Overview (Verses 65 - 66)

Blind to the Truth
 
Having taken us on this round of universal imagery and facts about our lives to establish the truth of God’s oneness and the falsehood of polytheism, the sūrah begins a new passage citing aspects of what lies beyond the reach of human perception, known only to God. These verses discuss the life to come, which human nature and logic accept as essential, but the timing of which our knowledge cannot determine:
 
Say: None in the heavens or earth knows what is hidden except God. Nor can they ever perceive when they shall be raised from the dead.’ Indeed the total sum of their knowledge stops short of comprehending the hereafter. Nay, they are in doubt of it. Nay, they are blind to it. The unbelievers say: ‘What! After we have become dust, we and our forefathers, shall we be brought back [to life]? We have been promised this before, we and our forefathers! This is nothing but fables of the ancients. ‘Say: “Go all over the earth and see what happened in the end to the guilty. ‘Do not grieve over them, nor be distressed by what they scheme. They ask: “When will this promise be fulfilled, if what you say be true?’ Say: ‘It may well be that something of that which you so hastily demand has already drawn close to you.’ Your Lord is indeed most bountiful to people, but most of them are ungrateful. And indeed your Lord knows all that their hearts conceal and all that they bring into the open. There is nothing that is hidden in the heavens or the earth but is recorded in a clear book. (Verses 65-75)
 
Belief in resurrection, reckoning and reward is an integral and indispensable element of faith. There must be a future world when reward is completed so as to make it fit the action performed. It is necessary that man’s heart and mind are focused on such future life, so as to make his actions in this world look to what awaits him there.
 
Over countless generations and despite successive divine messages humanity has taken a singularly bizarre attitude towards the question of resurrection and the life to come, despite its being both simple and necessary. It always stood incredulous when a messenger of God said that there would be life after death. The great miracle of initiating life in the first place was not enough to make humanity realize that a second life is easier to accomplish. Hence, people often turned away from every signal warning them of what awaits them in the life to come. They were bent on following their erring ways, disbelieving in God’s messages and rejecting His messengers.
 
The life to come is part of the realm that lies beyond our faculties of perception and which is known only to God. Yet unbelievers always demanded to know the exact timing of this future life, or else they would continue to deny it. They treated it as superstition and legend that has no place in reality. Therefore the sūrah makes clear that it is God alone who knows the world beyond, and that human knowledge of the hereafter is very limited: “Say: ‘None in the heavens or earth knows what is hidden except God. Nor can they ever perceive when they shall be raised from the dead.’ Indeed the total sum of their knowledge stops short of comprehending the hereafter. Nay, they are in doubt of it. Nay, they are blind to it.” (Verses 65-66)
 
Ever since the beginning of human life, man has been unable to see anything of the world beyond his perceptive faculties except what God, who knows all, has chosen to reveal to him. This has always worked for man’s benefit. Had God known that revealing such knowledge would be good for man, He would have satisfied his curiosity and revealed it to him.
 
God has given man a host of abilities, talents, powers and potentials that enable him to fulfil the task assigned to him on earth, but no more. To lift the thick curtains that hide what lies beyond the reach of human perception would not help man in his task. Indeed keeping it unknown increases man’s search for knowledge, which then opens up new vistas for him providing him with hidden treasures. Man’s quest for knowledge enables him to discover more of the world’s secrets and powers which he can then use to improve the quality of life on earth. He can use its materials and products, modify his practices and elevate his life, and by so doing fulfil his role of building human life on earth.
 
It is not only man who has been denied access to God’s knowledge. All creatures that live anywhere in the universe, including the angels and the jinn, are assigned missions and tasks that do not require knowledge of what God has kept secret. Therefore: “Say: None in the heavens or earth knows what is hidden except God.” (Verse 65) This is a definitive statement which leaves no room for anyone to make false claims. Yet this statement speaks about “hat is hidden” in general. Therefore, it is followed by a more specific statement concerning the life to come because, next to God’s oneness, it represents the second most important issue of contention with the idolaters: “Nor can they ever perceive when they shall be raised from the dead.” (Verse 65)
 
This is a negation of any knowledge of the timing of resurrection, even in the most undefined form of knowledge, which is perception. It is not only that they lack any definite knowledge of when resurrection will take place; they cannot perceive it as it approaches. Such knowledge is part of what is hidden, which none in the heavens or earth knows anything about.
 
This point is then left aside, so as to speak about their attitude to the hereafter and knowledge of it: “Indeed the total sum of their knowledge stops short of comprehending the hereafter.” (Verse 66) On this issue they have achieved all that they can aspire to, but remain unable to fathom it. “Nay, they are in doubt of it.” (Verse 66) They are uncertain whether it will ever come. How can they know its timing and expect its arrival? “Nay, they are blind to it.” (Verse 66) In as far as the hereafter is concerned, they are totally blind, unable to see or comprehend anything. This last statement depicts them in a worse situation with regard to the hereafter than the two earlier ones.