The very sad treatment that this Revelation “received, at the hands of a generation so blind and so perverse, so infamous”

Dear friends! Alas, a thousand times alas, that a Revelation so incomparably great, so infinitely precious, so mightily potent, so manifestly innocent, should have received, at the hands of a generation so blind and so perverse, so infamous a treatment! “O My servants!” Bahá’u’lláh Himself testifies, “The one true God is My witness! This most great, this fathomless and surging ocean is near, astonishingly near, unto you. Behold it is closer to you than your life vein! Swift as the twinkling of an eye ye can, if ye but wish it, reach and partake of this imperishable favor, this God-given grace, this incorruptible gift, this most potent and unspeakably glorious bounty.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

During His last days of His earthly life ‘Abdu’l-Baha asked God to hasten His “flight unto Thy Kingdom”

“Hasten, O my God!” He cried, at a time when adversity had sore beset Him, “the days of my ascension unto Thee, and of my coming before Thee, and of my entry into Thy presence, that I may be delivered from the darkness of the cruelty inflicted by them upon me, and may enter the luminous atmosphere of Thy nearness, O my Lord, the All-Glorious, and may rest under the shadow of Thy most great mercy.” “Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá [O Thou the Glory of Glories]!” He wrote in a Tablet revealed during the last week of His life, “I have renounced the world and the people thereof, and am heartbroken and sorely afflicted because of the unfaithful. In the cage of this world I flutter even as a frightened bird, and yearn every day to take my flight unto Thy Kingdom. Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá! Make me to drink of the cup of sacrifice, and set me free. Relieve me from these woes and trials, from these afflictions and troubles.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

‘Abdu’l-Baha “at last, sank beneath a weight of troubles for which they who had imposed them upon Him”

A co-sharer in the woeful trials and momentary frustrations afflicting the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh; reaping a harvest in His lifetime wholly incommensurate to the sublime, the incessant and strenuous efforts He had exerted; experiencing the initial perturbations of the world-shaking catastrophe in store for an unbelieving humanity; bent with age, and with eyes dimmed by the gathering storm which the reception accorded by a faithless generation to His Father’s Cause was raising, and with a heart bleeding over the immediate destiny of God’s wayward children—He, at last, sank beneath a weight of troubles for which they who had imposed them upon Him, and upon those gone before Him, were soon to be summoned to a dire reckoning. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

‘Abdu’l-Baha’s “countless Tablets and discourses, during an almost lifelong incarceration and in the course of His extended travels in both the European and American”

With the warnings which both His pen and voice have given in countless Tablets and discourses, during an almost lifelong incarceration and in the course of His extended travels in both the European and American continents, they who labor for the spread of His Father’s Faith in the Western world are sufficiently acquainted. How often and how passionately did He appeal to those in authority and to the public at large to examine dispassionately the precepts enunciated by His Father? With what precision and emphasis He unfolded the system of the Faith He was expounding, elucidated its fundamental verities, stressed its distinguishing features, and proclaimed the redemptive character of its principles? How insistently did He foreshadow the impending chaos, the approaching upheavals, the universal conflagration which, in the concluding years of His life, had only begun to reveal the measure of its force and the significance of its impact on human society? 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

“sufferings which, for no less than seventy years, were endured by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá”

To the mounting tide of trials which laid low the Báb, to the long-drawn-out calamities which rained on Bahá’u’lláh, to the warnings sounded by both the Herald and the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation, must be added the sufferings which, for no less than seventy years, were endured by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as well as His pleas, and entreaties, uttered in the evening of His life, in connection with the dangers that increasingly threatened the whole of mankind.

• Born in the very year that witnessed the inception of the Bábí Revelation;
• baptized with the initial fires of persecution that raged around that nascent Cause;
• an eyewitness, when a boy of eight, of the violent upheavals that rocked the Faith which His Father had espoused;
• sharing with Him, the ignominy, the perils, and rigors consequent upon the successive banishments from His native-land to countries far beyond its confines;
• arrested and forced to support, in a dark cell, the indignity of imprisonment soon after His arrival in Akká;
• the object of repeated investigations and the target of continual assaults and insults under the despotic rule of Sultán ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd, and later under the ruthless military dictatorship of the suspicious and merciless Jamál Páshá—

He, too, the Center and Pivot of Bahá’u’lláh’s peerless Covenant and the perfect Exemplar of His teachings, was made to taste, at the hands of potentates, ecclesiastics, governments and peoples, the cup of woe which the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, as well as so many of their followers, had drained. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

