said: ‘Then Allah will come to them in a form other than the one they recognize and say, “I am your Lord.” They will say, “We seek refuge in Allah! We shall remain here until our Lord comes to us, for there is a sign between us and Him. When our Lord comes to us, we shall recognize Him.” Then Allah will come to them in the form they recognize, and they will say, “You are our Lord,” and follow Him.’”

He then said: “Know that this hadith may be discussed from two perspectives. The first is to understand fī (“in”) in the sense of bā’ (“with”), so that the meaning would be: ‘Allah will come to them with a form other than the form by which they knew Him in this world.’ This would be by His showing them one of the angels. A parallel to this is the statement of Ibn ‘Abbās (may Allah be pleased with them both)