Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh Revealed After the Kitáb-i-Aqdas
Ishráqát :: (Splendours)
appeareth in the beginning of the Mathání,1 it traversed the heavens of exposition and utterance. Then the eternal Light of God shed its radiance, flared up in the midmost heart of the firmament of testimony and produced two Luminaries. Glorified be the Merciful One, unto Whom no allusion can be made, Whom no expression can define, nor any assertion reveal, nor any evidence describe. He is in truth the Ordainer, the All-Bountiful, both in the beginning and in the end. And He provided for them protectors and defenders from among the hosts of power and might. Verily, He is the Help in Peril, the Mighty, the Unconstrained.
The preamble of this Epistle is being revealed twice, even as was the Mathání1
Praise be unto God Who hath manifested the Point, hath unfolded therefrom the knowledge of all things, whether of the past or of the future—a Point He hath chosen to be the Herald of His Name and the Harbinger of His Great Revelation which hath caused the limbs of all mankind to quake and the splendour of His light to shine forth above the horizon of the world. Verily, this is the Point which God hath ordained to be an ocean of light for the sincere among His servants and a flame of fire to the froward amidst His creatures and the impious among His people—they who bartered away the gift of God for unbelief, and the celestial food for hypocrisy, and led their associates to a wretched abode. These are the people who
1 The opening chapter of the Qur’án, which begins with the letter ‘B’: Bismi’lláhi’r-Rahmáni’r-Raḥím (In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful). This chapter of the Qur’án was revealed twice, once in Mecca and once in Medina.
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