of Divine mercy are preserved in things the beauty of which is not apparent and the wisdom of which is not understood; and they are not the target of objections, and so that in the superficial view Divine power does not appear to be in contact with base, trivial, or cruel things. For the Risale-i Nur has proved definitively with innumerable evidences that the stamps of Divine unity on all things show clearly that no cause has an actual effect or the ability to create. Creation and the giving of existence are particular to Him. Causes are merely a veil. Conscious beings like angels can do nothing other than a sort of voluntary duty in accordance with their natures and active worship which is called ‘acquisition,’ and is insignificant and not creative.

 

Yes, dignity and grandeur demand that in the view of the mind causes are veils to the hand of power. While unity and oneness demand that causes abstain from having any real effect.

 

Just as angels and the apparent causes employed in good works pertaining to existence are all means of exonerating dominical power of fault and tyranny in things the beauties of which are not known or seen, and of hallowing it and preserving it from the ascription of fault; so too, satans from among jinn and men and harmful matters being employed in evil matters pertaining to non-existence is to hallow and glorify God by saving Divine power from being the target of complaint and wrongful accusations of cruelty. It is to exonerate Him and declare Him free of all the faults in the universe. For all faults arise from non-existence, or lack of ability, or destruction, or the failure to perform duties, which are all non-existence and acts which are not existent and pertain to non-existence. The faults are ascribed to these satanic and evil veils, the objections and complaints are deservedly directed at them, and they are means of Almighty God being pronounced free of all defect.

 

In any event, strength or power are not necessary for evil destructive works pertaining to non-existence; sometimes extensive non-existence or destruction may occur through some petty act or insignificant power, or even the failure to perform a duty. It is supposed those doers of evil possess power, but they have no effect other than non-existence and no power other minor ‘acquisition.’ But since the evils arise from non-existence, the doers of evil are the true agents. If they are intelligent beings, they deservedly pay the penalty. That is to say, in evils the perpetrators are the true ‘doers,’ but since good deeds and acts are existent, those who ‘do’ them are not the true ‘doers’ and do not have an actual effect. They are recipients rather, receiving the Divine effulgence; the All-Wise Qur’an states that their reward too is purely a Divine favour, and says:

 

Whatever good happens to you is from God but whatever evil befalls you is from yourself.43

 

I n S h o r t : While the universes of existence and the innumerable worlds of non-existence clash, producing fruits like Paradise and Hell; and all the worlds of existence declare: “All praise be to God! All praise be to God!” and all the worlds of non-existence declare: “Glory be to God! Glory be to God!”; and while through an all-encompassing law of contest angels and satans, and instances of good and instances of evil, as far as the inspirations and satanic whisperings of the heart, all struggle against each other; a fruit of belief in the angels is suddenly manifested, solving the matter and illuminating the universe. Showing us one of the lights of the verse,

 

God is the Light of the heavens and the earth,44

 

it shows us just how sweet is this fruit.

 

The Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Ninth Word —the latter of which demonstrates the marvels of the ‘alifs’45— point out a second universal fruit, and prove in brilliant fashion the existence and functions of the angels. Yes, in everything in the universe, particular and universal, in every realm of being, is a compassionate, splendid dominicality which makes itself known and loved. Most certainly it is necessary to respond to that splendour, that compassion, that making known and loved, with thanks and comprehensive, conscious worship, declaring them to be free of all fault. And it is only countless angels that can perform the duty on behalf of unconscious inanimate creatures and the great elements, and can represent the wise, majestic activity of the sovereignty of that dominicality everywhere on the earth, on the Pleiades, in the foundations of the earth, and outside it.

 

Through this fruit, for example, the creation of the earth and its natural duties, which the soulless laws of philosophy show to be dark and desolate, are placed in luminous familiar fashion on the shoulders of, that is, under the supervision of, two angels called Thawr (the Bull) and Hut (the Fish).46 And a truth, a substance of the hereafter called sakhra is sent as an everlasting foundation stone of the transitory earth, that is, as a sign that in the future part of it will be transformed into eternal Paradise, and is made a point of support for the angels Thawr and Hut. This was narrated by the old prophets of the Children of Israel, and also by Ibn ‘Abbas. Unfortunately, in the course of time, this sacred meaning and allegory was taken literally by the ordinary people and acquired a form outside the bounds of reason. Since the angels travel through earth and rock and the centre of the earth the same as they do through the air, they, and the earth, surely have no need of physical rocks and a fish and ox to support them.

