Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh Revealed After the Kitáb-i-Aqdas

BY the righteousness of God! The Mother Book is made manifest, summoning mankind unto God, the Lord of the worlds, while the seas proclaim: The Most Great Ocean hath appeared, from whose waves one can hear the thundering cry: ‘Verily, no God is there but Me, the Peerless, the All-Knowing.’ And the trees raising their clamour exclaim: O people of the world! The voice of the Divine Lote-Tree is clearly sounding and the shrill cry of the Pen of Glory is ringing loud: Give ye ear and be not of the heedless. The sun is calling out: O concourse of the divines! The heaven of religions is split and the moon cleft asunder and the 248 peoples of the earth are brought together in a new resurrection. Fear ye God and follow not the promptings of your passions, rather follow Him unto Whom have testified the Scriptures of God, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.

The episode of Sinai hath been re-enacted in this Revelation and He Who conversed upon the Mount is calling aloud: Verily, the Desired One is come, seated upon the throne of certitude, could ye but perceive it. He hath admonished all men to observe that which is conducive to the exaltation of the Cause of God and will guide mankind unto His Straight Path.

How vast the number of the down-trodden who have been enraptured by the Call of God! How numerous the potentates who have risen up to commit acts of aggression that have caused the inmates of the all-highest Paradise to lament and the dwellers of this glorious habitation to wail with grief! How great the multitude of the poor who have quaffed the choice wine of divine revelation and how many the rich who have turned away, repudiated the truth and voiced their disbelief in God, the Lord of this blessed and wondrous Day!

Say: Fear ye God, then observe equity in your judgement of this Great Announcement before which, as soon as it shone forth, every momentous announcement bowed low in adoration. Say: O concourse of the foolish! If ye reject Him, by what evidence can ye prove your allegiance to the former Messengers of God or vindicate your belief in that which He hath sent down from His mighty and exalted Kingdom? What benefit do your possessions bestow upon you? What protection can your treasures afford you? None, I swear by the Spirit of God that pervadeth all that are in the heavens and on the earth. Cast away that which ye have put together with the hands of 249 idle fancy and vain imaginings and take fast hold of the Book of God which hath been sent down by virtue of His all-compelling and inviolable authority.

Thy letter was presented before this Wronged One and in thine honour have We revealed this Tablet from which the fragrance of the gracious favour of thy Lord, the Compassionate, the Bountiful, is diffused. We beseech God to make thee as a banner upraised in the city of His remembrance, and to exalt thy station in this Cause—a Cause beneath whose shadow the sincere ones of God shall behold the peoples and kindreds of the earth seeking shelter. Verily, thy Lord knoweth and informeth. Moreover We entreat Him to nourish thee with the best of what hath been treasured in His Book. He is in truth the One Who doth hear and answer the call.

Persevere thou in helping His Cause through the strengthening power of the hosts of wisdom and utterance. Thus hath it been decreed by God, the Gracious, the All-Praised. Blessed is the believer who hath in this Day embraced the Truth and the man of fixed resolve whom the hosts of tyranny have been powerless to affright.

The glory which hath shone forth above the horizon of utterance be upon thee and upon such believers as have seized the chalice of His sealed wine through the power of His Name, the Self-Subsisting, and drunk deep despite those that have rejected the One in Whom they had formerly professed belief—they that have disputed the truth of this Great Announcement whereunto God hath testified in His precious and ancient Book.