The City of the Covenant

Yeshua · 01-23-2011, 05:38 AM

I found this video really interesting:

YouTube - The City of the Covenant

I must admit when I first heard that Abdu'l-Baha had called New York the City of the Covenant I was rather surprised, since it doesn't usually strike me as being a particularly holy place - although I do love the city very much! But this video explained it all really well. I understand that it was the place where the Tablet of the Branch was read for the first time.

Abdu'l-Baha's desire was that New York become in his words, "A heavenly realm, so that the City of Baha may prosper and New York be favoured with blessings from the Abha Kingdom, that this region may become like the all-highest Paradise, may develop into a vineyard of God and be transformed into a heavenly orchard and a spiritual rose garden."

This struck me as somewhat similar to a Catholic prophecy of Saint Francis of Paola:

"The great leader of the holy militia of the Holy Spirit shall overcome the world, and shall possess the earth so completely that no king or lord shall be able to exist, except that he belongs to the sacred host of the Holy Ghost...The first members of this holy order shall be natives of the city where iniquity, vice and sin abound. However, they shall be converted from evil to good; from rebels against God they shall become most fervent and most faithful in His divine service. That city shall be cherished by God and by the Great Monarch, the elect and the beloved of the Most High Lord. For the sake of that place all holy souls who have done penance in it shall pray in the sight of God for that city and its inhabitants. When the time shall come of the immense and most right justice of the Holy Spirit, His Divine Majesty wills that such city become converted to God, and that many of its citizens follow the great prince of the holy army. The first person that will openly wear the sign of the living God shall belong to that city, because he will through a letter be commanded by a holy hermit to have it impressed upon his heart and to wear it externally on his breast... That man will begin to meditate on the secrets of God, about the long visitation which the Holy Spirit will make and the dominion that he will exercise over the world through the holy militia. O! happy man, who shall receive from the Most High the greatest privileges! He will interpret the hidden secrets of the Holy Ghost, and he shall often excite the admiration of men by his revealed knowledge of the internal secrets of their hearts. Rejoice, my Lord, because that Prince above other princes, and King over other kings, will hold you in the greatest veneration, and after having been crowned with three most admirable crowns, will exalt that city, will declare it free, and the seat of the Empire, and it shall become one of the first cities in the world "

Some Catholic analysts think that the City prophesised by Francis in the 1400s is modern day New York and since Baha'is call New York "The City of the Covenant" and since it appears to be materialistic and sinful at the moment but Abdu'l-Baha prayed that it will become a spiritial "paradise" I find the similarities very overwelming and perhaps too stark...

Interestingly New York is the host of the United Nations Headquarters and is often called the financial capital of the world...so it is currently big bucks capitalism and materialism PAR EXCELLENCE, which is why I think it fits. Also, as many as 800 languages are spoken in New York City, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world!!!!!! And it of course has the world-famous Statue of Liberty...while Times Square is called the Crossroads of the World...

Regardless I loved the video.

arthra · 01-23-2011, 08:44 AM

What I found is that the "City of the Covenant" for Baha'is at any rate relates more to the Covenant of Baha'u'llah..

YouTube - The City of the Covenant

http://www.bahainyc.org/about_us/city-of-covenant.pdf

The next day, June 19th, was an historic day for the Bahá'ís of New York, for on that day 'Abdu'l-Bahá named their city the City of the Covenant. He spoke in their gathering of the Tablet of the Branch, revealed by Bahá'u'lláh in Adrianople, and declared His own station: the Centre of the Covenant. In New York He had made this emphatic, authoritative statement in public, and therefore New York was invested with that distinction. On the same day He received the manuscript of The Brilliant Proof[1] which He greatly admired, and arranged for its translation and publication in the United States.

~ H.M. Balyuzi, Abdu'l-Baha - The Centre of the Covenant, p. 220

Sen McGlinn · 01-23-2011, 09:32 AM

I'm not at all sure that Abdu'l-Baha did name New York the city of the Covenant. If he did, it is very odd that the Bahais at the time time did not refer to this. I have not found it in any early pilgrim’s notes, and Star of the West magazine does not contain any use of the term, either before or after 1912. I have a blog on it here:

A 1912 Announcement of the Covenant?

