We have sent forth other Messengers before you and given them wives and descendants. Yet none of them could bring a sign except by the permission of Allah. Every term has its Book. 38 Allah doth blot out or confirm what He pleaseth: with Him is the Mother of the Book. 39 Whether We show thee a part of that We promise them, or We call thee to Us, it is thine only to deliver the Message, and Ours the reckoning. 40 Do they not see how We come to [their] land and shrink its borders? God decides, no one can reverse His decision, and He is swift in reckoning. 41 Now those who lived before these [sinners] did, too, devise many a blasphemy - but the most subtle devising is that of God, who knows what each human being deserves: and the deniers of the truth will [in time] come to know to whom the future belongs. 42 The unbelievers claim that you have not been sent by Allah. Tell them: "Allah is sufficient as a witness between me and you; and so also do those who know the Scriptures." 43