I put my trust in the Lord, the God al-Ḥākim, exalted above number and offspring, and I give thanks to His servant, the one Messiah.
From the eloquent servant, possession of the Lord, the guiding Messiah, to all who have drawn near to the divinity through the reality of the sacrament and who hold to it: to every priest, patriarch, and metropolitan among the people of truth.
Peace upon the people of unity and religion who follow the traces of the pure apostles, recognize the doctrine of the trustworthy and truthful messengers, and possess purified souls. They endured what they encountered in obedience to the Lord and pledged themselves to him, devoting their lives at the beginning for love of the obedient High Priest, by which I mean the martyr of martyrs and people like John, who brought good tidings to humanity and endured slander, slaughter, and beheading for the favor of his Lord.
It is extraordinary in this age, and ought to cause astonishment, that the nations have forgotten the foundations of their religions, committed what their own teachings forbade, obeyed Satan and Iblīs, and acknowledged the falsehood and lies that their worship-books bear witness against them. They have agreed in transgression and sin, and their corrupt beliefs have become notorious among the truthful near and far.
Where, claimants, is your obedience to the Lord? Where is your acceptance of his commandments, liars, if you truly believe him and are certain that he will return to save the people of truth from their sins? Did he not command you in Matthew's Gospel: 'Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who mistreat you, and pray for those who drag you away by force and expel you in arrogance. In this way you will be children of your Father in heaven, who causes His sun to rise upon the good and the wicked and His rain to fall upon the righteous and the transgressors. If you love only those who love you, what reward or excellence do you have? Even tax collectors do the same.'
O ignorant and brutish people, remnant of idol-worshippers: you accepted neither the counsel of the one who directed you, nor the coming of the one who announced his return and brought you grace. You neither heard nor obeyed his command. Rather, you broke the covenant of his instruction and disobeyed his prohibition against obedience to the devils. Like the rebellious Jews of old, you imitated those who killed and intimidated prophets. You visited evil and injury upon the one who announced the Messiah's coming to you, committing the associationism and manifest unbelief he had forbidden. In your arrogance you assaulted the learned apostle, the truthful and trustworthy wise shaykh, departed from the straight way by harming him, and left the path of people of truth and upright religion. You became like the chief priests among the Jews, who persecuted Christians who bowed in worship and resisted the Lord's revealed Word by rejection and denial.
In your deafness and dullness you resemble a mute beast. A person moved by compassion might come to help such an animal, only for it to kick him violently and prevent him from doing the good he intended. So have you acted, deaf to truth and unable to accept the parables of the true Messiah. Look, heedless people—if you have eyes capable of seeing! Understand—if you have minds capable of understanding—the examples issuing from the sources of true knowledge.
Matthew's Gospel records: 'Truly I tell you, tax collectors and prostitutes will enter the Kingdom of Heaven before you. John came to you by the road of righteousness, but you did not believe him, although you saw him with your own eyes. Nor did you repent of what you had done or believe what you witnessed.' You have neglected this wisdom, failed to safeguard the rights of those affiliated with Christianity, and disregarded the manifestation of the Universal Cause. You disbelieve the signs of its coming and deny the passages foretelling it. You are figures without souls, pleased by foolishness and ignorance and disgusted by virtue and intellect. Instead of taking the Lord's true parables to heart, you devoted yourselves to fabricating the religious codes assembled for you by lying leaders of falsehood.
Listen to the parable in Matthew which sets out your deeds and what will become of you at the time of his manifestation. A householder planted a vineyard, put a wall around it, dug a winepress, built a tower, leased it to farmers, and departed to his country. When the harvest approached, he sent servants to collect its fruit. The tenants beat some, stoned others, and killed the rest. He sent more servants than before, and they treated them in the same way. Then he said, 'Perhaps they will be ashamed before my son,' and sent his son. But the tenants said among themselves, 'This is the heir. Come, let us take his inheritance.' They cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. 'When the owner comes, what will he do to these farmers?' The hearers replied: 'He will destroy those wicked people completely and lease the vineyard to others who deliver its fruit at the proper time.' Jesus explained that this is what they did at the beginning and would do at the end: 'The Kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who bear its good fruit.'
Your days of rule and continuance have reached their limit. Because of your deeds you are threatened with uprooting and retribution. If you deny this Gospel passage, you deny and invalidate the very book you profess to worship through. If you believe it, you acknowledge the evil deed and yet commit it yourselves. If you say that Jesus spoke only about the people of a past age, remember that the apostles stand between you and that past, and that you have repeated the acts of the Jews and their wicked chief priests. The parable portrays you, people who have departed from the path. The prediction that the Kingdom will be given to a people who produce good fruit lies before you: parts of it have already been fulfilled, but you failed to understand them. When he promised you that his messengers would come, you called him a liar.
