“Man asks: `When the day of resurrection will be?

“Man asks: `When the day of resurrection will be?' (Say:) `It well be the day when the sight of man is confounded in terror, when the moon is darkened and the sun and the moon are joined. On that day man will ask where he might flee and to what shelter'“ (75:6-10). “When the stars are put out, and when the heavenly bodies are scattered” (82:2) .

* * * * * Flammarion, the well-known astronomer, says in his book The End of the World: “The appearance of life in all its splendor is the result of the submission of the solar system to the universal pull of gravity and centrifugal motion. It is gravity that interrelates all the parts of the universe, from the atom to the star, and controls and regulates their movements with the aid of centrifugal motion. Thus a universal order comes into being throughout creation.

This order will, however, inevitably collapse; the stars will die and the heavenly bodies will scatter like the beads of a broken necklace.” As can be deduced from verses of the Qur'an and reliable narrations, the order of creation will suddenly collapse as the result of a happening the exact nature of which is unknown to us: the life of the sun, the stars and the whole of creation will come to an abrupt end.

Rill, the British astronomer, says: “The universe came into being some ten or fifteen billion years ago as the result of an explosion. It used half of its energy or its matter to dispatch the stars to the depths of space, and the other half to assemble the galaxies and prepare them for the final explosion.” The Qur'an says: “On the day when We shall roll up the heavens like a scroll ...” (21:104) .

“When the oceans shall be aflame ...” (81:6) “On the day that the heavens shall be molten like brass...” (70:8) . The last two of these verses contradict the theory of many scientists of the past who maintained that the end of the world would come about as the result of a decrease in the heat of the sun and the freezing of all creatures. They tell instead of heat of the sun being intensified at the time of resurrection, in such a way that no living thing will be able to endure.

Many prominent scientists now describe the coming of such a day in accordance with the relative knowledge they possess. Thus Georges Gamoff writes: “The radiation of the sun will increase over time, and once the amount of hydrogen in the sun has attained its maximum amount, the energy emitted by the sun will increase about a hundred fold.