of the Authorized English translation of the Quran by Dr. Rashad Khalifa
The Crucial Age of 40
What is the age of responsibility?
If a child dies at the age of 12,
without even hearing about
God, does this child go to Heaven or Hell?
What if the child is 15
years old, or 21, or 25? At what age will the
human being be held responsible
for his or her beliefs?
This question has puzzled
researchers of all religions for a long time.
The Quran sets the age of
responsibility at 40; anyone who dies before
this age goes to Heaven
(46:15).
If the person believed in
God and benefitted from belief by nourishing and developing the soul (see
Appendix 15), he or she goes to the High Heaven. Otherwise, the person
goes to the Lower Heaven.
Your first reaction to this
piece of information is objection: "What
if the person was really
bad, evil, and an atheist, will he go to
Heaven if he died before
the age of 40?"
This is because you are
mean,
while God is the Most Merciful.
Our tendency is to
"put them all in Hell."
People who objected strongly
to this Divine mercy cannot come up with
a cut-off age of responsibility.
They ask questions like,
"What if the person was
really wicked?"
The answer is,
"Does God know that this
person was wicked?"
"Yes."
"Does God know that this
person does not deserve to go to Heaven?"
"Yes."
"Therefore, this person
will not die before the age of 40."
As simple as that.
God is the only one who
terminates our lives on this earth.
He knows exactly who deserves
to go Heaven and who deserves to go to Hell.
Early in 1989 a man by the
name of Theodore Robert Bundy was executed
for killing a number of
women. The whole nation agreed that he was one
of the most vicious criminals
in history.
So much so that his execution
was one of the rare occasions where the opponents of capital punishment
did not protest.
On the contrary, many people
actually celebrated his execution. Numerous journalists, editorials, and
politicians lamented the fact that justice took eleven years to execute
Ted Bundy.
They stated that Bundy should
have been executed within a maximum of six years after his conviction.
According to the Quran,
this would have been the greatest favor anyone could have done to Bundy.
He was 42 years old when executed. Had he been executed five years earlier,
at the age of 37, he would have gone straight to Heaven, and he did not
deserve that.
As it turns out, Bundy was
one of the signs God has given us to
confirm that anyone who
dies before 40 goes to Heaven. Bundy's name,
Theodore Robert Bundy, consists
of 19 letters, and he confessed to
killing 19 women just one
day before his execution.
There were many other signs
from God.
Delivering this important
piece of information is one of the
responsibilities given to
me as God's Messenger of the Covenant. It is
not my personal opinion.
It is noteworthy that both
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were
assassinated just a couple
of months before their 40th birthdays.