The world turned a deaf ear to the message of Baha’u’llah

Who is the ruler, may it not be confidently asked, whether of the East or of the West, who, at any time since the dawn of so transcendent a Revelation, has been prompted to raise his voice either in its praise or against those who persecuted it? Which people has, in the course of so long a captivity, felt urged to arise and stem the tide of such tribulations? Who is the sovereign, excepting a single woman, shining in solitary glory, who has, in however small a measure, felt impelled to respond to the poignant call of Bahá’u’lláh? Who amongst the great ones of the earth was inclined to extend this infant Faith of God the benefit of his recognition or support? Which one of the multitudes of creeds, sects, races, parties and classes and of the highly diversified schools of human thought, considered it necessary to direct its gaze towards the rising light of the Faith, to contemplate its unfolding system, to ponder its hidden processes, to appraise its weighty message, to acknowledge its regenerative power, to embrace its salutary truth, or to proclaim its eternal verities? Who among the worldly wise and the so-called men of insight and wisdom can justly claim, after the lapse of nearly a century, to have disinterestedly approached its theme, to have considered impartially its claims, to have taken sufficient pains to delve into its literature, to have assiduously striven to separate facts from fiction, or to have accorded its cause the treatment it merits? Where are the preeminent exponents, whether of the arts or sciences, with the exception of a few isolated cases, who have lifted a finger, or whispered a word of commendation, in either the defense or the praise of a Faith that has conferred upon the world so priceless a benefit, that has suffered so long and so grievously, and which enshrines within its shell so enthralling a promise for a world so woefully battered, so manifestly bankrupt? 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

Some passages from Baha’u’llah concerning His sufferings

No wonder that from the Pen of Him Who bore this anguish with such sublime patience these words should have been revealed:

• “He Who is the Lord of the seen and unseen is now manifest unto all men. His blessed Self hath been afflicted with such harm that if all the seas, visible and invisible, were turned into ink, and all that dwell in the kingdom into pens, and all that are in the heavens and all that are on earth into scribes, they would, of a certainty, be powerless to record it.”
• And again: “I have been, most of the days of My life, even as a slave, sitting under a sword hanging on a thread, knowing not whether it would fall soon or late upon him.”
• “All this generation,” He affirms, “could offer Us were wounds from its darts, and the only cup it proffered to Our lips was the cup of its venom. On Our neck We still bear the scar of chains, and upon Our body are imprinted the evidences of an unyielding cruelty.”
• “Twenty years have passed, O kings!” He, addressing the kings of Christendom, at the height of His mission, has written, “during which We have, each day, tasted the agony of a fresh tribulation. No one of them that were before Us hath endured the things We have endured. Would that ye could perceive it! They that rose up against Us have put Us to death, have shed Our blood, have plundered Our property, and violated Our honor. Though aware of most of Our afflictions, ye, nevertheless, have failed to stay the hand of the aggressor. For is it not your clear duty to restrain the tyranny of the oppressor, and to deal equitably with your subjects, that your high sense of justice may be fully demonstrated to all mankind?” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

Some of the “ordeal[s] and…indignities” that Baha’u’llah suffered

To enumerate a few of the outstanding features of this moving drama will suffice to evoke in the reader of these pages, already familiar with the history of the Faith, the memory of those vicissitudes which it has experienced, and which the world has until now viewed with such frigid indifference.

• The forced and sudden retirement of Bahá’u’lláh to the mountains of Sulaymáníyyih, and the distressing consequences that flowed from His two years’ complete withdrawal;
• the incessant intrigues indulged in by the exponents of Shí’ih Islám in Najaf and Karbilá, working in close and constant association with their confederates in Persia;
• the intensification of the repressive measures decreed by Sultán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz which brought to a head the defection of certain prominent members of the exiled community;
• the enforcement of yet another banishment by order of that same Sultán, this time to that far off and most desolate of cities, causing such despair as to lead two of the exiles to attempt suicide;
• the unrelaxing surveillance to which they were subjected upon their arrival in Akká, by hostile officials, and the insufferable imprisonment for two years in the barracks of that town;
• the interrogatory to which the Turkish páshá subsequently subjected his Prisoner at the headquarters of the government;
• His confinement for no less than eight years in a humble dwelling surrounded by the befouled air of that city, His sole recreation being confined to pacing the narrow space of His room—

these, as well as other tribulations, proclaim, on the one hand, the nature of the ordeal and the indignities He suffered, and point, on the other, the finger of accusation at those mighty ones of the earth who had either so sorely maltreated Him, or deliberately withheld from Him their succor. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

The “other tribulations which, before and immediately after this dreadful episode [Siyah-Chal], touched Baha’u’llah: - "the greatest drama in the world’s spiritual history"

And what of the other tribulations which, before and immediately after this dreadful episode, touched Him?

