Guidance

Now we know that ever since humans have lived on the earth,

there have been people who had a special relationship with God,

people who could hear words from God

and pass them on to the rest of humankind.

And the first of these was the person we know as Adam,

for God spoke to Adam in the Garden.

But after disobeying God, Adam was banished to the earth

to begin the family to which all humans since then belong.

And there have been many others since the time of Adam who have been able to hear God's words.

We call these people Messengers,

and you are sure to have heard of some of their names.

Like Nooh, known in English as Noah,

who built a boat to save the animals and people

when God said that there was going to be

a flood all across the land.

And Ibrahim, who in English we know as Abraham,

whose people threw him into a fire for refusing to worship idols,

only to discover that God protected him from being burned.

Then there was Yusuf, known in English as Joseph,

who was thrown down a well by his brothers and left to die,

but was rescued by strangers to later become powerful and famous,

and able to show his brothers that with God's help anything is possible.

And there is a whole chapter of the Qur'an devoted to Yusuf's story.

Then there was Musa, who in English is known as Moses,

who was adopted by Pharaoh,

but who heard the Word of God and challenged Pharaoh

who thought that he was a god himself.

And Pharoah refused to believe in the One God that Musa spoke of

and was finally drowned beneath the waters of the Red Sea

that had parted to allow Musa and his people to cross.

And Musa is known as the Messenger who received tablets of stone

on which were written God's rules for his people,

the Ten Commandments.

But despite the miracles that God gave Musa to perform,

his people still turned away from God,

and were condemned to wander homeless until the time of another Messenger, Daud.

And to Daud, in English known as David, God gave wisdom and bravery,

and when he was a young man his people came under attack

from an army led by a giant of a man known as Jalut, known in English as Goliath.

And even though everyone else was afraid, Daud was not,

and faced the giant armed only with a shepherds slingshot.

But God saw fit to give Daud victory,

and his people won the battle against Jalut's army,

with the result that they later made Daud their king.

And after Daud, his son Sulaiman, known in English as Solomon, was also a great king and a Messenger.

And Sulaiman could talk to the Jinn, and understand the language of the animals and birds.

And there was yet another Messenger,

who showed the power of God

to provide food and drink from out of nothing,

to heal the sick and even to give life to the dead.

And his followers spread word of his teachings around the world.

This was Isa, known in English as Jesus.

And since Adam there have been many Messengers as well as these we know of,

Messengers for every people that ever lived.

But with the coming of Muhammad the Messenger,

the kind of Message in which God speaks in words to mankind came to an end.

The words of the Qur'an which the Messenger heard were complete

in a way that other Messages weren't,

and God has preserved that Message.

So we say that Muhammad is the last of the Messengers of that kind,

and like the signature at the bottom of a letter,

or the sealing wax mark on the proclamation of a king,

Muhammad is known as the Seal of all Messengers,

with the Qur'an itself being clear proof of where it came from.