It includes an interesting talk by Abdu'l-Baha on the Covenant, which is not included in Promulgation of Universal Peace.

Fadl · 07-01-2011, 09:58 PM

Here is the relevant passage from God Passes By:

Quote:

It was reserved, however, for the North American continent to witness the most astonishing manifestation of the boundless vitality ‘Abdu’l-Bahá exhibited in the course of these journeys. The remarkable progress achieved by the organized community of His followers in the United States and Canada, the marked receptivity of the American public to His Message, as well as His consciousness of the high destiny awaiting the people of that continent, fully warranted the expenditure of time and energy which he devoted to this most important phase of His travels. A visit which entailed a journey of over five thousand miles, which lasted from April to December, which carried Him from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast and back, which elicited discourses of such number as to fill no less than three volumes, 288 was to mark the climax of those journeys, and was fully justified by the far-reaching results which He well knew such labors on His part would produce. “This long voyage,” He told His assembled followers on the occasion of His first meeting with them in New York, “will prove how great is My love for you. There were many troubles and vicissitudes, but in the thought of meeting you, all these things vanished and were forgotten.”

The character of the acts He performed fully demonstrated the importance He attached to that visit. The laying, with His own hands, of the dedication stone of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár, by the shore of Lake Michigan, in the vicinity of Chicago, on the recently purchased property, and in the presence of a representative gathering of Bahá’ís from East and West; the dynamic affirmation by Him of the implications of the Covenant instituted by Bahá’u’lláh, following the reading of the newly translated Tablet of the Branch, in a general assembly of His followers in New York, designated henceforth as the “City of the Covenant”; the moving ceremony in Inglewood, California, marking His special pilgrimage to the grave of Thornton Chase, the “first American believer,” and indeed the first to embrace the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh in the Western world; the symbolic Feast He Himself offered to a large gathering of His disciples assembled in the open air, and in the green setting of a June day at West Englewood, in New Jersey; the blessing He bestowed on the Open Forum at Green Acre, in Maine, on the banks of the Piscataqua River, where many of His followers had gathered, and which was to evolve into one of the first Bahá’í summer schools of the Western Hemisphere and be recognized as one of the earliest endowments established in the American continent; His address to an audience of several hundred attending the last session of the newly-founded Bahá’í Temple Unity held in Chicago; and, last but not least, the exemplary act He performed by uniting in wedlock two of His followers of different nationalities, one of the white, the other of the Negro race—these must rank among the outstanding functions associated with His visit to the community of the American believers, functions designed to pave the way for the erection of their central House of Worship, to fortify them against the tests they were soon to endure, to cement their unity, and to bless the beginnings of that Administrative Order which they were soon to initiate and champion.-God Passes By, Shoghi Effendi, p 287-9

LordOfGoblins · 07-01-2011, 10:27 PM

Wow. Abdul'Baha really had his finger on the pulse. Those quotes were really good about the hell machines of war.
There is also another one that a spark shall ignite Europe in reference to the assasination of the Austrian prince that started WW1.

One question though:
What does it actually mean to say a city is the 'city of the covenant'?
Im sure we can only speculate- unless it explains somewhere' but what do people think.

07-01-2011, 10:27 PM	#5
LordOfGoblins Senior Member Joined: Dec 2010 From: Australia Posts: 1,329	Wow. Abdul'Baha really had his finger on the pulse. Those quotes were really good about the hell machines of war. There is also another one that a spark shall ignite Europe in reference to the assasination of the Austrian prince that started WW1. One question though: What does it actually mean to say a city is the 'city of the covenant'? Im sure we can only speculate- unless it explains somewhere' but what do people think. Last edited by LordOfGoblins; 07-01-2011 at 10:52 PM.

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01-23-2011, 09:32 AM	#3
Sen McGlinn Senior Member Joined: Aug 2010 From: Leiden, the Netherlands Posts: 249	I'm not at all sure that Abdu'l-Baha did name New York the city of the Covenant. If he did, it is very odd that the Bahais at the time time did not refer to this. I have not found it in any early pilgrim’s notes, and Star of the West magazine does not contain any use of the term, either before or after 1912. I have a blog on it here: A 1912 Announcement of the Covenant? It includes an interesting talk by Abdu'l-Baha on the Covenant, which is not included in Promulgation of Universal Peace.