Ninth truth: The gate of God’s revival and causing death, the manifestation of the Names the Ever-Living and the Self-Subsistent, the One Who Revives and the One Who Causes To Die. God revives this vast Earth when it is dead and dry, thereby displaying His Power via quickening countless species of creation, each as extraordinary as humanity. He shows His all-embracing Knowledge in these creatures’ infinite variations within the complex intermingling of all their distinct forms. God turns His servants’ attention toward everlasting contentment, assuring them of resurrection in His heavenly decrees, and makes visible the splendor of His being their Lord and Nurturer. He causes all His creatures to collaborate with each other, turning within the orbit of His Command and Will, and to help each other in submission to Him.

He shows our value by creating us as the Tree of Creation’s most comprehensive, subtle, worthiest, and most valued, fruit; by addressing us directly; and by subjugating all things to us. Could One so Compassionate and Powerful, Wise and All-Knowing, not (or be unable to) bring about the resurrection, assemble His creatures, and restore us to life? Could He not institute His Supreme Court or create Heaven and Hell? Such ideas are inconceivable.

Indeed, the Almighty Disposer of this world’s affairs continually creates on its finite, transient surface numerous signs, examples, and indications of the Supreme Gathering and the Plain of Resurrection. Each spring we see countless animal and plant species assembled in a few days and then scattered. All tree and plant roots, as well as certain animals, are revived and restored exactly as they were. Other animals are re-created in nearly identical forms. Seeds that appear so alike quickly grow into distinct and differentiated entities, after being brought to full vigor with extraordinary rapidity and ease, in absolute orderliness and harmony. How could anything be difficult for the One Who does this? How could He create the heavens and Earth in 6 days and yet be unable to resurrect humanity with a single blast?

Suppose a gifted writer could copy out in an hour the confused, half-effaced letters of countless books on a sheet of paper without error or omission, fully and in the best style. If someone then told you that he could rewrite his own book from memory, even though it had fallen into water and become effaced, how could you say that he could not do so? Or think of a king who, to show his power or warn, removes mountains with a command, turns his kingdom about, and transforms the sea into dry land. Then imagine that a great boulder blocks the path of guests travelling to his reception. If someone says that the king will remove the boulder with a command, would you say that he could not do so? Or imagine someone assembles a great army, and you are told that he will recall it to parade in battalions by a trumpet blast after dismissing them to rest? If the battalions formed in disciplined rows, would you respond with disbelief? If you did, your error would be enormous.

Now, see how the Eternal Designer closes winter’s white page and opens spring’s and summer’s green pages before our eyes. With the Pen of Power and Destiny, He inscribes infinite species, none of which encroach upon another, on Earth’s surface in a most beautiful style. Each has a unique form and shape and is without confusion. The writing also has no error. Is it reasonable to ask the All-Wise and All-Preserving, Who compacts a great tree’s being into a dot-sized seed, how He will remove the boulder from the path of travelers coming to meet Him in the Hereafter?

Is it reasonable to ask the All-Glorious, Who inscribes fresh recruits from non-being into His battalions with Be! and it is, and with absolute orderliness arranges the ranks of all living things, down to their bodily atoms, and so creates highly disciplined armies—even to ask how He can make bodies submit to His discipline like obedient soldiers, how He can assemble their mutually related fundamental atoms and their members composed thereof?

Can you not see the numerous designs made by God as signs, similitudes, and analogies of resurrection? He has placed them in every era, the alternation of day and night, even in the coming and going of clouds. If you imagine yourself 1,000 years in the past and then compare past and future, you will see as many similitudes and analogies of resurrection as there are centuries and days past. If, after this, you still consider corporeal resurrection improbable and unacceptable to reason, there is something seriously wrong with your powers of reasoning.

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

Nothing makes the Resurrection impossible, and much necessitates it. The glorious and eternal Lordship, the all-mighty and all-embracing Sovereignty, of the One Who gives life and death to this wide and wonderful Earth as if it were a single organism; Who has made it as a pleasing cradle and handsome craft for humanity and animals; Who has made the sun a lamp that gives it both its light and heat; Who has made the planets transports for His angels—such a One’s Lordship and Sovereignty cannot be confined to a mutable, transitory, unstable, slight, and imperfect world.

Thus there is another realm, one worthy of Him, immutable, permanent, stable, great, and perfect. He causes us to work for this realm and summons us to it. Those who have penetrated from outward appearances to truth, who have been ennobled by proximity to the Divine Presence, all spiritual “poles” endowed with light-filled hearts, and those with enlightened minds, testify that He will transfer us to that other kingdom. They teach us that He has prepared a reward and a requital for us there, and that He gives us His firm promises and stern warnings thereof.

Breaking a promise is base humiliation and irreconcilable with His Sanctity’s glory. Failure to carry out a threat can arise only from forgiveness or impotence, and unbelief cannot be forgiven.[1]·The All-Powerful is exempt from and far above all impotence. All who bring us their testimony agree on this fundamental. In numbers, they have the authority of unanimity; in quality, the authority of learned consensus. In rank, each is a guiding light of humanity, the cherished one of a people and the object of their veneration. In importance, each is a subject expert and authority. In any art or science, two experts are preferred to thousands of nonexperts, and two positive affirmers are preferred to thousands of negators in a report’s transmission. For example, the testimony of two competent men that they have sighted the crescent moon marking the beginning of Ramadan nullifies the negation of thousands of deniers.

[1] Unbelief denounces creation, alleging it to be without worth or meaning. It insults creation by denying the manifestation of the Divine Names in the mirrors of created beings. It disrespects the Divine Names, rejects the witness borne to the Unity of God by all beings, and denies creation by so corrupting our potentialities that we cannot reform and become unreceptive to good. Unbelief is also an act of absolute injustice, a transgression against creation and the rights of God’s Names. The defense of those rights, and an unbeliever’s irredeemable state, require that unbelief be unpardonable. The words to associate partners with God is truly a great transgression (31:13) express this necessity.

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