The Gospel Herald -- Promoting the fundamentals of the 1888 message.

“Is our power exhausted by the first creation? Yea; they are in a perplexity, because of a new creation which is foretold them, namely the raising of the dead. We created man, and We know what his soul whispereth within him; and We are nearer unto him than his jugular vein.”

(The Qur’an, 50:15, 16)

Can We Know What Lies Beyond Death?

We know incomparably more about the mysteries of the human body, even the electrical energy of the human nervous system, than did our ancient ancestors. At the opposite side of the spectrum of human knowledge, we know much more about the planets, stars and galaxies in the far-flung universe than they knew. In between the mysteries of our own human bodies and the mysteries of space there is a tremendous field of scientific knowledge now open to our understanding.

There is one area, however, that all of man’s scientific discovery has not been able to penetrate: the mystery of death. Some people who have started to die have been rescued by medical science before their inner mental processes became completely defunct. They have told us of their feelings and “visions” while in this dying state, but no one who has actually died has ever returned to tell us what lies beyond.

Death is more remote than Saturn or Mars: a “barrier”, says the honoured Qur’an, beyond which we cannot conduct any valid experiments.1 Speculation or philosophy is at its best, only guess-work. Our human imaginings about what lies beyond death can in fact be harmful, because they can be inspired by the enemy, Iblis. Our only source of accurate knowledge about death is what Allah has revealed to us.

If we believe the truth, it will provide us with comfort, peace, and confidence for the future. If we disbelieve it, then like a foolish ship’s captain we have cut our moorings and will drift aimlessly in an ocean of suppositions with fear as our only pilot.

1. Allah loves each of his faithful ones personally and individually, so that it is he who wants them to be with him in eternity. It is he who wants his children to be resurrected from the dead, like parents who cannot bear to be separated from their child forever. Therefore, the resurrection from the dead will take place because “God is love.” We are the lost children who will be brought back again from the land of death, and the resurrection will be at his initiative.

The first man who seems to have understood this great truth was the patriarch Job (Ayyub). He did not know that it was Satan (Iblis) who had sent him all his terrible troubles; he thought it was Allah. He knew Allah to be kind and merciful, and he could not reason out why Allah had turned against him so bitterly. In Job chapter 14 the pathetic sufferer sees himself as a little boy who welcomes his usually loving father home from his day’s work, throwing himself into his father’s arms with delight. But instead of father being kind as he usually is, something strange has happened—father is drunk and angry. He flings his little “boy” Job cruelly aside, cursing and abusing him. Poor Job runs away to hide in a dark room until his father’s strange fit is over. Notice carefully what Job says. He has no Book such as a copy of the Qur’an or a Bible to read; he doesn’t know or understand what we do today; but he begins to see the resurrection from the dead as an expression of Allah’s love:

I wish you would hide me in the world of the dead; let me be hidden until your anger is over, and then set a time to remember me.

If a man dies, can he come back to life? But I will wait for better times, wait till this time of trouble is ended.

Then you will call, and I will answer, and you will be pleased with me.2

A little later Job says that Allah is his Friend and Saviour, who will resurrect him from the dead:

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been destroyed,

yet in my flesh I will see God,

I myself will see him

with my own eyes—I, and not another.

How my heart yearns within me!3

2. Death is a quiet, peaceful rest in sleep, awaiting the resurrection. When his friend Lazarus had died, Jesus (Issa) said of him, “‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.’ “ His disciples understood him to mean that Lazarus had not died, but that he had found relief from his fever by normal sleep. The Holy Injil continues:

Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”4

The great prophet Daniel teaches the same truth: “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.”5

The Holy Injil is consistent and clear:

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. …

We who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call. of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.6

The honoured Qur’an is clear that there is a “barrier” that prevents any contact between the living and the dead. The reason is that the dead are asleep and are therefore not conscious:

When death comes to one of them, he says, “My Lord, send me back, that I may do right in that which I have left behind.” But, no, it is but a word he speaks; and there behind them is a barrier until the day that they shall be raised up.7

