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But Baha'u'llah does not represent the final stage in the history of the Salvation of Man. He proclaims that God will continue in the future to send His messengers to mankind "to summon all mankind to truthfulness and sincerity, to piety and trustworthiness, to resignation and submissiveness to the Will of God, to forbearance and kindliness, to uprightness and wisdom" and "to array ever man with the mantle of a saintly character, and to adorn him with the ornament of holy and goodly deeds" (Gl). (23:2) This is the fundamental belief of Baha'u'llah's followers: that religion is not static but dynamic, that God did not manifest Himself for once and for all in the past but has done so at irregular cyclic intervals and will continue to do so in the future. They believe that the birth of each revealed religion was as the "tide of Fortune" and that the progressive development of the human race is dependent on the appearance of the divine manifestations. (23:3) Baha'u'llah teaches that with the coming of each prophet of God a new force was released into the world which had the power to transform man as well as the order of things, an impulse which, however, was consumed in the course of history. Man's mental capacity and his cultural situation were relative to his environment and to the time in which he lived. Earthly conditions are constantly changing. All living things, including religions, are exposed to time's process of deterioration. This is why God speaks to mankind anew whenever He pleases: "for every age requireth a fresh measure of the light of God. Every Divine Revelation hath been sent down in a manner that befitted the circumstances of the age in which it hath appeared." (Gl). (24:1) All that lives, and this includes the religions, have a springtime, a time of maturity, of harvest and a winter-time. Then religion becomes barren, a lifeless adherence to the letter uninformed by the spirit, and man's spiritual life declines. When we look at religious history, we see that God has spoken to men precisely at times when thy have reached the nadir of their degradation and cultural decadence. Moses came to Israel when it was languishing under the Pharaoh's yoke, Christ appeared at a time when the Jewish Faith had lost its power and the culture of antiquity was in its death throes. Muhammad came to a people who lived in barbaric ignorance at the lowest level of culture and into a world in which the former religions had strayed far away from their origins and nearly lost their identity. The Bab addressed Himself to a people who had irretrievably lost their former grandeur and who found themselves in a state of hopeless decadence. Baha'u'llah came to a humanity which was approaching the most critical phase of its history. (24:2) 'Abdul-Baha writes: "God leaves not His children comfortless, but, when the darkness of winter overshadows them, then again He sends His Messengers, the Prophets, with a renewal of the blessed spring. The Sun of Truth appears again on the horizon of the world shining into the eyes of those who sleep, awakening them to behold the glory of a new dawn. Then again will the tree o humanity blossom and bring forth the fruit of righteousness for the healing of the nations." (Pt).
(24:3)
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