s the centenary of the passing of Baha'u'llah. His
vision of humanity as one people and of the earth as a common homeland,
dismissed out of hand by the world leaders to whom it was first enunciated
over a hundred years ago, has today become the focus of human hope.
Equally inescapable is the collapse of moral and social order, which this
same declaration foresaw with awesome clarity.

The occasion has encouraged publication of this brief introduction to
Baha'u'llah's life and work. Prepared at the request of the Universal
House of Justice, trustee of the global undertaking which the events of a
century ago set in motion, it offers a perspective on the feeling of
confidence with which Baha'is the world over contemplate the future of our
planet and our race.

BAHA'U'LLAH

As the new millennium approaches, the crucial need of the human race is to
find a unifying vision of the nature of man and society. For the past
century humanity's response to this impulse has driven a succession of
ideological upheavals that have convulsed our world and that appear now to
have exhausted themselves. The passion invested in the struggle, despite
its disheartening results, testifies to the depth of the need. For,
without a common conviction about the course and direction of human
history, it is inconceivable that foundations can be laid for a global
society to which the mass of humankind can commit themselves.

Such a vision unfolds in the writings of Baha'u'llah, the nineteenth
century prophetic figure whose growing influence is the most remarkable
development of contemporary religious history. Born in Persia, November
12, 1817, Baha'u'llah(1) began at age 27 an undertaking that has gradually
captured the imagination and loyalty of several million people from
virtually every race, culture, class, and nation on earth. The phenomenon
is one that has no reference points in the contemporary world, but is
associated rather with climactic changes of direction in the collective
past of the human race. For Baha'u'llah claimed to be no less than the
Messenger of God to the age of human maturity, the Bearer of a Divine
Revelation that fulfills the promises made in earlier religions, and that
will generate the spiritual nerves and sinews for the unification of the
peoples of the world.

If they were to do nothing else, the effects which Baha'u'llah's life and
writings have already had should command the earnest attention of anyone
who