"The Baha'i Faith"

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Everything is in Some Answered Questions, except specific mention of “666”.
I wrote to the World Centre specifically about “666” and they replied that it involved the rebellion of the Umayyads, which they spelled Omawí. I have no authority whatsoever,and my service will always fall short.
 
Lapell said:
My understanding is, that no Israelite prophet, not even Moses, ever said a thing like: “Before Abraham (or whoever) was, I am”. Muhammad never said such a thing either, and I take it neither the Bab nor Baha’ullah ever said such a thing either. You don’t find this rather odd?
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It is unique in this age for the Man who is the Divine Manifestation to utter this; but as Baha’u’llah said, any of the previous Messengers could have said so. It was reserved for this Great Day. It is God saying it through the Everlasting Father, Baha’u’llah.
You know Baha’i comes out of the Islamic matrix, (illustrated in Revelation 12) just like Christianity came out of the Jewish matrix; and there was expectation, in Islam, after Christianity, that the Voice from the Burning Bush would speak again. THis is the ‘Presence of God’ promised many times in the Qur’an, and which is unattainable, except through the Mediator.
**The Commander of the Faithful **(Imam Ali) **-- peace be upon him – moreover, saith in the Khutbiy-i-Tutunjiyyih: *“Anticipate ye the Revelation of Him Who conversed with Moses from the Burning Bush on Sinai.” ***(Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 41)

“But for Him (Bahá’u’lláh) no Divine Messenger would have been invested with the robe of prophethood, nor would any of the sacred scriptures have been revealed. To this bear witness all created things.” (The World Order of Baha’u’llah, p. 103)

Verily, We behold all created things moved to bear witness unto Us. Some know Us and bear witness, while the majority bear witness, yet know Us not.
(Tablets of Baha’u’llah, p. 15)
 
Lapell said:
Any symbol used in the Book of the Apocalypse (or Revelation), written in a time of heavy persecution against the Christians, is to be understood according to what was known in the Apostle John’s time, not according to ours, which puts different meanings in a number of cases. Nothing like some Nostradamus’ so-called “predictions”…
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It is true that the Apocalypse was written to elude the Emperor’s agents. Baha’u’llah said:
Know then that He who uttered these words in the realms of glory meant to describe the attributes of the One Who is to come in such veiled and enigmatic terms as to elude the understanding of the people of error. (Baha’u’llah, Gems of Divine Mysteries, p. 53)

But it isn’t correct to say that we cannot know what they meant, or that the vision cannot be interpreted, or the seals be broken, when all of this was promised, and is fulfilled. It is quite remote from our understanding without the explanation of the Lord. Still, each to his own loyalties.
 
Lapell said:
My understanding is, that no Israelite prophet, not even Moses, ever said a thing like: “Before Abraham (or whoever) was, I am”. Muhammad never said such a thing either, and I take it neither the Bab nor Baha’ullah ever said such a thing either. You don’t find this rather odd?
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Thanks for your post Lapell,

You may not have read the following…in your searching… It was already posted I believe a while ago but I’ll present it here again:

“O concourse of the earth! By God! I am the true Faith of God amongst you. Beware that ye deny Me not. God hath manifested Me with a light that hath encompassed all that are in the heavens and all that are on earth. Judge ye equitably, O people, My manifestation, and the revelation of My glory, and the radiance of My light, and be not of them that act unjustly.”

(Baha’u’llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 96)

Thus hath Muhammad, the Point of the Qur’án, revealed: “I am all the Prophets.” Likewise, He saith: “I am the first Adam, Noah, Moses, and Jesus.” Similar statements have been made by Imam Ali. Sayings such as these, which indicate the essential unity of those Exponents of Oneness, have also emanated from the Channels of God’s immortal utterance, and the Treasuries of the gems of Divine knowledge, and have been recorded in the Scriptures. These Countenances are the recipients of the Divine Command, and the Day Springs of His Revelation. This Revelation is exalted above the veils of plurality and the exigencies of number.

(Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 51)

Wherefore, should one of these Manifestations of Holiness proclaim saying: “I am the return of all the Prophets,” He, verily, speaketh the truth. In like manner, in every subsequent Revelation, the return of the former Revelation is a fact, the truth of which is firmly established…

(Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 51)

There are more but I’ll end here for now…

Regarding the interpretation about the number of the beast there is a reference to it

‘Abdu’l-Bahá in a Tablet has given an explanation for the reference to the “beast” mentioned in Revelations 13:18, saying that the numerical value given to the beast in that passage referred to the date of the year, i.e. 666 A.D., when the Umayyad ruler arose. This is obviously a reference to Mu‘áwíyih, the Umayyad Caliph who opposed the Imamate. He speaks further on this subject in Some Answered Questions, Chapter XI.
found at:

74.125.155.132/custom?q=cache:HzCpxbC2v4AJ:bahai-library.com/file.php%3Ffile%3Dtheresearchdepartment_implantation_chip_beast+666&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

The Umayyads as well as the Abbasids were in our view the dynasties that really turned the direction of Islam to a wrong direction… without guidance from the descendants of Prophet Muhammad… worse they managed to poison, slay or imprison the descendants of the lawful successors. Now our view of the Apocalypse is unlike that of most Christians today but consider that it really focuses we believe on events in the Middle East where the Byzantine Empire held sway and then later collapsed.

Anyone interested in pursuing this area should obtain a copy of Robert Riggs The Apocalypse Unsealed and pp. 170 -175 particularly deal with this issue.

I think for Baha’is there is a natural interest in Gematria as the Abjad Reckoning was used in our Writings.
 
I recall now that the term used in the letter from the World Centre, which is in a file in storage, was Amawí, not Omawí, and is probably the transliteration of the Persian term for Umayyad.

This subject is taken up in Adib Taherzadeh’s The Revelation of Baha’u’llah v 1, p. 127

“Because the appointment of Ali was not considered conclusive or binding by the majority of the followers of Muhammad, they disregarded the wishes of their Prophet and acted against His counsels. The arch-opponent of this appointment was Umar, who became the second Caliph of Islam. He campaigned against Ali, usurped his right of succession and rallied the people instead around the old and venerable person of Abu-Bakr who was installed as the first Caliph.
Umar repudiated Ali and his position as the ‘Interpreter of the Qur’án’, saying:*** ‘The Book of God is sufficient for us.’ ***'Abdu’l-Bahá has explained that these few words, embodying the forces of negation, were so potent that they became the prime factor in precipitating all the discord and bloodshed in the Islamic Dispensation. They caused the martyrdom of Imam Ali and His illustrious son, Imam Husayn. They gave rise to untold sufferings and death for countless devoted souls within the Islamic fold. The effect of these words, according to 'Abdu’l-Bahá’s testimony, was so far-reaching that a thousand years later it brought about the martyrdom of the Báb and all the sufferings of Bahá’u’lláh.”

Bahá’u’lláh had said:
Muhammad, Himself, as the end of His mission drew nigh, spoke these words: “Verily, I leave amongst you My twin weighty testimonies: The Book of God and My Family.”(The Kitab-i-Iqan, p. 201) And this was before the words of division were spoken by Umar, which led to the extinction of many of the Hashemite Imams and their kin…

Baha’u’llah also said: Inasmuch as Muhammad hath confined His testimonies to His Book and to His Family, and whereas the latter hath passed away, there remaineth His Book only as His one testimony amongst the people. (The Kitab-i-Iqan, p. 202)
 
**In accepting Bahá’u’lláh you have accepted Christ in His appearance as the Father, as He Himself so clearly foretold. The Catholic Church does not believe this; on the contrary, it still awaits the return of Christ. **(Shoghi Effendi, Directives from the Guardian, p. 10)
 
DavidMark said:
**In accepting Bahá’u’lláh you have accepted Christ in His appearance as the Father, as He Himself so clearly foretold. The Catholic Church does not believe this; on the contrary, it still awaits the return of Christ. **(Shoghi Effendi, Directives from the Guardian, p. 10)
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Quite confusing. Does it mean that baha’is claim that Bahaullah was the Father of Jesus? Or, that Jesus had come in the shape of the Father in the person of Bahaulah?
 
