Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | Book: Global Warming: The Divine Warning of Doomsday, pp. 30-31 | Nov 16, 2021
The earth is a unique planet in the vast Universe. It provides in an exceptional manner everything that is required to support life. As such, it has enabled human beings to inhabit it and develop civilizations. But according to the Quran, this state of affairs is not going to last forever.
A time will come when the earth will lose all its greenery and its vegetation and it will become an arid waste. This will happen sometime before Doomsday. According to the Quran:
“We have adorned the earth with attractive things, so that We may test mankind as to which one is best in conduct, but We shall reduce all this to barren waste.” (18:7-8)
In the first quarter of the 7th century AD when this verse was revealed in the Quran, it was a very distant prediction. However, the scientific observations made about the earth tell us that this destined end of the earth has already begun. Recent satellite observations of the earth from space tell us that the water system on our planet has been seriously disturbed and that the earth is fast heading towards its end.
This is what the Quran means by a “barren waste”. We learn from the Quran and Hadith that the present world is not an eternal world. A time will come when this world will be wound up and replaced by another world which will be eternal.
There are such signs in the present world as lead scientists to conclude that the end of history has come very close. Now, through purely scientific surveys, the revelation has been confirmed that the world has, in reality, reached the last stage of its existence.
Those signs predicted in the Quran and Hadith have been underscored by scientific studies.