 

Also for example, since the globe utters Divine glorifications to the number of its realms of beings, with tongues to the number of the members of those species, and to the parts, leaves, and fruits of those members, surely there will be an appointed angel with forty thousand heads and forty thousand tongues in each head, each of which will utter forty thousand Divine glorifications, which will know that splendid, unconscious, innate worship, represent it consciously, and offer it to the Divine Court, as the Bringer of Sure News informed us absolutely correctly.

 

Also, the existence and extraordinary nature of angels like Gabriel (Peace be upon him), who conveys and announces the dominical relations with man, the most important result of the universe’s creation; and Israfil (Peace be upon him) and Azra’il (Peace be upon him), who merely represent the Creator’s most awesome actions in the world of animate beings, which are the raising to life and giving of life, and the release from duties with death, and they supervise them in worshipful manner; and Michael (Peace be upon him) who besides supervising the bounties of the Most Merciful in food, which is the most extensive and most pleasurable mercy in the sphere of life, consciously represents unconscious thanks — the existence and extraordinary nature of angels like these, and the immortality of their spirits, are necessitated by the sovereignty and splendour of dominicality. Their existence and that of their own species is as certain and free of doubt as the existence of the sovereignty and splendour that are to be seen in the universe as clearly as the sun. Comparisons may be made with this for other matters concerning the angels.

 

Yes, the All-Powerful One of Glory and Beauty created four hundred thousand species of living beings on the earth, and created beings with spirits in great abundance, even out of common and rotting substances, filling everywhere with them. In the face of the miracles of His art He causes them to declare: “What wonders God has willed! How great are God’s blessings! Glory be to God!”, and before the gifts of His mercy: “All praise be to God! All thanks be to God! God is Most Great!” Most certainly and without doubt therefore He created inhabitants and spirit beings suitable for the vast heavens, who never rebel and perform constant worship. Not leaving the heavens empty, He populated them with these beings. He created too countless different sorts of angels, far greater in number than the animal species. Some in tiny form, mount raindrops and snowflakes and applaud the Divine art and mercy in their own tongues. Others mount the travelling stars and on their journeys through space, through their Divine exaltations and pronouncements of Divine Unity, proclaim to the world their worship before the grandeur, splendour and dignity of dominicality.

 

The agreement of all the revealed scriptures and religions since the time of Adam concerning the existence and worship of the angels, and the numerous unanimous reports in all ages of conversations and meetings of men with the angels, proves that their existence is as certain as the existence of the people of America, whom we have never seen, and that they are concerned with us.

 

Now come and taste through the light of belief this second universal fruit; see how it fills the universe from end to end, making it beautiful and transforming it into a vast mosque and place of worship. In the face of science and philosophy showing it to be cold, lifeless, dark, and desolate, it shows it to be full of life and light, conscious, familiar, and agreeable, allowing the people of belief to experience a manifestation of the pleasures of immortal life according to their degree, while still in this world.

 

C o n c l u s i o n : Since through the mysteries of Divine unity and oneness, the same power, the same Names, the same wisdom, and the same art are found in every part of the universe, the Creator’s unity, disposal, giving of existence, dominicality, creativity, and sacredness are proclaimed through the tongues of disposition of all creatures, particular and universal. So too He created the angels, and caused the glorifications which all creatures offer unconsciously through the tongues of their beings to be offered consciously through the worshipful tongues of the angels. None of the angels’ actions are in any respect contrary to the Divine command. Apart from pure worship, they do nothing; they bring nothing into being, can intervene in nothing unless commanded, and cannot intercede even, without permission. They manifest to the utmost the meaning of:

 

They are [but] servants raised to honour. * They speak not before He speaks, and they act [in all things] by His command.47

 

* * *

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

[This forms a brief indication to a lengthy truth concerning a subtle point of miraculousness of great importance which was imparted to me after sunset and demonstrates clearly miraculous predictions of Sura al-Falaq concerning the Unseen.]

