It was written to a priest in Isfahan, a priest called the
"Son of the Wolf". His father had spoken the words that sent the
"twin shining lights," the King of Martyrs and the Beloved of Martyrs
to their death. They were laid in two sandy graves near Isfahan. (Years
afterward, an American woman named Keith Ransom Kehler knelt there and wept and
brought them flowers; then in a few days she was stricken and died, and the
friends carried her back to these same graves and buried her beside them).
This priest, Aqa Najafi, had committed the unforgivable sin:
he had violated the Covenant and blasphemed against the Holy Spirit; that is,
he had hated, not the lamp, not the Prophet of God as an individual -- from
ignorance, or because he did not recognize Him -- but the light itself, the
perfections of God which the Prophet reflects; he had hated the light in the
lamp -- and "this detestation of the light has no remedy...”
This priest was, then, the most hopeless of sinners. His
evil found expression in many ways, and among them was this, that with his
pupils, he kicked at and trampled the martyred body of Mirza Ashraf, in Isfahan
(not the Ashraf of whom we read in Gleanings; Siyyid Ashraf, whose head was cut
off in Zanjan).
And yet, Baha'u'llah begins this Tablet with a prayer of
repentance for Aqa Najafi to recite. He offers this breaker of the Covenant
forgiveness; just as, in His Most Holy Book, He offers forgiveness to Mirza
Yahya, the treacherous half-brother who tried to destroy him. This offering is
a demonstration of "Badá" -- of the principle of the free operation
of the Will of God, Who doeth whatsoever He willeth and shall not he asked of
His doings.
