On Sale! Moving to Print-On-Demand.

Two pioneering families abandoned familiar comforts in Germany to forge a bold new community at the foot of Mount Carmel, believing themselves called to gather the Children of God in Jerusalem ahead of Christ’s promised return. Calling themselves the Temple Society, they drew on a rich heritage of 19th-century Christian reformers, shaping a vision that combined spiritual yearning with practical endeavour in the Holy Land. Their “state of heaven” was built not only on stone dwellings but on a conviction that faith could transform both individual lives and the wider world.

Just months earlier, a very different exiled band had arrived in Ottoman-ruled Palestine: the Bahá’ís, led by Bahá’u’lláh, confined to the prison city of ʻAkká after successive banishments from Persia. Though their origins lay thousands of miles and centuries apart, the accidental proximity of these two groups in Haifa’s bay fostered encounters charged with profound spiritual resonance. As Seeking a State of Heaven reveals, this unlikely convergence illuminates shared yearnings for unity, renewal and the birth of a transcendent community.