The Promised Day Is Come
S >> Shoghi Effendi >> The Promised Day Is Comeby Shoghi Effendi
Edition 1, (September 2006)
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CONTENTS
Baha'i Terms of Use
Preface
The Promised Day Is Come
This Judgment of God
What Response to His Call?
Features of This Moving Drama
A World Receded from Him
Recipients of the Message
Tablets to the Kings
The Most Great Law Revealed
Revealed to the Pope
Let the Oppressor Desist
God's Vicar on Earth
Humiliation Immediate and Complete
The Rise of Bolshevism
End of the Holy Roman Empire
What of Turkey and Persia?
The Doom of Imperial Turkey
Divine Retribution on the Qajar Dynasty
The Decline in the Fortunes of Royalty
Recognition of Kingship
The Crumbling of Religious Orthodoxy
Words Addressed to Muslim Ecclesiastics
The Falling Fortunes of _Sh_i'ih Islam
The Collapse of the Caliphate
A Warning Unto All Nations
His Messages to Christian Leaders
Christian Nations against Christian Nations
The Continuity of Revelation
The Three False Gods
The Weakened Pillars of Religion
God's Purpose
The Great Age to Come
Religion and Social Evolution
The Wider, Inclusive Loyalty
World Commonwealth
PREFACE
The fundamental principle enunciated by Baha'u'llah ... is that religious
truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is a continuous
and progressive process, that all the great religions of the world are
divine in origin, that their basic principles are in complete harmony,
that their aims and purposes are one and the same, that their teachings
are but facets of one truth, that their functions are complementary, that
they differ only in the nonessential aspects of their doctrines, and that
their missions represent successive stages in the spiritual evolution of
human society....
...His mission is to proclaim that the ages of the infancy and of the
childhood of the human race are past, that the convulsions associated with
the present stage of its adolescence are slowly and painfully preparing it
to attain the stage of manhood, and are heralding the approach of that Age
of Ages when swords will be beaten into plowshares, when the Kingdom
promised by Jesus Christ will have been established, and the peace of the
planet definitely and permanently ensured. Nor does Baha'u'llah claim
finality for His own Revelation, but rather stipulates that a fuller
measure of the truth He has been commissioned by the Almighty to vouchsafe
to humanity, at so critical a juncture in its fortunes, must needs be
disclosed at future stages in the constant and limitless evolution of
mankind.
The Baha'i Faith upholds the unity of God, recognizes the unity of His
Prophets, and inculcates the principle of the oneness and wholeness of the
entire human race. It proclaims the necessity and the inevitability of the
unification of mankind, asserts that it is gradually approaching, and
claims that nothing short of the transmuting spirit of God, working
through His chosen Mouthpiece in this day, can ultimately succeed in
bringing it about. It, moreover, enjoins upon its followers the primary
duty of an unfettered search after truth, condemns all manner of prejudice
and superstition, declares the purpose of religion to be the promotion of
amity and concord, proclaims its essential harmony with science, and
recognizes it as the foremost agency for the pacification and the orderly
progress of human society....
Mirza Husayn-'Ali, surnamed Baha'u'llah (the Glory of God), a native of
Mazindaran, Whose advent the Bab [Herald and Forerunner of Baha'u'llah]
had foretold, ... was imprisoned in Tihran, was banished, in 1852, from
His native land to Ba_gh_dad, and thence to Constantinople and Adrianople,
and finally to the prison city of Akka, where He remained incarcerated for
no less than twenty-four years, and in whose neighborhood He passed away
in 1892. In the course of His banishment, and particularly in Adrianople
and Akka, He formulated the laws and ordinances of His Dispensation,
expounded, in over a hundred volumes, the principles of His Faith,
proclaimed His Message to the kings and rulers of both the East and the
West, both Christian and Muslim, addressed the Pope, the Caliph of Islam,
the Chief Magistrates of the Republics of the American continent, the
entire Christian sacerdotal order, the leaders of _Sh_i'ih and Sunni
Islam, and the high priests of the Zoroastrian religion. In these writings
He proclaimed His Revelation, summoned those whom He addressed to heed His
call and espouse His Faith, warned them of the consequences of their
refusal, and denounced, in some cases, their arrogance and tyranny....
