Section Al A’raf – Part 17

part 17

7:37 “Who does more wrong than those who fabricate lies against God or deny His signs?  They will receive what is destined for them, until Our messenger-angels arrive to take their souls, asking them, where are those you used to invoke besides God?  They will say, they have failed us, and they will confess against themselves that they were indeed disbelievers.”

What does wrong refer to?  It refers to attributing the power to give existence to things around us in the universe.

What does denying His signs refer to?  It refers to those people who do not acknowledge that every piece of the world reflects the Qualities of its Maker but claim that they are naturally developed, and mock at the idea that the universe must have a Source of Existence.

What does “receive what is destined for us” mean?  

When Adam receives revelation from His Lord, as soon as he learns it, he feels sorry about his ignorant activities, he repents and turns back to God.  As a result, he finds that God is the acceptor and receiver of repentance.  Similarly, when we realize our shortcomings, we are receiving our messages.

All scholars agree that Adam was the first Prophet, the name is not our concern.We should ask ourselves: Do you believe in Prophethood, in other words, do you need the Prophets in your lives?  This is the belief side of what we study from the Quran.

What does it mean for Adam to be the first Prophet to be listed in the Quran?  Who did he spread the message to?  What we notice here is that Adam was the Prophet to himself, i.e., the revelation of God starts from oneself, for every being. Then, the sequence of the revelations to other Prophets continues.  Finally, the maturation takes place, and the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is the Prophet of the whole mankind.  That is the gradual process of the revelation, starting from an individual and then addressing a whole mankind.  This is the best example for us to understand that if we assimilate the message of the revelation, we must start with ourselves, then as we see in Noah’s case (PBUH), we must expand it to families and the community.  As a result, that is when the Quran comes to the level of understanding of all human beings.

We are given the revelation for ourselves to get guidance for all of humanity.  Hence, we must be cautious that when we quote from the Quran, we must know that it is a universal message, speaking to all humanity.  The Quran addresses everyone.  We must spread the message to all humanity regardless of their race, education level, including people who do not believe in anything.  That is why the verse considers fabricating lies against God, who is the Creator of the universe to be an offense committed against the rights of all human beings.  

The Quran introduces this God as “Rabbul-alameen,” the Creator of the whole universe, including your human senses, feelings and creation.  Whoever has given existence to your senses, and everything that we see in the universe, for example, the sun, the trees and the stars, they all need to be given existence which cannot have any quality to create, is the Creator of everything in the universe.  Also, they cannot go beyond the limitations of the universe, they are subject to the order of the universe, the way the universe is brought into existence.

Example: We may say that the sun is the reason for life to exist.  What a shallow understanding, such as if there was no sun, there would be no life?!  That does not mean that the sun is the inventor or originator of life.  Does the sun have the quality to produce life or is it subject to the order that it is set in?  This simple understanding is transgressing the right of the Creator of life.  The sun has no free will so it cannot rise and set as it wants.  The sun cannot be the producer of anything because it has no free will:  “Matter has no quality to produce anything, it is the slave of the plan of the universe, therefore, of the One who created the whole universe. This plan is nothing but how the universe is created.”  

– That is why the most severe transgression is the transgression of the rights of the Creator of the universe.

Every day a new universe is coming into existence.  Who is changing it in a perfect order?  Every human feeling is a sign, every miracle is a sign of the existence of the Creator of the universe.  Ordinary is in our eyes, because I get used to creation.  Just as every morning, I get used to the sun rising and the Earth revolving.  It becomes normal.  When I see that something does not happen in an ordinary way, only, then, I say that this is extraordinary. 

Everything at every moment is extraordinary.  We ask, we question, we inquire about everything in our lives, such as what I will do tomorrow, get things ready, prepare myself for work/school…, however, when it comes to religion, we sit in the worship space for less than an hour, and think we are done.  Why is that!?  We must question our existence; we must plan our lives to live with the awareness of our Lord.  The reality is that the whole universe is a worship space (mosque) and every moment and opportunity is a means for living in the presence of the Source of our existence and eternal happiness.  Example: When your eyes stare at  a bug, they are mosques as you have to see the qualities of its Creator, you must prostrate and submit that this bug or tree does not belong to nature, but everything needs to be given existence by a One who has Absolute qualities.  Thus, submitting that this bug belongs to an Absolute Creator is fulfilling the purpose of your existence, i.e., worship.

Whatever exists is the work of God, cannot be any other way, they need to be given existence.  God’s work is holy, with this understanding, everything is holy.

What does transgression mean?

If you deny the signs of the Creator of the universe, your existence, then you are transgressing the rights of the One who sends the universe.  Back in the days, people used to kill each other for tribal honor, now after the Quranic guidance, we kill the rights of creation for nature’s honor.  We must be mindful that things are created for a purpose, to honor the right of the Creator of the universe.

Belief needs to be practiced alongside with the universe, some events are in a social mosque, and others are in one’s personal mosque.  Human capacity is the same for everyone, limitless.  We must work on ourselves to practice belief and increase our human capacity to recognize the signs in creation pointing to the Source of existence of the universe.

We are not physical entities, and the universe is not a lump of matter.  Example: If you want to boil water, then you need heat.  That is, you need a principle to execute this act, however, the principle of creating hot water does not disappear when it is created as cold water.  That means that the principle of creating hot water does not disappear. Similarly, when the body dies, the spirit does not die.  It is like when the cold weather disappears, the ice becomes liquid.  When ice becomes liquid, the principle does not die and disappear.  The principle of creation of freezing is there but it does not have the right position within the principles of creation.  Again, when the body dies, the human spirit does not die, this is a special principle for creating human beings who are given a spirit which is in a form of principle, not like body side of human beings