WHAT IS DEATH?
Towards the Hereafter
OF ALL THE STAGES through which a person will have to pass, death is the most certain. Everyone who is alive now will be dead sometime in the future. One day the eyes of those who see will fade and their tongues freeze into silence. Every human being will one day be leaving this world, never to return, and entering a world which he will never leave.
No one can be sure when death will come; it might strike at any instant. The gravity of the situation lies in death not being the end of life, but rather the beginning of a new, eternal life, a world of everlasting reward or retribution.
Everyone is on a journey from life to death. Some have set their sights on the world, others on the Hereafter. Some strive to satisfy their own desires and egos, others are restless in love and fear of God.
Every human being will one day be leaving this world, never to return, and entering a world which he will never leave.
Both types of people appear the same in this world. But in relation to the life after death, there is a world of difference between the two: those who live in God and the Hereafter are redeeming themselves, while those who live in worldly pleasures and selfish desires are condemning themselves to doom.
The world beyond death is, as Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian-British author put it, an “unknown country”. We are all traveling towards that unknown country. The strangest and most mysterious event of our lives is death. Everyone is anxious to know what will become of them after death.
The American evangelist, Billy Graham, has written a book called The Secret of Happiness. He writes in this book that he once received an urgent message from a famous political leader, who wanted to meet him at the earliest opportunity.
When Billy Graham reached the politician’s residence, he was ushered into a separate room. There the politician addressed him in a heartrending tone. “I am an old man,” he said, “Life has lost all meaning. I am ready to take a fateful leap into the unknown. Young man, can you give me a ray of hope?”
It was, indeed, only a man of religion who could give him an answer. Death is lying in wait for everyone. In one’s youth one tends to forget death, but in the end the hand of fate holds sway. In old age, when one’s strength is on the wane, one realizes the imminence of death; one is moved to wonder what lies in store for one in the Hereafter; one searches for a ray of hope which can illuminate the world one will have to face after death.
The strangest and most mysterious event of our lives is death. Everyone is anxious to know what will become of them after death.
It is this ray of hope that God’s prophets have come to the world to provide. The prophets have taught man that there is another world—one that is both eternal and ideal— after death. Those who will be admitted to this perfect world in the afterlife are those who, in this life on earth, prove themselves worthy of it by their righteous actions.
This message has been summed up in these words of the Quran: “And God calls unto the home of peace.” (10: 25)