Chapter 18
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Conflicting writings regarding the abrogation of past dispensations.  Last updated: 2024/04/11.

Passage 1 by Shoghi Effendi conflicts with established divine teachings on the requirement for true believers to recognise the Independent Prophets when they appear. Independent Prophets who abrogate the previous dispensation, as indicated in passages 2 - 4 by Baha'u'llah, the Bab, and Abdu'l-Baha. Keeping in mind the teaching not to deviate from what Baha'u'llah revealed, not "even to the extent of a hair's breadth". Baha'is generally know Baha'u'llah abrogated the Babi Faith on the "Day of the Latter Resurrection", and therefore the statement in passage 1, "The Revelation, of which Bahá'u'lláh is the source and center, abrogates none of the religions that have preceded it", is false; is not in keeping with the divine teachings.


1)
Let no one, however, mistake my purpose. The Revelation, of which Bahá'u'lláh is the source and center, abrogates none of the religions that have preceded it, nor does it attempt, in the slightest degree, to distort their features or to belittle their value. It disclaims any intention of dwarfing any of the Prophets of the past, or of whittling down the eternal verity of their teachings. It can, in no wise, conflict with the spirit that animates their claims, nor does it seek to undermine the basis of any man's allegiance to their cause. Its declared, its primary purpose is to enable every adherent of these Faiths to obtain a fuller understanding of the religion with which he stands identified, and to acquire a clearer apprehension of its purpose. It is neither eclectic in the presentation of its truths, nor arrogant in the affirmation of its claims. Its teachings revolve around the fundamental principle that religious truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is progressive, not final. Unequivocally and without the least reservation it proclaims all established religions to be divine in origin, identical in their aims, complementary in their functions, continuous in their purpose, indispensable in their value to mankind.
-- Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 57


2)
In like manner, strive thou to comprehend from these lucid, these powerful, conclusive, and unequivocal statements the meaning of the "cleaving of the heaven" -- one of the signs that must needs herald the coming of the last Hour, the Day of Resurrection. As He hath said: "When the heaven shall be cloven asunder."[1] By "heaven" is meant the heaven of divine Revelation, which is elevated with every Manifestation, and rent asunder with every subsequent one. By "cloven asunder" is meant that the former Dispensation is superseded and annulled. I swear by God! That this heaven being cloven asunder is, to the discerning, an act mightier than the cleaving of the skies! Ponder a while. That a divine Revelation which for years hath been securely established; beneath whose shadow all who have embraced it have been reared and nurtured; by the light of whose law generations of men have been disciplined; the excellency of whose word men have heard recounted by their fathers; in such wise that human eye hath beheld naught but the pervading influence of its grace, and mortal ear hath heard naught but the resounding majesty of its command -- what act is mightier than that such a Revelation should, by the power of God, be "cloven asunder" and be abolished at the appearance of one soul? Reflect, is this a mightier act than that which these abject and foolish men have imagined the "cleaving of the heaven" to mean?
[1 Qur'án 82:1.]
-- Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan, p. 43


3)
1.85
Say: O ye manifestations [believers] of My Names! Should ye offer up all that ye possess, nay your very lives, in the path of God, and invoke Him to the number of the grains of sand, the drops of rain, and the waves of the sea, and yet oppose the Manifestation of His Cause at the time of His appearance, your works shall in no wise be mentioned before God. Should ye, however, neglect all righteous works and yet choose to believe in Him in these days, God perchance will put away your sins. He, verily, is the All-Glorious, the Most Bountiful. Thus doth the Lord inform you of His purpose, that haply ye may not wax proud before the One through Whom whatsoever hath been revealed from all eternity hath been confirmed. Happy is he who approacheth this Most Sublime Vision, and woe to them that turn aside!
-- Baha'u'llah, Surih of the Temple, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p. 45

Below is a reference to Babi's who rejected Baha'u'llah:

Beware, beware lest thou behave like unto the people of the Bayan. For indeed they erred grievously, misguided the people, ignored the Covenant of God and His Testament and joined partners with Him, the One, the Incomparable, the All-Knowing. Verily they failed to recognize the Point of the Bayan, for had they recognized Him they would not have rejected His manifestation in this luminous and resplendent Being. And since they fixed their eyes on names, therefore when He replaced His Name 'the Most Exalted' by 'the Most Glorious' their eyes were dimmed. They have failed to recognize Him in these days and are reckoned with those that perish.
-- Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 185

Below are references to Muslims who rejected the Bab:

