See they not how many generations We destroyed before them whom We had established on earth more firmly than We established you; and blessed them with abundance of rainfall and caused rivers to flow in the vales below them; yet We wiped them out because of their sinfulness and then replaced them with new generations!

(Other repudiators who came before them had a firmer foothold on the earth; they had no shortage of rainfall; their rivers never dried up; their valleys were green;, their pastures were dense; their crops seldom failed; their cattle always thrived; their dwellings bore all the hallmarks of affluence, and yet, as soon as they raised their heads against the Lord who had blessed them with all that and showed signs of arrogance, they were stripped of their pride, deprived of their comforts, consigned to days bygone and replaced by others!

Even though religion is often dismissed by intellectuals as a preoccupation of fools, history bears witness how many civilizations sprang on earth, engineered by the architects who brought them into existence; how many heads wore crowns of glory and have yet perished; how many Pharaohs surfaced and sank into oblivion; how many Alexanders built empires without frontiers and yet fell victims to the ravages of time; how many Neros and Nimrods rose to fame and then slowly faded away into obscurity, leaving behind them faint traces of their short-lived glory! The haunting Pyramids of Egypt, the crumbling domes and steeples of Rome, the desolate Caves of Agenta and the abandoned Pagodas of China, all say only one thing : these are the transient comforts of the life of this world, - here today and gone tomorrow; these are remnants of Pomp; these are vestiges of Glory; these are reflections from a past that would never recur)