The Lord Almighty repeatedly reminds man of His Omnipotence. Thereby He wants man to realise and tread the True Path. For this He has sent Messengers from time to time. The fact that the very first man, Adam, was God’s Messenger bears testimony to it. And at last, He perfected His Message by revealing the Qur’ān to His last Messenger, Muhamad ﷺ. Thus the Qur’ān is the Final Word of God. It presents the stories of earlier nations, the peoples of earlier Messengers, to show how they were presented with the Divine Message and how they responded thereto. These stories carry glad tidings of man’s success and the resultant place in the Paradise if he follows the True Path as well as the sheer warnings in case they choose to reject the Message. Here lies man’s test whether he makes good use of the right to freedom of choice God has blessed him with or goes astray to follow his whims and inconsistencies.
The Qur’ān (6:42) says: “Indeed We sent messengers before your time to other nations, and visited them with misfortune and hardship so that they might humble themselves.” This verse avers that God sent Messengers to earlier nations; but when the people chose the path of rejection instead of submission to God’s Will, God inflicted misfortune and hardship upon them. This hardship was, thus, an act of mercy which God bestows upon His servants as it was meant to give them one more chance to mend their ways, realise the Truth and follow the path of submission. Indeed some of the people submitted to God but some others remained stubborn in following their erroneous path. In the latter case, the Qur’ān (6:43-4) says, “Rather, their hearts were hardened and Satan made their deeds seem goodly to them. Then, when they had clean forgotten what they had been reminded of, We threw open to them the gates of all good things, until just when they were rejoicing in what they had been granted, We suddenly took them to task; and they were plunged into utter despair.”
This historical example shows that God gives people one chance after another and sends them successive reminders, but, as their preference to mundane pleasures would have it, they still forget, quite unaware of the ‘utter despair’ God might inflict upon them. Human history has witnessed many such nations and the Qur’ān gives us their accounts which date back to periods long before recorded history. The Qur’ān does not present these stories for the sake of storytelling but to impress upon man that his success lies in his submission to the Will of God.