God Passes By

by Effendi Shoghi

In immortal passages of His Kitáb-i-Aqdas and other Tablets He bids the entire company of these ecclesiastical leaders to “fear God,” to “rein in” their pens, “fling away idle fancies and imaginings, and turn then towards the Horizon of Certitude”; warns them to “weigh not the Book of God (Kitáb-i-Aqdas) with such standards and sciences as are current” amongst them; designates that same Book as the “Unerring Balance established amongst men”; laments over their blindness and waywardness; asserts His superiority in vision, insight, utterance and wisdom; proclaims His innate and God-given knowledge; cautions them not to “shut out the people by yet another veil,” after He Himself had “rent the veils asunder”; accuses them of having been “the cause of the repudiation of the Faith in its early days”; and adjures them to “peruse with fairness and justice that which hath been sent down” by Him, and to “nullify not the Truth” with the things they possess.

To Pope Pius IX, the undisputed head of the most powerful Church in Christendom, possessor of both temporal and spiritual authority, He, a Prisoner in the army barracks of the penal-colony of Akká, addressed a most weighty Epistle, in which He announces that “He Who is the Lord of Lords is come overshadowed with clouds,” and that “the Word which the Son concealed is made manifest.” He, moreover, warns him not to dispute with Him even as the Pharisees of old disputed with Jesus Christ; bids him leave his palaces unto such as desire them, “sell all the embellished ornaments” in his possession, “expend them in the path of God,” abandon his kingdom unto the kings, “arise ... amidst the peoples of the earth,” and summon them to His Faith. Regarding him as one of the suns of the heaven of God’s names, He cautions him to guard himself lest “darkness spread its veils” over him; calls upon him to “exhort the kings” to “deal equitably with men”; and counsels him to walk in the footsteps of his Lord, and follow His example.

To the patriarchs of the Christian Church He issued a specific summons in which He proclaims the coming of the Promised One; exhorts them to “fear God” and not to follow “the vain imaginings of the superstitious”; and directs them to lay aside the things they possess and “take fast hold of the Tablet of God by His sovereign power.” To the archbishops of that Church He similarly declares that “He Who is the Lord of all men hath appeared,” that they are “numbered with the dead,” and that great is the blessedness of him who is “stirred by the breeze of God, and hath arisen from amongst the dead in this perspicuous Name.” In passages addressed to its bishops He proclaims that “the Everlasting Father calleth aloud between earth and heaven,” pronounces them to be the fallen stars of the heaven of His knowledge, and affirms that His body “yearneth for the cross” and His head is “eager for the spear in the path of the All-Merciful.” The concourse of Christian priests He bids “leave the bells,” and come forth from their churches; exhorts them to “proclaim aloud the Most Great Name among the nations”; assures them that whoever will summon men in His Name will “show forth that which is beyond the power of all that are on earth”; warns them that the “Day of Reckoning hath appeared”; and counsels them to turn with their hearts to their “Lord, the Forgiving, the Generous.” In numerous passages addressed to the “concourse of monks” He bids them not to seclude themselves in churches and cloisters, but to occupy themselves with that which will profit their souls and the souls of men; enjoins them to enter into wedlock; and affirms that if they choose to follow Him He will make them heirs of His Kingdom, and that if they transgress against Him, He will, in His long-suffering, endure it patiently.

And finally, in several passages addressed to the entire body of the followers of Jesus Christ He identifies Himself with the “Father” spoken of by Isaiah, with the “Comforter” Whose Covenant He Who is the Spirit (Jesus) had Himself established, and with the “Spirit of Truth” Who will guide them “into all truth”; proclaims His Day to be the Day of God; announces the conjunction of the river Jordan with the “Most Great Ocean”; asserts their heedlessness as well as His own claim to have opened unto them “the gates of the kingdom”; affirms that the promised “Temple” has been built “with the hands of the will” of their Lord, the Mighty, the Bounteous; bids them “rend the veils asunder,” and enter in His name His Kingdom; recalls the saying of Jesus to Peter; and assures them that, if they choose to follow Him, He will make them to become “quickeners of mankind.”

