What will the resurrection be like after death?

- What does ba’th mean?
- What should we do for the mind to comprehend the resurrection and for the heart to believe?

Dear Brother / Sister,

Ba’th, means resurrection after death, going to mahshar (the gathering place) from the realm of the grave. Ba’th is the name of another birth. It is the clothing of the spirits with the bodies in the realm of the grave, birth in the hereafter and going out to the gathering place. There is a divine reproach to human beings in the Chapter of al-Baqara:

“How can ye reject the faith in Allah?- seeing that ye were without life, and He gave you life; then will He cause you to die, and will again bring you to life; and again to Him will ye return.” (al-Baqara, 2/28)

All of us, the humanity underwent a dead period. That period was a period of “mud” for our father, Adam. A resurrection that came into being by Allah’s giving spirit to a quintessence of clay, maybe to a divine program or genetic structure was shown to the angels. Non-living mud came alive. That happening was displayed in a somewhat veiled phase in the human beings that followed. Human seed called white blood forms in a man who eats a vegetable; the dead become alive. The human body that grows in the womb of the mother as half-alive for four months and that is dead in a way becomes an example of the spirit being given to our father Adam and gets a spirit in the darkness of the womb of the mother and becomes enlightened with life.

The divine power and wisdom that exhibits an example of giving life to the dead in the womb like that gives life to numerous non-living beings and turns them into plants or animals, making them food for the mother of the child. A human that grows with resurrection manifestations like this is exposed to the attacks of Satan when he reaches a certain age as a secret of testing; and doubts about resurrection occur in his heart: “How will a human be resurrected after death?” The answers to the doubts like this are given to humans in the Quran; and humans undergo a test whether to follow the Quran or Satan.

Verses 66-67 of the Chapter of Maryam:

“Man says: ‘What! When I am dead, shall I then be raised up alive? But does not man call to mind that We created him before out of nothing?”

Let us think about only three beings, nutfah (sperm), seed and egg among the world of things that surround us. The womb becomes a means for the first one’s relationship with the universe. The crops of this world flow into the stomach of the mother, and then go to help the nutfah.

There is not a give and take like that in the egg. It seems to have stored what it needs. Its only desire in order to become a bird and fly is a specified time and a specified level of temperature. As for the seed, it is quite different. It drops itself into the ground, which is part of this world. It performs its give and take with the universe like that. When creation is in question, man understands it as only going into the womb from the father’s body and after maturing there for nine months coming out to the world. And when he is informed that he will be created again in the hereafter, he cannot perceive this reality with his narrow mind. However, if he looks at the trio of sperm, egg and seed, he will not see it as something unreasonable that the being who makes these different laws in the world can exhibit a fourth type of creation in the hereafter.

There is a famous hadith in which the Messenger of Allah (pbuh) states that he is amazed by the five things of human beings. He states one of those five things as follows:

“It is also surprising that he dies every night and resurrects every morning but denies resurrection.” (Razi, Mafatihul-Ghayb, II, 37)

In fact, sleep is a form of death. Our feet lie down on the bed but they cannot walk. Our ears are open but they cannot make us hear anything. We set up connections with other worlds through the world of dreams. Allah has created the phenomenon of sleep. Humans cannot do it. Allah takes our feelings out of this world and makes them travel in other worlds.

Waking up is another wonder. It is Allah who creates it too. He takes us from the unknown worlds into this world, its affairs, sounds and colors again.

Human beings undergo samples of death and resurrection by dying every day and reviving the next day as many times as the days of their lives. The Messenger of Allah (pbuh) is surprised by the denial of resurrection, going to mahshar (gathering place) and being questioned by human beings. If we want to keep ourselves away from Satan’s misgivings about resurrection, we should say the following message to our own souls repeatedly:

“You, who cannot sleep or wake up on your own, think about resurrection and consider that you cannot do it and hence deny it. The being that makes you sleep will kill you and the being that wakes you up will resurrect you again. You cannot oppose Him when He removes you from this world with the law of death; nor can you oppose Him when He resurrects you again.”