• What of His confinement in the home of one of the kad-khudás of Tihrán
• What of the savage violence with which He was stoned by the angry people in the neighborhood of the village of Níyálá?
• What of His incarceration by the emissaries of the army of the Sháh in Mázindarán, and His receiving the bastinado by order, and in the presence, of the assembled siyyids and mujtahids into whose hands He had been delivered by the civil authorities of Ámul?
• What of the howls of derision and abuse with which a crowd of ruffians subsequently pursued Him?
• What of the monstrous accusation brought against Him by the Imperial household, the Court and the people, when the attempt was made on the life of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh?
• What of the infamous outrages, the abuse and ridicule heaped on Him when He was arrested by responsible officers of the government, and conducted from Níyávarán “on foot and in chains, with bared head and bare feet,” and exposed to the fierce rays of the midsummer sun, to the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán?
• What of the avidity with which corrupt officials sacked His house and carried away all His possessions and disposed of His fortune?
• What of the cruel edict that tore Him from the small band of the Báb’s bewildered, hounded, and shepherdless followers, separated Him from His kinsmen and friends, and banished Him, in the depth of winter, despoiled and defamed, to ‘Iráq?

Severe as were these tribulations which succeeded one another with bewildering rapidity as a result of the premeditated attacks and the systematic machinations of the court, the clergy, the government and the people, they were but the prelude to a harrowing and extensive captivity which that edict had formally initiated. Extending over a period of more than forty years, and carrying Him successively to ‘Iráq, Sulaymáníyyih, Constantinople, Adrianople and finally to the penal colony of Akká, this long banishment was at last ended by His death, at the age of over three score years and ten, terminating a captivity which, in its range, its duration and the diversity and severity of its afflictions, is unexampled in the history of previous Dispensations.

No need to expatiate on the particular episodes which cast a lurid light on the moving annals of those years. No need to dwell on the character and actions of the peoples, rulers and divines who have participated in, and contributed to heighten the poignancy of the scenes of this, the greatest drama in the world’s spiritual history.

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

“For three days and three nights no manner of food or drink was given to Bahá’u’lláh”

“For three days and three nights,” Nabíl has recorded in his chronicle, “no manner of food or drink was given to Bahá’u’lláh. Rest and sleep were both impossible to Him. The place was infested with vermin, and the stench of that gloomy abode was enough to crush the very spirits of those who were condemned to suffer its horrors.” “Such was the intensity of His suffering that the marks of that cruelty remained imprinted upon His body all the days of His life.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

Eight-year-old ‘Abdu’l-Bha was allowed to see Baha’u’llah while in Siyah-Chal

“‘Abdu’l-Bahá,” writes Dr. J.E. Esslemont, “tells how one day He was allowed to enter the prison-yard to see His beloved Father when He came out for His daily exercise. Bahá’u’lláh was terribly altered, so ill He could hardly walk. His hair and beard unkempt, His neck galled and swollen from the pressure of a heavy steel collar, His body bent by the weight of His chains.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

Bahá’u’lláh describes the awful conditions of the Black Pit

“We were consigned,” He wrote in His “Epistle to the Son of the Wolf,” “for four months to a place foul beyond comparison. As to the dungeon in which this Wronged One and others similarly wronged were confined, a dark and narrow pit were preferable.... The dungeon was wrapped in thick darkness, and Our fellow prisoners numbered nearly a hundred and fifty souls: thieves, assassins, and highwaymen. Though crowded, it had no other outlet than the passage by which We entered. No pen can depict that place, nor any tongue describe its loathsome smell. Most of these men had neither clothes nor bedding to lie on. God alone knoweth what befell Us in that most foul-smelling and gloomy place!” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

Bahá’u’lláh was “forced, for no less than four months, to breathe, in utter darkness, whilst in the company of the vilest criminals and freighted down with galling chains, the pestilential air of the vermin-infested subterranean dungeon of Tihrán”

…was not the Bearer of such a Revelation, at the instigation of Shí’ih ecclesiastics and by order of the Sháh himself forced, for no less than four months, to breathe, in utter darkness, whilst in the company of the vilest criminals and freighted down with galling chains, the pestilential air of the vermin-infested subterranean dungeon of Tihrán—a place which, as He Himself subsequently declared, was mysteriously converted into the very scene of the annunciation made to Him by God of His Prophethood? 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

