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The Russian Minister, as soon as he was informed of the Imperial decision, expressed the desire to take Baha'u'llah under the protection of his government, and offered to extend every facility for His removal to Russia. This invitation, so spontaneously extended, Baha'u'llah declined, preferring, in pursuance of an unerring instinct, to establish His abode in Turkish territory, in the city of Baghdad. "Whilst I lay chained and fettered in the prison," He Himself, years after, testified in His Epistle addressed to the Czar of Russia, Nicolaevitch Alexander II, "one of thy ministers extended Me his aid. Whereupon God hath ordained for thee a station which the knowledge of none can comprehend except His knowledge. Beware lest thou barter away this sublime station." "In the days," is yet another illuminating testimony revealed by His pen, "when this Wronged One was sore- afflicted in prison, the minister of the highly esteemed government (of Russia)-- may God, glorified and exalted be He, assist him!-- exerted his utmost endeavor to compass My deliverance. Several times permission for My release was granted. Some of the ulamas of the city, however, would prevent it. Finally, My freedom was gained through the solicitude and the endeavor of His Excellency the Minister. ...His Imperial Majesty, the Most Great Emperor-- may God, exalted and glorified be He, assist him!-- extended to Me for the sake of God his protection-- a protection which has excited the envy and enmity of the foolish ones of the earth." (106:1) The Shah's edict, equivalent to an order for the immediate expulsion of Baha'u'llah from Persian territory, opens a new and glorious chapter in the history of the first Baha'i century. Viewed in its proper perspective it will be even recognized to have ushered in one of the most eventful and momentous epochs in the world's religious history. It coincides with the inauguration of a ministry extending over a period of almost forty years-- a ministry which, by virtue of its creative power, its cleansing force, its healing influences, and the irresistible operation of the world- directing, world- shaping forces it released, stands unparalleled in the religious annals of the entire human race. It marks the opening phase in a series of banishments, ranging over a period of four decades, and terminating only with the death of Him Who was the Object of that cruel edict. The process which it set in motion, gradually progressing and unfolding, began by establishing His Cause for a time in the very midst of the jealously- guarded stronghold of Shi'ah Islam, and brought Him in personal contact with its highest and most illustrious exponents; then, at a later stage, it confronted Him, at the seat of the Caliphate, with the civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries of the realm and the representatives of the Sultan of Turkey, the most powerful potentate in the Islamic world; and finally carried Him as far as the shores of the Holy Land, thereby fulfilling the prophecies recorded in both the Old and the New Testaments, redeeming the pledge enshrined in various traditions attributed to the Apostle of God and the Imams who succeeded Him, and ushering in the long- awaited restoration of Israel to the ancient cradle of its Faith. With it, may be said to have begun the last and most fruitful of the four stages of a life, the first twenty- seven years of which were characterized by the care- free enjoyment of all the advantages conferred by high birth and riches, and by an unfailing solicitude for the interests of the poor, the sick and the down- trodden; followed by nine years of active and exemplary discipleship in the service of the Bab; and finally by an imprisonment of four months' duration, overshadowed throughout by mortal peril, embittered by agonizing sorrows, and immortalized, as it drew to a close, by the sudden eruption of the forces released by an overpowering, soul- revolutionizing Revelation.
(106:2)
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