Paragraph 147

When the Unseen, the Eternal, the divine Essence, caused the Day-star of Muhammad to rise above the horizon of knowledge, among the cavils which the Jewish divines raised against Him was that after Moses no Prophet should be sent of God. Yea, mention hath been made in the scriptures of a Soul Who must needs be made manifest and Who will advance the Faith, and promote the interests of the people, of Moses, so that the Law of the Mosaic Dispensation may encompass the whole earth. Thus hath the King of eternal glory referred in His Book to the words uttered by those wanderers in the vale of remoteness and error: “‘The hand of God,’ say the Jews, ‘is chained up.’ Chained up be their own hands! And for that which they have said, they were accursed. Nay, outstretched are both His hands!” “The hand of God is above their hands.”

Here Baha'u'llah is introducing a similar argument to that which was used against Muhammad, as recorded in the Qur'an. The uncle of the Bab, who, as you recall, was a devout Muslim , was most likely aware of this argument.

What is interesting to note is that Baha'u'llah is not citing the Bab, or any contemporary authors, but is strictly referring to a book that this man would regard as sacred. It is also worth noting that this argument comes quite late in the Kitab-i-Iqan. Baha'u'llah does not open with this. It is a nearly 150 paragraphs into it. By this point, Baha'u'llah has already firmed up the foundation of this man's belief, and is building His argument on what is now solid ground.

The argument, as you can see, basically says that the Jews argued that God was unable to send down another Messenger, which is exactly the same argument that the Muslim divines of the day were using against the Bab. Baha'u'llah will go more into this over the next few paragraphs.

But now that we have seen a summary, we want to look in a slightly different direction.

Quite often we like to focus on a single word or phrase and explore what we can learn from it. Here, we want to look at the attributes of God that Baha'u'llah cites at the beginning of this paragraph: the Unseen, the Eternal, the divine Essence.

He has just finished up a series of paragraphs in which He has talked about the spiritual understanding of the word "sovereign", and how it refers to the Promised One in a spiritual sense, and not in a literal sense. And here He immediately begins by reminding us that God is the Unseen. It only makes sense, in this context, that the sovereignty to which the traditions refer would also be "unseen".

He is also beginning an argument to show that God's hands cannot be tied up. For us to think that God cannot send down another Messenger really limits Him. And this limitation would not be for our lifetime, nor even for another hundred, or thousand years, but for the rest eternity. That's a long time for God to cut off communication. And really, when we stop to think about it, it just doesn't make any sense.

Another point to consider is how we reflect that attribute of God, the Eternal. While our soul may be eternal, we, in our bodies, most definitely are not. We only last around a hundred years, if we are lucky. But the Manifestations? Their dispensations tend to last a thousand years. So maybe Baha'u'llah is also alluding to the truth that only God is eternal, and that the various religions come and go.

God is eternal. The Manifestations are, in a sense, around for a thousand years. We are only here for a hundred. So again we can see this progression that is so often found in the Writings

If we are only here for a hundred years, at the most, then what are we going to do with the time we have? Are we going to try to bolster our own ego by showing how great our religion of the past was, or are we going to spend our time striving to build something new? Muhammad spoke at great length about the Last Days, and isn't it worth our time to investigate to see if we are living in those days? And if God has sent down another Messenger, shouldn't we do all we can to learn His message and strive to put it into practice?

As for the divine Essence, this seems to regularly refer in Baha'u'llah's writings to the source of the Manifestations. They are regularly referred to as the "Manifestations of His divine Essence", "the Mirrors reflecting the divine Essence", and so forth. It reminds us of the very source of Their power. If we consider ourselves as created in the image of God, and that this imaging refers to our own spiritual attributes, then we might think of the Manifestations as the capital version of this divine Essence, while we would be the lower case version of that. God, of course, would be in all caps.

Much of the rest of this book looks at the qualities of a true seeker, and gives inspirational examples of those heroes who have given their all to help support this new Message. It seems that Baha'u'llah, here, is just beginning to get us to consider stepping off the path on which we have been walking, and begin looking at this new one.