The station of Bahá’u’lláh

Was it not He [Bahá’u’lláh] —the Bearer of a Revelation, Whose day “every Prophet hath announced,” for which “the soul of every Divine Messenger hath thirsted,” and in which “God hath proved the hearts of the entire company of His Messengers and Prophets” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

Bahá’u’lláh “arose to champion… the nascent Cause of the Báb” when He was twenty-seven years old

Was it not He [Bahá’u’lláh] Who, at the early age of twenty-seven, spontaneously arose to champion, in the capacity of a mere follower, the nascent Cause of the Báb? Was He not the One Who by assuming the actual leadership of a proscribed and harrassed sect exposed Himself, and His kindred, and His possessions, and His rank, and His reputation to the grave perils, the bloody assaults, the general spoliation and furious defamations of both government and people? 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

Excruciating cruelties inflicted upon Bahá’u’lláh during His ministry

“The cruelties inflicted by My oppressors,” He Himself in His anguish has cried out, “have bowed Me down, and turned My hair white. Shouldst thou present thyself before My throne, thou wouldst fail to recognize the Ancient Beauty, for the freshness of His countenance is altered and its brightness hath faded, by reason of the oppression of the infidels. I swear by God! His heart, His soul, and His vitals are melted!” “Wert thou to hear with Mine ear,” He also declares, “thou wouldst hear how ‘Alí [the Báb] bewaileth Me in the presence of the Glorious Companion, and how Muhammad weepeth over Me in the all-highest Horizon, and how the Spirit [Jesus] beateth Himself upon the head in the heaven of My decree, by reason of what hath befallen this Wronged One at the hands of every impious sinner.” “Before Me,” He elsewhere has written, “riseth up the Serpent of wrath with jaws stretched to engulf Me, and behind Me stalketh the lion of anger intent on tearing Me in pieces, and above Me, O My Well-Beloved, are the clouds of Thy decree, raining upon Me the showers of tribulations, whilst beneath Me are fixed the spears of misfortune, ready to wound My limbs and My body.” “Couldst thou be told,” He further affirms, “what hath befallen the Ancient Beauty, thou wouldst flee into the wilderness, and weep with a great weeping. In thy grief, thou wouldst smite thyself on the head, and cry out as one stung by the sting of the adder.... By the righteousness of God! Every morning I arose from My bed I discovered the hosts of countless afflictions massed behind My door, and every night when I lay down, lo! My heart was torn with agony at what it had suffered from the fiendish cruelty of its foes. With every piece of bread the Ancient Beauty breaketh is coupled the assault of a fresh affliction, and with every drop He drinketh is mixed the bitterness of the most woeful of trials. He is preceded in every step He taketh by an army of unforeseen calamities, while in His rear follow legions of agonizing sorrows.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

Bahá’u’lláh was “for nearly half a century… under the domination of the two most powerful potentates of the East”

What of Bahá’u’lláh, the germ of Whose Revelation, as attested by the Báb, is endowed with a potency superior to the combined forces of the Bábí Dispensation? Was He not—He for Whom the Báb had suffered and died in such tragic and miraculous circumstances—made, for nearly half a century and under the domination of the two most powerful potentates of the East, the object of a systematic and concerted conspiracy which, in its effects and duration, is scarcely paralleled in the annals of previous religions? 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

God admonishes the generation that mistreated the Báb: “All that is on earth hath been created for Him”

“How veiled are ye, O My creatures,” He, speaking with the voice of God, has revealed in the Bayán, “...who, without any right, have consigned Him unto a mountain [Mákú], not one of whose inhabitants is worthy of mention.... With Him, which is with Me, there is no one except him who is one of the Letters of the Living of My Book. In His presence, which is My Presence, there is not at night even a lighted lamp! And yet, in places [of worship] which in varying degrees reach out unto Him, unnumbered lamps are shining! All that is on earth hath been created for Him, and all partake with delight of His benefits, and yet they are so veiled from Him as to refuse Him even a lamp!” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

The tribulations sustained by the Báb: “none of those gone before Me have suffered what I have suffered”

“I swear by God!” the Báb Himself in His Tablet to Muhammad Sháh has written, “Shouldst thou know the things which in the space of these four years have befallen Me at the hands of thy people and thine army, thou wouldst hold thy breath from fear of God.... Alas, alas, for the things which have touched Me!... I swear by the Most Great Lord! Wert thou to be told in what place I dwell, the first person to have mercy on Me would be thyself. In the heart of a mountain is a fortress [Mákú] ... the inmates of which are confined to two guards and four dogs. Picture, then, My plight.... In this mountain I have remained alone, and have come to such a pass that none of those gone before Me have suffered what I have suffered, nor any transgressor endured what I have endured!” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)