The short span of time separating the Dispensations of the Báb and Baha’u’llah

The short duration of His [Báb's] Dispensation, the restricted range within which His laws and ordinances have been made to operate, supply no criterion whatever wherewith to judge its Divine origin and to evaluate the potency of its message. “That so brief a span,” Bahá’u’lláh Himself explains, “should have separated this most mighty and wondrous Revelation from Mine own previous Manifestation, is a secret that no man can unravel and a mystery such as no mind can fathom. Its duration had been foreordained, and no man shall ever discover its reason unless and until he be informed of the contents of My Hidden Book.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Dispensation of Baha’u’llah; included in ‘The World Order of Baha’u’llah’)

“The passion of Jesus Christ, and indeed His whole public ministry… offer a parallel to the Mission and death of the Báb”

It would indeed be no exaggeration to say that nowhere in the whole compass of the world’s religious literature, except in the Gospels, do we find any record relating to the death of any of the religion-founders of the past comparable to the martyrdom suffered by the Prophet of Shíráz. So strange, so inexplicable a phenomenon, attested by eye-witnesses, corroborated by men of recognized standing, and acknowledged by government as well as unofficial historians among the people who had sworn undying hostility to the Bábí Faith, may be truly regarded as the most marvelous manifestation of the unique potentialities with which a Dispensation promised by all the Dispensations of the past had been endowed. The passion of Jesus Christ, and indeed His whole public ministry, alone offer a parallel to the Mission and death of the Báb, a parallel which no student of comparative religion can fail to perceive or ignore.

• In the youthfulness and meekness of the Inaugurator of the Bábí Dispensation;
•  in the extreme brevity and turbulence of His public ministry;
• in the dramatic swiftness with which that ministry moved towards its climax;
• in the apostolic order which He instituted, and the primacy which He conferred on one of its members;
• in the boldness of His challenge to the time-honored conventions, rites and laws which had been woven into the fabric of the religion He Himself had been born into;
• in the role which an officially recognized and firmly entrenched religious hierarchy played as chief instigator of the outrages which He was made to suffer;
• in the indignities heaped upon Him;
• in the suddenness of His arrest;
• in the interrogation to which He was subjected;
• in the derision poured, and the scourging inflicted, upon Him;
• in the public affront He sustained; and, finally,
• in His ignominious suspension before the gaze of a hostile multitude—

in all these we cannot fail to discern a remarkable similarity to the distinguishing features of the career of Jesus Christ. 

-Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By)

“the reality of the great and essential truth lying at the very core of His [Bahá’u’lláh’s] Message to mankind"

We might well ponder in our hearts the following passages from a prayer revealed by Bahá’u’lláh which strikingly affirm, and are a further evidence of, the reality of the great and essential truth lying at the very core of His Message to mankind: “Praise be to Thee, O Lord my God, for the wondrous revelations of Thine inscrutable decree and the manifold woes and trials Thou hast destined for myself. At one time Thou didst deliver me into the hands of Nimrod; at another Thou hast allowed Pharaoh’s rod to persecute me. Thou alone canst estimate, through Thine all-encompassing knowledge and the operation of Thy Will, the incalculable afflictions I have suffered at their hands. Again Thou didst cast me into the prison-cell of the ungodly for no reason except that I was moved to whisper into the ears of the well-favored denizens of Thy kingdom an intimation of the vision with which Thou hadst, through Thy knowledge, inspired me and revealed to me its meaning through the potency of Thy might. And again Thou didst decree that I be beheaded by the sword of the infidel. Again I was crucified for having unveiled to men’s eyes the hidden gems of Thy glorious unity, for having revealed to them the wondrous signs of Thy sovereign and everlasting power. How bitter the humiliations heaped upon me, in a subsequent age, on the plain of Karbilá! How lonely did I feel amidst Thy people; to what state of helplessness I was reduced in that land! Unsatisfied with such indignities, my persecutors decapitated me and carrying aloft my head from land to land paraded it before the gaze of the unbelieving multitude and deposited it on the seats of the perverse and faithless. In a later age I was suspended and my breast was made a target to the darts of the malicious cruelty of my foes. My limbs were riddled with bullets and my body was torn asunder. Finally, behold how in this day my treacherous enemies have leagued themselves against me, and are continually plotting to instill the venom of hate and malice into the souls of Thy servants. With all their might they are scheming to accomplish their purpose… Grievous as is my plight, O God, my Well-beloved, I render thanks unto Thee, and my spirit is grateful for whatsoever hath befallen me in the path of Thy good-pleasure. I am well pleased with that which Thou didst ordain for me, and welcome, however calamitous, the pains and sorrows I am made to suffer.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Dispensation of Baha’u’llah; included in ‘The World Order of Baha’u’llah’)

circa 1930: The Masjid in Barfurush, Mazindaran, Iran where Quddus was buried

 

(The Baha'i World 1932-1934)