Jesus also said: 'You have heard, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I tell you not to resist the wicked. If someone strikes your left cheek, offer him the right. If someone demands your tunic, hand over your cloak as well'. Every time you read these Gospel verses, you condemn yourselves. You tyrannize the weaker members of your own denomination, manipulate their minds, and oppose what Jesus commanded and prohibited. You were ordered to pray for those who forced you out, yet you expelled his friends by force and persecuted them in arrogance. Which Lord, then, do you worship? By what religion do you conduct yourselves? Do you have commandments apart from the Gospel, or do you turn to a direction other than the one Jesus designated?
You have deceived the weaker Christians by decorating the fabricated religious codes, seized their reins through deceit, led them away from obedience to the Messiah, and bound them to overt unbelief and associationism. Falsehood's dissolution is approaching, and the truth will emerge to destroy Iblīs and his callers. The dominion of wrongdoers and the forms of unbelief are coming to an end. You rejected this very instruction in full sight of what you were doing. If you truly considered the Gospel's commands binding, believed in the Lord's return and in his reckoning with humanity on the Day of Resurrection, you would have remained within his prohibitions and commands instead of rebelling against them.
What, then, do you believe? Whose commandments guide you after his? By what argument do you defend your disobedience? You will be among those who call to him on the coming day, only for him to answer: 'Depart; I never knew you, you unjust workers of falsehood.' You will withdraw disgraced, condemned, and regretful. Through these deeds you have shown yourselves to be, in truth, children of vipers, and he has disowned you because you followed a way other than that of Jesus.
Consider the instruction read on Great Tuesday, when Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives. We have a greater claim to its truth, because we are the truthful. His apostles came privately and asked: 'Master, tell us when these things will be and what sign will announce your coming after the end of this world.' Jesus answered: 'Beware lest anyone deceive you, for many will come in my name and say, “I am the Messiah.”' Notice the sign he appointed: the appearance of many pretenders, each claiming the name Messiah. This sign has already appeared, and the claimants have uttered precisely these words in falsehood.
The true Lord Messiah is too exalted to come to this world declaring, 'I am the Messiah.' The one who claims that title for himself is the lying messiah, the accursed deceiver, the foolish and miserable pretender. The true Messiah comes to all the world through his proofs, signs, and testimony, carried by the hands of his truthful guides and his honored, believing apostles.
After warning them about false messiahs, Jesus continued: 'You will hear rumors and reports of wars. Do not be troubled, for these things must happen, but they are only the beginning. Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and people against people. Hunger will be severe and calamities will multiply in different places; these are the beginning of birth-pangs. Then they will hand you over to suffering and torment, kill you, and all peoples will hate you for my name.' He made clear that the people of truth are those who undergo persecution, are killed, and are hated by peoples, families, and companions. These people cannot be identified with a mad pretender who declares himself to be the Messiah; such pretenders themselves fulfill a different part of the prediction.
You who make these claims, when have you been persecuted for the faith? Who afflicted you, handed you over to suffering, killed you, or hated you on this account? These signs have happened, and reports of them have spread among the nations. Yet it is the Lord's friends, those who have proclaimed his name and called humanity to him, who have been tried through you and people like you, publicly persecuted, tortured, and killed. You deemed their persecution permissible, approved it, joined in it, hated them in word and heart, and helped to kill and expel them. You are outside the description of the people of truth and included among their enemies; you have forgotten the words Jesus made binding upon you.
The same instruction says that people will hate one another and deliver one another to death. Because of the enormity of the trials, love will diminish in many hearts, but whoever endures until the end will gain everlasting life. Jesus announced that 'this gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed throughout all the world as a witness to every nation, and then the end will come.' Awaken, Christians who remain bewildered in your inherited law. Where is this worldwide proclamation? You know of neither its time nor its nature, though you claim belief in his wisdom and await the signs of his return. The witness has been carried to all the peoples; you are the ones who do not recognize it.
Jesus also warned: 'When you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place, then let whoever is in Judea flee to the mountains.' Those signs, too, have appeared and have become known throughout the world. The abomination that occupied the holy place will soon have its traces wiped away. Again he said that his coming would be like lightning running from west to east. That is proof that the true Messiah does not simply appear before the world and announce 'I am the Messiah.' The person who does so is the accursed impostor; the true Messiah's heralds make his signs and testimony known to the nations.
No human being and no angel of heaven knows the hour of the Messiah's manifestation, but the Father alone. Before the Flood people ate, drank, married, and celebrated, heedless of what approached, until the waters carried them away. So will his coming in majesty destroy you and those like you who rebel. Do you imagine that he must appear only among you, or that no one outside your community awaits him? What are you in comparison with even a hundredth part of this world, whose peoples he comes to release from sin? Awake from heedlessness and return to truth with his friends before the period of respite ends. The cycles have passed, the Father's unity has been made manifest, and Jesus said: 'This generation will not pass away until all these things have been accomplished.'
These are explicit passages of the Gospel. Only a stubborn unbeliever denies them. You have denied them, departing from the religion of the Lord Messiah just as you departed from the other religions.
