Tom Facchine – 4 Pathways To The Hellfire

Surah Al Mudethir is a really, really amazing

Surah, and there's a lot of, interesting points

to highlight. One of them is that Allah

shows us 4 pathways that lead us to

the hellfire

and punishment and paint.

And so, there's this kind of, you know,

hypothetical but future conversation that's going to happen.

What's what is it that landed you in

hellfire?

And then the people of the hellfire are

gonna respond, lam nekum minam musalin, that we

weren't praying. We didn't used to pray.

And we didn't used to feed the poor.

Right? And

we used to

play around or be idle with those who

were doing the same thing,

And we used to deny,

the

reckoning, you know, the last day.

And so every

believing person has to check themselves against these

four things. Right?

If you're safe from every single one of

them, then congratulations. You're doing a great job.

But usually

usually,

we have some sort of shortcoming or deficiency.

Right? Can we really oh, okay. Many of

us, we take care of our prayers, alhamdulillah.

But are we feeding the poor? Okay. Most

of us, probably not.

Are we

basically having a sort of allegiance to truth

that we're not even going to spend time

with the people of falsehood or we're going

to sort of take it and make it

into that public sort of unapologetic

way.

And are we living our lives?

Right? Think about don't think about belief in

the sense of, like, propositions that you agree

with, but think about it.

If somebody looked at me,

would they

say that, oh, this person, they fear the

afterlife.

They fear the day of judgment.

Or do your actions reflect actually that you

are belaying the day of judgment? Your actions

show that you

your belief, it might be an idea that

you think is true,

but hasn't become internalized in part of your

your actions. That's an entire an entirely other

thing. This belief in the afterlife is something

that's so central and so foundational

to faith

that you can't have morality

without it. And that actually

almost all kufr, you know, and and denial

is rooted

in specifically the denial of the afterlife.

Right? And so that's why just shortly after

in the in the Surah, Allah Subhanahu Wa

Ta'ala calls out people

that claim

that they would like their own personal revelation,

right? It's kind of they want to play

they want to be the boss. They want

to control. They want to have their own

criteria.

Well, Allah should send me my own personal

revelation. That's what Allah says.

Is that every one of them, they they

they wish that they could have their own

revelation.

But then when does Allah say,

No. What's really at the bottom of this

is that they don't feel fear the afterlife.

Because if you fear the afterlife, you feel,

excuse me, you fear recompense, you're afraid of

the consequences of your actions in the afterlife.

If anything

that's like guidance comes to you, you're gonna

take it seriously. You're gonna look at it

as like, oh, no. Is this something that

I need to be following? Is this something

that I need to,

use to improve myself or to get close

to my Creator?

Right?

But the opposite is true. If you don't

fear the afterlife, if you have no sense

that your time is limited and the consequences

are eternal,

then even if the perfect proof and the

perfect guidance comes to you, you're gonna be

like, you know, whatever. What's this? Why should

I need to follow it? I can get

away with it. It's not gonna affect me.

Why would I

make things more difficult for myself by restricting

myself, disciplining myself in this life when I

could just be having a good time? I

could just be enjoying myself.

So belief in the afterlife is absolutely fundamental

to to morality,

to doing the right thing,

to living a righteous life. And without belief

in the afterlife,

there's none of that. It's not possible. And

so Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says that this

is something that

even people's excuses for not believing at the

base of it, underneath of it all is

that they're not afraid of what's to come.