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“PONDER upon the people unto whom the Gospel was …” 143 |
PONDER upon the people unto whom the Gospel was
given. Their religious leaders were considered as the true
Guides of the Gospel, yet when they shut themselves out
from Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, they turned into
guides of error, notwithstanding that all their lives they
had faithfully observed the precepts of their religion in
order to attain unto Paradise; then when God made
Paradise known unto them, they would not enter therein.
Those unto whom the Qur’án is given have wrought likewise.
They performed their acts of devotion for the sake of
God, hoping that He might enable them to join the
righteous in Paradise. However, when the gates of Paradise
were flung open to their faces, they declined to enter. They
suffered themselves to enter into the fire, though they had
been seeking refuge therefrom in God.
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Say, verily, the criterion by which truth is distinguished
from error shall not appear until the Day of Resurrection.
This ye will know, if ye be of them that love the Truth.
And ere the advent of the Day of Resurrection ye shall
distinguish truth from aught else besides it according to that
which hath been revealed in the Bayán.
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How vast the number of people who will, on the Day of
Resurrection, regard themselves to be in the right, while
they shall be accounted as false through the dispensation of
Providence, inasmuch as they will shut themselves out as
by a veil from Him Whom God shall make manifest and
refuse to bow down in adoration before Him Who, as
divinely ordained in the Book, is the Object of their
creation. XVII, 4.
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