The Concept of Progressive Revelation:
    [1]	"Among the bounties of God is revelation.  Hence revelation is 
progressive and continuous.  It never ceases.  It is necessary that the reality of 
Divinity with all its perfections and attributes should become resplendent in the 
human world.  The reality of Divinity is like an endless ocean.  Revelation may be 
likened to the rain.  Can you imagine the cessation of rain?  Ever on the face of the 
earth somewhere rain is pouring down."  ('Abdu'l-Bahá, Promulgation of Universal 
Peace, page 378)
    [2]	 "'All the Prophets of God', asserts Bahá'u'lláh in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, 
'abide in the same tabernacle, soar in the same heaven, are seated upon the same 
throne, utter the same speech, and proclaim the same Faith.'  From the 'beginning 
that hath no beginning,' these Exponents of the Unity of God and Channels of His 
incessant utterance have shed the light of the invisible Beauty upon mankind, and will 
continue, to the 'end that hath no end,' to vouchsafe fresh revelations of His might 
and additional experiences of His inconceivable glory.  To contend that any 
particular religion is final, that 'all Revelation is ended, that the portals of Divine 
mercy are closed, that from the daysprings of eternal holiness no sun shall rise again, 
that the ocean of everlasting bounty is forever stilled, and that out of the Tabernacle 
of ancient glory the Messengers of God have ceased to be made manifest' would 
indeed be nothing less than sheer blasphemy. 
"'They differ,' explains Bahá'u'lláh in that same epistle, 'only in the intensity of their 
revelation and the comparative potency of their light.'  And this, not by reason of any 
inherent incapacity of any one of them to reveal in a fuller measure the glory of the 
Message with which He has been entrusted, but rather because of the immaturity and 
unpreparedness of the age He lived in to apprehend and absorb the full potentialities 
latent in that Faith. 
"'Know of a certainty,' explains Bahá'u'lláh, 'that in every Dispensation the light of 
Divine Revelation has been vouchsafed to men in direct proportion to their spiritual 
capacity.  Consider the sun. How feeble its rays the moment it appears above the 
horizon.  How gradually its warmth and potency increase as it approaches its zenith, 
enabling meanwhile all created things to adapt themselves to the growing intensity of 
its light.  How steadily it declines until it reaches its setting point.  Were it, all of a 
sudden, to manifest the energies latent within it, it would, no doubt, cause injury to all 
created things....  In like manner, if the Sun of Truth were suddenly to reveal, at the 
earliest stages of its manifestation, the full measure of the potencies which the 
providence of the Almighty has bestowed upon it, the earth of human understanding 
would waste away and be consumed; for men's hearts would neither sustain the 
intensity of its revelation, nor be able to mirror forth the radiance of its light.  
Dismayed and overpowered, they would cease to exist.'"  (Shoghi Effendi, World 
Order of Bahá'u'lláh, pages 57-59)

The Station of the Báb:
    [3]	 "The Revelation of the Báb may be likened to the sun, its station 
corresponding to the first sign of the Zodiac — the sign Aries —which the sun enters 
at the vernal equinox.  The station of Bahá'u'lláh's Revelation, on the other hand, is 
represented by the sign Leo, the sun's mid-summer and highest station.  By this is 
meant that this holy Dispensation is illumined with the light of the Sun of Truth 
shining from its most exalted station, and in the plenitude of its resplendency, its heat 
and glory."  (Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, pages 99-100)
    [4]	 "… the  fundamental truth that in the person of its Forerunner, the Báb, 
every follower of Bahá'u'lláh recognizes not merely an inspired annunciator but a 
direct Manifestation of God.  It is their firm belief that, no matter how short the 
duration of His Dispensation, and however brief the period of the operation of His 
laws, the Báb had been endowed with a potency such as no founder of any of the past 
religions was, in the providence of the Almighty, allowed to possess.  That He was not 
merely the precursor of the Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, that He was more than a 
divinely-inspired personage, that His was the station of an independent, self-sufficient 
Manifestation of God, is abundantly demonstrated by Himself, is affirmed in 
unmistakable terms by Bahá'u'lláh, and is finally attested by …'Abdu'l-Bahá."  
(Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá'u'lláh, page 61) 

The Station of the Bahá'u'lláh:
    [5]	 "Bahá'u'lláh describes the station of "Divinity" which He shares with all 
the Manifestations of God as 
...the station in which one dieth to himself and liveth in God.  Divinity, whenever I 
mention it, indicateth My complete and absolute self-effacement.  This is the station in 
which I have no control over mine own weal or woe nor over my life nor over my 
resurrection. 
And, regarding His own relationship to God, He testifies: 
When I contemplate, O my God, the relationship that bindeth me to Thee, I am moved 
to proclaim to all created things "verily I am God"; and when I consider my own self, 
lo, I find it coarser than clay!"  
(Bahá'u'lláh, Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Notes, page 234)
    [6]	 "As to the third Dispensation — the Revelation proclaimed by 
Bahá'u'lláh — inasmuch as the Sun of Truth when attaining that station shineth in 
the plenitude of its meridian splendor its duration hath been fixed for a period of one 
whole month, which is the maximum time taken by the sun to pass through a sign of 
the Zodiac.  From this thou canst imagine the magnitude of the Bahá'í cycle — a 
cycle that must extend over a period of at least five hundred thousand years."  
(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh, pp. 101-2) 

The Station of the 'Abdu'l-Bahá:
    [7]	 "Question:  What relation do you sustain to the founder of your belief?  
Are you His successor in the same manner as the Pope of Rome? 
Answer:  I am the servant of Bahá'u'lláh, the Founder; and in this I glory.  No honor 
do I consider greater than this, and it is my hope that I may be confirmed in servitude 
to Bahá'u'lláh.  This is my station."  ('Abdu'l-Bahá, Promulgation of Universal 
Peace, 2 June 1912, Talk at Church of the Ascension Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street 
in New York, page 167)
    [8]	 "… in the entire field of religious history [he] fulfills a unique function.  
Though moving in a sphere of His own and holding a rank radically different from 
that of the Author and the Forerunner of the Bahá'í Revelation, He, by virtue of the 
station ordained for Him through the Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh, forms together with 
them what may be termed the Three Central Figures of a Faith that stands 
unapproached in the world's spiritual history … 
That 'Abdu'l-Bahá is not a Manifestation of God, that, though the successor of His 
Father, He does not occupy a cognate station, that no one else except the Báb and 
Bahá'u'lláh can ever lay claim to such a station before the expiration of a full 
thousand years — are verities which lie embedded in the specific utterances of both 
the Founder of our Faith and the Interpreter of His teachings. "  (Shoghi Effendi, 
World Order of Bahá'u'lláh, pages 131-133)
The Central Figures of the Bahá'í Faith
Milwaukee Conference 28 June – 1 July 2001

Presentation by Steven A. Milston
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