O thou who art steadfast in the Covenant! Thy letter was received and its contents noted. Speak in accordance with the instructions written herein, and utter not even one word more: Abraham, on Him be peace, made a covenant concerning Moses and gave the glad-tidings of His coming. Moses made a covenant concerning the promised Christ, and announced the good news of His advent to the world. Christ made a covenant concerning the Paraclete and gave the tidings of His coming. The Prophet Muhammad made a covenant concerning the Bab, and the Bab was the One promised by Muhammad, for Muhammad gave the tidings of His coming. The Bab made a covenant concerning the Blessed Beauty, Baha'u'llah, and gave the glad-tidings of His coming for the Blessed Beauty was the One promised by the Bab. Baha'u'llah made a covenant concerning a Promised One Who will become manifest after one thousand or thousands of years. That Manifestation is Baha'u'llah's Promised One, and will appear after a thousand or thousands of years. He, moreover, with His Supreme Pen, entered into a great Covenant and Testament with all the Baha'is whereby they were all commanded to follow the Centre of the Covenant after His ascension, and depart not, even to a hair's breadth, from obeying Him.
In the Most Holy Book, there are two instances in which He hath explicitly issued a binding command and appointed, in clear and unequivocal language, the Interpreter of His Word. In all His heavenly Tablets---especially in the Tablet of the Branch, the entire substance of which referreth to the servitude of 'Abdu'l-Baha, that is, the Servant of Baha---the Supreme Pen hath revealed all that is needed. And since 'Abdu'l-Baha is the Interpreter of His Word, he sayeth that this Tablet of the Branch, that is, 'Abdu'l-Baha, referreth to the servitude of 'Abdu'l-Baha, and naught else.
In brief, among the characteristics of this Dispensation which were not present in previous Dispensations, one is this: Baha'u'llah hath left no room for discord. For in His own blessed Day and by His Supreme Pen, He established a Covenant and Testament, appointed the Centre towards whom all must turn, explicitly specified the Interpreter of His Word, and closed the doors to false interpretations.
It behoveth everyone to render thanks unto God for having granted such assurance in this blessed Dispensation, and for having left no cause for wavering. Therefore, all must show forth obedience and submissiveness towards that Centre and turn their entire attention unto him. As to thy speech, it must be confined to this and in no wise exceed it, so that it may foster harmony and ward off discord. The Glory of Glories rest upon thee.
Future revelation: an open horizon and a firm minimum
duration of the Baha'i cycle; future divine revelations
Editorial introduction
Abraham gave tidings of Moses, Moses of Christ, Christ of the Paraclete, Muḥammad of the Báb, the Báb of Bahá’u’lláh; and Bahá’u’lláh in turn speaks of One who will come after Him, fearing for Him more than for Himself. The rising and setting of the Sun of Truth has no beginning and no end. To believe this is to hold a revelation’s greatness and its openness together, and the Kitáb-i-Aqdas supplies the hinge: before a full thousand years have passed, anyone claiming direct revelation from God is an impostor. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá adds that the minimum is not an appointment; the interval may be a thousand years or thousands, and the cycle Bahá’u’lláh opened stretches across ages beyond reckoning, in which other Manifestations will renew laws under His shadow. Jesus likewise asked for readiness without knowledge of the day or hour, though without a numbered safeguard [1]. The path from here runs through progressive revelation, through the discernment of false claims to spiritual station, and through the long story of religion corrupted and renewed, where patience and humility prove to be one virtue.
Selected passages
And as for the "thousand years" mentioned in the Most Holy Book - this means that before the thousand years any Manifestation is absolutely impossible and inconceivable, and all holy souls are under His blessed shadow. But after the conventional thousand years among people it is not impossible or inconceivable. Now that period could potentially be extended - each day could represent a thousand years, as stated in the Qur'an: "Verily a day with thy Lord is as a thousand years." The meaning is that after the passing of the conventional thousand years among people, a second Manifestation is not immediately ordained - it could be extended much longer.
