BAHA’I
FAITH HAS NO BASIS
DID BAHA’U’LLAH PREDICT THE
FUTURE?
THE BAHAI’S, PART 1
The Baha’is have published an important account of their faith
and its apologetics called Baha’u’llah and
the New Era by J.E. Esslemont.
Abdu’l-Baha, the most important member of the sect apart
from the founder and the one who knew him best and who was his son, read the
first nine chapters of the book and corrected 1, 2, 5, and part of 3. It is complained that he hadn’t the chance to
revise the whole book and died before he could complete it. But these revisions must have taken the form
of clarifications rather than amending for Abdu’l had
already sanctioned everything in the book when he and the author spent a whole
winter talking about it and studying it (page ix). Abdul must have approved of the content of
the book and it would not have taken him long to cross out the errors in it if
there were any and he would have done this before working on clarifications and
grammar and the style. The National Baha’i Assembly of England carefully examined the whole
book and decreed that it embodied all Abdul’s doctrine. It is safe to say that the version that now
exists is akin to the Bible in the
The leaps we have made in science and
technology are attributed to “a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit through the
Prophet Baha’u’llah” though he was born in 1817 and
died in 1892 (page 4). That is a
superstition for we have done better since he departed this life. Maybe it means that his presence in the world
increased the power of the Spirit in the world?
But then one would expect the great scientists to have been Baha’is. What sense
is there in their argument when the Prophet, the manifestation of the Holy
Spirit, could not reveal the secrets of science?
The book says, “Were all the former
prophecies swept into oblivion, He would still be His own abundant and
sufficient proof to whose spiritual senses are open” (page 7). So, this man who worked no miracles was his
own proof! This is
really saying that we should feel that he is God and his Prophet and believe
in him because of that feeling!
Two of his ethical rules were that begging
and taking strong drink are sinful (page 21). It is obvious that there is something wrong
here.
Who could believe in a man who did no
miracles and who promised to do one if the Mullas
signed a document promising to believe in him and desist from persecuting his
followers? (page
28). If anybody else did that we would
say that we can see though them. And he
was saying that miracles are evidence for a valid divine mission for the
Muslims wouldn’t have wanted one if they are not and he wouldn’t have agreed
unless he accepted that miracles were signs though he claimed to be a Prophet
and did none! He was declaring a sign to
be necessary and yet he gave no sign.
Zoroaster said that after three thousand years of war the saviour who
would bring the world peace would come.
Muhammad said that God would come to bring peace after conflict on the day of judgment and resurrection. Yet page 43 says Baha’u’llah
who obviously did not fulfil these prophecies did fulfil them. They may say that parts of them are still to
be taken care of but then anybody could claim to be the one foreseen by the
prophets. Two of the worst wars ever,
the First and the Second World Wars, took place after Baha’u’llah’s
decease.
His son Abdul, talked like a masochistic
Catholic saint when he said that to be chained and mutilated for Baha’u’llah’s sake would be his glory and pleasure (page
50). The son of a fanatic is likely to
be the same as his father. Abdul did not
care about his children when he fathered them in prison (page 52).
Abdul said, “A man may call himself a Baha’i for fifty years, and if he does not live the life he
is not a Baha’i” (page 69). A Baha’i has to be
good and selfless and helping everybody.
So there are no Baha’is
at all for nobody will do all the good they can in this world. Look at the starving millions.
People not seeing the will of God as
interpreted by this cult was blamed solely on prejudice and on having a sinful
heart (page 72). This sectarian doctrine
attempts to arouse hatred against those who do not follow the Baha’i way. It
blackmails Baha’is not to lose or to change their
faith.
Baha’u’llah
wrote in the book, Words of Paradise, “Blessed is he who
prefers his brother before himself; such a one is of the people of Baha” (see quote in Baha’u’llah
and the New Era, page 73). This conflicts with the doctrine of Moses and
Christ who said we must do all things for the sake of God and love our
neighbour as ourselves – not more than ourselves. Baha’u’llah
declared that the basic doctrines were the same in every religion but this proves
him wrong. He was a fraud for he knew
that Jesus never taught that.
