Fifth Addendum
Fifth Part
of the Addendum
The hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets, [^34] who are according to explicit prophetic tradition the choice part of humanity, have unanimously and with one accord reported, partly on the basis of direct vision and partly on the basis of absolute certainty, that the hereafter exists and that all human beings will be taken to the hereafter as the universe’s Creator has firmly promised.
[^34]:Musnad, v, 266; Tabrīzī, Mishkāt al-Maṣābīḥ, iii, 122; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzī, Zād al-Ma’ād (taḥqīq: al-Arnā’ut), i, 43-4.
Similarly, the one hundred and twenty-four million saints who confirm the reports of the prophets through unveiling and witnessing, give testimony to the existence of the hereafter in the form of certain knowledge.
And all the names of the cosmos’ All-Wise Maker also necessitate the existence of an eternal realm through the manifestations they display in this world.
The existence of the hereafter is furthermore necessitated by the infinite pre-eternal power, the unlimited and exact everlasting wisdom, that revives every spring the countless dead trees scattered all over the earth with the command of “‘Be!’, and it is”(36:82), thus making of them manifestations of “resurrection after death,” and that resurrects three hundred thousand different species of the various groups of plant and nations of animals, as hundreds of thousands of specimens of the supreme resurrection.
The existence of the hereafter is also necessitated by the everlasting mercy and permanent grace that sustains in wondrous and solicitous fashion all animate beings that stand in need of nurture, and that display each spring, in the briefest of periods, infinite different varieties of adornment and beauty.
Finally, there is the self-evident proof and indication given by the intense, unshakeable, and permanent love of eternity, yearning for immortality and hope of permanence that are lodged in man, the most beloved creation of the Maker of the cosmos, and whose concern with all the beings in the cosmos is the greatest.
All of the foregoing so firmly prove that after this transient world there