This is the Day whereon naught can be seen except the splendors of the Light that shineth from the face of Thy Lord, the Gracious, the Most Bountiful. Verily, We have caused every soul to expire by virtue of Our irresistible and all-subduing sovereignty. We have, then, called into being a new creation, as a token of Our grace unto men. I am, verily, the All-Bountiful, the Ancient of Days.[162]
Footnotes
Shoghi Effendi, Advent of Divine Justice (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1990), p. 81.
Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day is Come (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1996), p. 1.
Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 (London: Abacus, 1995), p. 584.
Leopold II, King of the Belgians, operated the colony as a private preserve for some three decades (1877-1908). The atrocities carried out under his misrule aroused international protest, and in 1908 he was compelled to surrender the territory to the administration of the Belgian government.
The processes that brought about these changes are reviewed in some detail by A. N. Wilson, et al., God’s Funeral (London: John Murray, 1999). In 1872, a book published by Winwood Reade under the title The Martyrdom of Man (London: Pemberton Publishing, 1968), which became something of a secular “Bible” in the early decades of the twentieth century, expressed the confidence that “finally, men will master the forces of Nature. They will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. Man will then be perfect; he will then be a creator; he will therefore be what the vulgar worship as a god.” Cited by Anne Glyn-Jones, Holding up a Mirror: How Civilizations Decline (London: Century, 1996), pp. 371-372.
Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1997), p. 35, (section 15.6).