"An Ever-Advancing
Civilization"
Implicit in these
paragraphs is a perspective which represents the most challenging feature of
Bahá’u’lláh’s exposition of the function of the Manifestation of God.
Divine Revelation is, He says, the motive power of civilization. When it occurs, its
transforming effect on the minds and souls of those who respond to it is replicated in the
new society that slowly takes shape around their experience. A new center of loyalty
emerges that can win the commitment of peoples from the widest range of cultures; music
and the arts seize on symbols that mediate far richer and more mature inspirations; a
radical redefinition of concepts of right and wrong makes possible the formulation of new
codes of civil law and conduct; new institutions are conceived in order to give expression
to impulses of moral responsibility previously ignored or unknown: “He
was in the world, and the world was made by him...”47 As the new culture evolves
into a civilization, it assimilates achievements and insights of past eras in a multitude
of fresh permutations. Features of past cultures that cannot be incorporated atrophy or
are taken up by marginal elements among the population. The Word of God creates new
possibilities within both the individual consciousness and human relationships.
Every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God is endowed with such potency as can instill new
life into every human frame... All the wondrous works ye behold in this world have been
manifested through the operation of His supreme and most exalted Will, His wondrous and
inflexible Purpose.... No sooner is this resplendent word uttered, than its animating
energies, stirring within all created things, give birth to the means and instruments
whereby such arts can be produced and perfected.... In the days to come, ye will, verily,
behold things of which ye have never heard before.... Every single letter proceeding out
of the mouth of God is indeed a mother letter, and every word uttered by Him Who is the
Well Spring of Divine Revelation is a mother word....48
The sequence of the Divine
Revelations, the Báb asserts, is “a process that hath had
no beginning and will have no end.”49 Although the mission of each
of the Manifestations is limited in time and in the functions it performs, it is an
integral part of an ongoing and progressive unfoldment of God's power and will:
Contemplate
with thine inward eye the chain of successive Revelations that hath linked the
Manifestation of Adam with that of the Báb. I testify before God that each one of these
Manifestations hath been sent down through the operation of the Divine Will and Purpose,
that each hath been the bearer of a specific Message, that each hath been entrusted with a
divinely revealed Book... The measure of the Revelation with which every one of them hath
been identified had been definitely foreordained....50
Eventually, as an ever-evolving civilization
exhausts its spiritual sources, a process of disintegration sets in, as it does throughout
the phenomenal world. Turning again to analogies offered by nature,
Bahá’u’lláh compares this hiatus in the development of civilization to the
onset of winter. Moral vitality diminishes, as does social cohesion. Challenges which
would have been overcome at an earlier age, or been turned into opportunities for
exploration and achievement, become insuperable barriers. Religion loses its relevance,
and experimentation becomes increasingly fragmented, further deepening social divisions.
Increasingly, uncertainty about the meaning and value of life generates anxiety and
confusion. Speaking about this condition in our own age Bahá’u’lláh says:
We can well
perceive how the whole human race is encompassed with great, with incalculable
afflictions. We see it languishing on its bed of sickness, sore-tried and disillusioned.
They that are intoxicated by self-conceit have interposed themselves between it and the
Divine and infallible Physician. Witness how they have entangled all men, themselves
included, in the mesh of their devices. They can neither discover the cause of the
disease, nor have they any knowledge of the remedy. They have conceived the straight to be
crooked, and have imagined their friend an enemy.51
When each of the Divine impulses has fulfilled
itself, the process recurs. A new Manifestation of God appears with the fuller measure of
Divine inspiration for the next stage in the awakening and civilizing of humankind:
Consider the
hour at which the supreme Manifestation of God revealeth Himself unto men. Ere that hour
cometh, the Ancient Being, Who is still unknown of men and hath not as yet given utterance
to the Word of God, is Himself the All-Knower in a world devoid of any man that hath known
Him. He is indeed the Creator without a creation.... This is indeed the Day of which it
hath been written: “Whose shall be the Kingdom this Day?” And none can be found
ready to answer! 52
Until a section of humanity begins to
respond to the new Revelation, and a new spiritual and social paradigm begins to take
shape, people subsist spiritually and morally on the last traces of earlier Divine
endowments. The routine tasks of society may or may not be done; laws may be obeyed or
flouted; social and political experimentation may flame up or fail; but the roots of faith
-- without which no society can indefinitely endure -- have been exhausted. At the
“end of the age,” at the “end of the world,” the spiritually minded
begin to turn again to the Creative source. However clumsy or disturbing the
process may be, however inelegant or unfortunate some of the options considered, such
searching is an instinctive response to the awareness that an immense chasm has opened in
the ordered life of humankind.53 The effects of the new Revelation, Bahá’u’lláh says, are universal,
and not limited to the life and teachings of the Manifestation of God Who is the
Revelation's focal point. Though not understood, these effects increasingly permeate human
affairs, revealing the contradictions in popular assumptions and in society, and
intensifying the search for understanding.
The succession of the Manifestations is an
inseparable dimension of existence, Bahá’u’lláh declares, and will continue
throughout the life of the world: “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’...”54
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Copyright © 1991,
the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís
of the United States. All right reserved.
Published by the Bahá’í International Community,
Office of Public Information, New York.
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Bahá'u'lláh forbids:
Bahá'u'lláh
