t character of His own Revelation. "If all who are in heaven and
on earth," He moreover affirms, "be invested in this day with the powers
and attributes destined for the Letters of the Bayan, whose station is ten
thousand times more glorious than that of the Letters of the Qur'anic
Dispensation, and if they one and all should, swift as the twinkling of an
eye, hesitate to recognize My Revelation, they shall be accounted, in the
sight of God, of those that have gone astray, and regarded as 'Letters of
Negation.'" "Powerful is He, the King of Divine might," He, alluding to
Himself in the Kitab-i-Iqan, asserts, "to extinguish with one letter of
His wondrous words, the breath of life in the whole of the Bayan and the
people thereof, and with one letter bestow upon them a new and everlasting
life, and cause them to arise and speed out of the sepulchers of their
vain and selfish desires." "This," He furthermore declares, "is the king
of days," the "Day of God Himself," the "Day which shall never be followed
by night," the "Springtime which autumn will never overtake," "the eye to
past ages and centuries," for which "the soul of every Prophet of God, of
every Divine Messenger, hath thirsted," for which "all the divers kindreds
of the earth have yearned," through which "God hath proved the hearts of
the entire company of His Messengers and Prophets, and beyond them those
that stand guard over His sacred and inviolable Sanctuary, the inmates of
the Celestial Pavilion and dwellers of the Tabernacle of Glory." "In this
most mighty Revelation," He moreover, states, "all the Dispensations of
the past have attained their highest, their final consummation." And
again: "None among the Manifestations of old, except to a prescribed
degree, hath ever completely apprehended the nature of this Revelation."
Referring to His own station He declares: "But for Him no Divine Messenger
would have been invested with the Robe of Prophethood, nor would any of
the sacred Scriptures have been revealed."

And last but not least is 'Abdu'l-Baha's own tribute to the transcendent
character of the Revelation identified with His Father: "Centuries, nay
ages, must pass away, ere the Day-Star of Truth shineth again in its
mid-summer splendor, or appeareth once more in the radiance of its vernal
glory." "The mere contemplation of the Dispensation inaugurated by the
Blessed Beauty," He furthermore affirms, "would have sufficed to overwhelm
the saints of bygone ag