The Book of Certitude (the Iqan)

 

Four Questions submitted to Baha'u'llah by Haji Mirza Sayyid Muhammad (the Bab's Uncle). the questions led to the revelation of the Kitab-i Iqan.

Question One; (Resurrection and Judgment)

What was previously believed is that the promised resurrection will take place in another world. The raising of the dead (hashr wa nashr), the Bridge (sirat), the accounting of the deeds of all creatures, and the reward or punishment of those deeds will take place in that world. However, it is all in this world, and it has taken place. And the days of the appearance of every manifestation of the truth (or manifestation of God: mazhar-i haqq) constitute that same day of resurrection for the period preceding it. In this new revelation, there has been no punishment for men's deeds. Nay, the rebelliousness and corruption of the people of tyranny and oppression have increased, even if the real meaning of reward and punishment is nearness or distance from the divine court. This subject is the same, regardless of which world it occurs in. The people of truth in this world, since they exist in God's good pleasure, are in a state of well-being; but they are outwardly caught in the grip of the people of oppression, and are troubled by them. The people of oppression, although they are tormented by being far from the court of God, are outwardly in a state of comfort, and by reason of their innate ignorance (ghaflati ki darand), are unaware of that torment. If the requital for men's deeds (jaza-yi a'mal) and the promised punishment (? the text reads thawab-i 'iqab-i maw'ud, which makes imperfect sense and could be in error for thawab wa 'iqab-i maw'ud, meaning the promised reward and punishment) is this (i.e. as described above), and there is no other world than this one, where will the oppressed seek vengeance from the one who oppressed him, and where will the people of punishment receive their desserts. This would be nothing but a denial of the promised resurrection. I have not understood this subject properly, yet it is among the most important of matters to understand it.

في كينية المعاد وبعث الأجساد وحقيقة الثواب والعقاب

Reference; https://bahai-library.com/muhammad_questions_kitab_iqan 

"Judgment is not an oral trial or interrogation, but rather tests individuals to see whether they possess the inner insight to recognize the divine light of the new Messenger or allow worldly prejudices to blind them. "

"Being "dead" or in "tombs" symbolizes a state of spiritual ignorance and waywardness, while the "cleaving of the heavens" means the superseding and annulling of a previous religious dispensation to make way for a new divine truth"

Why We (all Human beings) Should Read the Kitab-i-Iqan; the Book of Certitude

 

Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, revealed The Book of Certitude in 1861/62 in the span of two days and two nights. He wrote this treatise in response to questions asked by one of the maternal uncles of the Bab — the herald and forerunner of Baha’u’llah. The Kitab-i-Iqan fulfills “the prophecy of the Báb, Who had specifically stated that the Promised One would complete the text of the unfinished Persian Bayán” — a volume that the Bab wrote around 1847 before he was martyred in 1850.

Shoghi Effendi summarized The Book of Certitude in the following words:

Within a compass of two hundred pages it proclaims unequivocally the existence and oneness of a personal God, unknowable, inaccessible, the source of all Revelation, eternal, omniscient, omnipresent and almighty; asserts the relativity of religious truth and the continuity of Divine Revelation; affirms the unity of the Prophets, the universality of their Message, the identity of their fundamental teachings, the sanctity of their scriptures, and the twofold character of their stations; denounces the blindness and perversity of the divines and doctors of every age; cites and elucidates the allegorical passages of the New Testament, the abstruse verses of the Qur’án,

…enumerates the essential prerequisites for the attainment by every true seeker of the object of his quest; demonstrates the validity, the sublimity and significance of the Báb’s Revelation; acclaims the heroism and detachment of His disciples; foreshadows, and prophesies the world-wide triumph of the Revelation promised to the people of the Bayán; upholds the purity and innocence of the Virgin Mary; glorifies the Imáms of the Faith of Muḥammad; celebrates the martyrdom, and lauds the spiritual sovereignty, of the Imám Ḥusayn; unfolds the meaning of such symbolic terms as ‘Return,’ ‘Resurrection,’ ‘Seal of the Prophets’ and ‘Day of Judgment’; adumbrates and distinguishes between the three stages of Divine Revelation; and expatiates, in glowing terms, upon the glories and wonders of the ‘City of God,’ renewed, at fixed intervals, by the dispensation of Providence, for the guidance, the benefit and salvation of all mankind.

https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/kitab-i-iqan/1#990539395