The Kitáb-i-Aqdas

The passage of the Bayán which Bahá’u’lláh here quotes draws the attention of the believers to the imminence of the coming of “Him Whom God will make manifest”. Its prohibition of marriage with a non-Bábí and its provision that the property of a husband or wife who embraced the Faith could not lawfully pass to the non-Bábí spouse were explicitly held in abeyance by the Báb, and were subsequently annulled by Bahá’u’lláh before they could come into effect. Bahá’u’lláh, in quoting this law, points to the fact that, in revealing it, the Báb had clearly anticipated the possibility that the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh would rise to prominence before that of the Báb Himself.

In God Passes By Shoghi Effendi points out that the Bayán “should be regarded primarily as a eulogy of the Promised One rather than a code of laws and ordinances designed to be a permanent guide to future generations”. “Designedly severe in the rules and regulations it imposed,” he continues, “revolutionizing in the principles it instilled, calculated to awaken from their age-long torpor the clergy and the people, and to administer a sudden and fatal blow to obsolete and corrupt institutions, it proclaimed, through its drastic provisions, the advent of the anticipated Day, the Day when ‘the Summoner shall summon to a stern business’, when He will ‘demolish whatever hath been before Him, even as the Apostle of God demolished the ways of those that preceded Him’” (see also note 109).