Thanks be to Allah Lord
of the worlds. And peace and prayers be upon the most honorable of all
messengers,
In the name of Allah
most gracious most Merciful
This Friday the talk is
about some who did repent and their stories and the lessons learnt.
It was said that those
with sins have three rivers in this life to cleanse themselves. If due to a
large amount of their sins those rivers are not enough then they will be
cleansed off their sins in the Hellfire in the life after.
Those three rivers are:
1.
The river of Repentance.
2.
The river of good deeds that weighs out sins.
3.
The river of major calamities.
If Allah wanted goodness
to servant of his, then Allah puts his servant into the way of one of those
three rivers.
It was reported that the
prophet said: "There was a man before your time; who killed 99 souls. He asked
for the wisest one on earth. He found a preacher; He asked him if there was
repentance for him after killing 99 souls. The preacher said "No". The man got
so annoyed and killed the preacher thinking "So what difference killing one
more will make!!" But; He still felt he wanted to repent. So, he sought out
the wisest man till found him. He asked him: "I killed a hundred souls. Is
there repentance for me?" The wise man said: "And what or who would come
between you and repentance?" He went on saying: "Go to such and such land.
There are people there who worship Allah. Join them in worshipping Allah and
do not return to this evil land."
The man seeking
repentance set off on his journey. Half way through journey he died. The
angels of mercy and angels of punishment argued to whom the man's soul
belonged. The angel of mercy said: "The man came to Allah with a repentant
heart". The angel of punishment said: "He never did a single good deed in his
entire life."
A third angel in a human
appearance came along and he was asked to look into their case. He said:
"Measure the distance between the dead man and each of the two lands (the land
of evil where he was coming from; and the land of good where was heading. And
find out to which land is he closer". When the measuring was done, it was
found that he was closer to the land he was seeking (the good land) by no more
than an arm's length. So the angel of mercy received his soul.
In another version the
story says that as he was dying he pushed his chest to protrude towards the
land of good. And he was found to be that much closer. In another version the
story states that Allah moved the good land closer and moved the evil land
further out. How merciful Allah is?
Another scene of
repentance:
A bandit used to rub
travelers. One day he and his gang were about to rub people on some caravan
when he heard someone saying: "By-pass this road and use that road going to
that town; because ther is a rubber called Al-Fadeel ben Eyath (
