Look upon the signs and imprints of God’s Mercy, how He revives Earth after its death. Surely He it is Who will revive the dead [in the same way], and He is powerful over all things. (30: 50)

This verse contains nine convincing arguments for the Resurrection. The first, concerning life and will be expounded upon below, is very clear and pointed to in:

Glory be to God, when you enter evening and when you enter morning. All praise is to Him in the heavens and on Earth and at nightfall and when you enter noon. He brings forth the living from the dead and the dead from the living, and revives Earth after its death. So you will be brought forth. (30:17‑19)

Life has a connection with the six articles of faith and establishes them by a series of indications of their truth. Life is the most important consequence of, and the most substantial reason for, the universe’s creation. Life, that noble reality, cannot be restricted to this fleeting, transient, defective, and painful world. Rather, the tree of life’s fruit, the purpose and result worthy of being such a fruit, is the Hereafter’s eternal life—life in the realm where even stones, trees, and soil will be animate. If this were not so, the tree of life, so abundantly adorned with significant means, could yield no fruit, benefit, or truth worthy of animate beings, and especially not for us. Humanity, the most important and elevated creature as regards happiness in the worldly life, would fall below a sparrow, even though the sparrow is far inferior in substance and faculties, and become the least fortunate and most humiliated of all poor creatures.

Similarly intelligence, our most precious possession, would wound our hearts by constantly reflecting upon past hardships and future fears. It would mix one part of pleasure with nine parts of hardship and grief, and so become a means of disaster to human life. As this cannot be, life here is a decisive argument for belief in the Hereafter. It parades before our eyes each spring in the form of countless specimens being revived (an image of the Resurrection).

Could an All‑Powerful Agent Who promptly supplies and provides, with wisdom, care and mercy, everything needed by your life, body, garden, and homeland; Who hears and answers even your stomach’s private, particular petition for sustenance by providing so many delicious foods—is it conceivable that such a Being should be unaware of you or deaf to you, that He should not provide you with the means of eternal life, the highest purpose of being human?

How could He not establish eternal life and create Paradise in response to our greatest, most significant, worthy and universal prayer for eternity? How could He not hear and grant our universal and insistent prayer, given that we are His most important creature and vicegerent, a prayer that resounds throughout the heavens and Earth, while He does so for our stomachs? Could He cause His perfect Wisdom and infinite Mercy to be denied?

He hears the tiniest being’s innermost voice, cures its injury, and relieves its complaint. He nourishes it with the utmost care and consideration, and causes other creatures to serve it. Given this, how could He not hear the thunderous cry of the greatest, most valued and subtle form of life, or ignore its powerful prayer and plea for eternity? Doing so would be like lavishly equipping one soldier and neglecting a large obedient army, like seeing a speck and overlooking the sun, like hearing a whirring fly and not the roaring thunder.

The All‑Powerful and All‑Wise Being has infinite Mercy, Love, and Caring. He loves His own artistry, causes Himself to be loved, and greatly loves those who love Him. Could such a Being use permanent death and non‑existence to annihilate the spirit (life’s essence and core) that greatly loves Him, is itself lovable, and that by its nature worships Him as its Maker? Would He offend and rebuff it forever or injure its sentiments, thereby denying and causing others to deny His Mercy’s meaning and His Love’s light? An absolute Beauty that makes creation beautiful by showing itself, and an absolute Mercy that enables all creatures to rejoice, are exalted and far above such immeasurable ugliness and lack of pity.

In sum, people who understand life’s purpose and so do not waste their lives will become reflective displays of eternal Paradise. All transparent objects on Earth’s surface, such as brilliant bubbles catching and then reflecting flashes of the sun’s light, hold up mirrors to it and contain its image. Such images show that each flash of light is the reflected manifestation of the one, supreme sun. With their many and diverse tongues, they mention the sun and point toward it with their “fingers” of light.

