A Description of the Proclamation of Bahá'u'lláh

The Proclamation of His Mission had been, as already observed, directed particularly to the kings of the earth, who, by virtue of the power and authority they wielded, were invested with a peculiar and inescapable responsibility for the destinies of their subjects. It was to these kings, as well as to the world’s religious leaders, who exercised a no less pervasive influence on the mass of their followers, that the Prisoner of ‘Akká directed His appeals, warnings, and exhortations during the first years of His incarceration in that city. “Upon Our arrival at this Prison,” He Himself affirms, “We purposed to transmit to the kings the messages of their Lord, the Mighty, the All-Praised. Though We have transmitted to them, in several Tablets, that which We were commanded, yet We do it once again, as a token of God’s grace.”

To the kings of the earth, both in the East and in the West, both Christian and Muslim, who had already been collectively admonished and warned in the Súriy-i-Múlúk revealed in Adrianople, and had been so vehemently summoned by the Báb, in the opening chapter of the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, on the very night of the Declaration of His Mission, Bahá’u’lláh, during the darkest days of His confinement in ‘Akká, addressed some of the noblest passages of His Most Holy Book. In these passages He called upon them to take fast hold of the “Most Great Law”; proclaimed Himself to be “the King of Kings” and “the Desire of all Nations”; declared them to be His “vassals” and “emblems of His sovereignty”; disclaimed any intention of laying hands on their kingdoms; bade them forsake their palaces, and hasten to gain admittance into His Kingdom; extolled the king who would arise to aid His Cause as “the very eye of mankind”; and finally arraigned them for the things which had befallen Him at their hands.

In His Tablet to Queen Victoria He, moreover, invites these kings to hold fast to “the Lesser Peace,” since they had refused “the Most Great Peace”; exhorts them to be reconciled among themselves, to unite and to reduce their armaments; bids them refrain from laying excessive burdens on their subjects, who, He informs them, are their “wards” and “treasures”; enunciates the principle that should any one among them take up arms against another, all should rise against him; and warns them not to deal with Him as the “King of Islám” and his ministers had dealt.

To the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III, the most prominent and influential monarch of his day in the West, designated by Him as the “Chief of Sovereigns,” and who, to quote His words, had “cast behind his back” the Tablet revealed for him in Adrianople, He, while a prisoner in the army barracks, addressed a second Tablet and transmitted it through the French agent in ‘Akká. In this He announces the coming of “Him Who is the Unconstrained,” whose purpose is to “quicken the world” and unite its peoples; unequivocally asserts that Jesus Christ was the Herald of His Mission; proclaims the fall of “the stars of the firmament of knowledge,” who have turned aside from Him; exposes that monarch’s insincerity; and clearly prophesies that his kingdom shall be “thrown into confusion,” that his “empire shall pass” from his hands, and that “commotions shall seize all the people in that land,” unless he arises to help the Cause of God and follow Him Who is His Spirit.

In memorable passages addressed to “the Rulers of America and the Presidents of the Republics therein” He, in His Kitáb-i-Aqdas, calls upon them to “adorn the temple of dominion with the ornament of justice and of the fear of God, and its head with the crown of remembrance” of their Lord; declares that “the Promised One” has been made manifest; counsels them to avail themselves of the “Day of God”; and bids them “bind with the hands of justice the broken” and “crush” the “oppressor” with “the rod of the commandments of their Lord, the Ordainer, the All-Wise.”

To Nicolaevitch Alexander II, the all-powerful Czar of Russia, He addressed, as He lay a prisoner in the barracks, an Epistle wherein He announces the advent of the promised Father, Whom “the tongue of Isaiah hath extolled,” and “with Whose name both the Torah and the Evangel were adorned”; commands him to “arise … and summon the nations unto God”; warns him to beware lest his sovereignty withhold him from “Him Who is the Supreme Sovereign”; acknowledges the aid extended by his Ambassador in Ṭihrán; and cautions him not to forfeit the station ordained for him by God.

