This brief work is the result of a decision by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States to use the first chapter of The Ocean of His Words as a standalone publication. I was told that the rationale for this decision was the feeling that this presentation about the artistic method by which the Word of God is revealed through the intermediary of the Manifestation would provide useful insight for Bahá’í audiences and for the wider audience as well. The focus of this discussion is on those passages by Bahá’u’lláh where He discusses the process by which divine inspiration is forged by the Manifestation into scripture.
scripture.
But I suspect most important of the points made in this discussion is the conclusion that we must become active participants in the process of reading scripture—we must become “creative readers”—if we are to derive lasting benefit from reading and reciting the revealed verses. This axiom is especially true for this era in which the Manifestation has abolished clergy or any “learned class” as having the right to provide “authoritative interpretation” of scripture—a station or capacity He has for this dispensation confined to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi alone. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to resort to the study of the interpretations rendered by the Master and the Guardian, as well as to the elucidations by the Universal House of Justice, that we may become competent students of those verses revealed for this Day.