A new version of the Bahá’í Reference Library is now available. This ‘old version’ of the Bahá’í Reference Library will be replaced at a later date.
The new version of the Bahá’i Reference Library can be accessed here »
A new version of the Bahá’í Reference Library is now available. This ‘old version’ of the Bahá’í Reference Library will be replaced at a later date.
The new version of the Bahá’i Reference Library can be accessed here »
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“An Ever-Advancing Civilization…” |
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Implicit in these paragraphs is a perspective which represents the most
challenging feature of Bahá’u’lláh’s exposition of the function of the
Manifestation of God. Divine Revelation is, He says, the motive power of
civilization. When it occurs, its transforming effect on the minds and souls
of those who respond to it is replicated in the new society that slowly takes
shape around their experience. A new center of loyalty emerges that can win
the commitment of peoples from the widest range of cultures; music and the arts
seize on symbols that mediate far richer and more mature inspirations; a radical
redefinition of concepts of right and wrong makes possible the formulation of
new codes of civil law and conduct; new institutions are conceived in order
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to give expression to impulses of moral responsibility previously ignored or
unknown: “He was in the world, and the world was made by him…”
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As the new
culture evolves into a civilization, it assimilates achievements and insights
of past eras in a multitude of fresh permutations. Features of past cultures
that cannot be incorporated atrophy or are taken up by marginal elements among
the population. The Word of God creates new possibilities within both the
individual consciousness and human relationships.
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Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God is endowed with
such potency as can instill new life into every human frame… All the
wondrous works ye behold in this world have been manifested through the
operation of His supreme and most exalted Will, His wondrous and
inflexible Purpose…. No sooner is this resplendent word uttered, than
its animating energies, stirring within all created things, give birth
to the means and instruments whereby such arts can be produced and
perfected…. In the days to come, ye will, verily, behold things of
which ye have never heard before…. Every single letter proceeding out
of the mouth of God is indeed a mother letter, and every word uttered by
Him Who is the Well Spring of Divine Revelation is a mother word….
2
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The sequence of the Divine Revelations, the Báb asserts, is “a process
that hath had no beginning and will have no end.”
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Although the mission of
each of the Manifestations is limited in time and in the functions it performs,
it is an integral part of an ongoing and progressive unfoldment of God’s power
and will:
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Contemplate with thine inward eye the chain of successive Revelations
that hath linked the Manifestation of Adam with that of the Báb. I testify
before God that each one of these Manifestations hath been sent down
through the operation of the Divine Will and Purpose, that each hath been
the bearer of a specific Message, that each hath been entrusted with a
divinely revealed Book… The measure of the Revelation with which every
one of them hath been identified had been definitely foreordained….
4
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Eventually, as an ever-evolving civilization exhausts its spiritual
sources, a process of disintegration sets in, as it does throughout the phenomenal
world. Turning again to analogies offered by nature, Bahá’u’lláh compares
this hiatus in the development of civilization to the onset of winter. Moral
vitality diminishes, as does social cohesion. Challenges which would have been
overcome at an earlier age, or been turned into opportunities for exploration
and achievement, become insuperable barriers. Religion loses its relevance, and
experimentation becomes increasingly fragmented, further deepening social divisions.
Increasingly, uncertainty about the meaning and value of life generates
anxiety and confusion. Speaking about this condition in our own age Bahá’u’lláh
says:
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We can well perceive how the whole human race is encompassed with
great, with incalculable afflictions. We see it languishing on its bed
of sickness, sore-tried and disillusioned. They that are intoxicated by
self-conceit have interposed themselves between it and the Divine and
infallible Physician. Witness how they have entangled all men, themselves
included, in the mesh of their devices. They can neither discover the
cause of the disease, nor have they any knowledge of the remedy. They
have conceived the straight to be crooked, and have imagined their friend
an enemy.
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Consider the hour at which the supreme Manifestation of God revealeth
Himself unto men. Ere that hour cometh, the Ancient Being, Who is still
unknown of men and hath not as yet given utterance to the Word of God, is
Himself the All-Knower in a world devoid of any man that hath known Him.
He is indeed the Creator without a creation…. This is indeed the Day
of which it hath been written: “Whose shall be the Kingdom this Day?”
And none can be found ready to answer!
6
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Until a section of humanity begins to respond to the new Revelation, and a
new spiritual and social paradigm begins to take shape, people subsist spiritually
and morally on the last traces of earlier Divine endowments. The routine
tasks of society may or may not be done; laws may be obeyed or flouted; social
and political experimentation may flame up or fail; but the roots of faith—without which no society can indefinitely endure—have been exhausted. At
the “end of the age,” at the “end of the world,” the spiritually minded begin
to turn again to the Creative source. However clumsy or disturbing the process
may be, however inelegant or unfortunate some of the options considered, such
searching is an instinctive response to the awareness that an immense chasm has
opened in the ordered life of humankind.
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The effects of the new Revelation,
Bahá’u’lláh says, are universal, and not limited to the life and teachings of
the Manifestation of God Who is the Revelation’s focal point. Though not
understood, these effects increasingly permeate human affairs, revealing the
contradictions in popular assumptions and in society, and intensifying the
search for understanding.
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The succession of the Manifestations is an inseparable dimension of existence,
Bahá’u’lláh declares, and will continue throughout the life of the
world: “God hath sent down His Messengers to succeed to Moses and Jesus, and
He will continue to do so till ‘the end that hath no end’…”
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| 1. |
New Testament, John 1:10.
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| 2. |
Gleanings, pp. 141–42.
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| 3. |
Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: Selected Letters (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1982), p. 117.
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| 4. |
Gleanings, p. 74. In the Bahá’í writings the term “Adam” is used symbolically in two different senses. The one refers to the emergence of the human race, while the other designates the first of the Manifestations of God.
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| 5. |
Gleanings, p. 213.
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| 6. |
Gleanings, p. 151.
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| 7. |
See Bahá’u’lláh, The Seven Valleys and The Four Valleys (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1986), pp. 6–7: “Yea, although to the wise it be shameful to seek the Lord of Lords in the dust, yet this betokeneth intense ardor in searching.”
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| 8. |
World Order, p. 116.
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