Allah's Plan

Adam: The Garment of Righteousness

The story of Adam is familiar to every Muslim from childhood. What is less familiar is what Allah actually does when Adam sins. Adam covers himself with leaves from the garden. It is the first human attempt to cover human shame with human effort. And it does not work.

Read the ayah twice. Allah gives Adam a raiment to cover his shame. Then He tells us about a better one. The raiment of righteousness. And He says this is a Sign. The first Sign in Allah's plan is that man cannot cover himself. Leaves do not work. Good deeds do not work. The shame of sin is deeper than any effort of ours can reach. Allah will provide the covering. Not us. But He has not yet given the raiment of righteousness, the best one. He has only pointed at it. A promise. A Sign of something to come. What covering, in Allah's plan, was He pointing toward?

Nuh: The Ark

Nuh built the ark for a long time. His neighbours laughed. His own son refused to come aboard. When the rain began, it was too late to argue with the design.

Nuh did not build the ark to Nuh's specifications. He built it to Allah's. The ark itself did not save anyone. Entering the ark saved them. The wood carried them. The door closed behind them. The flood came. The ark held. The second Sign says: Allah provides the rescue. Man enters it by faith. Everyone inside is saved. Everyone outside is not. What kind of rescue, designed by Allah, takes the form of a single door through which all must enter?

Ibrahim: The Momentous Sacrifice

Every Muslim knows this story. We celebrate it each year on Eid al-Adha. Ibrahim takes his son to the place of sacrifice. The son submits. Ibrahim submits. Both of them are ready. Then Allah speaks.

Read the last ayah again. Wa fadaynahu bi dhibhin adheem. We ransomed him with a momentous sacrifice. The word adheem is the word the Qur'an uses for Allah Himself, when it calls Him Al-Adheem, the Magnificent. A ram caught in a thicket is not, in itself, a momentous sacrifice. So what is Allah calling momentous? And why is that word placed here? The third Sign shows us how Allah will rescue us. Not by our effort. By substitution. By one life standing in the place of another, by Allah's own provision. Whose sacrifice could be so great that Allah Himself would call it momentous?

Musa: The Blood

The Great Sign. The one above all the others. The Qur'an singles it out. The Tawrat records the detail the Qur'an points to. On the night Allah sent the destroyer through Egypt, each family of Israel was told to take a lamb, slaughter it, and put the blood on the doorposts of their house. When the angel of death saw the blood, he would pass over. Every house without the blood lost its firstborn. Every house with the blood was spared. The fourth Sign shows us that the provision Allah will make is made through blood. The blood of a sacrifice that stands in our place. The Qur'an commands us to believe in the Tawrat. And the Tawrat tells us this Sign in full. If Musa's greatest Sign was blood standing between a people and the destroyer, what Blood did Allah have in mind for the world?

Daoud: The Psalms

The Qur'an names the Zabur as a book from Allah. The fifth Sign is in the songs themselves. Daoud was a king. But the songs he sang, and Allah inspired in him, were not all about Daoud. Many spoke of a king yet to come. One greater than Daoud. A son from his own line whose throne would never end. An anointed one. A Messiah. The Psalms sang of this figure centuries before he was born. When Issa al-Masih came, the Qur'an gave him the very name the Psalms had promised.

Al-Masih. The Anointed One. The Messiah the Zabur had been singing of, long before Maryam was born. What does it mean that Allah sang of one man, by name, centuries before he came?

Yunus: Three Days, Then Life

Three days in the dark belly of the fish. Then, on the shore, alive. Brought back. The sixth Sign is the pattern of descent and return. Into the depths. Three days. Then up again into the light. Yunus went down as a man under judgment. He came up as a prophet restored. The Injil records that Issa himself, when his people asked for a sign, pointed to Yunus.

The same Sign. In both books. Preserved by Allah across the centuries, so we would not miss it. What was Allah preparing us to understand, by placing this pattern in the mouth of Yunus first?

Issa al-Masih: The Fulfillment

Every Sign before him was pointing here. The garment. The ark. The sacrifice. The blood. The song. The three days. Six Signs, across the centuries, converging on one man.

He became the garment of righteousness, because in him, Allah covered our shame with a covering that was not our own making. He was the ark, because only through him, by the Father's provision, were any saved. He was the momentous sacrifice, the one Ibrahim's ram was pointing toward. He was the blood on the doorpost, because his blood is what Allah made to stand between us and the destroyer. He was the one the Psalms had sung of. Al-Masih. The Anointed One. And he was three days in the heart of the earth, just as Yunus had been three days in the belly of the fish. And then he came out. Alive. Raised by Allah.

One plan. Seven Signs. Six of them promises. The seventh, the fulfillment. All of it, from Adam's leaves to the raising of Issa, placed in the hands of Allah long before any of us were born. If Allah laid down seven Signs across the centuries to point us to one man, what does He expect us to do when we finally see him?