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The Bible throughout has for its constant theme mankind's toilsome journey towards the Kingdom of God and paints its promised attainment with fervor and vividness and illimitable joy. These exquisite pictures have been for a hundred generations and more a source of undying comfort and happiness to a struggling race. But the Bible nowhere describes the inwardness of that Kingdom nor develops the psychology of it, nor explains why the Kingdom should come at that particular stage of man's journey. Jesus admits expressly that He had other things to say and gives as His reason for withholding the knowledge that mankind in His day was not advanced and mature enough to understand its future experiences (64:1) But now the Herald of the Kingdom had come and gone. The Seal of the Prophets had likewise come and gone. The next great spiritual event was the actual coming of the Kingdom which both these Revelators had announced (64:2) With the Bab the Kingdom actually begins. He stands both as a Revealer Prophet bringing His own Dispensation and Laws and also as a Forerunner of One, Baha'u'llah, bearing a Revelation immeasurably greater than His own (64:3) Standing at the close of the whole Prophetic Cycle His Revelation is described as including twenty-five out of the twenty-seven letters of all knowledge; and with Him each and every past Prophet has a separate Covenant, concerning the One whom He heralded. the Supreme World Redeemer. Thus He stands at the confluence of the Prophetic Cycle which is closed and of the Age of Fulfilment which now opens. The Baha'i Era begins with His Declaration on the evening of May 22, 1844, and ushers in the universal Age of Truth.
(65:1)
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