No, Baha’u’llah is going against what the Apostles themselves intended the Gospels to mean. It’s not about a “more recent Revelation,” it’s about one man’s opinion (Baha’u’lah’s) going against at least a dozen men’s firsthand experience (the Apostles’). If the Apostles themselves along with at least 500 others testify that they personally saw Jesus physically and literally risen from the dead, are you going to reject their personal and unanimous testimony in favor of a man who lived 1800 years after the fact and had no evidence or testimony to substantiate his claims about the nature of Christ’s Resurrection being a merely spiritual or metaphorical affair?
I’m sorry, but I’d rather trust the author of a book to tell me what it means, rather than some random guy who appeared on the scene 1800 years later, with no connection to the original author. You Baha’is might have had an argument–had you not been arguing against a substantial, visible line of unbroken teaching and testimony that goes clear back to the Apostles themselves. The Baha’i argument about the nature of Christ’s Resurrection relies on ignoring what the Apostles themselves testified on the matter.
Shiranui,
. I would like to address the emotional aspect of religion, for it has always been at the heart of the subject. For whatever reason, God made us the way He did, and when the subject of religion comes up, a lot of times people get riled. Do you know what I mean?
. So I’m not trying to say this in reference to anyone in particular, but in general, because people get riled about religion, and whenever a Prophet appears, people attack Him, and His followers, I think that survival plays a role in how certain events are portrayed.
. Here’s where I’m going with this line of thought. In the subject of the Resurrection of Christ, something happened. What it was is a very profound event. Some people “saw” that He was risen, and the language in which that was conveyed was in the form of a literal event, for people were very literate in their world view at that time, having difficulty even with the phrase: “Ye must be born again”
. That some people “saw” that Jesus was alive, like if I just told you that I “saw” that Jesus is alive, and you told somebody else and so on, how would that be recorded? As a literal event, right? Certainly at those times, as they clearly could not conceptualize that He “lived” other than that His body also lived.
. The trouble starts when He appears and disappears, as in: “He entered the room, not using the door” Put that next to: “Wherever two or three gather and make mention of Me, there I am also.” Now in the latter example, He never appears in physical form, right? So what I am suggesting is that when His Presence was so strongly felt and His true Reality was understood, that is, that He was “with them”, this was told and passed on to others, but received as a literal event, for they could not imagine how He could live and be amongst them otherwise.
. This is how I deal with it with my rational mind, without having to do a frontal lobotomy, if you see what I mean. He “appears” to me every now and then, such as when two or more gather, and I feel His presence, and I might say that I “see” that He lives, and is present, or that He “enters” the room, not using the door, etc.
. Viewing reality in this way does not make me a non-believer in Christ. Rather, it means that I understand that He lives, even after they killed His body, and that I understand something about the way people tell stories and pass them along…
Peace, my friend.
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