When we go to sleep at night, we know nothing until we awaken the next morning and hear the birds singing again. So also with the believer who lies down in death. He may have died thousands of years ago, but his rest is to him but a moment, like the wink of an eye. Yet all the while he has been under the watch-care of his loving Allah, like a child asleep on its mother’s breast. The Qur’an says:

He will say, “How long have you tarried in the grave, counting by years?” They will say, “We have tarried but a day, or part of a day, ask of those who keep count.” He will say, “You have tarried but a little if you only knew.”8

The condition in death is no more painful than a restful sleep that intervenes before the resurrection:

Don’t put your trust in human leaders; no human being can save you. When they die, they return to the dust; on that day all their plans come to an end.9

A live dog is better off than a dead lion. Yes, the living know they are going to die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward; they are completely forgotten. Their loves, their hates, their passions, all died with them. They will never again take part in anything that happens in this world [until the resurrection, that is].

There will be no action, no thought, no knowledge, no wisdom in the world of the dead.10

3. This means, of course, that all attempts to communicate with the dead are in fact heathenism. No mortal has the ability to break through that “barrier” of death, or to awaken the dead out of their sleep. Allah has not given that power to anyone. Any witch, necromancer, or spiritist medium who claims a power that God has not given, is either telling us a lie or is under the control of Satan.

Some may say: “But the spirit mediums do communicate with the dead! They bring them back, and we see them, and actually hear their voices. We recognize them!” Allah has clearly and repeatedly forbidden his faithful people to have anything to do with spirit mediums or witches.11 King Saul of Israel was condemned to the last Judgment because his final act of rebellion against God was to consult a medium who deceived him into thinking she had brought Samuel “up” from the dead.12 Satan and his clever angels were once mighty and intelligent beings in heaven. They have the skill to counterfeit the appearance and even the voices of our dead loved ones. We all know of actors who can do this fairly well; surely Satan is much more clever than they are!

They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world.13

Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness.14

Like Abraham, none who choose to believe the Word of Allah will be deceived by these Satanic impostors; but it is sad to see that many are being deceived today because they do not want to know the truth. They sell their souls for a little human gain, snatching the bait of the tempter and getting caught like a fish on a hook. Thank God for the truth revealed in his holy Word! Accept it wholeheartedly and it will forever deliver you from fear.

Two ideas about the dead have contended against each other ever since sin began. The Bible says that Allah told Adam and his wife that they should not eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree, “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Satan said: “Ye shall not surely die.”15 Shall we believe Satan’s lie?

The other idea is the truth as revealed by Allah himself: man’s nature is mortal; our life is borrowed, derived, a gift from Allah. Our only hope, therefore, of eternal life, is in him.

The Word explains this very clearly:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.16

Thus the soul is composed of the union of the body plus the breath, or spark of life that comes only from God. A wooden box is composed of assembled boards and nails. A pile of boards on one side and nails on the other would not be a box. As soon as you pull out the nails, and separate the boards the box ceases to exist.

So with man: he was formed “a living soul.” When he dies, the “breath” leaves and the body goes back to dust again, to await the resurrection day when God shall re-create it.

The teaching of the natural immortality of the soul has been associated with idolatry and heathenism since earliest times.

4. The resurrection will take place at the last day. Jesus (Issa) promised to return, and said that the reason for his coming was to renew fellowship with those who are true believers:

Believe in God and believe also in me. … I am going to prepare a place for you. I would not tell you this if it were not so. And after I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to myself, so that you will be where I am.17

Those whom he promises to “take” to himself are both the living and the resurrected saints.