 

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

 

Say: I seek refuge with the Sustainer of the rising dawn * From the evil of aught that He has created, * And from the evil of the black darkness whenever it descends, * And from the evil of blowers on knots, * And from the evil of the envious when he envies.48

 

Commanding God’s Messenger (PBUH) and his community to “Protect yourselves from the evil beings and satans among jinn and men who strive in the universe on account of the worlds of non-being,” this mighty, wondrous verse looks to all ages, and through its allusive meaning looks to a greater degree to our strange age, even explicitly, and calls on the Qur’an’s servants to seek refuge with God. This miraculous prediction about the Unseen will be explained briefly in five signs, as follows:

 

All the verses of this sura have numerous meanings. Only in respect of its allusive meaning, its repeating the word “evil” four times in five sentences; and with a powerful relation and in four ways its pointing the finger with the same date to the four unparalleled, ghastly, stormy evils, material and immaterial, of this age, with its revolutions and clashes, and its implicitly giving the command: “withdraw from these;” is certainly guidance from the Unseen in a way befitting the Qur’an’s miraculousness.

 

For example, the sentence Say: I seek refuge with the Sustainer of the dawn ‘coincides’ with the date 1352 or 1354 according to abjad and jafr reckoning, alluding to the Second World War, which was brewing up then erupted due to the prevalent ambition and greed of mankind and the First War, and in effect saying to the community of Muhammad (PBUH): “Do not enter this war, but seek refuge with your Sustainer.” With another of its allusive meanings, as a special favour to the Risale-i Nur students, who are servants of the Qur’an, it hints to them that they were to be saved around the same date from Eskishehir Prison and an awesome evil, and that the plans to eliminate them would come to nothing. It was as though commanding them symbolically to seek refuge with God.

 

And for example, the sentence From the evil of aught that He has created makes 1361 —the doubled ra is not counted— and points the finger through both the Rumi and Hijri dates at the cruel, tyrannical destruction of this unmatched war. ‘Coinciding’ too with the Risale-i Nur students, who work with all their strength to serve the Qur’an, being delivered from an extensive plan to eliminate them and from a grievous calamity and Denizli Prison, it looks with an allusive meaning to them too. With a concealed sign it says: “Protect yourselves from the evil of creatures.”

 

And for example, making 1328 if the doubled letters are not counted and 1358 if the doubled lam is counted, the sentence the blowers on knots ‘coincides’ with the dates when due their ambition and greed the Europeans tyrants who caused the two World Wars, instigated a change of Sultan and the Balkan and Italian Wars with the idea of spoiling the consequences of the Constitutional Revolution, which favoured the Qur’an; then with the outbreak of the First World War, through the political diplomats blowing their evils, material and immaterial and their sorcery and poison into everyone’s heads through the tongue of the radio and their inculcating their covert plans into the heart of human destiny, they prepared the evils that would savagely destroy a thousand years of the progress of civilization, which corresponds exactly with the meaning of the blowers on knots.

 

And for example, the sentence And from the evil of the envious when he envies makes 1347 —the doubled ra and tanwin are not counted— and coincides exactly, and corresponds in meaning, with the significant upheavals which occurred in this country due to the enforced European treaties, and the changes that took place in this religious nation due to the oppression of philosophy, and the awesome envy, rivalry and clashes in various countries which paved the way for the Second World War. These are surely flashes of this sacred sura’s miraculous predictions concerning the Unseen.

 

A Reminder

 

All Qur’anic verses have numerous meanings. And all the meanings are universal; they have significations in every century. Those discussed here are only its level of allusive meaning which looks to our century. Within that universal meaning our age is one signification. But it has gained particularity, and looks to it and its date. Since these last four years I have known neither the stages of the war, nor its results, nor whether or not peace has been declared, and I have not asked, I have not knocked on the door of this sacred sura to learn how many allusions it contains to this century and its wars. It has however been proved and explained in various parts of the Risale-i Nur, and especially in Rumûzât-i Semaniye (The Eight Symbols), that this treasury contains many more mysteries, so referring readers to those, I am cutting this short.

 

The answer to a question that might occur to one

 

In this flash of miraculousness, in the From the evil of aught that He has created at the beginning, both the from (min) and the evil (sharr) being counted, and in and from the evil of the envious when he envies at the end, only the word evil (sharr) being counted, and and from (wa min) not being counted, and in neither of these words being counted in and from the evil of the blowers on knots (wa min sharr al-naffathat fi’l-‘uqad) is a sign indicating an extremely subtle relationship. For there is good as well as evil in people (khalq), and not all evil is visited on everyone. Alluding to this, from (min) and evil (sharr), which are partitive, are counted. But the envier is altogether evil when he envies, so there is no need for the partitive. And according to the allusion of the blowers on knots, there is no need for the word evil to be counted here, for all the works of those casters of spells and sorcerer diplomats who have set the globe ablaze for their own benefits are pure evil.

 

An addendum to a point about the miraculousness of this sura

 

Just as with four of its five sentences, this sura looks with its allusive meaning to the four largest evil revolutions and storms this century; so, with its allusive meaning and according to jafr reckoning, by its repeating four times the phrase from the evil of (min sharri) —the doubling is not counted, it looks to and points the finger at the century of the dissension of Jenghiz Khan and Hulagu and the time of the fall of the ‘Abbasid dynasty, which was the most fearsome calamity experienced by the Islamic world.

 

Yes, without doubling, the evil (sharri) makes 500, and from (min) is 90. Numerous verses which look to the future, as well as Imam ‘Ali (May God be pleased with him) and Ghawth al-A‘zam (May his mystery be sanctified), who alluded to both our century and those times in their predictions of the future, saw both our century and that century and made predictions in exactly the same way. With ghasiq making 1161 and idha waqab making 810, the words (ghasiq idha waqab) look not to these times, but to the significant material and immaterial evils of those times. If they are counted together, they make 1971, and give news of some ghastly evil at that date. If the crops of the seeds of the present are not rectified, the blows will certainly be terrible.

 

 

A Supplement

 

to the Addendum of the Eleventh Topic

 

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

 

The verse, Let there be no compulsion (in religion; Truth stands out) from error,49 which is the complement of the Throne Verse, makes 1350; whoever rejects evil makes 1929 or 1928; and believes in God has grasped makes 946, corresponding to the name ‘Risaletü’n-Nur;’ the most trustworthy handhold makes 1347; that never breaks, and God is All-Seeing, All-Knowing * (God) (is the Protector of those who have faith) if counted together makes 1012, and if not counted together 945, with one doubling not being counted; from (the depths of darkness) He will lead them forth into the light makes 1372, without doubling; while those who do not believe, their patrons are (the evil ones) makes 1417; from the light (they will lead them forth into) the depths of darkness makes 1338, the doubling is not counted; they will be the companions of the Fire, to dwell therein for ever makes 1295, the doubling is counted.

 

It was imparted to me that with their allusive meanings, these verses ‘coincide’ exactly and twice with both the name of the Risaletü’n-Nur and the form of its striving; and with the date the people of unbelief were attempting to extinguish the light of the World of Islam with the war of 1293 (1876-77); and with the date the terrible treaties were signed in 1338 taking advantage of the First World War and in order to cast it into darkness in fact. It was imparted to me too that light and darkness are repeatedly contrasted in these verses, and in this immaterial struggle a Light proceeding from the Qur’an’s light would become a point of support for the people of belief. I was compelled to set this down in writing. Then I saw that the relationship of its meaning with this century was so powerful that even had there been no sign through the ‘coincidences,’ I would still have been certain that these verses were speaking with us through their allusive meanings, just as they look to all centuries.

