The Prophet (S) has said ** ** ...
The Prophet (S) has said ** ** : كَفَى بِالمَوتِ وَاعِظا "Death is sufficient as an admonisher." [^5] Regarding this, Imam ‘Ali (as) emphasizes: "I recommend that you always remember death and lessen your negligence of it. How can you be heedless of what is not heedless of you, and hope from one who will not give you respite? Those dead people you have observed would suffice for your taking advice.
They were carried to their graves without riding by themselves, and they were put in the graves without being able to descend by themselves. It was as if they had not lived in this world and as if the Hereafter had always been their abode. They made desolate what they had taken as a home and made their home in what they had found to be desolate. They had occupied themselves with that from which they separated, and they neglected that to which they were moved.
Now they cannot move away from the evil (they have committed) nor can they increase their good deeds. They had become intimate with the world and it deceived them; they trusted it and it threw them down. Race, may God have mercy on you, to your dwellings which you have been commanded to inhabit, and of which you have been made desirous and to which you have been called.
Seek the completion of the blessings of God on you with perseverance in obedience to Him, and keeping away from His disobedience, for tomorrow is close to today. How swiftly fly the hours of the day, and how swift the days in the month, how swift the months of the year, and how swift the years of a life!"[^6] Imam ‘Ali (as), elsewhere, has emphasized the same point: "I recommend you, O servants of God, fearful awareness of God who has clothed you well and provided you abundant livelihood.
If there was one who could find a ladder to eternal life or a way to repel death, that would have been Solomon, the son of David, to whom the dominion of the jinn and mankind was made subservient, together with (his) prophethood and great nobility. But when the subsistence assigned to him was finished, and his time was complete, the bows of annihilation struck him with the arrows of death! Lands became empty of him and (his) houses were unoccupied, and another people inherited them.
Indeed there is a lesson for you in the previous generations! Where are the Amalekites and the offspring of the Amalekites? Where are the Pharaohs and their offspring?