Baha'i Prophecies

In the 1930's, Baha'u'llah vision of a New World Order was summarized by Shoghi Effendi in an often-quoted letter to the Baha'is of the West.  Are you familiar with this correspondents?  In the letter it is written:

     "A mechanism of world intercommunication will be devised, said Baha'u'llah; embracing the whole planate, will be devised, embracing the whole planet, freed from national hindrance and restrictions, and functioning with marvelous swiftness and perfect regularity." 

The Bahá'ís of Persia

204:4 abstract:

The prophecies of Baha'u'llah made it clear that world had ended; that in the new heavens and new earth of His revelation, scientific knowledge and invention would dart forward with jackrabbit speed.

Beginning at once, He said, humanity would
'behold things of which ye have never heard before' including 'the knowledge of the most marvelous sciences'- hitherto unimaginable discoveries that would shrink the globe to a veritable village.
These advances (though exposing humankind to catastrophic danger)
would provide a material framework for the infinitely more glorious spiritual revolution to follow, a revolution destined to usher in the millennial paradise in scriptures of old.

210:3 >abstract:

Western scientists of Baha'u'llah's day believed that transmutation- the changing of one chemical element into another- was theoretically impossible.

Baha'u'llah explained that they were mistaken. He wrote that copper (for example) could become gold or vice versa:

'Every mineral can be make to acquire the density, form and substance of each and every other mineral.' Only decades later did physicists realize that elemental atoms are not, as they once thought the smallest irreducible building blocks of matter.

Atoms are composed of still smaller particles that can be separated and recombined, the result being that any element can indeed change into any other.

Unfortunately, transmutation (as Baha'u'llah also foresaw) is far from an unmixed blessing.

It has opened the door to global holocaust by virtue of its link with nuclear explosive technology.

214:2 >abstract:

The Baha'i teachings state that 'in the beginning matter was one', giving rise to elements which became differentiated only 'after a very long time' into their present complex forms.

This teaching seemed, at the time, irreconcilable with known facts; but its truth became apparent by the middle of the twentieth century.
Physicists now realize that all matter begins as hydrogen gas which, collecting slowly in suns and stars, cooks under enormous pressure for thousands of millions of years.

The resulting nuclear reactions combine the original atoms of hydrogen into heavier and ever- more-complex elements.

These elements eventually render the star unstable, triggering (if it is sufficiently massive) a 'supernova' explosion, which welds vast quantities of starstuff into still heavier elements
and flings them into space as gas.

The constant repetition of this process throughout the universe provides the raw material for suns and planets such as our own.

...It is evident that in the beginning matter was one, and that one matter appeared in different aspects in each element. 

Thus various forms were produced, and these various aspects as they were produced became permanent, and each element was specialized.

But this permanence was not definite, and did not attain realization and perfect existence until after a very long time (SAQ 181).

Transmission of Cancer   P226

The realization that some forms of cancer are communicable.      Page 226

ABSTRACT:  'Abdu'l-Baha counted cancer among 'bodily diseases' which (in at least some forms and to some extent) are communicable among human beings.  This statement, when published in 1921, defied established medical opinion.  In recent years, however, new evidence has linked some cancers of the reproductive system to human papilloma virus, an infection authorities believe can be sexually transmitted.  (This is not true of most - much less all - malignancies;  and none, so far as we now know, are spread by casual contact.)

215:2 >The detailed verification of this teaching is one of the most amazing stories of modern science..

216:1 >..After decades of detective work, based on studies of nuclear reactions and spectroscopic analysis of stars, astrophysicists worked out what must have happened.

The last few pieces of the puzzle fell into place as recently as 1957..

218:1 >..When this picture came into focus in `1957 it was precisely as 'Abdu'l- Baha had described more than half a century earlier.
(See the book ' He Cometh with Clouds' by Gary L. Matthews for a more complete description).

224:4 >ABSTRACT: