O My servants! There shineth nothing else in Mine heart except the unfading light of the Morn of Divine guidance, and out of My mouth proceedeth naught but the essence of truth, which the Lord your God hath revealed. Follow not, therefore, your earthly desires, and violate not the Covenant of God, nor break your pledge to Him. With firm determination, with the whole affection of your heart, and with the full force of your words, turn ye unto Him, and walk not in the ways of the foolish. The world is but a show, vain and empty, a mere nothing, bearing the semblance of reality. Set not your affections upon it. Break not the bond that uniteth you with your Creator, and be not of those that have erred and strayed from His ways. Verily I say, the world is like the vapor in a desert, which the thirsty dreameth to be water and striveth after it with all his might, until when he cometh unto it, he findeth it to be mere illusion. It may, moreover, be likened unto the lifeless image of the beloved whom the lover hath sought and found, in the end, after long search and to his utmost regret, to be such as cannot "fatten nor appease his hunger". Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, pp. 328-329 (172:3)

So to the description above of the new race of men, we must add yet another important quality with which they will be endowed:
A race that will understand the utter transience of this life, and the impermanence of all but God; that will look always to the eternal life, diligently preparing for it, praying for acceptance into it, awaiting its time to enter it - all this, in anticipation of that unknowable moment when their earthly life is consummated and they pass into the Realm of Immortality (172:4)

It is the afterlife, not this life, that is real. Our true home is there, not here: (172:5)

Get Next Page