As a young man, Bahá’u’lláh turned his back on the court and passed his days caring for the sick and poor. In May of 1844, immediately after His proclamation, the Báb sent His first and most prominent disciple north to Tehran with a letter for Bahá’u’lláh, who immediately accepted the Báb. During the succeeding six years leading up to the martyrdom of the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh fearlessly championed His Cause.

In the holocaust that followed the Báb’s martyrdom, Bahá’u’lláh, despite His prominence, was arrested and placed in the Siyah Chal (the Black Pit of Tehran) prison, a former underground reservoir. The conditions were so inhuman that the authorities expected that He would soon die. It was in this prison that Bahá’u’lláh received His Revelation. In a letter addressed to Nasiri’d-Din Shah, Bahá’u’lláh later wrote:

"O King! I was but a man like others, asleep upon My couch, when lo, the breezes of the All Glorious were wafted over Me, and taught Me the knowledge of all that hath been. This thing is not from Me, but from One Who is Almighty and All-Knowing. And He bade Me lift up My voice between earth and heaven…"

The Ambassador of Russia, who had followed the persecution of the Báb and His followers, intervened and forced the Shah to release Bahá’u’lláh, who, along with His family, was exiled on foot during the dead of winter to Baghdad.

Bahá’u’lláh passed ten eventful years in that city. During that time His fame and influence steadily grew. The Muslim priests and the Turkish and Persian governments could not tolerate the rebirth of this new Faith and decided to exile Him further away. In 1863, at the end of His exile in Baghdad, Bahá’u’lláh revealed for the first time that He was the One spoken of by the Báb. At that time most of the remaining followers of the Báb became Bahá’ís.

He was exiled to Constantinople, Adrianople and finally to the prison city of Akka (St. Jean de Acre, originally a crusader fort across the Bay from Haifa, Israel). He spent His remaining years there and in the vicinity, passing away in 1892.

While in Adrianople, Bahá’u’lláh began sending Tablets to the kings and rulers of the world. In them He proclaimed "The time foreordained unto the peoples and kindreds of the earth is now come", and He called upon them "to be just and vigilant, to compose their differences and reduce their armaments." With one notable exception, these Tablets were rejected.

"We desire but the good of the world and the happiness of the nations; yet they deem Us a stirrer up of strife and sedition worthy of bondage and banishment . . . That all nations should become one in faith and all men as brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religion should cease, and differences of race be annulled – what harm is there in this?. . . Yet so it shall be; these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away, and the ‘Most Great Peace’ shall come . . . Yet do We see your kings and rulers lavishing their treasures more freely on means for the destruction of the human race than on that which would conduce to the happiness of mankind . . . These strifes and this bloodshed and discord must cease, and all men be as one kindred and one family . . . . Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind. . . ."

Over the course of forty years, Bahá’u’lláh revealed a vast number of Books, Tablets and Letters.

The principal theme of this outpouring is "the oneness and wholeness of the human race." The Guardian of the Faith, Shoghi Effendi  wrote, "…implies an organic change in the structure of present day society, a change such as the world has not yet experienced . . .It calls for no less than the reconstruction and the demilitarization of the whole civilized world . . ."

Bahá’u’lláh compared this transformation from a world of competing nation states into a world federation of nations, to the end of the infancy of the human race, and the beginning of its maturity.

Religion, which has become a source of dissension in recent centuries, He said, will reinvigorate the spiritual life of the world, and become the cause of unity and concord.

In order to ensure that His Faith would not break into sects, and thereby defeat its purpose, Bahá’u’lláh wrote His Teachings. He abolished the priesthood, and He appointed His eldest Son, `Abdu‘l-Bahá as the Center of His Covenant and the only authorized Interpreter of His Teachings.

Today, the shrine of Bahá’u’lláh is located just a few miles outside of Akka. It is surrounded by beautiful gardens, and is visited by thousands of pilgrims who come to worship at the shrine of their Lord.