Shaykh Ahmad’s Secret

From: Baha’i Stories for Children

Many years ago there lived in Persia a man who knew a very wonderful secret. Perhaps you would not think it a secret because it was written in a Book, so that everyone might read it. But those who read it did not understand just what it meant. Shaykh Ahmad understood because he had studied this Book a great deal and had prayed to understand. And the secret he found there made him so happy that he wished to tell everyone.

Would you like to know the secret? In this Book, which was called the Qur'an, it told that God would send a new Teacher to the world, a very great Teacher like Jesus and Muhammad. We know only a little about God because He is so much greater than we are, and so very wonderful. Sometimes we are so busy taking care of ourselves and having a good time that we do not even think about God. We forget that we would not even be alive if He did not give us life. So once in a while He sends one of these divine Teachers to the earth to remind people about Himself. These Teachers are like Him and They show us how He wishes us to live.

Jesus was one of these Teachers. Some of us know about Him and read about Him in the Bible. Others know more about Muhammad and read about Him in the Qur'an. It was in the Qur'an, which Muhammad wrote, long ago, that Shaykh Ahmad read about the new Teacher who was coming. He was called the Promised One because God had promised He should come.

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We shouldn’t allow anything to “intervene” between us and God

From: Daily Verses of God

Should a man wish to adorn himself with the ornaments of the earth, to wear its apparels, or partake of the benefits it can bestow, no harm can befall him, if he alloweth nothing whatever to intervene between him and God, for God hath ordained every good thing, whether created in the heavens or in the earth, for such of His servants as truly believe in Him. Eat ye, O people, of the good things which God hath allowed you, and deprive not yourselves from His wondrous bounties. Render thanks and praise unto Him, and be of them that are truly thankful. 

- Baha’u’llah  ('Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah’; The Compilation of Compilations, vol. I, Conservation of the Earth's Resources)

Names and Attributes of God have penetrated “the degrees of existence”

From: Excerpts from Baha’i Tablets - provisional translations

Praise be to God Who hath ever caused His Names and Attributes to penetrate the degrees of existence; Who hath made the effects of those Names and Attributes to shine resplendent and their signs to be firmly established in both the hidden and manifest worlds. By them He hath made the holy realities that are informed by His grace and are the recipients of His outpourings to be the sole revealers of all that pertaineth unto Him, and hath caused them to move through the firmament of perfection in arcs of descent and ascent. He hath ordained these Names and Attributes to be the first and foremost origin and cause of being in the world of creation and the source of the different grades of realities in the degrees of existence. When, through its power of attraction and propagation, the Day-Star of Names and Attributes shone upon the hidden realities in the heart of the unseen realm, they issued forth, were spread abroad, scattered about, set in order, became the recipients of the grace of God and His outpourings, and were made to be the sole manifestations of the Divine conditions and Eternal signs. Emerging from behind the veils, they appeared clothed in raiments of light, moving in the firmament of the unity of God, in orbits of sanctity and circles of glorification. 

- ‘Abdu’l-Baha  (‘Tablet of Universe’)

'Abdu'l-Baha with children

From: 'Abdu'l-Baha Visits the West

‘Abdu'l-Baha with Musette 'Ruhiyyih' Jones and Joseph Ioas in Chicago 1912