To Queen Victoria He, during that same period, addressed an Epistle in which He calls upon her to incline her ear to the voice of her Lord, the Lord of all mankind; bids her “cast away all that is on earth,” and set her heart towards her Lord, the Ancient of Days; asserts that “all that hath been mentioned in the Gospel hath been fulfilled”; assures her that God would reward her for having “forbidden the trading in slaves,” were she to follow what has been sent unto her by Him; commends her for having “entrusted the reins of counsel into the hands of the representatives of the people”; and exhorts them to “regard themselves as the representatives of all that dwell on earth,” and to judge between men with “pure justice.”

In a celebrated passage addressed to William I, King of Prussia and newly-acclaimed emperor of a unified Germany, He, in His Kitáb-i-Aqdas, bids the sovereign hearken to His Voice, the Voice of God Himself; warns him to take heed lest his pride debar him from recognizing “the Day-Spring of Divine Revelation,” and admonishes him to “remember the one (Napoleon III) whose power transcended” his power, and who “went down to dust in great loss.” Furthermore, in that same Book, apostrophizing the “banks of the Rhine,” He predicts that “the swords of retribution” would be drawn against them, and that “the lamentations of Berlin” would be raised, though at that time she was “in conspicuous glory.”

In another notable passage of that same Book, addressed to Francis-Joseph, the Austrian Emperor and heir of the Holy Roman Empire, Bahá’u’lláh reproves the sovereign for having neglected to inquire about Him in the course of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; takes God to witness that He had found him “clinging unto the Branch and heedless of the Root”; grieves to observe his waywardness; and bids him open his eyes and gaze on “the Light that shineth above this luminous Horizon.”

To ‘Álí Páshá, the Grand Vizir of the Sulṭán of Turkey He addressed, shortly after His arrival in ‘Akká, a second Tablet, in which He reprimands him for his cruelty “that hath made hell to blaze and the Spirit to lament”; recounts his acts of oppression; condemns him as one of those who, from time immemorial, have denounced the Prophets as stirrers of mischief; prophesies his downfall; expatiates on His own sufferings and those of His fellow-exiles; extolls their fortitude and detachment; predicts that God’s “wrathful anger” will seize him and his government, that “sedition will be stirred up” in their midst, and that their “dominions will be disrupted”; and affirms that were he to awake, he would abandon all his possessions, and would “choose to abide in one of the dilapidated rooms of this Most Great Prison.” In the Lawḥ-i-Fu’ád, in the course of His reference to the premature death of the Sulṭán’s Foreign Minister, Fu’ád Páshá, He thus confirms His above-mentioned prediction: “Soon will We dismiss the one (‘Álí Páshá) who was like unto him and will lay hold on their Chief (Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz) who ruleth the land, and I, verily, am the Almighty, the All-Compelling.”

No less outspoken and emphatic are the messages, some embodied in specific Tablets, others interspersed through His writings, which Bahá’u’lláh addressed to the world’s ecclesiastical leaders of all denominations—messages in which He discloses, clearly and unreservedly, the claims of His Revelation, summons them to heed His call, and denounces, in certain specific cases, their perversity, their extreme arrogance and tyranny.

In immortal passages of His Kitáb-i-Aqdas and other Tablets He bids the entire company of these ecclesiastical leaders to “fear God,” to “rein in” their pens, “fling away idle fancies and imaginings, and turn then towards the Horizon of Certitude”; warns them to “weigh not the Book of God (Kitáb-i-Aqdas) with such standards and sciences as are current” amongst them; designates that same Book as the “Unerring Balance established amongst men”; laments over their blindness and waywardness; asserts His superiority in vision, insight, utterance and wisdom; proclaims His innate and God-given knowledge; cautions them not to “shut out the people by yet another veil,” after He Himself had “rent the veils asunder”; accuses them of having been “the cause of the repudiation of the Faith in its early days”; and adjures them to “peruse with fairness and justice that which hath been sent down” by Him, and to “nullify not the Truth” with the things they possess.