Abdul said, “If we investigate the religions to discover the principles
underlying their foundations we will find that they agree” (page 74). Christianity has three persons in God and
Islam has one person in God. The only
similarity in them is that God is personal, perfect and is one being who is not
the creation and neither cult can sincerely believe that God is perfect. They impute many evils that they just call
God to their God. The Baha’i faith says that all things are part of God for God
is the creation. This tells us that he
is not personal and not perfect. He is
just a single being. The Baha’i will say, “There, they agree that God is one
being. That is the most important part
of the doctrine and the religionists agree on the important tenets”. But surely it is more important for God to be
absolute love than it is for him to be one being? I am not saying that it is more important for
God to be love than to exist for that would be absurd. If God is one being he is without composition
for a man for instance is made up of a huge number of beings or existing
elements. It is more important for God
to be good than for God to be spirit or one.
The religions do not all teach the same basics. Baha’is regard seven men as the manifestation of God apart from Baha’u’llah.
Zoroaster – founder of the Zoroastrian religion, Christ, Moses, Buddha,
Confucius,
There are a lot of religious founders left
out. What about the founder of the
ancient religion of Jainism? What about
Joseph Smith who founded the Mormons?
They picked Zoroaster whose cult is smaller than these today. Size was not the criterion. If it was then the religions that had the
most member should have been claimed to have possessed
the greatest manifestations. Islam is
smaller than Christianity and yet Muhammad is considered to be better than
Christ. Baha’u’llah
founded a smaller religion and is supposed to be the best of the whole
bunch. The choice of prophets was
arbitrary and obviously eccentric.
What evidence is there that Christ founded
Christianity? The two-faced apostles
told a lot of lies and we have to go through them to hear about Jesus which
raises the question, “Can we know Jesus this way at all?” For instance, they said that sinners could do
good works and then that they could not.
The Koran was written after the death of Muhammad by vicious and
deceptive and fanatical people – so you can’t be sure that he founded what is
now Islam either.
What kind of God would manifest himself, say in Jesus, and not work to unite the religions
based on other manifestations like Buddhism and Zoroastrianism? Bahai’ism is the
ecumenical cult and yet its ecumenism is forbidden by it’s teaching that
religions are one for if they are one they would not be separate religions and
there should be no new religion even like Baha’ism to
cause more separation and conflict.
THE BAHAI’S, PART 2
The Baha’i faith is deeply altruistic.
Baha’u’llah
said, “If thine eyes be turned towards mercy forsake
the things that profit thee, and cleave unto that which will profit mankind”
(page 76).
And the cult says we are to love God alone
and to love others for his sake which is really just using them to please God
and caring about none of them for themselves, “In the highest prayer, men pray
only for the love of God, not because they fear Him or hell, or hope for bounty
or heaven” (page 90).
Altruism is evil for I am more sure that I exist than that others do so anything I do
should be done mainly for me. Religious
founders insisted on altruism for it implied that religion came first for
commanding it and gave them a justification for controlling their victims who
had to forget themselves and serve them.
The book says that the devotee
of the religion will “on no account force his ideas on those who do not
wish to hear them” (page 77). Why not if
there is a God and prayer works for the Spirit will use your efforts to soften
them eventually? This is just to bait
those who shy away from religions that will use force to get their own way.
Sin is considered to be the worst evil by
Abdul. “Should one become the cause of
grief to any one heart, or of despondency to any one soul, it were better to hide oneself in the lowest depths of the
earth than to walk upon the earth” (page 78).
This is a vicious and harsh doctrine.