 

Yes, firstly, the sentence at the beginning, Let there be no compulsion (in religion; Truth stands out) from error points through abjad and jafr reckoning to the date 1350 [if Rumi, 1934, or if Hijri, 1931-2], and through its allusive meaning, says: By the matters of religion being separated from those of this world on that date, freedom of conscience, which is opposed to force and compulsion in religion, and to religious struggle and armed jihad for religion, was accepted as a fundamental rule and political principle by governments, and this State became a ‘secular republic.’ In view of this, jihad will be a non-physical religious jihad with the sword of certain, verified belief. Because it shows a flash of miraculousness indicating that a light will emerge from the Qur’an which will make known and set forth clearly proofs so powerful they will demonstrate almost visibly the guidance and truths of religion.

 

Furthermore, as far as the word khalidun —to dwell therein for ever, by repeating the contrast between light and darkness, and belief and darkness —the source and origin of all the comparisons in the Risale-i Nur and just like them— is a concealed sign that a great hero in the contest of the ‘mânevî jihad’ at that date is the Risale-i Nur, which bears the name of light. For its immaterial sword has solved hundreds of the mysteries of religion, leaving no need for physical swords.

 

Yes, countless thanks be to God, for twenty years the Risale-i Nur has demonstrated this prediction and flash of miraculousness in fact. It is due to this mighty mystery that Risale-i Nur students do not interfere in the politics and political currents of the world and their material struggles, nor attach importance to them, nor condescend to any involvement with them. Its true students say to their most fearsome enemies in the face of their insults and aggression:

 

“You wretch! I am trying to save you from eternal annihilation and to raise you from the basest and most grievous level of ephemeral animality to the happiness of immortal humanity, while you are working for my death and execution. Your pleasures in this world are very few and fleeting and the penalties and torments you will suffer in the hereafter will be very great and very longlasting. For me, death will be a discharge from duties. Go away! I am not going to bother with you, do whatever you like!” They feel not anger at their enemies, but pity and compassion. They try to reform them, in the hope they shall be saved.

 

Secondly: And believes in God has grasped has grasped the most trustworthy handhold. These two sacred sentences have a powerful relationship, and according to abjad and jafr reckoning the first corresponds exactly with the name Risaletü’n-Nur, and the second corresponds in meaning, and according to jafr reckoning with its being realized and perfected and its brilliant conquests. These correspondences are an indication that this century at this date, the Risaletü’n-Nur is a most trustworthy handhold. That is, it is an unbreakable chain of great strength and a “rope of God (hablullah).” They inform through their allusive meanings that those who lay hold of it and cling onto it will be saved.

 

Thirdly: Both in meaning and according to jafr reckoning, the sentence God is the Protector of those who have faith makes an allusion to the Risaletü’n-Nur, as follows....

 

(The curtain descended here and permission was not given to write it. It has been postponed to another time.)

 

 

 

NOTE

 

The reason permission was not given to write the remainder of this point for now is that it touches to an extent on politics and this world, and we are prohibited from considering these. Yes, the verse, Man is indeed overweening50 looks to this ‘taghut’ and draws attention to it...

 

S a i d N u r s i

 

* * *

 

 

 

Part of a letter from Husrev, the hero of the Risale-i Nur,

 

in connection with the Eleventh Topic of the Fruits of Belief

 

In His Name, be He glorified!

 

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise.

 

May the peace and mercy and blessings of God be upon you!

 

My Beloved and Esteemed Master!

 

With the great good it contains for this nation and country, with its Ninth Topic The Fruits of Belief was not only the means of salvation of its students while in the midst of their greatest enemies and the awesomely rebellious, but also with its Tenth and Eleventh Topics, it applauded the Risale-i Nur students in particular on the ways of reality. Moreover, concerning the circumstances of the grave, which we are certain to enter, by making familiar that place under the earth, which makes everyone tremble and is a source of terror for the heedless in particular, where we will meet and speak with the angels; it made us happy at their companionship, and dispelled our terrible fears about that first stopping-place, letting us breathe freely. In the hands of those like me who have not seen that luminous life, it resembles an electric lamp whose rays penetrate hundreds of thousands of years. It also resembles a model flower-garden, the scents of which are ever a source of delight.