Neither the righteous nor the wicked go to their reward immediately at death. All go to sleep; and the reward will come at the resurrection when both believers and unbelievers will rise again. Let us read in the honoured Qur’an:

How do you disbelieve in God seeing you were dead and He gave you life, then He shall make you dead, then He shall give you life, then unto Him you shall be returned.18

And afterward, when He calls you, once and suddenly, out of the earth you will emerge.19

When we say good-bye to a loved one who is dying, we have a joyous hope and confidence in the promises of God. Listen to what the Holy Injil says:

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.20

And again we consult the honoured Qur’an:

And the trumpet shall be blown; then behold, from the graves they come unto their Lord crying, Woe unto us, who has roused us from our place of sleep?21

It will, however, not be “woe” for those who are roused from their sleep by the voice of God if they have gone to sleep in true faith: “All that are in the graves shall hear his voice.”22 It will be a voice full of music and happiness that awakes them. They will enjoy eternal fellowship with Allah and with his people from all ages, for he will create for them “a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.”23 This is Paradise.

5. Every human soul will meet God face to face in a final Judgment. Not one who died faithless is now suffering the torture of fire. Scripture teaches a truth that is clear and reasonable, that appeals to our sense of fairness on the part of Allah. All are resting in the “sleep” that we call death until the resurrection; then will come the Judgment. Even then, those who have chosen not to believe the good news of truth that God sends will not be unendingly tortured for eternal ages by a cruel and bloodthirsty God. Scripture teaches that “the wages of sin is death,”24 not an eternal life of torture. Note the sensible words of Christ:

As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. … Angels … will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.25

That “fiery furnace” will not burn on for ever and ever. It will consume them as “stubble” in the fire, and “shall leave them neither root not branch.”26 Allah, the kind and compassionate One, must punish sin, rebellion and unbelief; but he still delights in mercy. He is not a cruel sadist who enjoys seeing the creatures he created suffer endless agony. Those who have rebelled against him and rejected his forgiveness would not find any happiness in the heavenly Paradise he has prepared for his children. It would be torture for them to prolong their lives forever. We see therefore, that in mercy and kindness to them, he permits their unhappy lives to be cut off.

If by accident one incorrigible rebel found himself in Paradise, he would be unhappy there and would surely head for the nearest exit! The lost are not shut out of heaven by any harsh decree from Allah himself, but by their own unworthiness for the pure and holy companionship to be found there. Allah does not want any of us to dread death or the Day of Judgment as something that will be “against” us. The Holy Injil presents the “good news” of a God who is compassionate, loving, and always seeking the eternal good of all mankind:

The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome [margin] it. … The true light … gives light to every man.27

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light.28

In the quietness of this moment, you and I come to a fork in our road of life. We must make a choice to “love” either darkness or Light. Which of the two roads will you take?

My choice is to love the Light—may you choose to do so too!

Chapter 9: The Great War Behind All Wars: Satan’s Hatred Against Allah

Index: In Search of the Treasure of Faith

References:

  1. The Qur’an, 23.99, 100.
  2. Job 14:13-15, TEV.
  3. Job 19:25-27, NIV.
  4. John 11:11-15, NIV.
  5. Daniel 12:2, NIV.
  6. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-16, NIV.
  7. The Qur’an, 23:99, 100.
  8. The Qur’an, 23:112-114.
  9. Psalm 146:3, 4, TEV.
  10. Ecclesiastes 9:4, 5, 10, TEV.
  11. See Isaiah 8:19; Leviticus 19:31; 20:26; Exodus 22:18; Deuteronomy 18:10-12; 32:17.
  12. 1 Samuel 28:8, 7-14; 1 Chronicles 10:13, 14.
  13. Revelation 16:14, NIV.
  14. 2 Corinthians 11:14, 15, NIV.
  15. Genesis 2:17; 3:4.
  16. Genesis 2:7.
  17. John 14:1-3, TEV.
  18. The Qur’an, 2:28.
  19. The Qur’an 30:25.
  20. 1 Corinthians 15:51-53, NIV.
  21. The Qur’an 36:51, 52.
  22. John 5:28.
  23. 2 Peter 3:13, NIV. See Revelation 21, 22.
  24. Romans 6:23.
  25. Matthew 13:40-42, NIV.
  26. Malachi 4:1.
  27. John 1:5, 9, NIV.
  28. John 3:19, NIV.