COMPARATIVE RELIGION
Abdul-Baha was the Son of Baha’u’llah and designated the interpreter of His Father’s Writings. For a brief review of His life see:
Also see the construction of the Shrine of Abdul-Baha:
https://news.bahai.org/story/1497/
Less than five months before His ascension, ‘Abdu’l-Baha had beseeched God for release from this world
The night of July l0th 1921 ‘Abdu’l-Baha was on Mount Carmel by the Shrine of the Bab. There, He revealed a Tablet and a prayer in honour of a ‘kinsman of the Bab’, who had died recently. [He was the father of the Hand of the Cause Balyuzi, who had died in Tihran, on May 6th]. Abdu’l-Baha beseeched God, in that prayer, for His own release from this world. He spoke of His ‘loneliness’, of being ‘broken-winged’, ‘submerged in seas of sorrows’: ‘O Lord! My bones are weakened, and the hoar hairs glisten on My head … and I have now reached old age, failing in My powers … No strength is there left in Me wherewith to arise and serve Thy loved ones … O Lord, My Lord! Hasten My ascension unto Thy sublime Threshold … and My arrival at the Door of Thy grace beneath the shadow of Thy most great mercy .. .’
That prayer was answered less than five months later. He passed away in the early hours of November 28th. The physician, who was summoned to His bedside at that hour, and closed His eyes, was Dr Florian Krug of New York, the same man who once bitterly resented the Faith of Baha’u’llah, and wanted alienists to examine his wife because of her intense devotion to it. He had now come, a pilgrim, with his wife [Grace], and ‘Abdu’l-Baha had allocated them a room in the compound of His own house… Other Western pilgrims present in Haifa at that poignant hour were Louise and John Bosch from California, Ethel Rosenberg from London, and Fraulein Johanna Hauff from Stuttgart were the Western pilgrims present in Haifa at that poignant hour, as well as Curtis Kelsey from the United States, who was in Haifa to attend to electrical installations in the Shrine of the Bab.
– Adapted from H.M. Balyuzi, ‘Abdu’l-Baha The Center of the Covenant of Baha’u’llah’, p. 452-463
‘Abdu’l-Baha knew the time of His passing
We have now come to realize that the Master, (i.e., ‘Abdu’l-Baha) knew the day and hour when, His mission on earth being finished, He would return to the shelter of heaven. He was, however, careful that His family should not have any premonition of the coming sorrow. It seemed as though their eyes were veiled by Him, with His ever-loving consideration for His dear ones, that they should not see the significance of certain dreams and other signs of the culminating event. This they now realize was His thought for them, in order that their strength be preserved to face the great ordeal when it should arrive, that they should not be devitalized by anguish of mind in its anticipation. Out of the many signs of the approach of the hour when He could say of His work on earth, “It is finished,” the following two dreams seem remarkable. Less than eight weeks before His passing the Master related this to His family:
“I seemed to be standing within a great temple, in the inmost shrine, facing the east, in the place of the leader himself. I became aware that a large number of people were flocking into the temple; and yet more crowded in, taking their places in rows behind me, until there was a vast multitude. As I stood I raised loudly the ‘Call to Prayer.’ Suddenly the thought came to me to go forth from the temple. When I found myself outside I said within myself, ‘For what reason came I forth, not having led the prayer? But it matters not; now that I have uttered the call to prayer, the vast multitude will of themselves chant the prayer’.”
When the Master had passed away, His family pondered over this dream and interpreted it thus .
https://www.upliftingwords.org/post/ascension-of-abdul-baha-devotional-program
(Discussion in ‘Baha’i‘ started by arthra, Oct 16, 2021)
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