The idolators say, 'If God had willed we would not have served; apart from Him, anything, neither we nor our fathers, nor would we have forbidden, apart from Him, anything.' So did those before them; yet is aught for the Messengers, but to deliver the manifest Message? 35 And indeed, within every community have We raised up an apostle [entrusted with this message]: "Worship God, and shun the powers of evil!" And among those [past generations] were people whom God graced with His guidance, just as there was among them [many a one] who inevitably fell prey to grievous error: go, then, about the earth and behold what happened in the end to those who gave the lie to the truth! 36 Though thou art ever so eager to guide them, God guides not those whom He leads astray; they have no helpers. 37 They swear their strongest oaths by God that God will never raise the dead to life -- nonetheless, it is a promise truly binding on Him, even though most people do not realize it -- 38 So that He might make manifest to them that about which they differ, and that those who disbelieve might know that they were liars. 39 Our only saying unto a thing, when We intend it, is that We say unto it: be, and it becometh. 40