What is the meaning of history? Can we discern its significant stages and developments? Does our past reveal an overall purpose and direction? What light do grand theories and religious visions cast on today’s world? Do the patterns enable us to envision humanity’s likely future?

This book proposes that a new Eye to past, present and future has been offered to humanity. We can now see further and implement more of this universal vision. A new Divine Educator appeared in the nineteenth century, and though humanity’s rejection of his guidance led to tragedies and atrocities in the twentieth century, our chastened eyes can adjust to his Light, and we can co-fashion an ever-advancing global civilization. Of course, this uniting in larger embrace will be very challenging. Birth brings intense pain of two kinds—a dying of the old order, and an awkward struggling with the new.

Among the Eyes guiding the main chapters of humanity’s story have been Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Zoroaster, Buddha, Christ and Muhammad. To these generators of civilization we must now add Baha’u’llah, founder of the Baha’i Faith, empowering humanity to attain moral-spiritual maturity and build a united world. “Peerless is this Day,” says Baha’u’llah, “for it is as the eye to past ages and centuries, and as a light unto the darkness of the times.”

We offer a five-stage theory of the development of religion and civilization, surveying views of history from Neolithic times onward. We portray the contours of major civilizations, taking a detailed look at the Great Transition from regional empires in the early nineteenth century to the emerging Global Civilization, while offering a providential view of humanity’s future. “This Day a door is open wider than both heaven and earth,” says Baha’u’llah. Let’s view world history anew, discovering realistic hope for a just, united and dynamic global community.