on Faith
- Thread starter Thomas
- Start date
LOL, OK ... if we're being as blunt as that.
In Gems of Divine Mysteries, Baha’u’llah wrote:
"... all the Prophets and Messengers of God as one soul and one body ... They are, one and all, the Manifestations of His Self, the Repositories of His might, the Treasuries of His Revelation, the Dawning-Places of His splendour and the Daysprings of His light... From them hath all creation proceeded and unto them shall return all that hath been mentioned. And since in their inmost Beings they are the same Luminaries and the self-same Mysteries, thou shouldst view their outward conditions in the same light, that thou mayest recognize them all as one Being, nay, find them united in their words, speech, and utterance."
To declare a Prophet or Messenger to be 'Manifestations of His (God's) Self" is to make a claim that no Scripture supports, and the very notion is refuted by the Prophets themselves who claim their prophecies are from God, and that they are merely the mouthpiece.
St Paul teaches:
"Now there are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit; And there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord; And there are diversities of operations, but the same God, who worketh all in all. And the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man unto profit."
(1 Corinthians 12:4-7)
Here St Paul points out the distinction – there is one Spirit, one Lord, one God, but in the world there is a 'diversity of operations', the source of which is in the one, the evidence of which is in the operations themselves – the Baha'i text fails to sufficiently discern between the one and the many, and attributes to the many, that which belongs to the one.
"To one indeed, by the Spirit, is given the word of wisdom: and to another, the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit; To another, faith ... healing ... miracles ... prophecy ... the discerning of spirits ... diverse kinds of tongues ... interpretation of speeches. But all these things one and the same Spirit worketh, dividing to every one according as he will."
(ibid 8-11)
Here Paul emphasises the point that the 'spiritual gifts', including prophecy, are gifts of the Holy Spirit, and that which is of the Holy Spirit is not to be assumed of the recipient.
So when Baha'u'llah says: "From them hath all creation proceeded and unto them shall return all that hath been mentioned" – this is complete nonsense, and again accords to the individual that which is the property of God alone. He's got completely carried away and is speaking nonsense.
"And since in their inmost Beings they are the same Luminaries and the self-same Mysteries, thou shouldst view their outward conditions in the same light, that thou mayest recognize them all as one Being, nay, find them united in their words, speech, and utterance."
A call to idolatry – as there is only one 'Luminary' and that is Christ, "the light of men" (John 1:4) – they are illuminated by that light, but they are not the light, as John says of his namesake, the Baptist: "This man came for a witness, to give testimony of the light, that all men might believe through him. He was not the light, but was to give testimony of the light." (John 1:7-8).
+++
But you don't baptise, you don't have sacraments, therefore you lack the means and the ability to confer graces.
I would strongly suggest that word emanates from a source other than God.
I think the Noble Quran told Christians not to believe in three gods, which is not what Christians do.
In Surah 5:116 "And ˹on Judgment Day˺ Allah will say, “O Jesus, son of Mary! Did you ever ask the people to worship you and your mother as gods besides Allah?” "
Jesus denies any such thing, and rightly so ... but the point is, why is the idea even mentioned? There is some evidence that in Arabia at the time there was a cult of Mary, the the Prophet was most likely preaching against this.
There is scholarship from both Muslim and Christian sources that agree that it is errors regarding the Trinity, rather than the Trinity, that the Quran rejects, in the same what that it is errors in understanding the meaning of the cross and resurrection are again refuted – whilst Islam believes in the Virgin Birth it cannot embrace its implication, and Islam believes in the bodily ascension of Christ – although the explanation of the crucifixion owes more to gnostic sources that Christian orthodoxy – some scholars argue that the Quran details no insight into Jesus' mission of ministry, but addresses issues it faced in the Arabian world.
..because many Christians venerate Jesus as only GOD should venerated.
i.e. they worship Jesus as God
In Islam, we worship only God .. but have great respect for prophets/messengers.
It's not the same thing.
The main reason for this emphasis, is that "shirk" (ascribing partners to God), has dangerous
consequences.
There are many types of shirk, including major and minor. It's a huge topic.
The more we concentrate on God's Oneness, the closer we get to appreciating ALL of the messengers
and hence "the message".
Hi @muhammad_isa –
Bábís and then Baháʼís see Shaykhism as a spiritual ancestor of their movement ... Shaykhism has outlived its eschatological purpose and is no longer relevant.
They say that about every religion ...