The Faith which this order serves, safeguards and promotes is ...
essentially supernatural, supranational, entirely non-political,
non-partisan, and diametrically opposed to any policy or school of thought
that seeks to exalt any particular race, class or nation. It is free from
any form of ecclesiasticism, has neither priesthood nor rituals, and is
supported exclusively by voluntary contributions made by its avowed
adherents. Though loyal to their respective governments, though imbued
with the love of their own country, and anxious to promote at all times,
its best interests, the followers of the Baha'i Faith, nevertheless,
viewing mankind as one entity, and profoundly attached to its vital
interests, will not hesitate to subordinate every particular interest, be
it personal, regional or national, to the over-riding interests of the
generality of mankind, knowing full well that in a world of interdependent
peoples and nations the advantage of the part is best to be reached by the
advantage of the whole, and that no lasting result can be achieved by any
of the component parts if the general interests of the entity itself are
neglected....
--Shoghi Effendi
THE PROMISED DAY IS COME
Friends and fellow-heirs of the Kingdom of Baha'u'llah:
A tempest, unprecedented in its violence, unpredictable in its course,
catastrophic in its immediate effects, unimaginably glorious in its
ultimate consequences, is at present sweeping the face of the earth. Its
driving power is remorselessly gaining in range and momentum. Its
cleansing force, however much undetected, is increasing with every passing
day. Humanity, gripped in the clutches of its devastating power, is
smitten by the evidences of its resistless fury. It can neither perceive
its origin, nor probe its significance, nor discern its outcome.
Bewildered, agonized and helpless, it watches this great and mighty wind
of God invading the remotest and fairest regions of the earth, rocking its
foundations, deranging its equilibrium, sundering its nations, disrupting
the homes of its peoples, wasting its cities, driving into exile its
kings, pulling down its bulwarks, uprooting its institutions, dimming its
light, and harrowing up the souls of its inhabitants.
"The time for the destruction of the world and its people," Baha'u'llah's
prophetic pen has proclaimed, "hath arrived." "The hour is approaching,"
He specifically affirms, "when the most great convulsion will have
appeared." "The promised day is come, the day when tormenting trials will
have surged above your heads, and beneath your feet, saying: 'Taste ye
what your hands have wrought!'" "Soon shall the blasts of His chastisement
beat upon you, and the dust of hell enshroud you." And again: "And when
the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly appear that which shall
cause the limbs of mankind to quake." "The day is approaching when its
[civilization's] flame will devour the cities, when the Tongue of Grandeur
will proclaim: 'The Kingdom is God's, the Almighty, the All-Praised!'"
"The day will soon come," He, referring to the foolish ones of the earth,
has written, "whereon they will cry out for help and receive no answer."
"The day is approaching," He moreover has prophesied, "when the wrathful
anger of the Almighty will have taken hold of them. He, verily, is the
Omnipotent, the All-Subduing, the Most Powerful. He shall cleanse the
earth from the defilement of their corruption, and shall give it for an
heritage unto such of His servants as are nigh unto Him."
"As to those who deny Him Who is the Sublime Gate of God," the Bab, for
His part, has affirmed in the Qayyum-i-Asma, "for them We have prepared,
as justly decreed by God, a sore torment. And He, God, is the Mighty, the
Wise." And further, "O peoples of the earth! I swear by your Lord! Ye
shall act as former generations have acted. Warn ye, then, yourselves of
the terrible, the most grievous vengeance of God. For God is, verily,
potent over all things." And again: "By My glory! I will make the infidels
to taste, with the hands of My power, retributions unknown of anyone
except Me, and will waft over the faithful those musk-scented breaths
which I have nursed in the midmost heart of My throne."
Dear friends! The powerful operations of this titanic upheaval are
comprehensible to none except such as have recognized the claims of both
Baha'u'llah and the Bab. Their followers know full well whence it comes,
and what it will ultimately lead to. Though ignorant of how far it will
reach, they clearly recognize its genesis, are aware of its direction,
acknowledge its necessity, observe confidently its mysterious processes,
ardently pray for the mitigation of its severity, intelligently labor to
assuage its fury, and anticipate, with undimmed vision, the consummation
of the fears and the hopes it must necessarily engender.
