Praise be to God! There is no other god except God.
Death is a great mystery to most people. Not so for the students of the Quran. We learn that death is exactly like sleeping; complete with dreams (6:60, 40:46). The period between death and resurrection passes like one night of sleep (2:259; 6:60; 10:45; 16:21; 18:11, 19, 25; 30:55).
At the moment of death, everyone knows his or her destiny; Heaven or Hell. For the disbelievers, death is a horrible event; the angels beat them on the faces and rear ends as they snatch away their souls (8:50, 47:27, 79:1).
Consistently, the Quran talks about two deaths, the first death took place when we failed to make a stand with God’s absolute authority. That first death lasted until we were born into this world. The second death terminates our life in this world (2:28, 22:66, 40:11).
Friday Sermon based on Appendix 17 of the the Authorized English Translation of the Quran by Rashad Khalifa (1989).