In Star of the West,
he wrote that to think of an enemy as an enemy and to put up with him instead
of liking him is hypocrisy if one claims to love enemies (See quote Baha’u’llah and the New Era, page 79). It is explained that this is not a turning
away from reality but realising that there is a potential for good in that
person which makes him your friend. That
is nonsense for he is not using the power to do good and that makes him an
enemy for he is using it only to do evil and one sin defiles all you do for it
indicates the good is only being done because the sinner feels like it and not
because of a love for righteousness. “If
a man has ten bad qualities and one good one” we have to “look at the one and
forget the ten” (page 60). The Baha’is don’t mean a word of this
when they would imprison murderers and thieves no matter how good they were
before and are now.
“The worst human quality and the most great sin is back-biting, more especially when it
emanates from the tongues of the believers of God. If some means were devised so that the doors
of back-biting could be shut eternally, and each one of the believers of God
unsealed his lips in praise of others, then the teachings of His Holiness Baha’u’llah would be spread, the hearts illumined, the
sprits glorified, and the human world would attain to everlasting felicity”
(page 80). This is nonsense too. Backbiters only hurt themselves most for
everybody knows you can only and should only accuse a person when they are able
to defend themselves. And people like
gossip so a religion that won’t gossip will not manage to rule the world.
“Dissatisfaction with oneself is a sign of
progress. If a person has a thousand
good qualities he must not look at them; nay, rather he must strive to find out
his own defects, and imperfections…However much a man may progress, yet he is
imperfect, because there is always a point ahead of him” (page 81).
This will completely annihilate all
self-confidence. Some will say he is
only forbidding a refusal to look at your faults and is not saying that we
should never notice our good points. But
the last line proves that he is saying that.
Yet, this cult says we must ignore the faults of others.
It will be replied that we have to ignore
the faults of other people because it is up to them to fix them and we have to
focus on ours for it is up to us to fix them.
But ignoring the faults of others is encouraging them to practice
them. We are to root out our own faults
and encourage faults in others!
Abdul absolutely forbade lying. “Truthfulness is the
foundation of all the virtues of mankind” (page 82). He said that progress and success is
impossible without truthfulness. This is
really Kant’s delusion that lying is bad for life would be unbearable if
everybody lied. This rule makes sleeping
and praying wrong. It is a sin to have a
lie in or a drink or to talk about the weather.
Baha’u’llah
asserted that the higher spiritual teachings could only be taught by God
speaking to you in your heart when you pray (page 86). This is bigoted nonsense and it is saying
that if a religionist abandons religion or if a Baha’i
switches religions they are doing what they know is wrong.
Abdul taught that if you don’t adore God
as he is revealed in his manifestations or prophets then you are worshiping
your image of him, a fantasy god, and an idol for you cannot picture or
understand God (page 87). This is untrue
if God is love for all you have to do is to understand love. He means that this idea of God as love is
idolatry for the perception might differ from real love. But your perception of the manifestations can
do the same and make them idols.
Those who believe that congregational
prayer is unnecessary are wrong for soldiers who are part of an army are
stronger and feel stronger than those who fight on their own (page 90). But prayer is not like fighting. If people need the support of others to serve
God when they could repose on faith and his grace alone they are sinning for
you can’t side-step God to reach God. He
should be your rock and your shield and nothing else.
The religion teaches that any suffering
that follows doing wrong is just to teach and improve us and that calamity is
always brought about by disobedience expect when the person wishes to suffer
for the sins of others (page 91). But if
you sinned you knew it was wrong and had nothing to learn. Turning your life around is the only
improving you need. The teaching is not
a very sympathetic one and accuses people of causing their own suffering. By the way, now you see just how horrible
belief in God is.
Abdul answered the objection that
suffering for the sins of others is unfair and unloving to yourself
by asserting that recompense will be made in the next life (page 92). That is a vicious teaching for it says that
it is good of God to harm or endorse harm when he will make it up later
on. It is unloving for others to use
your suffering for they could pay for their own sins.
Abdul said that the body is not able to
live forever for it is made of parts implying that the real person that lives
on is the spiritual soul - a being that has no parts – which survives bodily
death (page 97). Spirit is an incoherent
concept for I must be power and how could that power be love and intelligence
at the one time which are two powers? A
being made of parts can live forever when those parts are not tampered with and
made to break down.
