Baháʼu'lláh
Voice

Bahá’u'lláh describes each manifestation as having a twofold nature, one relating to God, the other to this material world. Moreover, each has a "double station"—the first relates to his "innermost reality" in which he speaks with "the voice of God", while the second station is his human side. He says all manifestations, as "channels of God’s all-pervasive grace", are unfailingly guided by the Creator to use "the inspiration of Their words" to affect human hearts and souls, so that open-minded individuals will grasp the truths being given.

The "voice" in Bahá’u’lláh’s writings varies depending upon the themes or topics covered, the specific backgrounds of their intended recipients, or particular questions which individuals asked of him. In many writings Bahá’u’lláh speaks as a caring counselor or friend sharing with another; in others it is someone conveying what the manifestation asked him to pass on; in some it is as if God is speaking in the first person; and in still others it is a lowly one speaking with profound humility before God—in absolute servitude and self-effacement.

In Bahá’u’lláh’s writings, voice may change from one form to another within a single text, or take the form of a conversation—as seen in the dialogue between Bahá’u’lláh and God guiding him as His manifestation in the Fire Tablet, or in the Tablet of Carmel in which Mt. Carmel and Bahá’u’lláh as God’s manifestation converse. In whatever style or voice a manifestation expresses himself, the aim is always to share spiritual truths. Shoghi Effendi, who was later appointed as the interpreter of Baháʼu'lláh’s writings, gives the following statement of Bahá’í belief on this matter:

The human temple that has been made the vehicle of so overpowering a Revelation must, if we be faithful to the tenets of our Faith, ever remain entirely distinguished from that " innermost Spirit of Spirits " and " eternal Essence of Essences "—that invisible yet rational God Who, however much we extol the divinity of His Manifestations on earth, can in no wise incarnate His infinite, His unknowable, His incorruptible and all-embracing Reality in the concrete and limited frame of a mortal being. Indeed, the God Who could so incarnate His own reality would, in the light of the teachings of Baháʼu'lláh, cease immediately to be God.... That Baháʼu'lláh should, notwithstanding the overwhelming intensity of His Revelation, be regarded as essentially one of these Manifestations of God, never to be identified with that invisible Reality, the Essence of Divinity itself, is one of the major beliefs of our Faith—a belief which should never be obscured and the integrity of which no one of its followers should allow to be compromised.
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