In a like manner, through the supreme manifestation of the Name “Giver of Life” of the Ever‑Living and Self‑Subsistent Being, all animate beings here shine back life through God’s Power. They then disappear behind the veil of the Unseen (die), demonstrating the Ever‑Living One’s ever‑living quality. They die to make room for new arrivals, who stream here in a continual series of testimonies to and indications of the Ever‑Living and Self‑Subsistent Being’s Life and Necessary Existence.

Similarly, all arguments attesting to Divine Knowledge, traces of which are visible in the ordering of all beings; all evidence establishing the existence of a Power controlling the universe; all proofs pointing to a Will directing universe’s arrangement and administering; all signs and miracles attesting to the Prophets’ Messengership, the means by which He addresses His creation and reveals His commands; and the indications bearing witness to Divinity’s[1] seven Attributes—all of these point and testify to the Ever‑Living and Self‑Subsistent Being’s life. If a creature can see, it must have life; if it can hear, it must be able to speak.

Similarly, such Attributes whose existence is established and self‑evident by their traces throughout the universe (e.g., Absolute Power, All‑Embracing Will, and Comprehensive Knowledge) bear witness, together with all their proofs, to the Ever‑Living and Self‑Subsistent Being’s Life and Necessary Existence. They testify to His everlasting Life, one shadow of which suffices to light the universe, one manifestation of which suffices to give life to the Hereafter and all its component particles.

His Attribute of Life is linked to belief in angels and argues for it indirectly. Life is the universe’s most important purpose. Animate beings make up the most diversely spread type of creation, and its kinds and species are multiplied on account of their worth. They continually enliven this world with their coming and going in caravans. Earth, stocked with so many living species, is continually emptied and restocked as diverse species are renewed, varied, and increased.

Even its vilest and most rotten substances give life to so many living things that they host swarms of microscopic organisms. Intelligence and consciousness (life’s distilled essence) and spirit (life’s subtle and stable substance) exist everywhere on Earth in the greatest multiplicity, as if this planet were teeming and bursting with the joy of life, intellect, consciousness, and spirit.

Given this, it seems impossible that the more subtle and lustrous heavenly bodies, all of which are far more significant in dimension than Earth, should be inanimate and entirely without life, movement, or voice. Thus there must be live and conscious beings enlivening the skies, suns, and stars. They must be giving the heavenly realm their vitality and so possessing them of the purpose for which the heavens were created, and receiving addresses from the Glorious One. These creatures are angels.

Similarly, life’s meaning and essential nature also establishes belief in the Prophets. The universe was created for the sake of life, and life is one of the supreme manifestations of the Living, Self‑Subsistent, and Eternal One, and one of His most perfect designs and most beautiful arts. God’s eternal life is declared by sending Messengers and revealed Books. Without these, His being eternal would remain unknown. Just as we are considered alive when we speak, the Being from behind the Unseen (veiled by the visible universe) speaks and sends out His commands and prohibitions via Prophets and revealed Books.

The presence of life in the universe testifies to the Living and Eternal One’s Necessary Existence, and indicates and indirectly confirms the sending of Messengers and the revelation of Scriptures, for both are rays and manifestations of that Eternal Life. In particular, Muhammad’s Prophethood and the Qur’anic revelation, both the very spirit and intellect of life, are established as irrefutably as life’s very existence.

Life is the extract distilled from the universe. Sentience (consciousness and feeling) is the extract distilled from life, intellect is the extract distilled from sentience, and spirit is life’s pure and unalloyed substance, its stable and independent essence. The physical and spiritual life of Prophet Muhammad is the purest extract, distilled from the universe’s life and meaning; His Messengership is the pure and distilled essence of the universe’s sentience, consciousness, and intellect. Indeed his life and accomplishments, in both their physical and immaterial, spiritual aspects, have proved themselves to be the true essence of the universe’s life, and his Messengership is the true light and essence of the universe’s consciousness. As its living and enlivening truths bear witness, the Qur’an is the spirit of the universe’s life and the intellect of its consciousness.

If his Messengership’s light disappeared from the universe, the latter would die. If the Qur’an were to forsake the universe, the universe would lose its sanity, and Earth would lose its reason. Dizzy and uncomprehending, it would collide with another planet and cause its own destruction.

Life also is linked to belief in Divine Destiny and establishes it indirectly. Life is the visible world’s light, pervading and dominating it. It is the result and goal of existence, the most inclusive mirror to the universe’s Creator, the most perfect sample and index of His activity as Lord, and a kind of program. The meaning of life requires that the Unseen world’s creatures, in the past and future, be disposed to conform to some order, regularity, and other rules or commands.

Some of these beings are visible, each in its individual form and character, such as the Almighty Creator has decreed for them to govern their lives. For example, a tree’s original seed and root, as well as seeds contained in its life’s outcome (fruit), each have the same degree of life as the entire tree. Indeed, they carry within themselves laws of life that are more subtle than those of the tree. The seeds and roots left last autumn for the present spring, as well as the seeds and roots that will be left to subsequent springs, all bear life’s visible imprint no less than the spring does, and are subject to its laws.

All branches and twigs of the cosmic tree likewise have a past and a future. They constitute a chain of past and future stages and circumstances. The multiple life stages of all species and all of their individual members, which exist in Divine Knowledge, form a chain of being in meaning or knowledge. Like the external (material) existence of things, their existence in knowledge or meaning also bears an aspect or manifestation of life. All the life stages of a living being, as well as whatever happens to it during its life, are the “materialized” duplication of its life in Divine Knowledge. What we call Destiny is, in one respect, a title of that Knowledge.

The World of Spirits, a kind of Unseen world, is full of spirits that constitute life’s essence and substances and thus requires that past and future (another kind of Unseen world or its second form), should receive its manifestation.[2] ·

In addition, the perfect orderliness and meaningfulness of an existent in God’s Knowledge, as well as all of its inherent events, circumstances, stages, and fruits, visibly demonstrate a sort of life. Being a light emitted by the “Sun” of Eternal Life, life cannot be limited to this world, the present, or to external existence. Rather, each world receives that light’s manifestation according to its capacity, and is alive and illumined through it. If this were not so, each world would be a vast and terrible corpse, a dark ruin beneath the visible crust of transient life. This is what the misguided think.

Thus one broad aspect of belief in Divine Destiny and Decree is understood through and established by life’s meaning. Just as the life and vitality of the material world and existent, visible objects becomes apparent from their orderliness and the consequences of their existence, past and future creatures (regarded as belonging to the Unseen) have an immaterial existence, an original and spiritual presence in God’s Knowledge. This is a sort of life. That life and presence attains visible form and is made known via the Tablet of Destiny and Decree, which contains all stages through which beings pass and all events happening to them during their material lives.

[1] God has three kinds of Attributes: the Essential Attributes of the “Essence,” Affirmative Attributes, and Negative Attributes. His Affirmative Attributes refer to the assertion of His absolute Unity; His Negative Attributes refer to the negation of limitation and compositeness. The Essential Attributes of the Essence are Existence, Having no beginning, Permanence, Dissimilarity to the Created and Self-Subsistence. The Affirmative Attributes, pointed to in the text above, are Life, Knowledge, Power, Will, Speech, Seeing, Hearing, and, according to some theologians, Creation. The Negative Attributes can be explained as follows: God cannot be described by any physical or anthropomorphic terms. He does not consist of body, color, and size. No person or thing can see Him, imagine, or conceive Him. He cannot be presented in the terms of substance or contingency of matter or form, localized in any part of space, confined to any part of time, or aligned and counted with any being. Nothing can be co-existent or co-extensive with Him. He never begets nor is begotten. And so on. (Tr.)

[2] The original word corresponding to what we translate as “the Unseen” or “the world of the Unseen” is ghayb: that which we cannot penetrate with our five senses, or is invisible and unknown to us until we somehow acquire knowledge of it. Like the World of Spirits that we cannot see, and the nature of which we cannot know through our senses, past and future are also unknown to us unless we somehow obtain knowledge of them. Past and future, being the two branches of time, is the “realm” where the World of the Absolutely Unseen manifests itself in the visible world, and may be regarded as its second form. (Tr.)