The Essence of Islam – Volume II — Page 422
422. Essence of Islam II of seventy years. Very often he is granted seventy years of active life leaving out of account his childhood and his extreme old age. The miserable one passes these seventy years caught in the desires of this world and does not wish to be free of this chain. Thus God Almighty says that the seventy years that he passed in his devotion to the world will be personified in the hereafter as a chain, the length of which will be seventy yards, each yard corresponding to a year. It should be remembered that. God Almighty imposes no distress from Himself upon a person, but confronts him with his evil deeds. Referring to His eternal law, God Almighty says at another place: 188 انْطَلِقُوا إلى ظلّ ذِي ثَلث شُعَبِ ٥ لاَ خَلِيلِ وَ لا يُغْنِي مِنَ اللَّهَبِ ٥ *. Proceed, O evil doers and misguided ones, towards a shelter which has three sections, neither affording shade nor protecting from the blaze. . In this verse by the three sections are meant the wild and the animal and the speculative faculties. These three faculties, of those who do not cast them into the moral mould and do not co-ordinate them, will be manifested on the Judgement Day as if they are three branches without leaves which can afford no protection from the blaze in which they will burn. . Again, referring to the same eternal way of His, Allāh the. Exalted, says in favour of the inmates of Paradise: 189 يَوْمَ تَرَى الْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَالْمُؤْمِنَتِ يَسْعَى نُورُهُمْ بَيْنَ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَبِأَيْمَانِهِمْ ). On that day, you will see that the light of the believing men and believing women that is hidden in this world, 188 Al-Mursalāt, 77:31-32 [Publisher] 189. Al-Hadid, 57:13 [Publisher]