My Dear Brothers!
With the disappearance of the things preventing the completion of the Topics of The Fruits of Belief, writing will recommence, Allah willing. One of these was the cold, the other was the fright the Masons took at its power. I think of this calamity from the angle of divine determining, and my difficulties are transformed into mercy. Yes, as is explained in the Treatise on Divine Determining, there are two causes for every event:
one is apparent; people base their judgements on this and frequently act unjustly.
The other is reality, according to which divine determining judges; it acts with justice in the events in which a person acted unjustly. For example, a man is sent to prison for a theft he did not commit. divine determining also sentences him to imprisonment, but for a secret crime, and acts justly within the human injustice.
Thus, there are two causes for our having been set this severe trial, the purpose of which is to separate out the diamonds from the pieces of glass, the veracious devotees from the inconstant waverers, and the purely sincere from those unable to give up their egotism and self‑interest:
The First is a powerful solidarity and a sincere and remarkable service of religion which aroused the suspicions of the worldly and the politicians; human injustice looks to this.
The Second: Since not everyone on their own could demonstrate their worthiness of this sacred service through complete sincerity and total solidarity, divine determining looked to this too.
But that determining is now pure mercy for us within the pure justice, for it brought together brothers who greatly missed each other, and transformed their hardships into worship and their losses into almsgiving. It is also pure mercy in many other respects, like attracting attention from all quarters to the treatises the brothers have written out; and not allowing worldly possessions and children and comfort, which are temporary, fleeting and which one day they will be bound to leave behind when they enter the grave, to damage their lives in the hereafter; and accustoming them to patient endurance; and their being heroic models for the believers of the future, and even their leaders.
But there is one aspect that caused me some thought, which is that if a finger is wounded, the eye, mind, and heart neglect their important duties and become preoccupied with it. Similarly, our lives, which reach this pitch of distress, busy our hearts and spirits with their wounds. Then just when I should be forgetting the world, the situation took me to the Masons’ council, and busied me with dealing them blows. I was consoled by the possibility that Allah the Most High might accept this state of heedlessness as a sort of intellectual striving.
I received the greetings of Ali Gül, the brother of Hafız Mehmed, the Risale‑i Nur’s esteemed teacher. I send greetings and prayers both to him, and to all his fellow villagers, and to all the people of Sava, both living and dead.