Daily Frameworks for 30 June 2024

Jamál, 08 Raḥmat (Mercy), 181 B.E.

The Twin Manifestations

Quotes for Reflection:

O King of Paris! ¹ Tell the priests to ring the bells no longer. By God, the True One! The Most Mighty Bell hath appeared in the form of Him Who is the Most Great Name, and the fingers of the Will of Thy Lord, the Most Exalted, the Most High, toll it out in the heaven of Immortality in His name, the All-Glorious. — Bahá’u’lláh ²

Arise thou amongst men in the name of this all-compelling Cause, and summon, then, the nations unto God, the Exalted, the Great. Be thou not of them who called upon God by one of His names, but who, when He Who is the Object of all names appeared, denied Him and turned aside from Him, and, in the end, pronounced sentence against Him with manifest injustice. — Bahá’u’lláh ³

Lay aside thy desire, and set then thine heart towards thy Lord, the Ancient of Days. We make mention of thee for the sake of God, and desire that thy name may be exalted through thy remembrance of God, the Creator of earth and heaven. — Bahá’u’lláh ⁴

O King of Berlin! Give ear unto the Voice calling from this manifest Temple: “Verily, there is none other God but Me, the Everlasting, the Peerless, the Ancient of Days.” Take heed lest pride debar thee from recognizing the Dayspring of Divine Revelation, lest earthly desires shut thee out, as by a veil, from the Lord of the Throne above and of the earth below. Thus counseleth thee the Pen of the Most High. He, verily, is the Most Gracious, the All-Bountiful. — Bahá’u’lláh ⁵

We have been with thee at all times, and found thee clinging unto the Branch and heedless of the Root. Thy Lord, verily, is a witness unto what I say. We grieved to see thee circle round Our Name, whilst unaware of Us, though We were before thy face. Open thine eyes, that thou mayest behold this glorious Vision, and recognize Him Whom thou invokest in the daytime and in the night season, and gaze on the Light that shineth above this luminous Horizon. — Bahá’u’lláh ⁶

Lay not aside the fear of God, and be thou of them that act uprightly. Gather around thee those ministers from whom thou canst perceive the fragrance of faith and of justice, and take thou counsel with them, and choose whatever is best in thy sight, and be of them that act generously. — Bahá’u’lláh ⁷

We pray that, out of His bounty—exalted be He—He may release, through this imprisonment, the necks of men from chains and fetters, and cause them to turn, with sincere faces, towards His face, Who is the Mighty, the Bounteous. Ready is He to answer whosoever calleth upon Him, and nigh is He unto such as commune with Him. — Bahá’u’lláh ⁸

Take ye advantage of the Day of God. Verily, to meet Him is better for you than all that whereon the sun shineth, could ye but know it. O concourse of rulers! Give ear unto that which hath been raised from the Dayspring of Grandeur: “Verily, there is none other God but Me, the Lord of Utterance, the All-Knowing.” Bind ye the broken with the hands of justice, and crush the oppressor who flourisheth with the rod of the commandments of your Lord, the Ordainer, the All-Wise. — Bahá’u’lláh ⁹

Issue forth from your habitations and bid the people enter the Kingdom of God, the Lord of the Day of Judgement. The Word which the Son concealed is made manifest. It hath been sent down in the form of the human temple in this day. Blessed be the Lord Who is the Father! He, verily, is come unto the nations in His most great majesty. Turn your faces towards Him, O concourse of the righteous! — Bahá’u’lláh ¹⁰

O concourse of monks! Seclude not yourselves in your churches and cloisters. Come ye out of them by My leave, and busy, then, yourselves with what will profit you and others. Thus commandeth you He Who is the Lord of the Day of Reckoning. Seclude yourselves in the stronghold of My love. This, truly, is the seclusion that befitteth you, could ye but know it. He that secludeth himself in his house is indeed as one dead. It behoveth man to show forth that which will benefit mankind. — Bahá’u’lláh ¹¹

The Life of the 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. ¹²

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.” ^{13 14}

1. This is Bahá’u’lláh’s second Tablet addressed to the French Emperor. An earlier Tablet was revealed in Adrianople. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/summons-lord-hosts/13#740860871 ↩
2. Baháʼuʼlláh. The Summons of the Lord of Hosts : Tablets. Translated by Shoghi Effendi. 1st ed. Haifa: Baháʼí World Centre, 2002. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/summons-lord-hosts/5#314956453 ↩
3. Baháʼuʼlláh. The Summons of the Lord of Hosts : Tablets. Translated by Shoghi Effendi. 1st ed. Haifa: Baháʼí World Centre, 2002. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/summons-lord-hosts/6#101578070 ↩
4. Baháʼuʼlláh. The Summons of the Lord of Hosts : Tablets. Translated by Shoghi Effendi. 1st ed. Haifa: Baháʼí World Centre, 2002. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/summons-lord-hosts/6#977151416 ↩
5. Bahá’u’lláh. The Kitáb-i-Aqdas. Bahá’í Reference Library. Accessed June 29, 2024. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/kitab-i-aqdas/6#182888505. ↩
6. Bahá’u’lláh. The Kitáb-i-Aqdas. Bahá’í Reference Library. Accessed June 29, 2024. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/kitab-i-aqdas/6#926103798. ↩
7. Baháʼuʼlláh. The Summons of the Lord of Hosts : Tablets. Translated by Shoghi Effendi. 1st ed. Haifa: Baháʼí World Centre, 2002. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/summons-lord-hosts/11#123175592 ↩
8. Baháʼuʼlláh. The Summons of the Lord of Hosts : Tablets. Translated by Shoghi Effendi. 1st ed. Haifa: Baháʼí World Centre, 2002. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/summons-lord-hosts/7#227668539 ↩
9. Bahá’u’lláh. The Kitáb-i-Aqdas. Bahá’í Reference Library. Accessed June 29, 2024. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/kitab-i-aqdas/6#649631207. ↩
10. Baháʼuʼlláh. The Summons of the Lord of Hosts : Tablets. Translated by Shoghi Effendi. 1st ed. Haifa: Baháʼí World Centre, 2002. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/summons-lord-hosts/5#192805100 ↩
11. Baháʼuʼlláh. The Summons of the Lord of Hosts : Tablets. Translated by Shoghi Effendi. 1st ed. Haifa: Baháʼí World Centre, 2002. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/summons-lord-hosts/5#243303440 ↩
12. Effendi, Shoghi. God Passes By. Bahá’í Reference Library. Accessed June 29, 2024. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/shoghi-effendi/god-passes-by/14#539873127. ↩
13. Effendi, Shoghi. God Passes By. Bahá’í Reference Library. Accessed June 29, 2024. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/shoghi-effendi/god-passes-by/14#144493505. ↩
14. Ruhi Institute. The Twin Manifestations. 2.1.21.PE December 2021. Vol. Book 4. 6 vols. Embarking on a Path of Service. Cali, Columbia: Ruhi Foundation, 2021, 117-118. https://www.ruhi.org/en/walking-a-path-of-service/#TWM.