The Purpose of Sending
the Prophets
Man ought to build his life taking guidance from the book of God and the teachings of the Prophet, to make himself deserving of the eternal Paradise.
Chapter 96 of the Quran states: “Read! In the name of your Lord, who created: created man from a clot [of blood]. Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful One who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know. Yet man behaves arrogantly, because he thinks himself self-sufficient: truly, all will return to your Lord.” (96:1-8)
These are the verses of the Quran which were first revealed to the Prophet of Islam. This shows God’s method of sending revelation to the Prophet, and explaining its purpose. Its purpose was that human beings should be told what they could not otherwise know.
In this life, a person appears to be free. This results in the misunderstanding that he will not be taken to task for his misdeeds. In the present world, a person lives for a period of time and then dies. This makes people think that human life extends just from birth to death, and does not go further than that.
To tell a person that this supposition was wrong, God sent revelations through prophets continuously, in every age and in every nation, until the Prophet Muhammad was born: he was the last of the prophets. Now he is the source of divine guidance till Doomsday.
These prophetic tidings mean that a person in the present world is not entirely free to do what he wants to do, that he has to follow God’s commands as conveyed by the prophets in his life’s affairs.
God, after giving this information has not just left a person to his own resources: He is constantly watching him. After death all human beings will return to God and then, according to the records of their worldly deeds, they will be rewarded or punished. For a person’s guidance, the real importance is not that of the mere existence of a living Prophet but the existence of the book he has brought. God’s book, the Quran, is in a preserved state and the Prophet’s traditions have also been recorded and preserved, so now a person has no excuse to deviate from the right path. He ought to build his life by taking guidance from the book of God and the sayings and deeds of the Prophet, and make himself deserving of the eternal blessings of God.
