the inmost shrine: ‘Thus far and no farther.’ Verily We bear witness to
that which they have done and now are doing.”
In a more explicit language Bahá’u’lláh testifies to this truth in one of
His Tablets revealed in Adrianople: “Know verily that the veil hiding Our
countenance hath not been completely lifted. We have revealed Our Self to
a degree corresponding to the capacity of the people of Our age. Should
the Ancient Beauty be unveiled in the fullness of His glory mortal eyes
would be blinded by the dazzling intensity of His revelation.”
In the Súriy-i-Sabr, revealed as far back as the year 1863, on the very
first day of His arrival in the garden of Ridván, He thus affirms: “God
hath sent down His Messengers to succeed to Moses and Jesus, and He will
continue to do so till ‘the end that hath no end’; so that His grace may,
from the heaven of Divine bounty, be continually vouchsafed to mankind.”
“I am not apprehensive for My own self,” Bahá’u’lláh still more explicitly
declares, “My fears are for Him Who will be sent down unto you after
Me—Him Who will be invested with great sovereignty and mighty dominion.”
And again He writes in the Súratu’l-Haykal: “By those words which I have
revealed, Myself is not intended, but rather He Who will come after Me. To
it is witness God, the All-Knowing.” “Deal not with Him,” He adds, “as ye
have dealt with Me.”
In a more circumstantial passage the Báb upholds the same truth in His
writings. “It is clear and evident,” He writes in the Persian Bayán, “that
the object of all preceding Dispensations hath been to pave the way for
the advent of Muḥammad, the Apostle of God. These, including the
Muḥammadan Dispensation, have had, in their turn, as their objective the
Revelation proclaimed by the Qá’im. The purpose underlying this
Revelation, as well as those that preceded it, has, in like manner, been
to announce the advent of the Faith of Him Whom God will make manifest.
And this Faith—the Faith of Him Whom God will make manifest—in its turn,
together with all the Revelations gone before it, have as their object the
Manifestation destined to succeed it. And the latter, no less than all the
Revelations preceding it, prepare the way for the Revelation which is yet
to follow. The process of the rise and setting of the Sun of Truth will
thus indefinitely continue—a process that hath had no beginning and will
have no end.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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