The Babi movement [...] [became] an important catalyst of social progressiveness in mid-nineteenth-century Iran, promoting interreligious peace, social equality between the sexes and revolutionary anti-monarchism. Babism was a reflection of an older Iran that had been mass-producing messiahs in opposition to mainstream Islam since the seventh century [...] And yet the new current was also a product of Iran's grappling with novelty and change, and [the Babi movement] went on to present a vision of modernity that was based on secularism, internationalism, and the rejection of war. It is this vision which has enabled it to survive to the present day – as Bahaism, which emerged from Babism in the late nineteenth century ...
When the Bab died, there were more than 25 contenders for baha'u'llah's title as his successor.
+++
Peter Smith. One key similarity between Shaykhism and the Bábí and Baháʼí Faiths is their shared emphasis on a symbolic and allegorical understanding of religious scripture.
The issue here is Baha'i teachings is not consistent with regard to the literal and analogical reading of a text – when a biblical passage refutes their doctrine, they simply say it's not to be read literally. However, when a text can be read in such a way as to infer Baha'u'llah, then it is to be read literally. The two readings are never explained or reasoned against the text itself.
Accepting as literal only those texts which seem to fit one's doctrinal views while declaring a contradictory passage needs to be read metaphorically – if not dismissed outright – is a common tactic.
Bábís and then Baháʼís see Shaykhism as a spiritual ancestor of their movement ... Shaykhism has outlived its eschatological purpose and is no longer relevant.
They say that about every religion ...
The Babi movement [...] [became] an important catalyst of social progressiveness in mid-nineteenth-century Iran, promoting interreligious peace, social equality between the sexes and revolutionary anti-monarchism. Babism was a reflection of an older Iran that had been mass-producing messiahs in opposition to mainstream Islam since the seventh century [...] And yet the new current was also a product of Iran's grappling with novelty and change, and [the Babi movement] went on to present a vision of modernity that was based on secularism, internationalism, and the rejection of war. It is this vision which has enabled it to survive to the present day – as Bahaism, which emerged from Babism in the late nineteenth century ...
When the Bab died, there were more than 25 contenders for baha'u'llah's title as his successor.
+++
Peter Smith. One key similarity between Shaykhism and the Bábí and Baháʼí Faiths is their shared emphasis on a symbolic and allegorical understanding of religious scripture.
The issue here is Baha'i teachings is not consistent with regard to the literal and analogical reading of a text – when a biblical passage refutes their doctrine, they simply say it's not to be read literally. However, when a text can be read in such a way as to infer Baha'u'llah, then it is to be read literally. The two readings are never explained or reasoned against the text itself.
Accepting as literal only those texts which seem to fit one's doctrinal views while declaring a contradictory passage needs to be read metaphorically – if not dismissed outright – is a common tactic.
As the Second Person of the Triune God, yes.
For sure ... God is one, there is no 'partnership'.
talib-al-kalim
Well-Known Member
The Quran is clear in the message that we would be resurrected as individuals and we will be judged according to our present lives. It's well in line with the Gospel traditions, and it's clear.
It's well possible that the revelation is a simplification; it may even be an image. But if it is an image, it is a clear one. The consequence is that we shall have faith in the commandments and recommendations of our messengers and act and try our best to do good accordingly.
It doesn't matter how it will be in detail.
Whenever I try to understand the Baha'i writings, things get complicated, loose shape and content, brief, I don't understand why those guys wrote what they wrote, and consequently, I can't accept the claim of the founders to be messengers.
Tony Bristow-Stagg
One Planet One People Please
Have you considered that the Holy Spirit is generated and given of God, the Most great Spirit? Would that change your replies?
Baha'u'llah speaking as an Annointed One has offered this.
"...Naught is seen in My temple but the Temple of God, and in My beauty but His Beauty, and in My being but His Being, and in My self but His Self, and in My movement but His Movement, and in My acquiescence but His Acquiescence, and in My pen but His Pen, the Mighty, the All-Praised. There hath not been in My soul but the Truth, and in Myself naught could be seen but God.… The Holy Spirit Itself hath been generated through the agency of a single letter revealed by this Most Great Spirit, if ye be of them that comprehend. (bold by me)
Speaking as a man like us, Baha'u'llah offered this.
"Certain ones among you have said: "He it is Who hath laid claim to be God." By God! This is a gross calumny. I am but a servant of God Who hath believed in Him and in His signs, and in His Prophets and in His angels. My tongue, and My heart, and My inner and My outer being testify that there is no God but Him, that all others have been created by His behest, and been fashioned through the operation of His Will. There is none other God but Him, the Creator, the Raiser from the dead, the Quickener, the Slayer. I am He that telleth abroad the favors with which God hath, through His bounty, favored Me." Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, p. 228
Jesus has also said the same things. Jesus has said in the divine station that: "I and the Father are one" and "He who sees me sees the Father", and in the human Station that no one has seen God and that the Father is greater than I.