To Pope Pius IX, the undisputed head of the most powerful Church in Christendom, possessor of both temporal and spiritual authority, He, a Prisoner in the army barracks of the penal-colony of ‘Akká, addressed a most weighty Epistle, in which He announces that “He Who is the Lord of Lords is come overshadowed with clouds,” and that “the Word which the Son concealed is made manifest.” He, moreover, warns him not to dispute with Him even as the Pharisees of old disputed with Jesus Christ; bids him leave his palaces unto such as desire them, “sell all the embellished ornaments” in his possession, “expend them in the path of God,” abandon his kingdom unto the kings, “arise … amidst the peoples of the earth,” and summon them to His Faith. Regarding him as one of the suns of the heaven of God’s names, He cautions him to guard himself lest “darkness spread its veils” over him; calls upon him to “exhort the kings” to “deal equitably with men”; and counsels him to walk in the footsteps of his Lord, and follow His example.

To the patriarchs of the Christian Church He issued a specific summons in which He proclaims the coming of the Promised One; exhorts them to “fear God” and not to follow “the vain imaginings of the superstitious”; and directs them to lay aside the things they possess and “take fast hold of the Tablet of God by His sovereign power.” To the archbishops of that Church He similarly declares that “He Who is the Lord of all men hath appeared,” that they are “numbered with the dead,” and that great is the blessedness of him who is “stirred by the breeze of God, and hath arisen from amongst the dead in this perspicuous Name.” In passages addressed to its bishops He proclaims that “the Everlasting Father calleth aloud between earth and heaven,” pronounces them to be the fallen stars of the heaven of His knowledge, and affirms that His body “yearneth for the cross” and His head is “eager for the spear in the path of the All-Merciful.” The concourse of Christian priests He bids “leave the bells,” and come forth from their churches; exhorts them to “proclaim aloud the Most Great Name among the nations”; assures them that whoever will summon men in His Name will “show forth that which is beyond the power of all that are on earth”; warns them that the “Day of Reckoning hath appeared”; and counsels them to turn with their hearts to their “Lord, the Forgiving, the Generous.” In numerous passages addressed to the “concourse of monks” He bids them not to seclude themselves in churches and cloisters, but to occupy themselves with that which will profit their souls and the souls of men; enjoins them to enter into wedlock; and affirms that if they choose to follow Him He will make them heirs of His Kingdom, and that if they transgress against Him, He will, in His long-suffering, endure it patiently.

And finally, in several passages addressed to the entire body of the followers of Jesus Christ He identifies Himself with the “Father” spoken of by Isaiah, with the “Comforter” Whose Covenant He Who is the Spirit (Jesus) had Himself established, and with the “Spirit of Truth” Who will guide them “into all truth”; proclaims His Day to be the Day of God; announces the conjunction of the river Jordan with the “Most Great Ocean”; asserts their heedlessness as well as His own claim to have opened unto them “the gates of the kingdom”; affirms that the promised “Temple” has been built “with the hands of the will” of their Lord, the Mighty, the Bounteous; bids them “rend the veils asunder,” and enter in His name His Kingdom; recalls the saying of Jesus to Peter; and assures them that, if they choose to follow Him, He will make them to become “quickeners of mankind.”

To the entire body of Muslim ecclesiastics Bahá’u’lláh specifically devoted innumerable passages in His Books and Tablets, wherein He, in vehement language, denounces their cruelty; condemns their pride and arrogance; calls upon them to lay aside the things they possess, to hold their peace, and give ear to the words He has spoken; and asserts that, by reason of their deeds, “the exalted station of the people hath been abased, the standard of Islám hath been reversed, and its mighty throne hath fallen.” To the “concourse of Persian divines” He more particularly addressed His condemnatory words in which He stigmatizes their deeds, and prophesies that their “glory will be turned into the most wretched abasement,” and that they shall behold the punishment which will be inflicted upon them, “as decreed by God, the Ordainer, the All-Wise.”

To the Jewish people, He, moreover, announced that the Most Great Law has come, that “the Ancient Beauty ruleth upon the throne of David,” Who cries aloud and invokes His Name, that “from Zion hath appeared that which was hidden,” and that “from Jerusalem is heard the Voice of God, the One, the Incomparable, the Omniscient.”