We ‘see’ through our faith Christ present in the Eucharist.

Christ will never come back to this earth.

Instead, Christ will rule from a new heaven and new earth.

Pretty far off I would think…

Better to live the Gospel today.

Our end of this world comes on the day we die. We do not know the day or hour of our death, only God.

So it is better to not mess with ‘what if?’…or endless, spiraling arguments.
 
planten said:
Quite confusing. Does it mean that baha’is claim that Bahaullah was the Father of Jesus? Or, that Jesus had come in the shape of the Father in the person of Bahaulah?
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Hi planten! It means that Bahá’u’lláh is the Everlasting Father promised by Isaiah 9:6.
That prophecy is so famous it was made into the *Messiah *chorus by Handel. It does not refer to Jesus’ first coming, but to His great Advent. Even some Muslims expect Jesus to be among the Prophets raised up on the Day of Resurrection.
Every Prophet’s coming was a Day for Resurrection for the previous community. This is a particularly great Day for the entire human race, even if it takes us a while to realize it!

Verily He Who is the Day-star of Truth and Revealer of the Supreme Being holdeth, for all time, undisputed sovereignty over all that is in heaven and on earth, though no man be found on earth to obey Him. He verily is independent of all earthly dominion, though He be utterly destitute. Thus We reveal unto thee the mysteries of the Cause of God, and bestow upon thee the gems of divine wisdom, that haply thou mayest soar on the wings of renunciation to those heights that are veiled from the eyes of men. (Bahá’u’lláh, The Kitab-i-Iqan, p. 93)

To Israel He was neither more nor less than the incarnation of the “Everlasting Father,” the “Lord of Hosts” come down “with ten thousands of saints”; to Christendom Christ returned “in the glory of the Father,” to Shí’ah Islam the return of the Imam Husayn; to Sunni Islam the descent of the “Spirit of God” (Jesus Christ); to the Zoroastrians the promised Shah-Bahram; to the Hindus the reincarnation of Krishna; to the Buddhists the fifth Buddha. (Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 93)

Ballou and Spiegelberg in The Bible of the World, point out that according to the sacred scripture of the East, **Maitreya **is ‘the compassionate Buddha who is to come in the distant future. Foretold by Gautama, as Christ foretold his second coming.’
Maitreya, the Buddha of ‘universal fellowship’ was expected to appear to the West of India and to the East of Israel. Persia, the home of Bahá’u’lláh, lies between them. His message is one of “universal fellowship” and the union of religions, nations, and
races. (William Sears, Thief in the Night)
 
