“I am the Primal Point,” the Báb thus addresses Muḥammad _Sh_áh from the
prison-fortress of Máh-Kú, “from which have been generated all created
things... I am the Countenance of God Whose splendor can never be
obscured, the light of God whose radiance can never fade... All the keys
of heaven God hath chosen to place on My right hand, and all the keys of
hell on My left... I am one of the sustaining pillars of the Primal Word
of God. Whosoever hath recognized Me, hath known all that is true and
right, and hath attained all that is good and seemly... The substance
wherewith God hath created Me is not the clay out of which others have
been formed. He hath conferred upon Me that which the worldly-wise can
never comprehend, nor the faithful discover.” “Should a tiny ant,” the
Báb, wishing to stress the limitless potentialities latent in His
Dispensation, characteristically affirms, “desire in this day to be
possessed of such power as to be able to unravel the abstrusest and most
bewildering passages of the Qur’án, its wish will no doubt be fulfilled,
inasmuch as the mystery of eternal might vibrates within the innermost
being of all created things.” “If so helpless a creature,” is
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s comment on so startling an affirmation, “can be endowed
with so subtle a capacity, how much more efficacious must be the power
released through the liberal effusions of the grace of Bahá’u’lláh!”
To these authoritative assertions and solemn declarations made by
Bahá’u’lláh and the Báb must be added ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s own incontrovertible
testimony. He, the appointed interpreter of the utterances of both
Bahá’u’lláh and the Báb, corroborates, not by implication but in clear and
categorical language, both in His Tablets and in His Testament, the truth
of the statements to which I have already referred.
In a Tablet addressed to a Bahá’í in Mázindarán, in which He unfolds the
meaning of a misinterpreted statement attributed to Him regarding the rise
of the Sun of Truth in this century, He sets forth, briefly but
conclusively, what should remain for all time our true conception of the
relationship between the two Manifestations associated with the Bahá’í
Dispensation. “In making such a statement,” He explains, “I had in mind no
one else except the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, the character of whose
Revelations it had been my purpose to elucidate. The Revelation of the Báb
may be likened to the sun, its station corresponding to the first sign of
the Zodiac—the sign Aries—which the sun enters at the Vernal Equinox. The
station of Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation, on the other hand, is represented by
the sign Leo, the sun’s mid-summer and highest station. By this is meant
that this holy Dispensation is illumined with the light of the Sun of
Truth shining from its most exalted station, and in the plenitude of its
resplendency, its heat and glory.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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