THIS JUDGMENT OF GOD
This judgment of God, as viewed by those who have recognized Baha'u'llah
as His Mouthpiece and His greatest Messenger on earth, is both a
retributory calamity and an act of holy and supreme discipline. It is at
once a visitation from God and a cleansing process for all mankind. Its
fires punish the perversity of the human race, and weld its component
parts into one organic, indivisible, world-embracing community. Mankind,
in these fateful years, which at once signalize the passing of the first
century of the Baha'i Era and proclaim the opening of a new one, is, as
ordained by Him Who is both the Judge and the Redeemer of the human race,
being simultaneously called upon to give account of its past actions, and
is being purged and prepared for its future mission. It can neither escape
the responsibilities of the past, nor shirk those of the future. God, the
Vigilant, the Just, the Loving, the All-Wise Ordainer, can, in this
supreme Dispensation, neither allow the sins of an unregenerate humanity,
whether of omission or of commission, to go unpunished, nor will He be
willing to abandon His children to their fate, and refuse them that
culminating and blissful stage in their long, their slow and painful
evolution throughout the ages, which is at once their inalienable right
and their true destiny.
"Bestir yourselves, O people," is, on the one hand, the ominous warning
sounded by Baha'u'llah Himself, "in anticipation of the days of Divine
Justice, for the promised hour is now come." "Abandon that which ye
possess, and seize that which God, Who layeth low the necks of men, hath
brought. Know ye of a certainty that if ye turn not back from that which
ye have committed, chastisement will overtake you on every side, and ye
shall behold things more grievous than that which ye beheld aforetime."
And again: "We have fixed a time for you, O people! If ye fail, at the
appointed hour, to turn towards God, He, verily, will lay violent hold on
you, and will cause grievous afflictions to assail you from every
direction. How severe indeed is the chastisement with which your Lord will
then chastise you!" And again: "God assuredly dominateth the lives of them
that wronged Us, and is well aware of their doings. He will most certainly
lay hold on them for their sins. He, verily, is the fiercest of Avengers."
And finally: "O ye peoples of the world! Know verily that an unforeseen
calamity is following you and that grievous retribution awaiteth you.
Think not the deeds ye have committed have been blotted from My sight. By
My Beauty! All your doings hath My pen graven with open characters upon
tablets of chrysolite."
"The whole earth," Baha'u'llah, on the other hand, forecasting the bright
future in store for a world now wrapt in darkness, emphatically asserts,
"is now in a state of pregnancy. The day is approaching when it will have
yielded its noblest fruits, when from it will have sprung forth the
loftiest trees, the most enchanting blossoms, the most heavenly
blessings." "The time is approaching when every created thing will have
cast its burden. Glorified be God Who hath vouchsafed this grace that
encompasseth all things, whether seen or unseen!" "These great
oppressions," He, moreover, foreshadowing humanity's golden age, has
written, "are preparing it for the advent of the Most Great Justice." This
Most Great Justice is indeed the Justice upon which the structure of the
Most Great Peace can alone, and must eventually, rest, while the Most
Great Peace will, in turn, usher in that Most Great, that World
Civilization which shall remain forever associated with Him Who beareth
the Most Great Name.
Beloved friends! Well nigh a hundred years have elapsed since the
Revelation of Baha'u'llah dawned upon the world--a Revelation, the nature
of which, as affirmed by Himself, "none among the Manifestations of old,
except to a prescribed degree, hath ever completely apprehended." For a
whole century God has respited mankind, that it might acknowledge the
Founder of such a Revelation, espouse His Cause, proclaim His greatness,
and establish His Order. In a hundred volumes, the repositories of
priceless precepts, mighty laws, unique principles, impassioned
exhortations, reiterated warnings, amazing prophecies, sublime
invocations, and weighty commentaries, the Bearer of such a Message has
proclaimed, as no Prophet before Him has done, the Mission with which God
had entrusted Him. To emperors, kings, princes and potentates, to rulers,
governments, clergy and peoples, whether of the East or of the West,
whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Zoroastrian, He addressed, for
well-nigh fifty years, and in the most tragic circumstances, these
priceless pearls of knowledge and wisdom that lay hid within the ocean of
His matchless utterance. Forsaking fame and fortune, accepting
imprisonment and exile, careless of ostracism and obloquy, submitting to
physical indignities and cruel deprivations, He, the Vicegerent of God on
earth, suffered Himself to be banished from place to place and from
country to country, till at length He, in the Most Great Prison, offered
up His martyred son as a ransom for the redemption and unification of all
mankind. "We verily," He Himself has testified, "have not fallen short of
Our duty to exhort men, and to deliver that whereunto I was bidden by God,
the Almighty, the All-Praised. Had they hearkened unto Me, they would have
beheld the earth another earth." And again: "Is there any excuse left for
anyone in this Revelation? No, by God, the Lord of the Mighty Throne! My
signs have encompassed the earth, and My power enveloped all mankind, and
yet the people are wrapped in a strange sleep!"