O people of the city! Ye have disbelieved your Lord. If ye are truly faithful to Muhammad, the Apostle of God and the Seal of the Prophets, and if ye follow His Book, the Qur'án, which is free from error, then here is the like of it -- this Book, which We have, in truth and by the leave of God, sent down unto Our Servant. If ye fail to believe in Him, then your faith in Muhammad and His Book which was revealed in the past will indeed be treated as false in the estimation of God. If ye deny Him, the fact of your having denied Muhammad and His Book will, in very truth and with absolute certainty, become evident unto yourselves. Chapter IV.
-- The Bab, Selections from the Writings of the Bab, p. 45

I am the Primal Point from which have been generated all created things. I am the Countenance of God Whose splendour can never be obscured, the Light of God Whose radiance can never fade. Whoso recognizeth Me, assurance and all good are in store for him, and whoso faileth to recognize Me, infernal fire and all evil await him...
I swear by God, the Peerless, the Incomparable, the True One: for no other reason hath He -- the supreme Testimony of God -- invested Me with clear signs and tokens than that all men may be enabled to submit to His Cause.
By the righteousness of Him Who is the Absolute Truth, were the veil to be lifted, thou wouldst witness on this earthly plane all men sorely afflicted with the fire of the wrath of God, a fire fiercer and greater than the fire of hell, with the exception of those who have sought shelter beneath the shade of the tree of My love. For they in very truth are the blissful...
-- The Bab, Selections from the Writings of the Bab, p. 12

Below is a reference to Christians who rejected Muhammad:

IT is recorded in a tradition that of the entire concourse of the Christians no more than seventy people embraced the Faith of the Apostle of God [Muhammad]. The blame falleth upon their doctors, for if these had believed, they would have been followed by the mass of their countrymen. Behold, then, that which hath come to pass! The learned men of Christendom are held to be learned by virtue of their safeguarding the teaching of Christ, and yet consider how they themselves have been the cause of men's failure to accept the Faith and attain unto salvation! Is it still thy wish to follow in their footsteps? The followers of Jesus submitted to their clerics to be saved on the Day of Resurrection, and as a result of this obedience they eventually entered into the fire, and on the Day when the Apostle of God appeared they shut themselves out from the recognition of His exalted Person. Dost thou desire to follow such divines?

Nay, by God, be thou neither a divine without discernment nor a follower without discernment, for both of these shall perish on the Day of Resurrection. Rather it behooveth thee to be a discerning divine, or to walk with insight in the way of God by obeying a true leader of religion.
-- The Bab, Selections from the Writings of the Bab, p. 123

Followers of past dispensations (which were abrogated on their respective Day of Resurrection) are to recognise Baha'u'llah, the Independent Prophet for this dispensation, also reflected in the words of Abdu'l-Baha in passage 4 below, "Thou must look at the Sun; do not become veiled by the places from which the Sun appears".

Say: Fear ye God, then observe equity in your judgement of this Great Announcement before which, as soon as it shone forth, every momentous announcement bowed low in adoration. Say: O concourse of the foolish! If ye reject Him, by what evidence can ye prove your allegiance to the former Messengers of God or vindicate your belief in that which He hath sent down from His mighty and exalted Kingdom?
-- Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 248

Say: O peoples of all faiths! Walk not in the ways of them that followed the Pharisees and thus veiled themselves from the Spirit [Jesus]. They truly have strayed and are in error. The Ancient Beauty is come in His Most Great Name, and He wisheth to admit all mankind into His most holy Kingdom. The pure in heart behold the Kingdom of God manifest before His Face. Make haste thereunto and follow not the infidel and the ungodly... Fear God, O ye who are endued with insight.
-- Baha'u'llah, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p. 64


4)
Below is a reference to Jews who rejected Jesus:

And it is a basic principle of the Law of God that in every Prophetic Mission, He entereth into a Covenant with all believers -- a Covenant that endureth until the end of that Mission, until the promised day when the Personage stipulated at the outset of the Mission is made manifest. Consider Moses, He Who conversed with God. Verily, upon Mount Sinai, Moses entered into a Covenant regarding the Messiah, with all those souls who would live in the day of the Messiah. And those souls, although they appeared many centuries after Moses, were nevertheless -- so far as the Covenant, which is outside time, was concerned -- present there with Moses. The Jews, however, were heedless of this and remembered it not, and thus they suffered a great and clear loss.
-- Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha, p. 206

