The first to affirm and answer was the Lord Gate, then the Orphans after him, then the Nakibs, then the Nukaba, followed by the remaining ranks to the last of them—the Tested ones. This was the First Call. Then the Meaning commanded the Name to create the small human world of seven ranks.
These are: the Near Ones, the Cherubim, the Spirituals, the Sanctified, the Travelers, the Listeners, and the Followers, whose number is one hundred and nineteen thousand persons. They are the Small World. He then created those who followed them from the world of the believers, who are the people of affirmation, according to their classes and their precedence in the call or their delay in answering. Then He created after them the world of denial and rejection from the residue of the clay of the people of affirmation. For our world consists of followers after the one hundred and nineteen thousand persons of the Small World; those ranks are complete, and we, by God’s praise and success, are followers. The rank of the Followers is joined by the believers; they are added not to the total of the number, but as followers to them, as God the Almighty said: {And the first forerunners among the Emigrants and the Helpers and those who followed them with good conduct—God is pleased with them and they are pleased with Him, and He has prepared for them gardens beneath which rivers flow, wherein they will abide forever. That is the great attainment.}1
When the Lord Name—exalted be his glory—created the worlds of the affirming and the disobedient, his Master the Meaning—glory be to His majesty—commanded him to intermingle the worlds of the obedient and the disobedient, so he mixed them. Then the Meaning—exalted be his glory—transfigured to them in His Essence and addressed them while they were then shadows like specks, not like ants.