Transcript:Filmstrip/Carmel, The Mountain of God
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Karl Mill, The Mountain of God.
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It is recorded in the Book of Isaiah,
and it shall come to pass in the last days
that the mountain of the Lord's house
shall be established in the top of the mountains,
and shall be exalted above the hills,
and all nations shall flow onto it.
And many people shall go and say,
"Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
and he will teach us of his ways,
and we will walk in his path.
And he shall judge among the nations,
and shall rebuke many people,
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into puri hooks.
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore."
Baha'u'llah has in our day proclaimed,
"The time foredained unto the peoples
and kilgrids of the earth is now come.
The promises of God as recorded in the Holy Scriptures
have all been fulfilled."
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Out of Zion has gone forth the law of God,
and Jerusalem and the hills and land thereof
are filled with the glory of his revelation.
Hasty, O Carmel,
for though the light of the countenance of God
has been lifted upon thee.
Rejoice, for God has in this day
established upon thee his throne,
has made thee the dawning place of his signs,
and the day-spring of the evidences of his revelation.
Call out to Zion, O Carmel,
and announce the joyful tidings.
He that was hidden from mortal eyes is come.
His all-conquering sovereignty is manifest.
His all-encompassing splendor is revealed.
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It was in this room in the city of Shiraz
that the bomb, the herald of the new day,
declared his mission.
Merle was saying the first to believe in him declared
awake for low the morning light has broken,
a rise for his cause is made manifest.
The portal of his grace is open wide.
Enter the ino peoples of the world,
for he who is your promised one is come.
As the Bob sent out his followers to spread the glad tidings,
he addressed to them these words,
O my letters, verily I say,
immensely exalted is this day
above the days of the apostles of old.
Nay, immeasurable is the difference.
You are the witnesses of the dawn of the promised day of God,
the secret of the day that is to come is now concealed.
Scatter throughout the length and breadth of this land
and prepare the way for his coming.
Immediately after the completion of the ninth year of this wondrous,
this most holy and merciful dispensation,
the requisite number of pure,
of holy consecrated and sanctified souls
was most secretly consummated.
Baha'u'llah recalls,
I heard the most wondrous and most sweet voice
calling above my head,
turning my face, I beheld a maiden,
the embodiment of the remembrance of the name of my Lord,
suspended in the air before me.
Pointing with her finger onto my head,
she addressed all who are in heaven and all who are on earth saying,
"By God, this is the best beloved of the world,
and yet he comprehend not.
This is the beauty of God amongst you,
and the power of his sovereignty within you could ye but understand."
But they perceived not, neither did they understand nor comprehend.
He whose advent had been foretold in all the holy books
was rejected and banished from the land of Persia
to the city designated as the abode of peace.
From the land of tar, after countless afflictions,
Baha'u'llah testifies,
we reached Iraq at the bidding of the tyrant of Persia,
where, after the fetters of our foes,
we were afflicted with the perfidy of our friends.
God knows what befell me thereafter.
I have borne what no man be he of the past or of the future,
have borne or will bear.
Nineteen years after the declaration of the Bab,
the 1,290 days fixed by Daniel in the last chapter of his book
as the duration of the abomination that makes desolate had elapsed.
The Lord of the Kingdom, returned in the glory of the Father,
was about to ascend his throne
and assume the scepter of a world embracing indestructible sovereignty.
It was in a beautiful garden beyond the banks of the Tigris River outside Baghdad
that Baha'u'llah declared his mission.
Speaking of that memorable occasion, he said,
"Arise and proclaim unto the entire creation
the tidings that he who is the all merciful
have directed his steps towards the Rizvaun and entered it.
Guide them the people unto the garden of delight,
which God has made the throne of his paradise."
On the model of this most mighty declaration to the world of humanity,
Baha'u'llah's second banishment began as he set out for Constantinople.
The city acclaimed by Mohammedans as the Dome of Islam,
that stigmatized by him as this spot where on the throne of tyranny had been established.
A period in which untold privations and unprecedented trials
were mingled with the noblest spiritual triumphs, was now commencing.
Less than four months after his arrival in Constantinople,
Baha'u'llah was again expelled, this time to Adrianople,
characterized by him as the place which none entered except such
as had rebelled against the authority of the sovereign.
He said, "The eyes of our enemies wept over us,
and beyond them those of every discerning person."
So bent with sorrow, verses rained down upon him
in such number that it was impossible to record them.
It is said that such were the outpourings that within the space of an hour
the equivalent of a thousand verses were revealed.
O kings of the earth, Baha'u'llah admonished in the surayyamuluk,
give ear unto the voice of God,
calling from this sublime, this fruit-laden tree
that has sprung out of the crimson hill upon the holy plain.
In turning the words, "There is none other God but He,
the mighty, the all-powerful, the all-wise."
Fear God, O concours of kings, and suffer not yourselves
to be deprived of this most sublime grace.
O kings of Christendom, heard ye not the saying of Jesus,
the Spirit of God, I go away and come again unto you.
Wherefore then did ye fail when he did come again
unto you in the clouds of heaven, to draw an eye unto him,
that ye might behold his face and be of them that attained his presence?
His fourth and final banishment brought Baha'u'llah to the holy land,
the land promised by God to Abraham,
sanctified by the revelation of Moses,
honored by the lives and labors of the Hebrew,
patriarchs, judges, kings, and prophets,
revealed as the cradle of Christianity,
and as the place where Zoroaster held converse
with some of the prophets of Israel.
Baha'u'llah said, "The Ottoman sultan,
without any justification or reason,
arose to oppress us and sent us to the fortress of Akha,
his imperial Falman decreed that none should associate with us,
and that we should become the object of the hatred of everyone."
