It is authentically reported from Imam Aḥmad [9/a] regarding the affirmation of a limit for God, Exalted is He, because that has been narrated from him through many routes.
Imam Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Hārūn al-Khallāl narrated with authentic chains of transmission in his Book of the Sunna (1):
17- Al-Khallāl said: Abū Bakr al-Marrūdhī informed us, he said: I heard Abū ʿAbd Allāh, when he was asked: ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan narrated from Ibn al-Mubārak that he was asked: How do we know God, Mighty and Majestic?
He said: Over the Throne, with a limit.
He said: That reached me from him, and he liked it. Then Abū ʿAbd Allāh Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal said:
{Do they await but that God should come to them in canopies of clouds} [al-Baqara: 210].
Then he said: {And your Lord comes, and the angels, rank upon rank} [al-Fajr: 22] (2).
18- Al-Khallāl said: Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Warrāq informed us: Abū Bakr al-Athram narrated to us: Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Qaysī narrated to me, he said: I said to Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal: It is related from Ibn al-Mubārak that he was asked: How do we know our Lord?
Al-Karajī al-Qaṣṣāb, may Allah have mercy on him, said in Nukat al-Qurʾān (4/517) regarding the verse of Sūrat al-Fajr: "It is a severe evidence against them by mentioning the coming, and it is similar to His statement, Exalted is He, in Sūrat al-Baqara: {Do they wait for anything except that God should come to them}, and it is a suffocating evidence against them, severe upon them." End quote.