Concerning the holy Manifestations who will come in the future "in the shadows of the clouds" - in terms of receiving divine bounty they are under the shadow of the Ancient Beauty, but in terms of their outpouring they "do whatsoever they will."
By God! I fear not for Myself, but for him who shall come after Me with mighty and impregnable sovereignty. By God! Whoso objecteth unto Me shall object unto him.
Although in this Manifestation all signs of power, manifest proofs, wondrous verses, glorious manifestations and divine attributes have appeared - and all this as a grace from Us to all created things - yet henceforth the matter resteth in God's hands, that He may designate what shall be proof for future Manifestations. We shall soon send down His decree in the Tablets, for verily We have ever been the Ruler over all things. All matters are within Our mighty grasp; We do what We will and decree what We please.
None but God is aware of the completion of a cycle. Sometimes perfection appears in less than that, and sometimes it does not appear in a thousand years or more. It is very clear that the perfection of all things is through God's confirmation, not through length of time and the appearance of people's vain imaginings.
… Whosoever claims before the thousand years hath fabricated against God, for thereby the Cause would be corrupted and the temple of the Divine Will would not be established upon the throne of mighty glory.
On the first day when the Ancient Beauty was seated upon the Most Great Throne in the garden named Ridvan, the tongue of grandeur spoke three verses: First, that the sword is abolished in this Revelation; second, that before the completion of a thousand years, whosoever makes a claim is false, and the year is a complete year - interpretation and explanation of this verse are forbidden; and third, that God, exalted be His glory, at that moment shed the radiance of all His names upon all things.
In one of the Tablets it is revealed: "Whosoever makes a claim before the completion of a full thousand years is a lying impostor. … For the harm of such souls has affected the divine Tree of Truth itself and has been the cause of discord, contention, conflict, the wavering of weak hearts, and the instability of the Cause among the people - and will continue to be so.
As the Pen of the Ancient of Days and the Most Great Name now declares: should anyone appear with all the signs before the completion of a full thousand years - each year comprising twelve months according to what was revealed in the Furqan, and nineteen months according to what was revealed in the Bayan, with each month being nineteen days - you must never believe them. … For the harm of such souls returns to the Divine Tree itself and has been and will be the cause of dissension, disputation, strife, the wavering of weak hearts, and the instability of the Cause among the people.
As for what thou hast mentioned regarding certain differences, this is what hath been sent down in the Tablets from thy Lord, the All-Knowing, the All-Informed: "Whoso layeth claim to a Cause before the completion of a full thousand years is verily a lying impostor. And whoso interpreteth this verse differently is indeed among the most lost." … For these souls have been and shall continue to be the cause of harm to the root of the Cause and the source of discord among the people. Were it to be thus, that every ignorant one might understand as he pleased, then never would the divine Tree of the Cause be established amongst men, nor would God's commandments and laws become effective and operative.
That which all are bound to recognize hath been revealed in this blessed verse, and all are obliged to acknowledge it and hold fast to it. Most of the ignorant are heedless and walk in the paths of delusion, and most people are unaware. Therefore was this blessed verse revealed as a bounty, that they might not follow every barking dog and become the cause of dissipating the Cause of God.
Say: The Revelations have reached their end. Whosoever before the completion of a thousand years maketh any claim, whosoever he may be and whatsoever he may bring forth, is false and untrue.
Know thou that when this Revelation was established upon the throne of His Most Great Name, the Most Great, this verse was revealed from the heaven of thy Lord, the Mighty, the Powerful, addressing the Pen: "O Pen! Write upon the Tablet and inform the people that the Manifestations have ended with this luminous, resplendent Manifestation. Whosoever claims this most mighty, most great, and most precious station before the completion of a thousand years hath indeed fabricated a lie against God and is of the mischief-makers, for thereby the Cause of God would be corrupted and His command would not be established among His believing servants."
