There is a wealth of doomsday prophecies and predictions in the Bahá’í scripture and literature. The following passage, for instance, clearly foresees the advent of Rock & Roll:

Suicidal Stanford

“The world is in travail, and its agitation waxeth day by day. Its face is turned towards waywardness and unbelief. Such shall be its plight, that to disclose it now would not be meet and seemly. Its perversity will long continue. And when the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly appear that which shall cause the limbs of mankind to quake. Then, and only then, will the Divine Standard be unfurled, and the Nightingale of Paradise warble its melody.”

—Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings … , pages 118-119

Of course, the simple fact of the matter is that the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith had already discovered Rock & Roll:

“the still small voice, which whispereth through and pierceth all things, and oftentimes it maketh my bones to quake while it maketh manifest”

—Doctrine & Covenants, 85

The Bahá’í writings claim that humanity must be purged of its spiritual slumber and corruption by disaster before it will open its eyes to its Savior, Bahá’u’lláh. In the following citation, Shoghi Effendi describes the calamity that must befall mankind:

The whole of mankind is groaning, is dying to be led to unity, and to terminate its age-long martyrdom. And yet it stubbornly refuses to embrace the light and acknowledge the sovereign authority of the one Power that can extricate it from its entanglements, and avert the woeful calamity that threatens to engulf it.

Ominous indeed is the voice of Bahá’u’lláh that rings through these prophetic words: “O ye peoples of the world! Know, verily, that an unforeseen calamity followeth you, and grievous retribution awaiteth you. Think not that which ye have committed hath been effaced in My sight.” And again: “We have a fixed time for you, O peoples. If ye fail, at the appointed hour, to turn towards God, He, verily, will lay violent hold on you, and will cause grievous afflictions to assail you from every direction. How severe, indeed, is the chastisement with which your Lord will then chastise you!”

Must humanity, tormented as she now is, be afflicted with still severer tribulations ere their purifying influence can prepare her to enter the heavenly Kingdom destined to be established upon earth?

Must the inauguration of so vast, so unique, so illumined an era in human history be ushered in by so great a catastrophe in human affairs as to recall, nay surpass, the appalling collapse of Roman civilization in the first centuries of the Christian Era? Must a series of profound convulsions stir and rock the human race ere Bahá’u’lláh can be enthroned in the hearts and consciences of the masses, ere His undisputed ascendancy is universally recognized, and the noble edifice of His World Order is reared and established?

—The Unfoldment of World Civilization.

At the time the above passage was written (1936), the world had already witnessed what it named “The Great War” and “The War To End All Wars”. At that very time, the world was bracing itself for an even more destructive world war. Even World War II, with its millions upon millions dead on the fronts, in the fire bombed cites, in the path of atomic bombs, and in Nazi and Stalinist death camps, even this “Most Great War” was not great enough to teach humanity much about war or genocide. So it is that Bahá’ís, true to their apocalyptic hypothesis, must await “still severer tribulations ere their purifying influence” bring about the utopian world they have been promised.