Meat-eating is permitted (page 98) even
though it is plainly evil when it concerns the higher animals except for a
grave reason.
Enjoyment is allowed (page 98). This is for a bait
for since we are to love God alone it is a sin to take pleasure in anything for
it is not embracing God alone.
Gambling is contrary to the Baha’i religion because of the bad consequences it can have
(page 99). Bad consequences were not
worried about when the religion advocated martyrdom and absolute truthfulness.
Baha’u’llah and
Abdul’s powers were probably natural enough when they could heal a person in
the next continent by praying for them (page 104). You could say your prayers were responsible
for healing cured people you never cured or met or prayed for at all.
THE BAHAI’S, PART 3
Abdu’l encouraged his followers to go to the
worship services of other religions.
That is good for God not Satan is worshipped (page 115). But this is assisting something that promotes
heresy. What is held in common cannot
justify overlooking what is not held in common.
The other religion has some truth and one would be supporting that truth
better by treating it as a heretical religion reminding it that you don’t agree
with everything it says rather than be doing nothing even for a day. Islam and Christianity both believe that
idolatry is devil-worship though it is not meant to be – meaning that God
deliberately lets the Devil get the worship and answer the prayers to idols
instead of simply making nothing hear or answer the prayers. God is a devil-worshipper when he does that
for his so-called nemesis.
The religion says that certain truths are
unchangeable and that others which deal with practical life change for
different eras need different things (page 117). Abdu’l said that
Jesus abrogated the Mosiac Law of cutting a person's
hand off for stealing for it was not useful in his day. That is not a believable assertion. Jesus’ world was not different from Joshua’s
when such savage laws were practiced. It
reduces morality to whatever most people think is right.
He said that what you have has to be shared
and you may have to give your life for others but you should not be made to do
any of this (page 135). But he agrees
with the law of the land compelling so why does he not agree with the law
forcing you to die for others when it is best, when it is your duty?
Abdul asserted that vengeance is bad for
it is returning wrong for wrong (page 145).
He said that the only difference between one doing wrong and you getting
your own back is that the first act happens before the other. This is rubbish for it merely assumes and
does not prove that revenge would be wrong.
The second act is different for it seeks to pay the person for harming
you which is not the same as harming somebody who has not harmed you.
The Baha’i
religion permits people to die for their faith and commends them in doing so
(page 158). Faith does not come before
life. A Baha’i
is more sure that a bullet in the head will kill him
than he is that his religion is true.
The religion is murderous and is characterised by a gross fanaticism.
Monasticism is forbidden for people should
busy themselves in doing good work for society according to Baha’u’llah
(page 164). But if God exists and prayer
works they are doing good work. And what
an extraordinary statement from a religion that says Buddha was a manifestation
of God for Buddha founded a strict monastic philosophical system.
“We will all, verily, abide by the Will of
God”, is a poor marriage vow and that is what a Baha’i
wedding essentially consists of (page 165).
Parents have to consent to a marriage no matter what age the couple are
(page 164). There are thousands of
parents who would wreck a son or daughter’s life by withholding consent out of
selfishness or spite. It is good if the
practice prevents bad relations between in-laws but the couple’s will comes
first. The families don’t have to get on
but just be civil. Disputes will be
somebody’s fault, and Baha’u’llah had a nerve to
punish the couple for the trouble that some stubborn person will cause.
The cult says that positive evil does not
exist (page 179). Evil is the absence of
good for the creation is God for God is infinite so there can be no power that
is not a part of him. But one might as
well say that good is the absence of evil!
Baha’u’llah taught
that the universe never had a beginning but was always held in existence by God
(page 188). If time never began there
must have been an infinity of moments until now. But you cannot get to now if that is so for
the same reason that if you have to go through an infinity of moments so to
reach moment X then you can never reach moment x for it is an infinity ahead of
you. You would have to be able to go
through an infinity of events to get to the present
meaning you have completed an infinity to get to the present but you cannot
complete infinity.
