The Most Holy Tablet: Bahá'u'lláh to the Christians

Among the Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh's later 'Akká period treated by Adib Taherzadeh in the fourth volume of The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh is the Lawḥ-i-Aqdas — the Most Holy Tablet — addressed by Bahá'u'lláh, from the prison-city, to the Christians of the world.

The Tablet was composed in Arabic, in the elevated elliptical style that Bahá'u'lláh employed for His most formal addresses to the great religious communities of His era. It is brief — perhaps a dozen pages in the printed English translation — but the substance is dense.

The opening of the Tablet is striking. Bahá'u'lláh addresses the Christians not as adversaries to be argued down but as those whose own most cherished Scriptures have foretold His coming. Verily, He Who is the Spirit of Truth is come to guide you unto all truth. The phrase echoes the Gospel of John's promise of the Comforter — the Paraclete — whom Christ had foretold would come to the disciples after His departure. Bahá'u'lláh, in the opening of the Tablet, identifies Himself with that foretold Comforter and calls the Christians to recognise Him by their own Scriptures' criteria.

The Tablet proceeds by addressing several specific groups within the Christian community: the bishops, the monks, the patriarchs. Each is summoned in language appropriate to its own ecclesiastical understanding. The bishops are reminded of their pastoral responsibility to the souls in their charge. The monks are reminded that the cells in which they have walled themselves up were not what Christ had asked of them. The patriarchs are reminded of the long decline of their authority and of the providential moment that the new Revelation represents.

The Tablet also addresses the kings of Christendom by their corporate identity. The European monarchs of the late nineteenth century are summoned to recognise the new Revelation and to use their political authority in support of the principles of unity, justice, and peace the Cause is bringing.

Taherzadeh's commentary observes that the Tablet was not publicly circulated in the West for several decades after its composition. Bahá'u'lláh held it in reserve. The Tablet was first carried into Western circulation by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, in the years of the Master's own ministry, when the conditions for its hearing had matured.

Taherzadeh devotes a portion of his treatment to the Tablet's specific exegetical claims regarding the prophetic literature of the Christian Bible. The Tablet identifies, in the imagery of the Book of Revelation and in the eschatological discourses of the Synoptic Gospels, the specific prophetic markers that are being fulfilled by the Bahá'í Revelation. The treatment is careful and substantial. The Tablet does not, in Taherzadeh's reading, ask the Christian reader to abandon the prophetic literature of the New Testament. It asks the Christian reader to read that literature, with care, and to recognise in the present moment the fulfilment that the literature itself has made possible to anticipate.

The Tablet closes with a benediction. The Christians who recognise the new Revelation, Bahá'u'lláh promises, will be received into the Cause not as converts from one religion to another but as those who, by their own Scriptures' guidance, have arrived at the next chapter of the same continuous divine Revelation that began with Adam and that will continue to its further unfoldings in the ages to come.

Paraphrased from The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, Vol. 4 — Mazra'ih and Bahjí 1877-92 (Adib Taherzadeh, George Ronald, 1987); see original for full text.

Taherzadeh, A.. (1987). *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh (Vol. 4 — Mazra'ih and Bahjí 1877-92)*. George Ronald.