The Messengers of Allah
'The Messenger believes in what has been revealed to him from his Lord, and so do the believers. They believe in Allah, His angels, His Books, and His messengers. (They proclaim) 'We make no distinction between any of His messengers.' And they say, 'We hear and obey. (We seek) Your forgiveness, our Lord! And to You (alone) is the final return.' (Al-Baqara 2: 286)
All the prophets who preceded Muhammad (pbuh) were sent with a message of warning and guidance to a particular people. None of their messages was intended to be universal, including that of Jesus [Isa (as)], who was commissioned by Allah specifically as a prophet to the Children of Israel, Israel being another name given to Jacob [Yaqub (as)], until there came the last law-bearing prophet and messenger, i.e. Muhammad (pbuh) who was entrusted with the final and complete set of Allah’s laws as guidance for the whole of humanity for all times to come. So, who were some of those prophets of Allah?
Like I have described
to you in my previous sermons, Adam (as), was the first in a series of new type
of human beings. He was not only the new human of his kind, but also the
Khalifatullah (Caliph of Allah), and Allah’s Prophet. Allah gave him his wife,
Hawa and from them and their offspring, there were born many human beings on
earth. All of them were born Muslims, and some were even made prophets, and
gradually over a period of time, while some of them remained true to Allah and
remained steadfast on His path, others were beguiled by the Satan and his
offspring and were made to go to their lost. Their accurate perception of
reality deteriorated and they became animists or idolaters [i.e. the Satan
confused their minds in such a way that they ultimately thought that such and
such objects, places, and creatures all possessed a distinct spiritual essence
and were worthy of worship, and thus they associated those material or created
beings with Allah in His Glorious worship or they altogether forgot Allah and
pray to those objects, places or creatures only, thus falling into idolatry or
polytheism], until Allah raised a new messenger among them to recall them to
the truth.
Allah says in the Holy
Quran: 'Indeed, Allah chose Adam, Nuh, the family of Ibrahim, and the family
of ‘Imran above all people (of their time). They are descendants of one
another. And Allah is All-Hearing, All-Knowing.' (Ali Imran 3: 34-35)
And in another verse of
the Quran, Allah says: 'And indeed, We sent Noah
and Abraham and reserved prophethood and revelation for their descendants. Some
of them are (rightly) guided, while most are rebellious.' (Al-Hadid
57: 27)
After Adam, the Holy
Quran mentions Noah [Nuh (as)] as the next major prophet who brought a message
of warning and the need for reform to his totally corrupted people; when they
refused to take heed Allah’s message and to return to His exclusive worship,
Allah willed that they be destroyed in the Great Deluge.
Allah says in the Holy
Quran, 'Indeed, We sent Nuh to his people, and
he remained among them for a thousand years, less fifty. Then the Flood
overtook them, while they persisted in wrongdoing.' (Al-Ankabut 29:
15)
What is interesting is
that all the prophets and messengers of Allah brought one same message: To
worship Allah alone and not to approach Shirk (i.e., the association of
false deities in the worship of Allah; for indeed no other god truly exist
except Him - the One True God).
And in the story of Nuh
(as), we get major lessons that we, as Muslims in the modern world must retain
so that we may educate the next generation of Muslims on the true teachings of
Allah and feed them with the right information which will benefit their souls
in this life and the life to come.
1. Nuh
(as) was a very humble and patient human messenger. Allah was highly pleased
with him and protected him and the believers from falling prey to the
machinations of their enemies, i.e. the disbelievers.
2. Though
not meant as a universal prophet, but only a prophet who came for his nation,
Nuh (as) lived a very long life and stayed with them for 950 years. Here the
reference is not only to Nuh’s message as staying amidst his people for 950
years, but his actual presence amidst them until Allah ordained him to
construct the Ark under His watchful eyes for He already revealed to His
Prophet about the impending punishment which would drown his people, except for
the true believers. (Al-Araf 7: 60-65)
3.
