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The Baha'i Faith Will Remain United (18:51) Baha'u'llah proclaims that this is the Day which shall never be followed by night, the Springtime which autumn will never overtake (gpb 99), These are references to the fact that His Faith will never suffer from division. (18:52) Baha'u'llah has protected His Faith from division by the power of the Covenant which He has established in His Will, written with His own hand in the clearest terms. In it, He states that the authority to interpret His Word and maintain the unity of His Faith would pass to His eldest son, 'Abdu'l-Baha. Baha'u'llah also prescribed the institutions that would govern the affairs of His Faith. In this way, He has protected His Faith from the man-made dogmas and institutions that have been the cause of conflict and division in past ages. (18:53) Although since the Faith began there have been Baha'is who, driven by ego, have attempted to gather their own following, and there have been persons outside the Faith who would hope for the Baha'i Faith to split, nothing more than momentary breaches of unity have ever occurred, and the Baha'i Faith has continued to grow, singular and unimpeded, for almost 170 years. (18:54) In addition to the specific prophecies made by Baha'u'llah, some of which are discussed above, there is another class of "prophecy" made by Baha'u'llah which should be mentioned here: His vision of the future of society. (18:55) Prophecies Given by Baha'u'llah (18:56) To put into perspective Baha'u'llah's insight we must consider that He was born and grew up in a society that in many ways was profoundly superstitious, prejudiced, and fanatical. Baha'u'llah never attended school. He spent most of His life as an exile and prisoner of the Ottoman Empire, experiencing the cruelest deprivation. All of His Writings were revealed spontaneously and with great rapidity-either written by His own hand or recorded by one of His followers as He revealed them. His Words were never premeditated, never revised or corrected, never changed. All of His Words-even entire books-were revealed in final form from beginning to end. Indeed, He was like a perfect mirror reflecting the Words revealed by God. Once the light of the sun strikes a mirror and is reflected, there is no way to take back the light. And so it was with Baha'u'llah's Words; once they were uttered, they were final. He wrote extensively-the equivalent of one hundred volumes over a period of forty years. Many of His writings on the prerequisites for the establishment of a thriving, spiritual world civilization were so far-sighted that it has only been with the passage of time that the world has appreciated their value. Some of His Teachings are still considered utopian, and will only be realized after mankind endures further suffering because of it's neglect of spiritual values. (18:57) What did Baha'u'llah have to say about the future?
(18:58)
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