It is in this context that one begins to appreciate Bahá’u’lláh’s choice
of imagery about the will of God for a new age: “Think not that We have
revealed unto you a mere code of laws. Nay, rather, We have unsealed the
choice Wine with the fingers of might and power.”(50) Through His
revelation, the principles required for the collective coming of age of
the human race have been invested with the one power capable of
penetrating to the roots of human motivation and of altering behaviour.
For those who have recognized Him, equality of men and women is not a
sociological postulate, but revealed truth about human nature, with
implications for every aspect of human relations. The same is true of His
teaching of the principle of racial oneness. Universal education, freedom
of thought, the protection of human rights, recognition of the earth’s
vast resources as a trust for the whole of humankind, society’s
responsibility for the well-being of its citizenry, the promotion of
scientific research, even so practical a principle as an international
auxiliary language that will advance integration of the earth’s
peoples—for all who respond to Bahá’u’lláh’s revelation, these and similar
precepts carry the same compelling authority as do the injunctions of
scripture against idolatry, theft and false witness. While intimations of
some can be perceived in earlier sacred writings, their definition and
prescription had necessarily to wait until the planet’s heterogeneous
populations could set out together on the discovery of their nature as a
single human race. Through spiritual empowerment brought by Bahá’u’lláh’s
revelation the Divine standards can be appreciated, not as isolated
principles and laws, but as facets of a single, all-embracing vision of
humanity’s future, revolutionary in purpose, intoxicating in the
possibilities it opens.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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