Know thou furthermore that the Revelations have ended with this Most Great, this Most Mighty Revelation. Whosoever shall lay claim to this exalted, mighty and impregnable station before the completion of a thousand years, hath indeed corrupted the Cause and falsely attributed that which is not unto God, thy Lord and the Lord of all creation.
O My bird! Soar in this atmosphere through My Name and My sovereignty; then, in My love, detach thyself from the worlds. By My life! The Revelations have ended with this Most Great Revelation. Whoso layeth claim to a Revelation before the completion of a full thousand years, such a one is assuredly a lying impostor. And whosoever interpreteth this verse is one who hath turned away from the All-Merciful and is counted among the lost. Although for those possessed of insight, mention was made aforetime of the dominion of Husayn lasting eighty thousand years, yet the people of Baha must at least hold to a thousand years.
Say: All Revelations have ended with this Most Great Revelation. Beware lest ye follow any ignorant doubter.
Say: Verily these verses are sealed in this Most Holy, this mighty Manifestation. Whoso claimeth revelation after Him hath indeed lied against the Lord of Baha and this mighty Throne.
Whosoever awaiteth a Manifestation after Me is indeed among the lost. And He who shall be manifest after the thousand years will speak in My Name. And He who shall come in the time of the Mustaghath will bear witness unto Me, and proclaim that I am God, the Lord of heaven and earth.
The outward spring -- unto which, by the command of the Creator of Names, the training of the outward forms of things is committed and entrusted -- appeareth but once in the year. Even so the spiritual spring, which nurtures souls and illumined hearts, and bestoweth the everlasting, enduring life, revealeth itself but once in a thousand years, or more; and upon all things, in the realms of the seen and the unseen, it conferreth the robe of existence and the splendor of lordship.
We have disclosed in this Tablet one of the mysteries of this Revelation, and have concealed that which is hidden lest the clamor of the ungodly be raised. By God! None hath comprehended it save according to his capacity. Should a soul discover the fragrance of this Raiment, he would be so attracted as to soar beyond contingent existence. Were We to expound what We have revealed in this Tablet, all the pens would not suffice, nor would oceans of ink be adequate.
The Cycle of the Blessed Beauty is endless. Only after ages and epochs have passed, and when entirely the Tablets, Books, Writings, invocations and traces of this Dispensation shall have been effaced, to the degree that naught of the teachings of the Blessed Beauty remaineth in men's hands---then will a new Manifestation appear. Otherwise, so long as the traces, Tablets, teachings, utterances, mysteries and lights of the Blessed Beauty are manifest in the world of existence, there shall be no appearance, no rising, no forth-going of another Dispensation.
That Light of Truth - its outpouring is all-encompassing and its grace is perfect, whether in the Day of Manifestation or after its setting. Its Day is a thousand years and its cycle is a hundred thousand years.
His Day is five hundred thousand years and His Dispensation will endure unto eternity.
However, what will appear after the manifestation of the Qa'im regarding the mysteries of the world of being, realities of things, arts and wonders, human knowledge, hidden secrets and guarded mysteries, is equivalent to twenty-five letters.
The revelation ended with Him Who conversed on Sinai, and this cycle will extend for a thousand years, nay, a hundred thousand years.
And today the center of attention and the object of supplication and imploring is the Abha Beauty (may my spirit be a sacrifice for His loved ones) until the Manifestation who will come after the thousand years.
This is the truth, and after truth there is nothing but manifest error.
The Promised One of the Blessed Beauty will come after a thousand years or thousands of years.
And likewise, in the dispensation of the Blessed Beauty---may my spirit be a sacrifice unto His loved ones---all are beneath His shadow. He hath no peer or likeness until the next Manifestation---and that after a thousand years; not that it must be exactly one thousand years, for it may be two thousand years, ten thousand years, twenty thousand years: it is not fixed that it should be after precisely one thousand years. But until a thousand years have passed, no Sun shall arise.
A question was asked about the phrase 'seventy thousand years' which appears in the statements of Baha'u'llah. Answer: The intention is temporal extension, meaning the laws and ordinances of this dispensation will undoubtedly manifest in the world even if it takes several thousand years.