 

Yes, I suggest to our beloved Master that like students who everyday recite their lessons to their teacher, we should always describe to our beloved Master the effulgence we receive from the Risale-i Nur. But for now our beloved Master is refraining from speaking.

 

My Dear Master! The reality of the Risale-i Nur, the beauty of the Fruits, and effulgence of its flowers have driven me to utter a few words, gratefully, in the name of my country, and have breathed life into many hearts which speak like mine. But now, due to the “flower” of the Eleventh Fruit of Belief, the steps taken against the Risale-i Nur in our area and the hands raised against it, have become harsher and stronger, and have been stirred into action.

 

Your humble student,

 

H u s r e v

 

 

 

A letter written in the name of all the Risale-i Nur students in Isparta to offer congratulations for Ramadan, which has been amended in thirteen sections

 

In His Name, be He glorified!

 

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise.

 

Our revered Master, who through the effulgence of the Qur’an and truths of the Risale-i Nur and aspirations of his loyal students weeps tears of blood for the well-being of the Islamic world in this world and the next...

 

Who in these stormy days of the end of time is beset with more woes and ills than Job (Peace be upon him), and through the light of the Qur’an, the proofs of the Risale-i Nur and efforts of his students works to cure the ills of the Islamic world like Luqman the Wise, and has proved with thirty-three verses of the Qur’an and the wondrous predictions of Imam ‘Ali and the Ghawth al-A‘zam that the Risale-i Nur with its different parts is truth and reality...

 

Who although he is himself ill and elderly and weak and in a piteous condition, more than anyone sacrifices his life for the World of Islam and responds to those wrong him with the truths of the Qur’an and proofs of the Risale-i Nur, and through the loyalty of the Risale-i Nur students, with prayers and good works...

 

Who together with his students was sent to prison because one of his important works, The Supreme Sign, was printed, and through the guidance of the Qur’an and teachings of the Risale-i Nur and enthusiasm of his students turned the prison in a ‘School of Joseph’ and place of learning, and was the cause of all the ignorant among us there learning to read the whole Qur’an, and despite being elderly and weak, through the sacred strength of the Qur’an and solace of the Risale-i Nur and endurance of his brothers, took on himself the loads of all of us, and through the Fruits of Belief and Defence Speeches which he wrote, the miraculousness of the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition, and the powerful proofs of the Risale-i Nur, and sincerity of his students, with Divine permission had the prison door opened and won our acquittals, and made that day a festival for us and for the Islamic world, and proving that in truth the Risale-i Nur is “Light upon light,” won the right for it to be read and written out freely till the end of time...

 

Who has proved with the sacred sustenance of the Qur’an of Mighty Stature and other-worldly food of the Risale-i Nur and appetite of its students, that the World of Islam has need for the Risale-i Nur as it does for water and air, and that thousands of those who have read these treatises and written them out have entered the grave in a state of belief, and has never defeated or embarrassed the students who follow him, and through the heavenly teachings of the Qur’an, the principles of the Risale-i Nur, the intelligence of its students, and the Tenth and Eleventh Topics of the Fruits of Belief and its flowers quenches the fires of separation that night and day sear our hearts, like the water of life and wine of Kawthar, filling them with joy and happiness...

 

Who, in accordance with the certain promises and threats of the Qur’an of Mighty Stature and the certain discoveries of the Risale-i Nur and the observations of its late students and those among them who divine the happenings of the grave, has for the believers saved death —the thing most feared by all the world— from being eternal annihilation and transformed it into a discharge from duties and shown that for the unbelievers and dissemblers it is eternal annihilation; has proved in accordance with the certain news of the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition, confirmed both by the thousand miracles of Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) and its forty aspects of miraculousness, and endorsed by the proofs of the Risale-i Nur —which proceeds from the Qur’an— which have defeated even its most obdurate enemies and are submitted to by the Risale-i Nur students, and are corroborated too by many signs, experiences, and convictions, that the terrifying, cold, dark and narrow grave is for the believers a pit of Paradise and a door onto the gardens of Paradise, while for the disbelievers and dissembling atheists is a pit of Hell full of snakes and scorpions; and has made the angels called Munkar and Nakir, who will enter there, familiar companions for the people of truth and those who have taken the way of reality; and included the Risale-i Nur students among ‘students of the religious sciences,’ and discovered on the death of the late heroic martyr Hafiz Ali that they reply to the questions of Munkar and Nakir with the Risale-i Nur, and who beseeches Divine mercy that those of us who are still living will also reply with the Risale-i Nur...