Isaiah 9:2-7 is stated to have predicted Baha’u’llah and not Jesus Christ. The book says that unlike Jesus he brought
light to most people on earth. He did
not. The burning of war in the prophecy
is alleged to be the atomic bomb. Enough
said! We are told that Baha’u’llah unlike Jesus, took government on his shoulders
by advising countries. But Jesus gave
moral teaching and supported the Law of Moses and did the same thing in the
same way but through his messengers and directly through divine
inspiration. And the expression taking
government on shoulders would mean more than advising them. It means something heavy and hard. It means BEING the government. And Baha’u’llah
came to make peace on earth but Jesus came to bring a sword allegedly showing
that the prophecy was not about Jesus.
But Christians say Jesus meant he would be the indirect cause of war for
he said that father would turn against son over him though he wanted only
peace. Baha’u’llah
brought a sword in the same sense. Baha’u’llah claimed to be the Eternal Father and Jesus
claimed to be the Son. But if Jesus
taught the Holy Trinity he would have called the being of God Father without
meaning the person of God the Father alone.
If Jesus was God then he was the Eternal Father though not God the
Father. If Jesus as not God he could
have entered the eternal state and be the father of our relationship with God
by the salvation he won for us. There is
no proof that the prophecy must be talking about Baha’u’llah.
Baha’u’llah
means the Glory of God and so the passage in Isaiah 40 which says that one must
tell Jerusalem that she is forgiven and every hill will be made low and the
glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see that it is alleged
to name him (page 199). The book dares
to admit that it was partly fulfilled with the coming of John the Baptiser and
Christ showing that it could mean anything even to a Baha’i. All flesh did not see Baha’u’llah. And the reason for saying it means that man
is that the prophecy says that
Matthew 13 which says that the son of man
will send his angels at the end of the world to judge and throw the wicked into
the fire is spiritualised. It is
supposed to speak of Baha’u’llah whose coming to
judge the world but ends the age not the world and who symbolically sends
symbolic angels to put sinners into an imaginary fire. Anybody can say that they are the fulfilment
of any prophecy if they are going to take bits or all of it as symbols. It smacks of dishonesty. Baha’u’llah did the
same with prophecies from Joel 2 and the Koran (page 209). We read that it would be absurd and therefore
wrong to take them literally for the moon will not turn to blood or the stars
will not fall on earth for they are too big (page 210). But God could do these things. He could make the stars smaller.
Jesus said that he would come back for his
disciples to take them to Heaven (John 14:2).
The book claims that Baha’u’llah was the
second coming of Jesus. He took nobody
to Heaven and Jesus’ apostles are dead.
It is most likely that Jesus meant his own apostles – perhaps risen from the dead – and was not speaking to the world.
It
is pointed out that Jesus said John the Baptiser was Elijah though he had a
different body from Elijah and the pair had different mothers and yet in spirit
and power they were the one person (page 206).
It is supposed to be the same with Jesus and Baha’u’llah.
Baha’u’llah
argued that if Jesus visibly came down from Heaven with clouds and angels
nobody would be able to believe or disbelieve for sheer shock so the
non-literal interpretation is right. He
tried to back this up by saying that it would be the crime of forcing some to
believe which of course utterly contradicts what he just wrote (page 213). But the predictions never said that we were
meant to be able. And Jesus said that he
wanted belief and holiness not mere belief and that belief could not go on
forever but one day people would know there was a God for they would meet
him. Forcing a person to believe in
Jesus is not the same as forcing them to be Christians. Moreover, he could be visible only to
believers so that unbelievers will decrease rapidly upon hearing their
testimony and then see the vision when they start to believe. The hypocrite Baha’u’llah
agrees with people going to Heaven and being forced to keep believing by seeing
God and enjoying him.