The key here is Christ has been seen in more than One Name in this creation, Baha'u'llah offered this in the Kitab-i-iqan
".. Conceive accordingly the distinction, variation, and unity characteristic of the various Manifestations of holiness, that thou mayest comprehend the allusions made by the creator of all names and attributes to the mysteries of distinction and unity, and discover the answer to thy question as to why that everlasting Beauty should have, at sundry times, called Himself by different names and titles..."
Each Revelation requires the Messengers to lift up their voice between earth and heaven and offer humanity the God given Message. Every Messenger has had an event when the time comes they start speaking with the Voice of God, in the time of Jesus it was at the Baptism with John the Baptist, when the Dove descended. This passage explains that all the Revelations have had such a time, when an ordinary man becomes known as the mouthpiece of God.
"....It was in such dramatic circumstances, recalling the experience of Moses when face to face with the Burning Bush in the wilderness of Sinai, the successive visions of Zoroaster, the opening of the heavens and the descent of the Dove upon Christ in the Jordan, the cry of Gabriel heard by Muḥammad in the Cave of Hira, and the dream of the Báb, in which the blood of the Imam Ḥusayn touched and sanctified His lips, that Bahá’u’lláh, He “around Whom the Point of the Bayán hath revolved,” and the Vehicle of the greatest Revelation the world has yet seen, received the first intimation of His sublime Mission, and that a ministry which, alike in its duration and fecundity, is unsurpassed in the religious history of mankind, was inaugurated. It was on that occasion that the “Most Great Spirit,” as designated by Bahá’u’lláh Himself, revealed itself to Him, in the form of a “Maiden,” and bade Him “lift up” His “voice between earth and heaven”—that same Spirit which, in the Zoroastrian, the Mosaic, the Christian, and Muḥammadan Dispensations, had been respectively symbolized by the “Sacred Fire,” the “Burning Bush,” the “Dove,” and the “Angel Gabriel.”..." Messages to America, on p. 100
Regards Tony
Tony Bristow-Stagg
One Planet One People Please
Tony Bristow-Stagg
One Planet One People Please
I offer that there is only One God and One source God Gives humanity, that is the voice through the chosen Christ. (Annointed One)
We are asked to be aware of false prophets, but we are also told how to determine a true prophet, thus the quandary faced by all of us.
Regards Tony
No, because the Holy Spirit is not 'generated'.
Well either Baha'u'llah is claiming to be divine, which I do not believe, or this is another example of category confusion.
More error – the Holy Spirit is not generated.
Yet you say Jesus is not God – so you contradict yourself.
My emphasis, as the idea that they are 'ordinary men' is flatly contradicted by this:
"... all the Prophets and Messengers ... are, one and all, the Manifestations of His Self ... Repositories ... Treasuries ... Dawning-Places ... Daysprings ... From them hath all creation proceeded and unto them shall return ... their inmost Beings they are the same Luminaries and the self-same Mysteries ... "
Your citations explain nothing, just confuses and confounds everything.
No quandry for me ... and I hope and pray in time you will 'see the light' ...
This is the spinning plate that falls.
Except for Jesus Christ and Krishna , both of whom revealed their divine form to their close followers in a vision of transfiguration, no other prophets or messengers in the Abrahamic scriptures made the claim – and actually strenuously denied it – to be anything more than ordinary men and purely human mouthpieces speaking the words that God told them to say.
Jesus healed and forgave sin
There would be no problem regarding Baha'u'llah as a messenger or prophet -- right or wrong -- but it is his claim to be the new returned Christ in the station of the Father, higher than Jesus Christ the Son, and the I AM presence that spoke to Moses from the burning bush, that doesn't fly, imo
Last edited:
I got no problem with that. In his image I feel we are all G!d expressing. For me if G!d is anywhere than she/they are everywhere, in them we live and breathe and have our being.
Each of us the eachness of the allness, the only begotten continuously begotten, I got the spirit in me....if ya can grok transmuting a wafer...
We ain't perfect, we are human representations of G!d, feline representations of G!d, Oak and Pine, and grass and wind and ocean representations...individual, limited expressions...I will rejoice and be glad in it....as my godself rolls in the grass of its godself I breathe in g!d and exhale g!d into g!d as I live and breathe and have my being.
Ignorance is bliss and I have no problem with that...I do chuckle tho as folks try to make me conform, they are not pleased with my pleasure and want me to join them in their belief as misery likes company! I will not wallow in any myth of progress I will surf the wave of light till I leave this mortal coil!
I have abstained from participating in this thread - first because this thread is in the Christianity subforum and second because I have had words with @Tony Bristow-Stagg in the past, primarily elsewhere, and I’ve said what I have thought I needed to say. But I am reconsidering.