Baha Ullah's method of interpretation and adaptation of prophecies is best seen in his "Ikan." In it he interprets at length Matthew xxiv.[202] In brief it is as follows: "After the tribulation of those days" means times of difficulty in understanding God's word and attaining divine knowledge; "the sun shall be darkened and the moon cease to give light," that is the teachings and the ordinances of the preceding dispensation shall lose their influence and efficiency. "The stars shall fall," etc., means the divines shall fall from the knowledge of religion, and the powers of science and religion shall be shaken. Because of the absence of the Son of Divine Beauty, the moon of knowledge, and the stars of intuitive wisdom, "all the tribes of the earth shall mourn." "They shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven," that is Baha Ullah shall appear from the heaven of the Supreme Will, outwardly from his mother's womb. "In the clouds" means in doubts which are caused by the human limitations of the Manifestation, eating, drinking, marrying, etc. "And he shall send his angels," the spiritual believers sent as preachers of Baha. The separation of the sheep from the goats, as we learn subsequently, means the schism at the death of Baha, when the violators, the brothers of Abdul Baha and their adherents, were exscinded.[203] Even granting an allegorical interpretation of Christ's words, only a stretch of imagination can find any reference to Baha. It should be borne in mind that Oriental Bahai writers have read Keith on Prophecy in Persian and the publications of the Mission Press at Beirut. Abdul Baha said to Dr. H. H. Jessup, "I am familiar with the books of your press."[204] M. Abul Fazl refers to and quotes them. Writers in English (as Kheiralla, Remey, Dealy, and Brittingham) refer to Miller, Cummings, Seiss, Guinness, and others. Yet with all their familiarity with apocalyptic literature, they make an exceedingly weak presentation. Their claims are so baseless as to require no refutation. They are a mass of unfounded assertions and assumptions,--vain, bold, and brazen. We may admit the declarations of Baha and Abul Fazl, which are but trite principles of hermeneutics, that figurative and allegorical language abounds in the Scriptures, that many meanings are "sealed" till after their fulfillment, that the prophecies of the Old Testament were only partially fulfilled at Christ's first coming. But their inference does not follow. There is nothing to prove the assertions that the prophecies were fulfilled in the Bab and Baha. They furnish no scintilla of evidence. For example, "the government shall be upon his shoulders." Was this fulfilled in Baha? He came and went; the nations and their rulers from 1817 to 1892 were neither literally nor figuratively under his sway. He did not nor does he rule over the nations. He did not reign in Mount Zion nor in Jerusalem. Jerusalem did not cease to be trodden down of the Gentiles.