 

Who, through demonstrating an aspect of miraculousness pertaining to each of the forty levels of the Qur’an of Mighty Stature, and through it being the pre-eternal Word of God, and through the works The Miraculousness of the Qur’an and The Eight Symbols from the Risale-i Nur, and the extraordinary efforts of the heroic brothers and students of the Risale-i Nur like the chief writer of the ‘Rose Factory,’ and through Husrev, one of the heroic scribes of the Risale-i Nur being commanded to “write!”, although no one since the time of the Prophet (PBUH) had been able to write it in such miraculous fashion, its being written like the Qur’an inscribed on the Preserved Tablet, — has proved in beautiful and brilliant fashion, never before seen or heard, that the Qur’an of Mighty Stature is the true Word of God, and the greatest of all the revealed books, and that there are thousands of Sura al-Fatiha’s within one Sura al-Fatiha, and thousands of Sura al-Ikhlas’s within one Sura al-Ikhlas, and that its letters yield ten, a hundred, a thousand, and thousands of merits and good deeds...

 

Who has proved, through the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition demonstrating its miraculousness for one thousand three hundred years and halting those who oppose it, and through the proofs of the Risale-i Nur that are so clear as to be almost visible, and through the diamond pens of the Risale-i Nur students, that the Twenty-Fifth Word and its Addenda, which have challenged the world and silenced even the most obdurate, are miracles of the Qur’an in forty aspects...

 

Who has proved in the treatise from the Risale-i Nur called The Miracles of Muhammad (PBUH) thousands of miracles showing that Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) was a true Messenger, the lord of all the twenty-four thousand prophets, and the most virtuous of them, and through the Qur’an of Mighty Stature proclaiming to the universe that God’s Noble Messenger (PBUH) was sent as a Mercy to All the Worlds, and the Risale-i Nur demonstrating from beginning to end that he was a Mercy to All the Worlds, and showing even to the blind that the Messenger’s deeds and conduct are the finest and best example to be followed in the world, and through the testimony of calamities being lifted when the Risale-i Nur is disseminated in Anatolia and other countries, and disasters occurring when it is silenced, and through the firm and steadfast attachment to their work of the Risale-i Nur students despite the extremely difficult circumstances, has shown how profitable it is to follow the practices of that Being (PBUH) and that to follow a single of his practices at this time gains the reward of a hundred martyrs, and has proved absolutely certainly that for twenty years the Risale-i Nur has repulsed the calamities and disasters that would otherwise have been visited on Anatolia, the same as alms-giving repels disaster!

 

Now, since the Risale-i Nur’s acquittal has filled with joy foremost our beloved Master, then us impotent, faulty students, then the Islamic world, and occasioned a second festival, we congratulate you on this great festival of yours, and offering our congratulations for Ramadan and the Night of Power, the third festival, we beseech Almighty God we shall see many more, and imploring forgiveness for our faults and the faulty among us, we send the greetings of all here and kiss your blessed hands, and beseech your prayers, o our Master!

 

The Risale-i Nur students

 

in Isparta and its environs

 

* * *

 

 

 

To modestly reject this letter, which is a hundred times greater than my due, would be ingratitude and an insult to the favourable opinions of all the students, while to accept it exactly as it is would tell of pride, egotism, and conceit. Therefore, adding thirteen sections, I am sending you a copy of this long letter written by the Risale-i Nur’s scribe in everyone’s name, both by way of thanks and to be saved from pride and ingratitude. It may be added at the end of the Eleventh Topic with the title: ‘A letter from the Risale-i Nur students of Isparta and its environs.’ Although I have amended the letter in this way, twice a pigeon alighted at my window. It was going to enter, but saw Ceylan’s head and did not. Several minutes later, another alighted in exactly the same way. It too saw the scribe’s head and did not come inside. I said: “Most probably these are bearers of good news like the sparrow and ‘kuddüs’ bird before. Or because we have written this letter like numerous other secret letters, they came to congratulate us on amending the auspicious letter in this way.”

