The Day of Judgment is certain. Its timing is known to Allah alone, and no one else has any share in that knowledge. But the Prophet ﷺ informed us of signs indicating that it draws nearer, and those signs fall into three groups.
The first have already come to pass and are finished. The second appear gradually with the passage of time. The third come immediately before the Hour and are called the Greater Signs. This book deals with the first two — together known as the Smaller Signs of the Day.
Signs Already Completed
- The coming of the Prophet ﷺ himself — the first sign, and the one most often overlooked
- His death
- The splitting of the moon
- The emergence of a fire from the land of Hijaz
- The embargoes against Iraq, Ash-Sham and Egypt
Signs That Continue
The second group has begun and has not stopped — and the largest section covers the appearance of lying claimants to prophethood. The book names them in sequence: Musailamah the Liar of Al-Yamamah, Sajah At-Tamimiyyah, Al-Aswad Al-'Ansi the Liar of San'a, Tulaihah Al-Asadi, Al-Mukhtar Ath-Thaqafi, Abu Mansur Al-'Ijli, Al-Mughirah bin Sa'id, Bayan bin Sam'an, Al-Harith the Liar, and others after them.
Laid out end to end, the list makes a point that no argument could: the Prophet ﷺ said this would happen repeatedly, and it has, in every century since, without interruption.
What the Study Produces
Reading the fulfilled signs has an effect the unfulfilled ones cannot have. Each one is a completed proof — something foretold and then observed. For a believer that steadily increases certainty in the Prophet's ﷺ truthfulness, and it turns the subject from speculation about the future into evidence from the past.
The practical conclusion the book presses is straightforward: since so much of what was foretold has appeared, the sensible response is to hold to this religion and be prepared.
Related Reading
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