Daily Lessons Received at ‘Akká, January 1908/Miracles
MIRACLES
[edit]One evening Ḥájí Mírzá Ḥaydar-‘Alí gave us this little lesson in his inimitably sweet and humorous way.
“If we ask for miracles as proof of the truth of this Revelation, we produce many veils. We should first be sure that the One we believe in has said, ‘I am sent by God.’ Then if we ask Him for a miracle, for example, to turn this glass cup into gold, He will answer, ‘I am sent by God; therefore, I am not against God. God has created this cup out of glass; if I turn it into gold, I am against God.’ And not only this; if He perform one miracle to satisfy one person, He will be obliged to perform thousands to satisfy all. Or suppose He should do this for the people who live in His time, what would He have to do to convince those who came after Him? How could He do this? He would have to live forever. Or He would have to divide Himself up and wander all over the earth, knocking at every door and saying, ‘I am the Manifestation; what kind of miracles would you like to see?’
“No. Let us see if He comes to improve the condition of the people, to develop their minds and hearts and give them the knowledge of God. If He did turn the cup into gold, what benefit is there in this—what profit or help to the people? Rather He would cloud the intellect and the reason by doing such strange things.
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“So we see that the Manifestation cannot follow the desire of the people. He must bring to the world something which all the people can understand, in order that they may recognize that His cause is from God. Now what shall this something be? It is to make the people understand. We may say to a man, ‘Close your eyes that you may not see,’ and he will close them; or ‘close your ears that you may not hear,’ and he will close them; but when we say ‘close your mind that you may not understand,’ then that is impossible.
“For example, I may say that I am sure I can wrestle with and overthrow a certain man; the people may declare that I cannot do it; but I am so sure—because I know—that the more they say I cannot, the more positive I become. When a person has learned something like a parrot, as soon as he meets with real opposition he will deny what he has learned; but if in his own mind he understands the matter, then the more he is opposed, the more sure he becomes. If all the people of the world came and told us that two and two make less than four, would we be disturbed? No, because we understand this matter. When we understand Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation as well as this, then we can stand firm and say to all the world, ‘You are wrong, for we are sure.’ This kind of understanding only flourishes by opposition.
“When the people asked Christ for a miracle, He declared, ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas; for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart
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of the earth.’ The spiritual meaning of these words must be clear. If Christ had performed physical miracles, He would have referred to them instead of giving such an answer; so we must conclude that the miracles were spiritual.
“By saying that He would be three days in the heart of the earth, He meant that He would be resurrected, or reappear in the third cycle or third heaven. Counting His own Dispensation as one, and the Muḥammadan cycle as two, He has reappeared in this, the third Dispensation, the Day of Bahá’u’lláh.”