WHAT RESPONSE TO HIS CALL?
How--we may well ask ourselves--has the world, the object of such Divine
solicitude, repaid Him Who sacrificed His all for its sake? What manner of
welcome did it accord Him, and what response did His call evoke? A clamor,
unparalleled in the history of _Sh_i'ih Islam, greeted, in the land of its
birth, the infant light of the Faith, in the midst of a people notorious
for its crass ignorance, its fierce fanaticism, its barbaric cruelty, its
ingrained prejudices, and the unlimited sway held over the masses by a
firmly entrenched ecclesiastical hierarchy. A persecution, kindling a
courage which, as attested by no less eminent an authority than the late
Lord Curzon of Kedleston, has been unsurpassed by that which the fires of
Smithfield evoked, mowed down, with tragic swiftness, no less than twenty
thousand of its heroic adherents, who refused to barter their newly born
faith for the fleeting honors and security of a mortal life.
To the bodily agonies inflicted upon these sufferers, the charges, so
unmerited, of Nihilism, occultism, anarchism, eclecticism, immorality,
sectarianism, heresy, political partisanship--each conclusively disproved
by the tenets of the Faith itself and by the conduct of its followers--were
added, swelling thereby the number of those who, unwittingly or
maliciously, were injuring its cause.
Unmitigated indifference on the part of men of eminence and rank;
unrelenting hatred shown by the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Faith
from which it had sprung; the scornful derision of the people among whom
it was born; the utter contempt which most of those kings and rulers who
had been addressed by its Author manifested towards it; the condemnations
pronounced, the threats hurled, and the banishments decreed by those under
whose sway it arose and first spread; the distortion to which its
principles and laws were subjected by the envious and the malicious, in
lands and among peoples far beyond the country of its origin--all these are
but the evidences of the treatment meted out by a generation sunk in
self-content, careless of its God, and oblivious of the omens, prophecies,
warnings and admonitions revealed by His Messengers.
The blows so heavily dealt the followers of so precious, so glorious, so
potent a Faith failed, however, to assuage the animosity that inflamed its
persecutors. Nor did the deliberate and mischievous misrepresentations of
its fundamental teachings, its aims and purposes, its hopes and
aspirations, its institutions and activities, suffice to stay the hand of
the oppressor and the calumniator, who sought by every means in their
power to abolish its name and extirpate its system. The hand which had
struck down so vast a number of its blameless and humble lovers and
servants was now raised to deal its Founders the heaviest and cruelest
blows.
The Bab--"the Point," as affirmed by Baha'u'llah, "round Whom the realities
of the Prophets and Messengers revolve"--was the One first swept into the
maelstrom which engulfed His supporters. Sudden arrest and confinement in
the very first year of His short and spectacular career; public affront
deliberately inflicted in the presence of the ecclesiastical dignitaries
of _Sh_iraz; strict and prolonged incarceration in the bleak fastnesses of
the mountains of A_dh_irbayjan; a contemptuous disregard and a cowardly
jealousy evinced respectively by the Chief Magistrate of the realm and the
foremost minister of his government; the carefully staged and farcical
interrogatory sustained in the presence of the heir to the Throne and the
distinguished divines of Tabriz; the shameful infliction of the bastinado
in the prayer house, and at the hands of the _Sh_ay_kh_u'l-Islam of that
city; and finally suspension in the barrack-square of Tabriz and the
discharge of a volley of above seven hundred bullets at His youthful
breast under the eyes of a callous multitude of about ten thousand people,
culminating in the ignominious exposure of His mangled remains on the edge
of the moat without the city gate--these were the progressive stages in the
tumultuous and tragic ministry of One Whose age inaugurated the
consummation of all ages, and Whose Revelation fulfilled the promise of
all Revelations.
"I swear by God!" the Bab Himself in His Tablet to Muhammad _Sh_ah has
written, "Shouldst thou know the things which in the space of these four
years have befallen Me at the hands of thy people and thine army, thou
wouldst hold thy breath from fear of God.... Alas, alas, for the things
which have touched Me!... I swear by the Most Great Lord! Wert thou to be
told in what place I dwell, the first person to have mercy on Me would be
thyself. In the heart of a mountain is a fortress [Maku] ... the inmates
of which are confined to two guards and four dogs. Picture, then, My
plight.... In this mountain I have remained alone, and have come to such a
pass that none of those gone before Me have suffered what I have suffered,
nor any transgressor endured what I have endured!"