The Messiah also wrote to a monk in Gurgān [Jurjān], describing a period of hardship and trial imposed upon his apostles because of the sins of their persecutors. He spoke of trials stretching from Antioch to Alexandria. Those who endured them were his pure chosen people; yet you deny and dissociate yourselves from them. The fact that he located the persecution between Antioch and Alexandria excludes you from the honor you claim for your Christian faction. The fulfillment has appeared before your eyes: nation rose against nation and kingdom against kingdom; the followers of falsehood killed the Lord's friends in those places, surrendered them to death, hated them, and expelled them from their homes. You joined in the violence and persecution, imitating the wicked among the Jews who oppressed the Lord's messengers at the beginning.
What wrong has the person committed who explained tawḥīd and sincerity to people, or awakened the sleeping through evidence that the Messiah was coming? Why attack the trustworthy and wise man, the learned apostolic shaykh, and slander him? You will answer for this before the Lord at the great reckoning. Punishment includes a change of form in subsequent embodiments: the persecutors become like apes and pigs as their wrongdoing is repaid. You have become unworthy successors to the apostles: you broke the Lord's covenant, rejected the eternal Word, laid traps for his chosen friends, denied his messengers, and preferred the ornament of falsehood to the Gospel's wisdom. Examine the Gospel if you wish to act justly toward yourselves.
Consider the Gospel passage about the faithful and prudent servant whom his master appoints over his household to give them food at the proper time. 'Blessed is the servant whose master finds him doing so when he comes. Truly, he will appoint him over all his possessions. But if the wicked servant says in his heart, “My master is delayed,” and begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink, his master will arrive on a day he does not expect and at an hour he does not know. He will cut him off and assign him a portion with the hypocrites.'
Contemplate this speech, you deaf and heedless ones. What are the master, his servants, his household, and its food? Do you suppose that 'food' means the eating, drinking, and perishing possessions to which you have devoted yourselves? Do you imagine that you yourselves are the people of his household? He also said: 'I am in you and you are in me,' and, 'You are in me and I am in my Father.' The people in whom he dwells and who dwell in him are his true household, distributed across the regions of the world and awaiting his coming for judgment. The faithful servants whom he appointed to supply its food are his messengers. As in the beginning, so at the end, they announce his coming at the appropriate time, warn the peoples against the false messiah, and bring spiritual nourishment by explaining his wisdom. 'Blessed is that servant whom his master finds doing what he commanded; he will entrust all his possessions to him.'
The faithful servants are thus the messengers of the Lord Messiah, announcing his signs and wisdom before his manifestation, and guiding the peoples to obedience to him, which leads to obedience to the Father and illumination by His light. If you truly believed in the Lord's exhortations, why do you not cease wrongdoing and withdraw from persecuting the servants to whom he entrusted the food of his household? Your removal from these stations and your punishment alongside the deniers may soon be hastened. You have exceeded even the rebellious Jews in oppression. What offense is it to explain the word of tawḥīd and summon you to the Lord who forgives sins and judges all creation? Your denial of his messengers will be answered on a day when delay and excuses will no longer be possible.
Recall the account of Great Thursday, when the Lord gathered the apostles whom you deny, but who will bear witness against you. He told them that his time had drawn near and that Judas Iscariot would hand him over to the Jewish Pharaohs of that troubled age. He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, 'Take and eat; this is my body.' Then he took a cup, blessed it, drank, and gave it to them: 'Take and drink; this is my blood, the new covenant, shed for many for the forgiveness of sins.' And he said: 'Truly, from now on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it anew in the Kingdom of my Father.' This was at the end of his first time and the completion of his call, when he announced his departure from the world and the coming of his absence.
Be fair with yourselves. You read and hear about this new covenant and its greatness continually in your own religious books, yet turn away from its meaning. He forbade drinking it during the first period and permitted it anew after his return, on the new day in his Father's Kingdom. He has now returned to the world for forgiveness of sins, given the new drink to his friends, and you have not noticed. The letters of his servant announcing this have reached you, but you have rejected the messages and denied the truth they explain.
The time is complete, leaders of Christianity. You have broken the covenant the Lord established with you and the truthful apostles; you have killed or persecuted his truthful, trustworthy advising servant. He warned you about the pretenders and wrongdoers among the peoples, made clear the signs by which you should recognize them, and spread the call of the true Messiah to every horizon. If you respond, you will attain; if you remain behind, the Gospel's express passages will stand against your denial.
As for you who carry guilt and sin, if you seek to answer the Lord's message with words, I shall not hold back my answer or permit error to pass in silence. You must either abandon the deviations in which you persist or continue upon the path of falsehood and wrongdoing. I shall expose the baseless religious codes, clarify the error in the doctrines of the cross and the offering, overturn the invented grounds of associating sects, and lay open the false statements attributed to the true Messiah throughout the ages. This shall be done after permission is given by the Qāʾim of the age, the Messiah of the Ages.
Praise belongs to our Lord alone; thanks belong to the Messiah and Guide of the nations, His servant.
Completed, through the Guardian of the Hereafter.