When His Holiness Christ appeared, they (the Jewish people) thought that holy personality intended to take away the eternal honor of Moses. Moses, in the eye of Israel, had no equal. Now, these had never thought that a greater than him (Moses) would appear. So this way of thinking became the cause of their being kept away from the Light of Christ and they were prevented from the precious things of the Holy Spirit, notwithstanding the fact that the greatest friend of Moses was Christ and He made His Holiness Moses great in the eye of the world and made Him to be glorious in the contingent world; They think that no other great person like Moses could ever come upon the earth and if such a person should be sent (by God), he must come under the shadow of His Holiness Moses and promulgate the law of the Torah. whereas, even now, Israel (that is, the Jews) deny His Holiness, the promised Christ, and count Him to be an enemy of His Holiness Moses and of Aaron and David; and they were kept away from the bounties of Christ.This negligence on the part of the Jews became the cause of keeping away a multitude from the heavenly bounties and from the beneficence of the Holy Spirit for nineteen-hundred years.

"The Sun is ever the same, but the place whence the Sun hath appeared hath changed. Then, at Christ's time, it appeared in the sign of Aquarius, but now it hath manifested itself from the sign of Cancer. These signs are just for an illustration. The sun is the same sun, no matter from what sign it may manifest itself or from what spot it may arise. Thou must look at the Sun; do not become veiled by the places from which the Sun appears."
-- Abdu'l-Baha, Tablets of Abdu'l-Baha v2, p. 341


5)
The believers should be careful not to deviate, even a hair-breadth, from the Teachings. Their supreme consideration should be to safeguard the purity of the principles, tenets and laws of the Faith. It is only by this means that they can hope to maintain the organic unity of the Cause. There can and should be no liberals or conservatives, no moderates or extremes in the Cause. For they are all subject to the one and the same law which is the Law of God. This law transcends all differences, all personal or local tendencies, moods and aspirations.
-- Shoghi Effendi, September 5, 1936, Dawn of a New Day, p. 60

However, the Most Great Infallibility [the Independent Prophet, who receives Revelation direct from God] is confined to the One Whose station is immeasurably exalted beyond ordinances or prohibitions and is sanctified from errors and omissions. Indeed He is a Light which is not followed by darkness and a Truth not overtaken by error. Were He to pronounce water to be wine or heaven to be earth or light to be fire, He speaketh the truth and no doubt would there be about it; and unto no one is given the right to question His authority or to say why or wherefore. Whosoever raiseth objections will be numbered with the froward in the Book of God, the Lord of the worlds. 'Verily He shall not be asked of His doings but all others shall be asked of their doings.' [1] He is come from the invisible heaven, bearing the banner 'He doeth whatsoever He willeth' and is accompanied by hosts of power and authority while it is the duty of all besides Him to strictly observe whatever laws and ordinances have been enjoined upon them, and should anyone deviate therefrom, even to the extent of a hair's breadth, his work would be brought to naught.
[1 cf. Qur'án 21:23.]
-- Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 108

Briefly, it is said that the "Dayspring of Revelation" [Baha'u'llah, the Independent Prophet] is the manifestation of these words, "He doeth whatsoever He willeth"; this condition is peculiar to that Holy Being, and others have no share of this essential perfection. That is to say, that as the supreme Manifestations certainly possess essential infallibility, therefore whatever emanates from Them is identical with the truth, and conformable to reality. They are not under the shadow of the former laws. Whatever They say is the word of God, and whatever They perform is an upright action. No believer has any right to criticize; his condition must be one of absolute submission, for the Manifestation arises with perfect wisdom -- so that whatever the supreme Manifestation says and does is absolute wisdom, and is in accordance with reality.
...
In short, the meaning of "He doeth whatsoever He willeth" is that if the Manifestation says something, or gives a command, or performs an action, and believers do not understand its wisdom, they still ought not to oppose it by a single thought, seeking to know why He spoke so, or why He did such a thing. The other souls who are under the shadow of the supreme Manifestations are submissive to the commandments of the Law of God, and are not to deviate as much as a hairsbreadth from it; they must conform their acts and words to the Law of God. If they do deviate from it, they will be held responsible and reproved in the presence of God. It is certain that they have no share in the permission "He doeth whatsoever He willeth," for this condition is peculiar to the supreme Manifestations.

So Christ -- may my spirit be sacrificed to Him! -- was the manifestation of these words, "He doeth whatsoever He willeth," but the disciples were not partakers of this condition; for as they were under the shadow of Christ, they could not deviate from His command and will.
-- Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions, p. 173

He, however, who denied God in His Truth, who turned his back upon Him and rebelled, who disbelieved and made mischief, the verdict of "impiety", "blasphemy", "death", and "fire" was passed upon him.
-- Baha'u'llah, Gems of Divine Mysteries, p. 44


More references related to this theme (the Covenant).



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