The Manifestation said that he who is dead in the spirit in this time, will never be alive again of the spirit, and the one who is confirmed in this time will never be dead again spiritually. Baha'u'llah said that this cycle of Baha'u'llah would last about 400,000 years.
The Judeo-Christian idea of the Messiah, Redeemer, appears in Islam as the Mahdi, in the Baha'i Teachings as Nuqtih, the Blessed Perfection Baha'u'llah chose for Himself the designation: "Qa'imu'z-Zaman", meaning "Lord of the Age", for the Divine Manifestation Baha'u'llah is the Lord of His Cycle, Master and Lord of His Age, which may last for a thousand years, but which may, in accordance with the development of mankind toward truth and unity, come to its conclusion before a thousand years are up.
The last of the Days of Judgment will dawn, when the Prophetic Cycle will have come to an end and the world returns to God, when all becomes lost in Him through the crashing and bursting of the elements, which means annihilation for those turned away from God, but spiritualization for those resting in God, and for those souls still in need of purification and development it is a triumphant sinking into God's infinite grace and mercy.
He said: 'Great events would happen and people will become irreligious. There will be tumult and because of irreligion there will be such confusion that all will be indistress. Then they will return to religion. As long as there is no religion, the happiness of the world of man is impossible.'
The Master: 'The sovereignty of God has no beginning and no end and the outpouring of His bounties is endless.'
Further quotations · supplied wording and references
...the Revelation of God may be likened to the sun. No matter how innumerable its risings, there is but one sun, and upon it depends the life of all things. … 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.
In connection with the Manifestations destined to follow the Revelation of Baha'u'llah, 'Abdu'l-Baha makes this definite and weighty declaration: "Concerning the Manifestations that will come down in the future 'in the shadows of the clouds,' know verily that in so far as their relation to the source of their inspiration is concerned they are under the shadow of the Ancient Beauty. In their relation, however, to the age in which they appear, each and every one of them 'doeth whatsoever He willeth.'
For while the Dispensation of Baha'u'llah will last for at least one thousand years, His cycle will extend still farther to at least 500,000.... After Baha'u'llah many Prophets will, no doubt, appear, but they will be all under His shadow. Although they may abrogate the laws of the Dispensation, in accordance with the needs and requirements of the age in which they appear, they nevertheless draw their spiritual force from this mighty Revelation.
The last twenty-three years of that same century [the first Baha'i century] coincided with the first epoch of the second, the Iron and Formative, Age of the Dispensation of Baha'u'llah -- the first of a series of epochs which must precede the inception of the last and Golden Age of that Dispensation -- a Dispensation which, as the Author of the Faith has Himself categorically asserted, must extend over a period of no less than one thousand years, and which will constitute the first stage in a series of Dispensations, to be established by future Manifestations, all deriving their inspiration from the Author of the Baha'i Revelation, and destined to last, in their aggregate, no less than five thousand centuries.
The bud, the flower, the fruit are only symbols to convey to us the sense of the progress being made by man in receiving ever fuller Revelations from God. In spite of the vast spiritual significance of what Baha'u'llah has brought to the world we humans have infinite progress to make in the future. Future Prophets will bring us new laws suitable to our state of development and continue to educate us on this planet, but they will be under the shadow of Baha'u'llah for five thousand centuries.
This final and crowning stage in the evolution of the plan wrought by God Himself for humanity will, in turn, prove to be the signal for the birth of a world civilization, incomparable in its range, its character and potency, in the history of mankind -- a civilization which posterity will, with one voice, acclaim as the fairest fruit of the Golden Age of the Dispensation of Baha'u'llah, and whose rich harvest will be garnered during future dispensations destined to succeed one another in the course of the five thousand century Baha'i Cycle.
"Centuries, nay ages, must pass away," He affirms in one of His earliest Tablets, "ere the Day-Star of Truth shineth again in its mid-summer splendor, or appeareth once more in the radiance of its vernal glory... How thankful must we be for having been made in this Day the recipients of so overwhelming a favor!"