To the entire body of Muslim ecclesiastics Bahá’u’lláh specifically devoted innumerable passages in His Books and Tablets, wherein He, in vehement language, denounces their cruelty; condemns their pride and arrogance; calls upon them to lay aside the things they possess, to hold their peace, and give ear to the words He has spoken; and asserts that, by reason of their deeds, “the exalted station of the people hath been abased, the standard of Islám hath been reversed, and its mighty throne hath fallen.” To the “concourse of Persian divines” He more particularly addressed His condemnatory words in which He stigmatizes their deeds, and prophesies that their “glory will be turned into the most wretched abasement,” and that they shall behold the punishment which will be inflicted upon them, “as decreed by God, the Ordainer, the All-Wise.”

To the Jewish people, He, moreover, announced that the Most Great Law has come, that “the Ancient Beauty ruleth upon the throne of David,” Who cries aloud and invokes His Name, that “from Zion hath appeared that which was hidden,” and that “from Jerusalem is heard the Voice of God, the One, the Incomparable, the Omniscient.”

To the “high priests” of the Zoroastrian Faith He, furthermore, proclaimed that “the Incomparable Friend” is manifest, that He “speaketh that wherein lieth salvation,” that “the Hand of Omnipotence is stretched forth from behind the clouds,” that the tokens of His majesty and greatness are unveiled; and declared that “no man’s acts shall be acceptable in this day unless he forsaketh mankind and all that men possess, and setteth his face towards the Omnipotent One.”

Some of the weightiest passages of His Epistle to Queen Victoria are addressed to the members of the British Legislature, the Mother of Parliaments, as well as to the elected representatives of the peoples in other lands. In these He asserts that His purpose is to quicken the world and unite its peoples; refers to the treatment meted out to Him by His enemies; exhorts the legislators to “take counsel together,” and to concern themselves only “with that which profiteth mankind”; and affirms that the “sovereign remedy” for the “healing of all the world” is the “union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith,” which can “in no wise be achieved except through the power of a skilled and all-powerful and inspired Physician.” He, moreover, in His Most Holy Book, has enjoined the selection of a single language and the adoption of a common script for all on earth to use, an injunction which, when carried out, would, as He Himself affirms in that Book, be one of the signs of the “coming of age of the human race.”

No less significant are the words addressed separately by Him to the “people of the Bayán,” to the wise men of the world, to its poets, to its men of letters, to its mystics and even to its tradesmen, in which He exhorts them to be attentive to His voice, to recognize His Day, and to follow His bidding.

Such in sum are the salient features of the concluding utterances of that historic Proclamation, the opening notes of which were sounded during the latter part of Bahá’u’lláh’s banishment to Adrianople, and which closed during the early years of His incarceration in the prison-fortress of Akká. Kings and emperors, severally and collectively; the chief magistrates of the Republics of the American continent; ministers and ambassadors; the Sovereign Pontiff himself; the Vicar of the Prophet of Islám; the royal Trustee of the Kingdom of the Hidden Imám; the monarchs of Christendom, its patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, priests and monks; the recognized leaders of both the Sunní and Shí’ah sacerdotal orders; the high priests of the Zoroastrian religion; the philosophers, the ecclesiastical leaders, the wise men and the inhabitants of Constantinople—that proud seat of both the Sultanate and the Caliphate; the entire company of the professed adherents of the Zoroastrian, the Jewish, the Christian and Muslim Faiths; the people of the Bayán; the wise men of the world, its men of letters, its poets, its mystics, its tradesmen, the elected representatives of its peoples; His own countrymen—all have, at one time or another, in books, Epistles, and Tablets, been brought directly within the purview of the exhortations, the warnings, the appeals, the declarations and the prophecies which constitute the theme of His momentous summons to the leaders of mankind—a summons which stands unparalleled in the annals of any previous religion, and to which the messages directed by the Prophet of Islám to some of the rulers among His contemporaries alone offer a faint resemblance.