In the authentic collection there is a report from Abū Hurayrah, may Allah be pleased with him, that the Prophet ﷺ said:

"When Allah decrees a matter in the heaven, the angels beat their wings in humble submission to His word, and it sounds like a chain being dragged across smooth stone. That sound pierces them, and when the terror is lifted from their hearts they say, ‘What has your Lord said?’ They reply, ‘The truth—and He is the Most High, the Most Great.’ Then the eavesdropper hears it. The eavesdroppers are like this: one piled upon another." Sufyān illustrated this by cupping his hand, tilting it, and spreading his fingers apart. "The one above hears the word and passes it down to the one beneath him, who in turn passes it to the one below, until it reaches the tongue of a sorcerer or a soothsayer. A shooting-star may strike him before he can pass it on, or he may pass it on before he is struck; but he mixes with it a hundred lies. People then say, ‘Did he not tell us on such-and-such a day that such-and-such would happen?’—and they believe him because of that single word that was heard from heaven." (1)

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Sufyān: This is Ibn ʿUyaynah ibn Maymūn al-Hilālī, a trustworthy, precise, and authoritative scholar of the foremost rank; he died in 198 AH.

“In the authentic collection” means Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī.

“When Allah decrees a matter” means: when He speaks it.

Khadaʿānan—pronounced with two fatḥahs—comes from khudūʿ (humility). Another reading places a ḍammah on the first letter and sukun on the second, meaning “humbly submissive.”