Bahai Faith; Peace -- Religious aspects -- Bahai Faith
Likewise, the divine bounties of the Sun of Reality are perpetual. Its
light is forever shining. Its love is forever radiating. Its bounty never
ceases. It could not be said that the power and effulgence of God was ever
subject to cessation. It could not be claimed that the divinity of the
Almighty One had come to an end. For the divinity of God is eternal.
Therefore, the divine bounties—whether phenomenal and accidental or
spiritual and ideal—are perpetual. But the people of religion are of two
kinds: Some worship the sun, and some adore the dawning points from which
the sun rises. For instance, the Jews adore the Mosaic point of dawning,
the Zoroastrians that of Zoroaster. The people of Abraham turned to the
point of rising in Abraham. When the Sun of Reality transferred its
illumination from the Abrahamic to the Mosaic point of dawning, the people
of Abraham denied its appearance because they were turning toward the
point and not to the Sun of Reality itself. When that Sun of Reality with
its divine bestowal, its heavenly glow and effulgence transferred to the
Messianic point of rising, the Jews denied its appearance in Jesus, for
they were not worshipers of the Sun itself but adored its rising in Moses.
Had they been worshipers of the Sun of Reality, they would have turned to
Christ instead of denying Him as the Messiah.
What was the reason of this deprivation? It was simply because they were
imitating fathers and ancestors in forms of belief instead of turning
toward the Sun of Divinity. For this reason they were deprived of the
bounty which dawned in the Messianic dayspring. Holding tenaciously to the
former dawning point, they still remain in this position of deprivation.
Consider the people and nations of the earth today and observe this same
tenacious allegiance to ancestral belief. He whose father was a
Zoroastrian is a Zoroastrian. He whose father was a Buddhist remains a
Buddhist. The son of a Muslim continues a Muslim, and so on throughout.
Why is this? Because they are slaves and captives of mere imitation. They
have not investigated the reality of religion and arrived at its
fundamentals and conclusions. The Jew, for instance, has not proved the
validity of Moses by investigating reality. He is a Jew because his father
was a Jew. He imitates the forms and belief of his fathers and ancestors.
There is no thought or mention of reality. And so it is with the other
peoples of religion. This is the purpose of our statement that they
worship the dawning point rather than the Sun of Reality itself.
If in the day of Jesus Christ the Jews had forsaken imitation and
investigated reality, they would assuredly have believed in and accepted
Him, for the Messianic effulgence was far greater than the Mosaic. The Sun
of Reality, when it appeared from the dawning point of Christ, was as the
midsummer sun in brilliancy and beauty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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