He said that the clouds symbolised what is
against the desires of men and that Heaven symbolises glory from Heaven (page
211). Fanciful
interpretations these. The clouds
could picture something that hides – that could be what they are most likely to
mean if they stood for something. And
Heaven cannot picture exalted glory – but only elevation. The symbolic interpretations are implausible.
DID BAHA’U’LLAH PREDICT THE FUTURE?
Baha’u’llah wrote to Napoleon III in 1869 to tell him
that he would lose his empire as a punishment for his war mongering and his
scoffing at a call to conversion from him.
He was told that wars would wreck his land “unless thou arisest to help this Cause, and followest
Him Who is the Spirit of God (Jesus Christ) in this,
the Straight Path” (Baha’u’llah and the New
Era, page 218). In other words,
Napoleon will retain his empire and create peace if he converts to Baha’u’llah who claimed to be the Spirit of God and Jesus
Christ.
God cannot foresee a future that won’t
exist so saying that Napoleon will keep the empire if he changes religion and
repents is a warning that if the prophecy was fulfilled it was merely a good
guess. A man who is too arrogant and who
lusts for war is headed for destruction so supernatural power was not needed to
foresee his losing the Empire.
They claim that Napoleon’s downfall was
predicted by Baha’u’llah who said that if he did not
change he would lose everything (Christ and Baha’u’llah,
page 82). But if Napoleon had not lost
his Empire but died they would be saying the prophecy predicted his loss and
desolation in the spirit world.
The prophecy about
Baha’u’llah and Abdu’l-Baha said that
In 1912, Abdu’l
said that “the whole of
The worst disaster in Baha’i
prophecy was when Abdu’l decreed that his grandson, Shogi Effendi, who was to lead the cult after his death and
to give infallible truth to it, would father a line of descendants who would
rule the cult (page 239). Effendi died
childless.
A QUICK REFUTATION
The Baha’i world faith claims that Baha’u’llah
who founded it was a manifestation of God like
Baha’u’llah rejected the Bab’s
claim to be an appearance of God and still claimed that he was a prophet and a
forerunner for himself (page 7). Abdu’l-Baha lied about Baha’u’llah
saying that he was a member of the Persian royal family (page 9). There have been several schisms in the
movement over the leadership. Baha’u’llah made Abdu’l-Baha his
successor and head of the true religion and contrary to the will of his master
he made Shoghi Effendi the successor and falsely
prophesied that Shoghi would have male children to
succeed him – a prophecy which proved false.
This resulted in the mainstream Baha’is
becoming an illegitimate religion and canonically apostate. The manifestation of God failed. This is as serious as the Catholic Church
losing the papacy for the head of the movement is, according to divine
revelation, infallible (page 12).
Bahai’sm is a
cult because it like the evil Christian faith insists
that all must be done wholly for God (page 49, The Light Shineth in Darkness). My book, Hate the Lord thy
God, shows why this is evil.
The
Faith claims that the status of Abdu’l Baha is a mystery as much as the mystery of the Trinity and
those other religious mysteries (page 63, The Light Shineth
in Darkness). Why the mystery
then? This must imply that Abdu’l Baha is as much an infallible
manifestation of God as the others but they do not want to say.
The Baha’i faith
rejects the doctrine of
The sect states that Muhammad is a more
important manifestation of God than Jesus.
Yet it confesses that on his deathbed in 632 AD he failed to legally and
clearly identify who was to be his successor (page 126, The Light Shineth in Darkness).
Muhammad asked for pen and paper to write down – he must have learned to
write by then – the information that that was required to guard them from
error. Whatever existed of the Koran
then gave no instructions either and some at the bedside made out that Muhammad
was confused by the pain and forbade anyone to give him the pen and paper. Obviously, he and his Allah intended to
appoint a successor who would protect Islam from error and give a divinely
inspired supervision for the task of putting together the Koran which was
supposed to be only in bits and pieces then.
This failure which resulted in schism and wars and hatred and doctrinal
error and did great harm to Allah’s’ work through Muhammad shows that Muhammad
was not a true prophet of God at all. He
was not a prophet never mind a manifestation.