O Pen! Write thou upon the Tablet, and announce unto the people, that all the Revelations have attained their final consummation in this shining and resplendent Revelation; and that whosoever advanceth a claim to this exalted, mighty and glorious station prior to the expiration of one thousand years, such a one hath verily uttered a slander against God and been accounted with the stirrers of sedition. For through such claims the Cause of Cause will be subverted and its stability among the believing souls undermined.
He is the Unique and Peerless One till the next Manifestation. It is, however, not definite that it will be 1,000 years; it may be 2,000, or 10,000 or 20,000 years; but it is definite that for the coming 1,000 years there will appear no Manifestation; for 1,000 years there shall arise no Sun. All the appearances will be beneath the shade of the Most Great Appearance; they will be as stars of guidance.
First, regarding Baha'u'llah's statement in the Iqan concerning the renewal of the "City of God" once every thousand years; this passage should not be taken too literally; what is meant is about and within the range of one thousand years, a few hundred years more or less make no much difference. God, of course, does not reveal His message with the same mathematical exactness as the scientist applies the principles and laws of science. It is unfair to attribute to Baha'u'llah things which He never and could have never meant.
Although in the present Dispensation all mighty evidences, perspicuous proofs, wondrous Verses, prodigious revelations, and divine stations have been made manifest - all these as a bounty from Our presence unto the entire creation - yet hereafter the matter rests in the hand of God: It is for Him to determine what to assign as proof in the succeeding Manifestations....
"I am not apprehensive for My own self," Baha'u'llah 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 Suratu'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."
As to the meaning of the quotation 'My fears are for Him Who will be sent down unto you after Me': this refers to the Manifestation Who is to come after a thousand or more years, Who like all previous Messengers of God will be subjected to persecutions, but will eventually triumph over them. For men of ill-will have been and will always continue to be in this world, unless mankind reaches a state of complete and absolute perfection -- a condition which is not only improbable but actually impossible to attain. The fundamental difference, however, between this Dispensation and all previous ones is this, that in this Revelation the possibility of permanent schism between the followers of the Prophet has been prevented through the direct and explicit instructions providing for the necessary instruments designed to maintain the organic unity of the body of the faithful.
There is nothing in the Writings to support the view that the opposition or persecution will be instigated or inflicted by the Universal House of Justice. You are aware, of course, that one of the reasons for the appearance of a new Manifestation of God is to bring forth a spiritual renewal, as the former Dispensation would have passed through its stages of growth and reached its zenith. You can be sure that the Supreme Institution of the Faith, "under the care and protection of the Abha Beauty, under the shelter and unerring guidance of His Holiness, the Exalted One", will exert every effort to recognize, when the time is ripe, the reality of the new Manifestation, and lead men to Him. How the majority of the people at that time will respond is a truth locked up in the treasury of God's knowledge.
The provenance, the authority, the duties, the sphere of action of the Universal House of Justice all derive from the revealed Word of Baha'u'llah which, together with the interpretations and expositions of the Centre of the Covenant and of the Guardian of the Cause -- who, after 'Abdu'l-Baha, is the sole authority in the interpretation of Baha'i Scripture -- constitute the binding terms of reference of the Universal House of Justice and are its bedrock foundation. The authority of these Texts is absolute and immutable until such time as Almighty God shall reveal His new Manifestation to Whom will belong all authority and power.
Continue exploring
For thought and discussion
Questions to carry forward
- How can fidelity to a revelation include openness to another revelation in the future?
- What distinguishes a minimum interval from a predicted date of arrival?
- How does the distinction between a dispensation and a cycle help interpret the different spans of time?
- How should translation authority, reported speech, and explicit interpretive guidance affect the way conflicting statements are weighed?
- What does Matthew’s call to readiness contribute, and how does it differ from the specific safeguard in the Aqdas?
- What habits of discernment and humility might help a community remain faithful without presuming to determine God’s future action?