Surah al-Hajj (The Pilgrimage ) 22 : 47

Explanatory Note

But the Quraysh unbelievers did not wish to reflect on such scenes demonstrating God’s punishment. Instead they tried to hasten their own punishment which God had delayed until a particular point in time known only to Him. It is the same story with the unbelievers in all generations. They see with their eyes the ruins of cities destroyed for their wrongdoing, and they hear their histories, but they, nevertheless, follow in their footsteps overlooking their fate. If they are reminded of what happened to earlier communities, they nonetheless consider it unlikely that they will suffer the same fate. But if God grants them respite to test them further, they grow arrogant and heedless. They even ridicule anyone reminding them that they could suffer as people before them suffered. What is more they add to such ridicule a request for their punishment to be hastened. Here they are told that "God never fails to fulfil His promise." Such a promise or warning will inevitably come to pass at the time God, in His infinite wisdom, determines. If people hasten its fulfilment, it will not be made to come before its appointed time, because its delay is for a purpose known to God, and that purpose will not fail so as to grant human beings their ignorant wishes. Moreover, time is calculated differently by God: “In your Lord’s sight a day is like a thousand years of your reckoning.”