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Dear readers
Hello again. I hope you are all well and healthy, enjoying spring coming. Today I will plant two roses, but first I will tell you about Bahaullah. Today I am very serious.
The following are excerpts from Shoghi Effendis "The Promised Day has Com" written in 1941.
"Well nigh a hundred years have elapsed since the Revelation of Bahaullah dawned upon the world - a Revelation, the nature of which, as affirmed by Himself, "none among the Manifestations of old, except to a prescribed degree, hath ever comprehended."
For a whole century God has respited mankind, that it might acknowledge the Founder of such a Revelation, espouse His Cause,proclaim His greatness, and establish His Order. In a hundred volumes, the repositories of priceless precepts, mighty laws, unique principles, impassioned exhortations, reiterated warnings, amazing prophesies, sublime invocations, and weighty commentaries, the Bearer of such a Message has proclaimed, as no Prophet before Him has done, the Mission with which God entrusted Him.
To emperors, kings, princes and potentates, to rulers, governments, clergy and peoples, whether of the East or of the West, whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Zoroastrian, He addressed, for well-nigh fifty years, and in the most tragic circumstances, these priceless pearls of knowledge and wisdom that lay hid within the ocean of His matchless utterance. Forsaking fame and fortune, accepting imprisonment and exile, careless of ostracism and obloquy, submitting to physical indignities and cruel deprivations, He, the Vice-gerent of God on earth, suffered Himself to be banished from place to place and from country to country...
"We verily," He Himself has testified,"have not fallen short of Our duty to exhort men, and to deliver that whereunto I was bidden by God, the Almighty. Had they hearkened unto Me, they would have beheld the earth another earth." And again: "Is there any excuse left for any one in this Revelation? No, by God, the Lord of the Mighty Throne! My signs have encompassed the earth, and My power enveloped all mankind, and yet the people are wrapped in a strange sleep!"
This article of mine today is meant to be a reminder of the fact that Bahaullah sent the Message of God to all the kings and rulers of the world , plus both secular and religious leaders from the Most Great Prison in Acko,Acre in Israel. That mankind was warned of "impending chaos". Therefore it is said that "God has respited mankind". Then came the double war.We know how devastating they were, how many millions were killed, how much was destroyed.
And how is it today?.70 years later after this was written..... I'd say even worse. If I had not embraced this precious Faith I would have been so scared at the sight of the world, so scared of the future. I would not have been able to see the light shining in the darkness, a light shining even from the horizon of the future world.Understand?
"This great retributive calamity, for which the world's supreme leaders, both secular and religious, are to be regarded as primarily answerable, as testified by Bahaullah, should not, if we would correctly appraise it, be regarded as solely as a punishment meted out by God to a world that has, for a hundred years, persisted in its refusal to embrace the truth of the redemptive Message proffered to it by the supreme Messenger of God in this day. It should be viewed also, though to a lesser degree, in the light of divine retribution for the perversity of the human race in general, in casting itself adrift from those elementary principles which must, at all times govern, and can alone safegard, the life and progress of mankind. Humanity has ,alas, with increasing insistence, preferred, instead of acknowledging and adoring the Spirit of God as embodied in His religion in this day, to worship those false idols, untruths and half-truths, which are obscuring its religions, corrupting its spiritual life, convulsing its political institutions, corroding its social fabric, and shattering its economic structure.
Not only have the peoples of the earth ignored, and some of them even assailed, a Faith, which is at once the essence, the promise, the reconciler, and the unifier of all religions, but they have drifted away from their own religions, and set up on their subverted altars other gods wholly alien not only to the spirit but to the traditional forms of their ancient faiths.
"The face of the world," Bahaullah laments, "hath altered. The way of God and the religion of God have ceased to be of any worth in the eyes of men." "The vitality of men's belief in God," He also has written, "is dying out in every land...The corrosion of ungodliness is eating into the vitals of human society." "Religion," He affirms, "is verily the chief instrument for the establishment of order in the world, and of tranquility amongst its peoples...The greater the decline of religion, the more grievous the waywardness of the ungodly. This cannot but lead in the end to chaos and confusion."
"...Religion is a radiant light and an impregnable stronghold for the protection and welfare of the peoples of the world." "As the body of man...needeth a garment to clothe it, so the body of mankind must needs be adorned with the mantle of justice and wisdom. Its robe is the Revelation vouchsafed unto it by God."
You, my dear diligent readers have not, I believe, ignored the Message of Bahaullah. You can also work for its spreading. This is what gives your heart nourishment. Each individual is like a priceless gem while working for the Cause of God, telling one's neighbors about it, relatives, school- or job colleges.. When working for this cause it should be remembered that it is the Holy Word, the Utterences by Bahaullah that can touch the hearts of men. If you tell somebody of the Cause of Bahaullah and if just one person appreciates your information about the cause and the Word of God has set his heart on fire, it is as if all mankind had become believers, so precious is this living, loving Faith.
Bye for now
Kind regards from
Laila
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