BB00364: Fi Bayani Lawhi’l-Mahfuz (Letter on the Preserved Tablet) (part II)

The questioner inquired of the Preserved Tablet; make thou known unto him that which the All-Encompassing God hath wrought. Behold, I have cast unto thee from the outpourings of those resplendent Tablets, until every people hath come to know its own draught from the spring which God hath placed within the most hidden recess of the secret of their inmost hearts—that men may know that God created the heavens and the earth, haply they may believe through the knowledge of God. Foreordained for him in the Book was faith in that intended matter—“Doth not He Who created know?—He is the Subtle, the All-Aware.” The believers from among the people of the Bab and of the Book have followed it, bearing witness to that ink, according to what God hath made to flow in the Tablet of rectitude: verily God hath ever been All-Knowing of all things.

And God hath appointed for the downtrodden among men and women a safeguarded Book. Glorified be God, the All-Knowing, Who hath fashioned things by the art of choice in a manner worthy of the wondrous lights: by the Will—the secret of possibilities; by the Purpose—the hidden core of existents; and by Decree—He ordained the triune marking for the sake of the sign of delimitation. From this did the Christians take the form of the cross and the notion of the indwelling of lahut in nasut. The Beloved hath informed of their corrupted consciences, and the Christians said, “God is the third of three,” though He is but One God—exalted be He above that which they associate!

After the creation of Decree, the All-Merciful adjudged the Judgment, established for the people of effacement and confirmation, that We should not enforce upon you the ordinance of alteration (badaʾ), inasmuch as God knew within your souls the exigency thereof. God hath ratified what He decreed, and naught of the Cause of God is subject to nullification. Moreover, the All-Merciful warned His servants, after the decree of effacement and confirmation, lest men speak concerning God aught but the truth. The Imam—upon him be peace—said: “The spirits of the qadaris are exposed to the Fire, morning and evening, until the Hour ariseth; and when the Hour hath arisen, they shall be chastised with the people of the Fire by divers punishments. Then they shall say: O our Lord! Thou hast chastised us in particular and chastised us in general!’ And one, the keeper of Saqar, shall answer them: Verily, We created all things by a fixed measure.”’

Thereafter did the All-Merciful set, following the Judgment of ratification, that there is no grasping nor outspreading, nor in the realm of possibility any thing, save by the leave of the All-Merciful. God thus ordained this ratification for what He had placed within the Judgment, by the mystery of exigency; and thou shalt never find any change in the wont of God. Then did the All-Wise inform, after the establishing of the five, of the decree of the Term and the Book, that naught of the ordinances of the Gate should fall from aught of things. God appointed the Term for the sake of causes, and He exalted the Book through the establishing of effects—so that naught of existents should escape from the Book, but that they should find it expounded in causes within this Book, and its reasons made plain in the secret of this Gate.

God hath made that Book the Greater Tablet, and hath decreed therein what was initiated in the Beginning and in the Seal. God ordained for that Book two gates—the secret of the two Tutanjs—upon the twin gulfs of water: the one, the sweet water of Kawthar—the realities of the sublime among the people of the two Easts, the near ones; the other, the bitter salty water—the people of the two Wests, the far-removed. God engraved upon each gate the images of the triad, and within the image of the triad the temple of the triad, that the gates of Gehenna be fully nine and the arrows ten, by the ruling of the Ancient. Yet within the inwardness of that Tablet He placed mercy and rest, while upon its outward face, from before God, there is chastisement. Glorified be God, its Fashioner, exalted above that which they ascribe!