"How veiled are ye, O My creatures," He, speaking with the voice of God,
has revealed in the Bayan, "...who, without any right, have consigned Him
unto a mountain [Maku], not one of whose inhabitants is worthy of
mention.... With Him, which is with Me, there is no one except him who is
one of the Letters of the Living of My Book. In His presence, which is My
Presence, there is not at night even a lighted lamp! And yet, in places
[of worship] which in varying degrees reach out unto Him, unnumbered lamps
are shining! All that is on earth hath been created for Him, and all
partake with delight of His benefits, and yet they are so veiled from Him
as to refuse Him even a lamp!"
What of Baha'u'llah, the germ of Whose Revelation, as attested by the Bab,
is endowed with a potency superior to the combined forces of the Babi
Dispensation? Was He not--He for Whom the Bab had suffered and died in such
tragic and miraculous circumstances--made, for nearly half a century and
under the domination of the two most powerful potentates of the East, the
object of a systematic and concerted conspiracy which, in its effects and
duration, is scarcely paralleled in the annals of previous religions?
"The cruelties inflicted by My oppressors," He Himself in His anguish has
cried out, "have bowed Me down, and turned My hair white. Shouldst thou
present thyself before My throne, thou wouldst fail to recognize the
Ancient Beauty, for the freshness of His countenance is altered and its
brightness hath faded, by reason of the oppression of the infidels. I
swear by God! His heart, His soul, and His vitals are melted!" "Wert thou
to hear with Mine ear," He also declares, "thou wouldst hear how 'Ali [the
Bab] bewaileth Me in the presence of the Glorious Companion, and how
Muhammad weepeth over Me in the all-highest Horizon, and how the Spirit
[Jesus] beateth Himself upon the head in the heaven of My decree, by
reason of what hath befallen this Wronged One at the hands of every
impious sinner." "Before Me," He elsewhere has written, "riseth up the
Serpent of wrath with jaws stretched to engulf Me, and behind Me stalketh
the lion of anger intent on tearing Me in pieces, and above Me, O My
Well-Beloved, are the clouds of Thy decree, raining upon Me the showers of
tribulations, whilst beneath Me are fixed the spears of misfortune, ready
to wound My limbs and My body." "Couldst thou be told," He further
affirms, "what hath befallen the Ancient Beauty, thou wouldst flee into
the wilderness, and weep with a great weeping. In thy grief, thou wouldst
smite thyself on the head, and cry out as one stung by the sting of the
adder.... By the righteousness of God! Every morning I arose from My bed I
discovered the hosts of countless afflictions massed behind My door, and
every night when I lay down, lo! My heart was torn with agony at what it
had suffered from the fiendish cruelty of its foes. With every piece of
bread the Ancient Beauty breaketh is coupled the assault of a fresh
affliction, and with every drop He drinketh is mixed the bitterness of the
most woeful of trials. He is preceded in every step He taketh by an army
of unforeseen calamities, while in His rear follow legions of agonizing
sorrows."
Was it not He Who, at the early age of twenty-seven, spontaneously arose
to champion, in the capacity of a mere follower, the nascent Cause of the
Bab? Was He not the One Who by assuming the actual leadership of a
proscribed and harrassed sect exposed Himself, and His kindred, and His
possessions, and His rank, and His reputation to the grave perils, the
bloody assaults, the general spoliation and furious defamations of both
government and people? Was it not He--the Bearer of a Revelation, Whose day
"every Prophet hath announced," for which "the soul of every Divine
Messenger hath thirsted," and in which "God hath proved the hearts of the
entire company of His Messengers and Prophets"--was not the Bearer of such
a Revelation, at the instigation of _Sh_i'ih ecclesiastics and by order of
the _Sh_ah himself forced, for no less than four months, to breathe, in
utter darkness, whilst in the company of the vilest criminals and
freighted down with galling chains, the pestilential air of the
vermin-infested subterranean dungeon of Tihran--a place which, as He
Himself subsequently declared, was mysteriously converted into the very
scene of the annunciation made to Him by God of His Prophethood?