Page:The young Moslem looks at life (1937).djvu/68

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and of these six are placed in the highest category. These six are Adam, the chosen of God; Noah, the preacher of God; Abraham, die friend of God; Moses, the spokesman of God; Jesus, the word of God; and Mohammed, the apostle of God.

These prophets and apostles are in the sacred succession of those who have been honored and chosen by God to communicate his guidance to mankind down the centuries. Mohammed is the last and the best of them. He will never have a successor, and it is firmly believed that ultimately the whole world will accept Islam.

5. "/ believe in the Last Day" The fifth article of belief in the Moslem creed has to do with the happenings of what is called the Last Day. It is also known as the Day of Resurrection, or Separation, or Reckoning, when the good and bad deeds of men will be reckoned up as a bookkeeper reckons his accounts. Most dreadful will be the terrors of that day and hour. There will be a literal resurrection of the physical bodies, and .so the afterlife, Moslems believe, will be one either of everlasting physical pleasures or of physical punishments. Many modern Moslems today would treat the descriptions of heaven and hell as found in the Koran and Traditions as allegorical, and give to them spiritual meanings. But by the standard orthodox writers and ordinary believers these descriptions are accepted literally as set forth.

Paradise or heaven as described in the Koran is like a huge banqueting hall, or lovely "gardens of


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