 

S a i d N u r s i

 

 

 

FOOTNOTES

 

1. Qur’an, 12:42.

 

2. Mishkat al-Masabih, iii, 122. See also, Zad al-Ma’ad (tahqiq: al-Arna’ut), i, 43-4.

 

3. One of those investigative scholars is the Risale-i Nur, which for twenty years has been silencing the most obstinate philosophers and obdurate atheists. Its various parts are available; everyone may read them, and no one can object to them.

 

4. For ‘certain, verified belief’ (iman-i tahkikî), see, page 488 footnote 71, and page 568 footnote 1. [Tr.]

 

5. This refers to 1946.

 

6. Qur’an, 6:1.

 

7. Qur’an, 13:16.

 

8. Qur’an, 2:32.

 

9. Qur’an, 16:77.

 

10. Qur’an, 31:28.

 

11. Qur’an, 30:50.

 

12. It is as though Doomsday has occurred in all past springs and they have died, while the following springs have been their resurrections.

 

13. Qur’an, 30:25.

 

14. Qur’an, 81:10.

 

15. Qur’an, 57:3.

 

16. Qur’an, 43:71.

 

17. Qur’an, 4:48, 116.

 

18. Qur’an, 93:8, etc.

 

19. Qur’an, 3:191.

 

20. Qur’an, 25:65-6.

 

21. Qur’an, 22:11.

 

22. Qur’an, 31:28.

 

23. Qur’an, 2:32.

 

24. Qur’an, 2:285.

 

25. As the Tenth Topic of the Fruits of Denizli Prison, it is a small, shining flower of Emirdag and of this month of Ramadan. By explaining one instance of wisdom in the repetitions in the Qur’an, it dispels the poisonous, putrid illusions of the people of misguidance.

 

26. Qur’an, 26:9, etc.

 

27. Qur’an, 55:13, etc.

 

28. Qur’an, 77:15, etc.

 

29. Qur’an, 2:20.

 

30. Qur’an, 29:62.

 

31. Qur’an, 30:27.

 

32. Qur’an, 30:5.

 

33. Qur’an, 57:4-6.

 

34. Qur’an, 12:76.

 

35. Qur’an, 5:85, etc.

 

36. Qur’an, 14:22.

 

37. Qur’an, 35:36.

 

38. Qur’an, 67:7-8.

 

39. Qur’an, 2:32.

 

40. Husrev Altinbasak (1899-1977). One of Bediuzzaman’s leading students, who wrote out numerous copies of the Risale-i Nur with his exceptionally fine handwriting. He also wrote copies of the Qur’an showing the ‘coincidences’ (tawafuqat) of the word ‘Allah’, an aspect of its miraculousness which Bediuzzaman ‘discovered.’ He was together with Bediuzzaman in the prisons of Eskishehir, Denizli, and Afyon. [Tr.]

 

41. Musnad, v, 173; al-Tirmidhi, Zuhd, 9; Ibn Maja, Zuhd, 19.

 

42. al-Tirmidhi, Jana’iz, 70; Abu Da’ud (in meaning), ii, 540, 541; Ibn Maja, Jana’iz, 65; Musnad, iii, 126; iv, 288.

 

43. Qur’an, 4:79.

 

44. Qur’an, 24:35.

 

45. This refers to the non-intentional alignment in patterns (tawafuq) of alifs (the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, written as a vertical stroke) in handwritten copies of the Twenty-Ninth Word. [Tr.]

 

46. Suyuti, al-Durr al-Manthur, i, 329.

 

47. Qur’an, 21:26-7.

 

48. Qur’an, 113:1-5.

 

49. Qur’an, 2:265-7.

 

50. Qur’an, 96:6.