The earth in which we live undergoes the same death and resurrection every year as humans undergo every day.

The Quran shows that great happening to us as follows:

“It is He Who brings out the living from the dead, and brings out the dead from the living and Who gives life to the earth after it is dead: and thus shall ye be brought out (from the dead).” (ar-Rum, 30/19)

Understanding the Resurrection

In the Resurrection Treatise from the Nur Collection, the following key sentence is used to comprehend the resurrection after death:

“One of the reasons that it is impossible to approach a rational understanding of resurrection is that since the supreme gathering, resurrection, is through the manifestation of the Greatest Name, only through beholding and demonstrating the great deeds evident in the maximum manifestation of the Greatest Name of God as well as His other Names, is it possible to prove it as certain; and unshakably believe that resurrection is as simple as the spring.”

When the word hashr is used, a new and eternal life that begins with the re-creation of human beings comes to mind...

As it is known, the Greatest Name (Ism al-A’zam) includes all the names, and it is not possible to see the manifestation of all Divine Names in the Gathering Place. So, we need to understand that phrase as the whole of “ba’th (resurrection), gathering, mizan (scales), sirat (bridge), Paradise and Hell”.

When that new creation and that second life are compared to this world, all the happiness and sufferings of the world are weak like a “shadow” compared to those in that realm.

Those shadows appear with the manifestations of the Names, but those manifestations are not at the maximum level. The greatest rank of each name will be manifested in the hereafter.

The re-creation of the plant kingdom that die in winter in the spring season is like a shadow compared to the resurrection of all people at once.

That manifestation is followed by the horridness of the gathering place. A “jalal scene” is exhibited, in which even the prophets are concerned about saving their own souls. All the frightening events of the world are like shadows compared to that horridness.

After that, as such complicated reckonings of human beings are realized all at once, the fact that Allah is Sariul-Hisab is manifested. All kinds of inquiries and investigations in the world are as weak as a shadow compared to His.

Plants’ being half-living, and animals and humans’ being living in this world, are like shadows compared to “life in Paradise, which is alive with its stone and soil”.

 “The sustenance that comes out of the ground after a certain time, the gradual digestion of that sustenance and the passing of a certain period of time for hunger” in this world is like a shadow compared to the sustenance in Paradise.

The rivers of the world compared to the rivers of Paradise, the mansions of the world compared to the mansions of Paradise, the gardens of the world compared to the gardens of Paradise are weak like shadows.

It is possible to give more examples.

On the other hand, the sufferings in the world are like shadows compared to the torments of hell, and the fires in the world are as light as shadows compared to the fires of Hell.

We live in the “realm of shadows” in this world. For that “realm of origins” to settle in our hearts with perfection, acting upon the fact,

“In Divine unity and the affirmation of it, Divine beauty and dominical perfection become apparent” (Badiuzzaman, Şualar),

we should first think about the names that are manifest in this world in a general sense, and then we should consider that they will be manifest at the maximum level in the hereafter. Only then can we understand that “the manifestations of the Divine names, which perform such marvelous deeds in this world, will be unbelievably extraordinary in the hereafter,” and can we readily accept that the resurrection and the hereafter will be created very easily with those manifestations. Thus, we will not leave the realm of the hereafter and the incident of resurrection, which is its beginning, to the judgment of our own minds and we will understand the great manifestations in that realm acting upon the manifestations of beauty and majesty in this world.

“If such wonderful things are displayed in minor manifestations, the greatest manifestations will definitely display extraordinary wonders in the gathering place and beyond that; then, we will say, as the Messenger of Allah puts it, ‘no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard, nor has their image crossed the heart of any man.’

Otherwise, if a person tries to understand how the afterlife will be created by looking at some examples, without even thinking about the manifestations here in a general sense, his mind will be confused by that greatness and his heart may find it difficult to believe.

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