From the inception of the mission of Jesus – may peace be upon Him – till the day of His ascension was the Resurrection of Moses. For during that period the Revelation of God shone forth through the appearance of that divine Reality, Who rewarded by His Word everyone who believed in Moses, and punished by His Word everyone who did not believe; inasmuch as God’s Testimony for that Day was that which He had solemnly affirmed in the Gospel.
And from the inception of the Revelation of the **Apostle of God **-- may the blessings of God be upon Him – till the day of His ascension was the Resurrection of Jesus – peace be upon Him – wherein the Tree of divine Reality appeared in the person of Muhammad, rewarding by His Word everyone who was a believer in Jesus, and punishing by His Word everyone who was not a believer in Him.
And from the moment when the Tree of the Bayan appeared until it disappeareth is the Resurrection of the Apostle of God, as is divinely foretold in the Qur’án; the beginning of which was when two hours and eleven minutes had passed on the eve of the fifth of Jamadiyu’l-Avval, 1260 A.H.,[22 May, 1844] which is the year 1270 of the Declaration of the Mission of Muhammad. This was the beginning of the Day of Resurrection of the Qur’án, and until the disappearance of the Tree of divine Reality is the Resurrection of the Qur’án. The stage of perfection of everything is reached when its resurrection occurreth. The perfection of the religion of Islam was consummated at the beginning of this Revelation; and from the rise of this Revelation until its setting, the fruits of the Tree of Islam, whatever they are, will become apparent.
The Resurrection of the Bayan will occur at the time of the appearance of Him Whom God shall make manifest (Bahá’u’lláh). For today the Bayan is in the stage of seed; at the beginning of the manifestation of Him Whom God shall make manifest its ultimate perfection will become apparent. He is made manifest in order to gather the fruits of the trees He hath planted; even as the Revelation of the Qá’im [He Who ariseth], a descendant of Muhammad – may the blessings of God rest upon Him – is exactly like unto the Revelation of the Apostle of God Himself [Muhammad]. He appeareth not, save for the purpose of gathering the fruits of Islam from the Qur’ánic verses which He [Muhammad] hath sown in the hearts of men.
The fruits of Islam cannot be gathered except through allegiance unto Him [the Qá’im] and by believing in Him. At the present time, however, only adverse effects have resulted; for although He hath appeared in the midmost heart of Islam, and all people profess it by reason of their relationship to Him [the Qá’im], yet unjustly have they consigned Him to the Mountain of Maku (Azerbayjan), and this notwithstanding that in the Qur’án the advent of the Day of Resurrection hath been promised unto all by God.

For on that Day all men will be brought before God and will attain His Presence; which meaneth appearance before Him Who is the Tree of divine Reality and attainment unto His presence; inasmuch as it is not possible to appear before the Most Holy Essence of God, nor is it conceivable to seek reunion with Him. That which is feasible in the matter of appearance before Him and of meeting Him is attainment unto the Primal Tree.
(The Báb, from The Persian Bayan, SWB p. 106)
 
**When I contemplate, O my God, the relationship that bindeth me to Thee, I am moved to proclaim to all created things *“Verily I am God”; *and when I consider my own self, lo, I find it coarser than clay! **(Baha’u’llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 234)
 
Dear AJ,
Thanks for coming to the Baha’i thread. I’m 57 now, and 40 years ago, when I was just beginning my spiritual quest, I read The Teahings of the Compassionate Buddha, Dhammapada and other translations, by Burtt, The best book on Buddhist prophecy from a Baha’i perspective is Buddha Maitrya-Amitabha Has Appeared, by Jamshid Fozdar.
It can be found on Amazon Books probably.
Some Catholics incorporate certain Buddhist pracatices into their lives, but Baha’is recognize Siddhartha as truly enlightened, even tho’ he didn’t speak much about God in the god-besotted India of his time. Still, many divine Manifestations have appeared in the world since his time, and the doctrine of re-incarnation is not swallowed by Baha’is, as it is by many people nowdays. Hope to talk to you more…

KathleenGee said: “Christ will never come back to this earth.”
We respectfully decline to agree with you there, because your interpretation of the promise is just that: yours, and yours alone; altho’ others may have also come to that conclusion --you will all have to answer for it. Increasing numbers of souls are seeing the new heaven, and working for the new earth that will result from it. I think you are thinking of the coming of the spirit into a person’s private life; which is good.
But this is about a man who walked upon the earth and maintained His claim to Revelation for 40 harrowing years. You can ignore it. You can refuse to read His verses.
But if there is a question about the RESULTS of the Baha’i Revelation, compare them with the results of the Christian Revelation. Baha’is have assembled a more diverse congress of tribes and races than any other community in the history of mankind. Why is that?
 
