In the name of the God who knows what is concealed within creation and exposes the inner thoughts of anyone who deceives the people of truth.
From the tender and compassionate father, the sincere and gentle physician, to his son who stands upon the road but neglects thought and sound guidance and refuses the way of people who believe and pursue certain knowledge.
My son, may the Creator preserve you from the impulses of the Iblīses and devils and protect you from the abysses of those who go astray and rebel. May He inspire you to resemble those who possess reverence and religion. May He make you one who follows and affirms the commands of the Guardian of Truth, who submits to the signs of Resurrection and its conditions as genuine realities, and who casts away the clothing of pride and conceit. May He reveal to your insight the religious matters that have become confused to you and protect you from mixing with the people of deception and mockery.
The corrupt opinions of those people have reversed their souls and condemned them to corrupted embodiment. Their souls have been brought to the pools of thirst and disobedience by fleeing from obedience and taking delight in opposition and the company of brutish things. Through such a condition, disobedient souls become distinguished from obedient, faithful, pure souls.
Noble souls, because of their subtlety, rise above low things through the signs of wisdom and disciplined effort. Disdaining descent and degradation, they long for the highest stations, devote themselves to the matters of religion, and turn away from stubbornness and objection. But turbid and disobedient souls, because they cling to the false Iblīses, have been reversed in their dwellings and states, drawn toward the two condemned extremes and far from the middle way and moderation. They accept false conclusions because they have departed from sound premises.
Follow, worthy son, the deeds of people of religion and excellence. Weigh your conduct upon the balance of truth and justice. Do not consent to occupy the station of the negligent and ignorant, who have cast away the rein of truth for falsehood. They withdraw from truth, fail to receive the influence of intellectual meanings, and prove unable to bear the obligations of religion. They depart from it as an arrow passes through its target. The consequences of rebellion are already visible. The children of obedience have been marked out by happiness, and the children of broken covenants and filial disobedience by misery. Their souls have entered the racecourse of realities, where those who lead are distinguished from those left behind. Winds of safety blow upon the ships of deliverance, while the signs of Resurrection carry negligent people toward the flames, because they have forgotten that the appointed term is drawing to its close and failed to understand the meaning of the known number. Iblīses have trodden them beneath their claws and hooves and turned them from the truthful aim toward wrongful deception.
How long, disobedient son, will you wrong your own soul and exceed all bounds? How long will you persist in this childish folly while your own conduct makes you confess that you know better? How long will you disgrace yourself through evil practices while swearing falsely to deny them? How can you repent of destructive acts while violating your oaths and breaking your covenant?
Do you think, wandering son, that you will reach repentance before the days change, before you arrive tomorrow at the presentation of Resurrection with your work incomplete? The sickness of your soul will meet the sickness of your intellect, and through their union you will be overcome. Your subtle soul will lie defeated by animal desires, and intellect will find itself deprived of the soul through which it acts. Your faculties will then be weakened in their pursuit of reality. Your former and latter destiny will be ruined in the return. Your ties and hopes among the people of truth will be severed. You will ask for pardon and not receive it; you will regret having dishonored your soul by what your hands have earned, and your eyes will shed blood after tears.
Have compassion on yourself, lost son! Truth has arrived and falsehood has vanished; falsehood can neither originate nor restore anything. After a little while the doors of repentance will be closed and the presentation and account will come upon the deniers. Each soul will be recompensed for what it has committed despite the reminder and explanation. It will be reckoned even for the number of its breaths spent in the company of those who oppose, deny, and rebel. It will be held to account for advising the negligent just as it is for stubbornly resisting the people of tawḥīd and faith. It will answer for obeying Iblīs, the foolish devil, the last impure remnants of the heavenly course and the first residue of transgression and corruption.
Will you not desist, disobedient son, from these tremendous offenses and shameful acts? Will you cast aside the admonitions of a compassionate father who sincerely counsels you? I have advised you, son, because of your professed affirmation of divine unity and submission. Before my Creator I disavow your deeds and your involvement with the hypocrites, the wicked, and the tyrants.
You and others like you must come out of the intoxication of ignorance. The period of the foolish deranged one has come to an end, the days of the false Messiah have passed, and the lying hopes of the apostates have retreated. The millstone of death has overturned them with its right side and ground them like scattered dust with its left.
Where can the world of corruption, ruin, and apostasy go? Where can those who cling to unbelief and denial escape from the torrent that sweeps away its own froth, or the overwhelming flood of the sword? Where will the liars, covenant-breakers, and deceivers flee from its flame when its thunder shakes the mountains of the Sacred Precinct from the side of Mount Ṭūr, its lights illuminate the Raised Roof and the Inhabited House, its rainstorm bursts over Bahrain and al-Yamāma, and its sweeping edge reaches the “distillery of unbelief” and the great gate of Tihāma? Its fire will be kindled there for the destruction of the structure and the burning away of the blindness of hearts.
When the suns of Resurrection blaze up to overturn the elements of former religious dispensation, and moons of felicity grow full and prepare to appear and exert their power, they will pass from possibility into action. They will be ready to undo the knots of the parties of alteration and negligence. Then nations and their religious communities will lament their beliefs as their crosses are broken, their Kaʿba destroyed, and their houses of fire torn down.
When the victorious and fortunate company sweeps forward upon lean, noble mounts, supported by the truth and the banners of the lords, the horizons will glitter with the splitting apart of the sects and the disclosure of the realities of their devotional obligations. The hidden tribes of truth will hasten out from their concealment. The earths will tremble at the appearance of the Qāʾim, Imam of transcendence and abstraction, and the banners of holiness and spiritual purity will become known in all regions. Then composite things will cast aside their shadows; originated spiritual substances will bear witness against the deniers. By His command our Lord, God of earth and heaven, will be manifest to the worlds, and the bonds fashioned by the Iblīses will be undone through the breaking of customary laws.
Intellects will be incapable of enclosing Him within limits and attributes. He is higher than the most immediate propositions of mind. The superior one who receives the truth will gain felicity, while the inferior who opposes it will receive loss and displeasure.
Good tidings, then, for whoever is satisfied and submits before the opportunity passes, and renounces the Iblīses and their followers to his Guide and Lord before the appointed Day. Woe and evil recompense to anyone overtaken by the Resurrection while still keeping company with the people of opposition and division.
O Lord, You witness concerning those who opposed the proof that I have delivered it truthfully; You know that I have spent my best efforts to explain Your straight road. Fulfill, O Lord, Your promise to Your Guardian concerning his friends, as You promised him. He commanded us to pray to You as You commanded him and gave him strength. Bless him as You commanded us to maintain his connection; sever the bonds You forbade and condemned. Praise belongs to You for Your patience and respite with the peoples, and thanks ascend to You through Your Guardian for the continuation of Your favors.
Completed. Praise belongs to our Lord alone, and thanks to His servant, the Qāʾim of Truth.