(i) Allah
refers to the true believers as the family of Prophet Nuh (as). In the line of
prophets of Allah, we have what we call the bloodline and the spiritual line.
For prophets of Allah, Allah can give them progeny from both their bloodline
and their spiritual lines as well. Those who inherit the spiritual treasures of
a prophet are the true heirs of the prophet. In the story of Nuh (as), Allah
mentions that one of his sons went astray and refused to obey his father [Nuh
(as)], preferring to ignore the warning of the impending punishment and
pompously saying that he would take refuge on the highest mountain so that the
flood may not affect him. Nuh (as) was deeply sorrowful that his flesh and
blood, a part of himself became disbeliever and would encounter the divine
wrath, but what did Allah tell him? Allah told him: 'O
Nuh, indeed he is not of your family; indeed, he is [one whose] work was other
than righteous, so do not ask Me for that about which you have no knowledge.
Indeed, I advise you, lest you be among the ignorant.' (Hud 11: 47)
(ii) Not
only the children of a prophet can become disbelievers or apostates, but their
parents or spouses as well, i.e. those who have their own blood in them or
their spouses through marriage agreements! In the Holy Quran, Allah cites the
examples of the wives of two of His prophets [Nuh (as) and Lut (as)] who became
apostates. Though they were initially with Allah’s prophets, but afterwards
they abandoned them and refused to believe in their missions.
Sometimes
when a prophet of Allah prophecy about some impending events or punishments,
people who are skeptics cannot fathom how the punishment of Allah can ever
reach them. They take the Messenger in jest and mock them and the signs which
accompany him as a testimony of his truthfulness and they refuse to believe in
His message and impending prophecies.
4.
Nuh
(as) had a very long, and tiring mission, but he did not despaired of the
promise of Allah. Some days were good, some days were bad, but he never
altogether despaired and remained ever true to Allah. Whenever something were
wrongly interpreted by him like the apostasy and disbelief of his son and wife in
his message and the Unicity of the One True God, Allah was quick to correct him
and maintain him on the right path, so that he may distinguish between the
believers and the disbelievers in a clear way, and also that he may stay far
from the hypocrites as well.
5.
Nuh
(as) was one of the Major Prophets to whom Allah revealed His set of laws (the
Scripture), but unfortunately through the vicissitudes of time, those laws were
interpolated and altogether lost until Allah revealed portions of it in His
Holy Quran, as a testament of its existence and concordance with the blessed
teachings of Islam (Submission to One God) and Tawheed (Unicity of Allah).
6. The
flood drowned his people and the entire world, for Allah wanted only the
bloodline and spiritual line of Nuh (as) to survive the Deluge and establish
His Unicity on earth. Therefore, the Deluge of Nuh’s time marked a new era in
the history of humankind. He became the representation of a new era Adam, in
line with the previous Adam for the rejuvenation of a new era of humans, who
would be believers. It is only after a long lapse of time in history that those
descendants also became corrupt like for the first Adam, until Allah decreed the
advent of the next major prophet, i.e. Ibrahim (as).
I stop here for today. Insha-Allah,
we will come on the life story of Hazrat Ibrahim (as) and the consecutive
prophets whom Allah sent from his line, as mentioned and honoured from His Holy
Quran. Insha-Allah. May Allah help us to take the lives of the prophets
as a blessed lesson for the reformation of our own lives and that we may live
our lives in His obeisance and submission to His Will. May Allah make us all
righteous Muslims, be it this humble one- the Khalifatullah of this era, as
well as you all my righteous followers, and I pray that humankind may heed
those messages as well and live a blessed life in the Submission to Allah’s
Will. Insha-Allah, Ameen.
----Friday Sermon of 16 August 2024~11 Safar 1446 AH delivered by Imam- Jamaat Ul Sahih Al Islam International Hazrat Muhyiuddin Al Khalifatullah Al Mahdi Munir A. Azim (aba) of Mauritius.