To the “high priests” of the Zoroastrian Faith He, furthermore, proclaimed that “the Incomparable Friend” is manifest, that He “speaketh that wherein lieth salvation,” that “the Hand of Omnipotence is stretched forth from behind the clouds,” that the tokens of His majesty and greatness are unveiled; and declared that “no man’s acts shall be acceptable in this day unless he forsaketh mankind and all that men possess, and setteth his face towards the Omnipotent One.”

Some of the weightiest passages of His Epistle to Queen Victoria are addressed to the members of the British Legislature, the Mother of Parliaments, as well as to the elected representatives of the peoples in other lands. In these He asserts that His purpose is to quicken the world and unite its peoples; refers to the treatment meted out to Him by His enemies; exhorts the legislators to “take counsel together,” and to concern themselves only “with that which profiteth mankind”; and affirms that the “sovereign remedy” for the “healing of all the world” is the “union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith,” which can “in no wise be achieved except through the power of a skilled and all-powerful and inspired Physician.” He, moreover, in His Most Holy Book, has enjoined the selection of a single language and the adoption of a common script for all on earth to use, an injunction which, when carried out, would, as He Himself affirms in that Book, be one of the signs of the “coming of age of the human race.”

No less significant are the words addressed separately by Him to the “people of the Bayán,” to the wise men of the world, to its poets, to its men of letters, to its mystics and even to its tradesmen, in which He exhorts them to be attentive to His voice, to recognize His Day, and to follow His bidding.

Such in sum are the salient features of the concluding utterances of that historic Proclamation, the opening notes of which were sounded during the latter part of Bahá’u’lláh’s banishment to Adrianople, and which closed during the early years of His incarceration in the prison-fortress of ‘Akká. Kings and emperors, severally and collectively; the chief magistrates of the Republics of the American continent; ministers and ambassadors; the Sovereign Pontiff himself; the Vicar of the Prophet of Islám; the royal Trustee of the Kingdom of the Hidden Imám; the monarchs of Christendom, its patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, priests and monks; the recognized leaders of both the Sunní and Shí‘ah sacerdotal orders; the high priests of the Zoroastrian religion; the philosophers, the ecclesiastical leaders, the wise men and the inhabitants of Constantinople—that proud seat of both the Sultanate and the Caliphate; the entire company of the professed adherents of the Zoroastrian, the Jewish, the Christian and Muslim Faiths; the people of the Bayán; the wise men of the world, its men of letters, its poets, its mystics, its tradesmen, the elected representatives of its peoples; His own countrymen—all have, at one time or another, in books, Epistles, and Tablets, been brought directly within the purview of the exhortations, the warnings, the appeals, the declarations and the prophecies which constitute the theme of His momentous summons to the leaders of mankind—a summons which stands unparalleled in the annals of any previous religion, and to which the messages directed by the Prophet of Islám to some of the rulers among His contemporaries alone offer a faint resemblance.

“Never since the beginning of the world,” Bahá’u’lláh Himself affirms, “hath the Message been so openly proclaimed.” “Each one of them,” He, specifically referring to the Tablets addressed by Him to the sovereigns of the earth—Tablets acclaimed by ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá as a “miracle”—has written, “hath been designated by a special name. The first hath been named ‘The Rumbling,’ the second ‘The Blow,’ the third ‘The Inevitable,’ the fourth ‘The Plain,’ the fifth ‘The Catastrophe,’ and the others ‘The Stunning Trumpet-Blast,’ ‘The Near Event,’ ‘The Great Terror,’ ‘The Trumpet,’ ‘The Bugle,’ and the like, so that all the peoples of the earth may know, of a certainty, and may witness, with outward and inner eyes, that He Who is the Lord of Names hath prevailed, and will continue to prevail, under all conditions, over all men.” The most important of these Tablets, together with the celebrated Súriy-i-Haykal (the Súrih of the Temple), He, moreover, ordered to be written in the shape of a pentacle, symbolizing the temple of man, and which He identified, when addressing the followers of the Gospel in one of His Tablets, with the “Temple” mentioned by the Prophet Zechariah, and designated as “the resplendent dawning-place of the All-Merciful,” and which “the hands of the power of Him Who is the Causer of Causes” had built.