His arrival in Akha was indeed a consummation
foretold through the tongues of the prophets for thousands of years.
David in his Psalms had predicted,
"Lift up your heads, O you gates,
even lift them up ye everlasting doors,
and the King of glory shall come in."
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.
Akha was described by David as the strong city,
designated by Hosea as a door of hope,
and alluded to by Ezekiel as the gates that looketh towards the east,
where unto the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east.
But so great were the afflictions he was to suffer in this city,
that Baha'u'llah eluded to them with these significant words.
No, thou, that upon our arrival at this spot,
we chose to designate it as the most great prison.
Though previously subjected in another land to chains and fetters,
we had refused to call it by that name.
Say, Ponder that on, O ye endured with understanding.
Where we to make mention of what befell us,
the heavens would be rent a sunder and the mountains would crumble.
My captivity cannot harm me.
That which can harm me is the conduct of those who love me,
who claim to be related to me,
and yet perpetrate what causes my heart and my pen to groan.
His enemies intended that his imprisonment should completely destroy
and annihilate the blessed cause.
But this prison was in reality of the greatest assistance
and became the means of its development.
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From this prison, his light was shed abroad,
his fame conquered the world,
and the proclamation of his glory reached the east and the west.
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After he was released from the confines of his prison cell,
he came to live with his family at the house of Abu.
Here was revealed the Katabar Das, the most holy book.
From here, he continued to address kings, rulers, and deglisiasics.
One day, Abdul Baha went to the presence of the Blessed Beauty
and said, "The palace at Masra is ready for you,
and it carriage to drive you there."
He refused to go, saying, "I'm a prisoner."
Only upon the insistent pleading of the Mufti of Akkah
did Baha'u'llah consent to leave,
thus ending nine years of confinement
within the walls of the prison city.
One of his favorite retreats, in those days,
was the Garden of Na'amayin,
a small island situated in the middle of a river to the east of Akkah,
which he honored with the appellation of Rizvan,
and which was designated by him the new Jerusalem.
Two years after he left the walled city,
Abdul Baha'u was able to rent for him the palace of Udi Hammar
on the construction of which so much wealth had been lavished,
while Baha'u'llah lay imprisoned in the barracks,
and which its owner had precipitately abandoned,
owing to the outbreak of an epidemic disease.
This palace, known as Bhaji,
was characterized by Baha'u'llah as that lofty mansion,
the spot which God hath ordained
as the most sublime vision of mankind.
It was in this same mansion that he received the distinguished orientalist,
Professor E. G. Brown of Cambridge,
who wrote, "The face of him on whom I gazed I can never forget,
though I cannot describe it.
Those piercing eyes seem to read ones very so.
Power and authority sat on that emperor,
no need to ask in whose presence I stood,
as I bowed myself before one,
with the object of a devotion and love which kings might envy,
and emperors sigh for in vain."
Four times Baha'u'llah visited Haifa.
His tent, the tabernacle of glory,
was raised on Mount Carmel,
the hill of God in his vineyard,
the home of Elijah,
extolled by Isaiah as the mountain of the Lord,
to which all nations shall flow.
In the course of one of these visits,
when his tent was pitched in the vicinity of the Carmelite monastery,
he, the Lord of the vineyard,
revealed the tablet of Carmel.
On another occasion, Baha'u'llah himself pointed out to after Baha'u'llah,
the site on the slopes of Mount Carmel,
which was to serve as the permanent resting place of the Baha'u'llah.
The ascension of Baha'u'llah ended a period unparalleled in religious history.
The message heralded by the Bab had yielded its golden fruit.
God's newborn faith,
the sinus shore of all past dispensations,
had been fully and unreservedly proclaimed.
With the transference of the remains of the Bab,
whose advent marks the return of the prophet Elijah,
to Mount Carmel,
and their internment in that holy mountain,
the plan so gloriously envisaged by Baha'u'llah,
had been at last executed.
And the arduous labors associated with the early
and tumultuous years of the ministry of the appointed center of his covenant,
crowned with immortal success.
A focused center of divine illumination and power
has been permanently established on that mountain,
regarded from time immemorial as sacred.
A structure at once massive, simple, and imposing,
nestling in the heart of Carmel,
flanked by the cave of Elijah on the west,
and by the hills of Galilee on the east,
backed by the plain of Sharon,
and facing the Silver City of Akka,
and beyond it,
the most holy tomb, the heart and gepna of the Baha'i world.
Overshadowing the colony of German tempers,
who, in anticipation of the coming of the Lord,
had forsaken their homes and foregathered at the foot of that mountain,
the shrine of the Bab has been established
as the spot round which the concours on high circle in adoration.
Events have already demonstrated,
through the extension of the edifice itself,
through the embellishment of its surroundings,
through the acquisition of extensive endowments in its neighbourhood,
and through its proximity to the resting places of the wife,
the son and daughter of Baha'u'llah,
that it was destined to acquire with the passing of the years,
a measure of fame and glory commensurate with the high purpose
that had prompted its founding,
nor will it, as the years go by,
and the institutions revolving around the world
administrative and spiritual centre are gradually established.
Seast to manifest the latent potentialities
with which that same immutable purpose has endowed it.
Resistlessly will this divine institution flourish and expand,
however fears the animosity which its future enemies may events,
until the full measure of its splendor will have been disclosed
before the eyes of all mankind.
Call out to Zion O Carmel,
and announce the joyful tidies.
He that was living from mortal eyes is coming,
his old conquering sovereignty is manifest,
his all-encompassing splendor is revealed.
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