Divine providence could not keep him alive until he ordained the
successor. The validity of Islam depends
on the unprovable assumption that Muhammad was insane
on his deathbed! What a terrible rock to
build a religion on!
FRANCIS BECKWITH’S BOOKLET
Francis Beckwith
published a courteous Christian booklet simply called Baha’i
which is recommended for further study.
She points out that the Bab implemented many social reforms in the Islamic society
into which he was born. He forbade the
study of logic and philosophy and endorsed religious persecution for all who
did not agree with him (page 6). I would
imagine the purpose of the anti-intellectualism was to prevent honest
examination of his claim that he was an imam and a special prophet of God.
The Baha’is do
not know of his dark side and they do not regard his message as relevant for
apparently the teaching of each manifestation of God only holds true until the
next manifestation comes (page 6).
Baha’u’llah
declared that God was unknowable and too different from us for us to know
anything about him (page 9). The problem
with this is how they can know he exists if he is so bizarre. They say that we get a vague idea of what God
is like through the manifestations. This
is the only way these glimpses of God can be obtained.
The problem is that anybody who is popular
can falsely claim to be a manifestation and get away with it. The Baha’i faith
makes this easy by saying that the manifestations can change what the previous
manifestations taught and move with the times.
Some of the previous manifestations proclaimed evil doctrines so
presumably the excuse is that they saw a good reason to do this. For example, Moses had gays stoned to death
and said God authorised this. So the Baha’i faith claims that truth is relative – what is
morally good or bad changes according to the circumstances (page 10,20).
Bahai’s see
manifestations not as incarnations of God but as reflections of God (page
13). They argue that the manifestations
never sin even though Muhammad admitted to being a sinner and they have tried
to twist the statements of the manifestations who did
the same to make it appear they never claimed to be sinners (page 19).
It is outrageous to exalt manifestations
over Jesus Christ who claimed to have risen from the dead according to the
earliest records proving that he was the supreme prophet if it really
happened. But that is what they do. They say they obey the manifestations and
honour them but then they just pick and choose what they want to believe out of
their teaching and their history.
Abdu’l-Baha
dishonestly said that any scripture that says that the blind were made able to
see and the dead were raised is talking symbolically. The blind seeing means seeing the truth and
the raising just means not that the dead come back to life but that they have
gone to Heaven (page 25).
Then the booklet notes how the sect has
argued that Daniel 8 gives a number of years in symbolic form to the coming of
one who will put God’s religion in order (page 28). Abdu’l argued that
it gives the year of the coming of Baha’u’llah which
was 1844. He claimed that Daniel was
counting from 456 BC and that the 2300 evenings and mornings he mentioned are
years so you add on the years to 456 BC and you get 1844. But the number of days is literal (page 30)
and was not intended to be a prophecy of the far distant future. It fits what we know about Judas Maccabeus cleansing the
We will pass over the vague Isaiah 11
which Abdu’l also said referred to Baha’u’llah ignoring the fact that Jesus said it applied to
himself.
There is no evidence in support of the Baha’i
claim that Jesus spoke of Baha’u’llah in John 16.
Abdu’l made a
false prophecy in 1923 that was in his book, Baha’u’llah
and the New Era which was partly dropped from and rewritten for the 1970
edition for it had proved false (page 37-38).
The prophecy had argued from the Bible that in 1957 the Baha’i faith would be universal and would be accompanied by
universal peace.
FURTHER READING
Baha’ i, Francis Beckwith, Bethany House
Publishers,
Baha’u’llah and the New Era, J.E.
Esslemont, Baha’i
Publishing Trust,
Christ and Baha’u’llah, George Townsend, George
Ronald,
Concise Guide to Today’s Religions, Josh Mc Dowell and Don Stewart,
Scripture Press, Bucks, 1988
The History and Doctrines of the Baha’i Faith,
Jim McCormick, Great Joy Publications,
The Light Shineth in Darkness, Udo Schaefer, George Ronald,