with the rule of the Caliphate of Muhammad (UWBP) would not leave him the time. Most probably a group preceding him will perform it in some respect. He will take the work which that group wrote as a result of lengthy study as a pre-prepared programme for himself, and with it will find the first duty to have been performed to the full, The force or spiritual army which has undertaken this duty consists only of a number of students who possess fully the attributes of sincerity, loyalty, and mutual support. However few they are in number, in meaning they should be deemed as powerful and valuable as an army.

His Second Function: With his title pertaining to the Caliphate of Muhammad (UWBP), this is to revive the marks of Islam, and making the unity of the Islamic world his source of support, to save humanity from material and spiritual dangers and from divine wrath. This function will require armies with millions of men to support it and serve it.

His Third Function: Since many Qur'anic precepts have suffered harm with the vicissitudes of the times, and the Shari'a of Muhammad (UWBP) has been suspended to an extent, the person in question will try to perform that mighty task with the moral assistance of all the believers, the help of Islamic unity, and with the participation of all the scholars and saints, particularly the millions of devoted sayyids, who are descended from the Prophet (UWBP) and every century are numerous and powerful.

Although the reality of the matter is this, since the duty of saving belief, the primary duty and highest way, and instructing the people generally in certain, affirmative belief and even making the belief of the common people thus, is guidance and instruction both in spirit and in fact — since the Nur students have beheld this duty fully in the Risale-i Nur, they rightly consider the collective personality of the Risale-i Nur to be a sort of Mahdi, and the second and third duties to be in second and third place. And since they suppose one representative of that collective personality to be a collective personality arising from the mutual support of the Risale-i Nur students, and a sort of representative of that collective personality to be the unfortunate interpreter, they sometimes give him that name too. This is actually a point of confusion and an error, but they are not responsible. For since early days he has been looked on too favourably, and this was never objected to. So I look on those excessively good opinions of my brothers as a sort of prayer and good wish and a manifestation of the perfect belief of the Risale-i Nur students, and I do not rebuke them. In fact, some of the saints of olden times foresaw with their wondrous predictions that the Risale-i Nur would be the guide at the end of time, and this is understood