for he is not a believer, and with no one who follows him, for he is not a messenger from God. Rather, he knows God and knows whatever events that come about in the cosmos he has come to know, by whatever means he came to know them.
No created being may institute a law without God’s permission. Nor may one make it an act of drawing near to God to assert that a possible event in the unseen must occur when the evidence allows the contrary, save by revelation and reports from God.
(Knowledge of Events and the Limits of Certainty)
Here there are subtle points for one who has a heart and understanding, in view of His words, “He revealed to each heaven its affair” [Fussilat 41:12], and His saying that He deposited in the Preserved Tablet everything that He will bring to pass among His creatures until the Day of Resurrection. Among what God revealed in His heavens and deposited in His Tablet is the sending of the messengers. This is learned from the Tablet by unveiling and direct awareness, and from the heavens by inquiry and examination.
Their knowledge of the sending of the messengers includes knowledge of the acts of drawing near to God that they bring, of their times, places, and distinguishing characteristics, of what happens to people after death and at the Resurrection and the Gathering, and of their final felicity or wretchedness in a Garden or a Fire. It also includes knowledge that God made the signs of the celestial sphere, its stations, and the motion of its stars indications of the determinations He brings to pass in the natural and elemental cosmos, of heat, cold, dryness, and moisture in what is hot, cold, moist, and dry. Some of these indications call for the coming into being of bodies at specific motions, while others