AJTheMan said:
David, how does Bahai view Buddhism?
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There’s some material you may find interesting … an article on Buddhism and the Baha’i Faith at

bahai-library.com/encyclopedia/buddhism.html

Most of the Baha’is I’ve known who have Buddhist backgrounds were from the Laos and they migrated to the US as the Vietnam war was ending and a few from Singapore. It’s interesting to note that Vietnam currently recognizes the Baha’i Faith in that country:

geocities.com/bahaisvietnam/

There are also Baha’is in Mongolia and they formed what we call a National Spiritual Assembly for the first time in 1994 and of course every year a new one is elected.

See:

bahaikipedia.org/NSA:Mongolia

Baha’is have been in Japan for a long time by our standards anyway

bahaijp.org/
 
I’ve come to believe that since God possesses the primary Infallibility, and this became manifest in the Word of Christ, it would follow that when Christ spoke again in the New Advent, He would gather all things under the authority of that same Word. Bahá’ís accept that this Word has been spoken again, almost in our own time.
Count Mastai-Ferretti, Bishop of Imola, the 254th pope since the inception of St. Peter’s primacy, who had been elevated to the apostolic throne two years after the Declaration of the Báb, and the duration of whose pontificate exceeded that of any of his predecessors, will be permanently remembered as the author of the Bull which declared the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin (1854), referred to in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, to be a doctrine of the Church, and as the promulgator of the new dogma of Papal Infallibility (1870)…

This temporal power had, throughout the ages, shrunk to insignificant proportions. The decades preceding its extinction were fraught with the gravest vicissitudes. As the sun of Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation was mounting to full meridian splendor, the shadows that beset the dwindling patrimony of St. Peter were correspondingly deepening. The Tablet of Bahá’u’lláh, addressed to Pius IX, precipitated its extinction.

In 1870, after Bahá’u’lláh had revealed His Epistle to Pius IX, (full text here
reference.bahai.org/en/t/b/SLH/slh-5.html ) King Victor Emmanuel II went to war with the Papal states, and his troops entered Rome and seized it. On the eve of its seizure, the Pope repaired to the Lateran and, despite his age and with his face bathed in tears, ascended on bended knees the Scala Santa. The following morning, as the cannonade began, he ordered the white flag to be hoisted above the dome of St. Peter. Despoiled, he refused to recognize this “creation of revolution,” excommunicated the invaders of his states, denounced Victor Emmanuel as the “robber King” and as “forgetful of every religious principle, despising every right, trampling upon every law.” Rome, “the Eternal City, on which rest twenty-five centuries of glory,” and over which the Popes had ruled in unchallengeable right for ten centuries, finally became the seat of the new kingdom, and the scene of that humiliation which Bahá’u’lláh had anticipated and which the Prisoner of the Vatican had imposed upon himself. (Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith 1921-1957, The Promised Day is Come, p. 53)

**Praise be unto God Who hath made the Most Great Infallibility the shield for the temple of His Cause in the realm of creation, and hath assigned unto no one a share of this lofty and sublime station – a station which is a vesture which the fingers of transcendent power have woven for His august Self. It befitteth no one except Him Who is seated upon the mighty throne of ‘He doeth what He pleaseth’. Whoso accepteth and recognizeth that which is written down at this moment by the Pen of Glory is indeed reckoned in the Book of God, the Lord of the beginning and the end, among the exponents of divine unity, they that uphold the concept of the oneness of God. **~Ishraqat, (Splendours) Tablets of Baha’u’llah, p. 105)
 
Badi admitted in his first appearance that his posts were ‘useless’.
What books did Yahya leave for the world to use,
and what campaigns or what vocitories has Yahya inspired? Zero.
 
Badi,

In my country you’re assumed to be innocent until tried in a court of law… So if these guys have indeed committed fraud they need to be tried and found guilty and prosecuted to the full extent of the laws of the land.

But also consider that your source is Iranian… and they would love to connect anything any crime to a Baha’i… They don’t love Babis either… would be my guess…
  • Art:)
 
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