Endeavour to your utmost to protect yourselves, because
satan appears in different robes and appeals to everyone according to each
person's own way, until he becomes like unto him (satan), then he will leave
him alone… Be informed by these utterances and shun the manifestations of the
people of hell... The greatest of degradation is to leave the Shadow of God and
enter under the shadow of satan.
- Baha’u’llah (Cited in ‘Star of the West’,
vol. XIII, pp. 20 to 22; printed in ‘The Power of Covenant, Part Two’, by the
NSA of Canada)
The meaning of the symbolic terms used in this passage has
been clarified by the Universal House of Justice:
The references to Satan or The Evil One in Baha'i Scripture
are symbolical and do not at all imply the existence of a personal devil. They
symbolize the lower nature of man, the selfish promptings of his ego, and so
forth. They are also used, sometimes, to symbolize the machinations of
Covenant-breakers or the spirit of Covenant-breaking, and this is the sense of
the quotation from the Words of Baha’u’llah on pages 20 to 22 of Volume XIII of
The Star of the West.
- The Universal House of Justice (From a letter dated
March 23, 1975 to an individual believer; printed in ‘The Power of Covenant,
Part Two’, by the NSA of Canada)
