Objection: What do you mean by saying that we should empower him? Do you mean that we find him and converse with him? Reply: That is not possible without him being existent. You will be told that none of that is possible without him being manifest and without us knowing, or someone of us knowing his place. If you say, “We mean by empowering him that we should submit to his obedience, fight under his command, refrain from helping the tyrants and rise to his support when he calls us to his Imamate and proves it to us through his miracles,” we will say to you it is possible for us to do that during occultation, even if it is a time without an Imam. How do you say then what we have been ordained to do cannot be performed without an Imam? Our response here is what Murtadha has mentioned in Dhakhira and what we have mentioned in Talkhis Shafi.