Douglas McAdam
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 Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 7:35 pm Post subject: Re: RETURN OF CHRIST |
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Hi Carl-
Neat approach I must say. However most of the conflict I experience
with teaching about Baha'u'llah to the Christian's I am immediately
teaching is that they simply do not believe Christ has returned because
the physical signs have not appeared.
In my Jail rehab. and addiction classes the Inmates often get
"jail-house religion" from attending bible classes and they bring
religious topics into our class discussion which are important for sure
but yet my class is not about religion because it passes the separation
of church and state rules. So I find ways to offer concepts from the
Baha'i Writings in the context of progressive revelation and eventually
someone will ask me what I personally believe and I tell them I cannot
quite accept the idea there was a time when there was no Jesus and that
to me all the prophets such as Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, the Bab and
Baha'u'llah are one and the same for there is only One God, One
Religion and One humankind and they accept the idea. I ask them which
idea best applies the purpose of religion which is to unite souls, one
that claims it is the one and only way to heaven, and that there is no
other religion or Prophet, or one that accepts all as Revelations from
God and they all agree on the latter.
I suppose there are many ways to teach and each of us must find what
suits us best and what fits the conditions of the time and the hearer.
One of my favorite quotes is as follows --
"How great the multitude of truths which the garment of words can
never contain! How vast the number of such verities as no expression
can adequately describe, whose significance can never be unfolded, and
to which not even the remotest allusions can be made! How manifold are
the truths which must remain unuttered until the appointed time is
come! Even as it hath been said: "Not everything that a man knoweth
can
be disclosed, nor can everything that he can disclose be regarded as
timely, nor can every timely utterance be considered as suited to the
capacity of those who hear it."
Of these truths some can be disclosed only to the extent of the
capacity of the repositories of the light of our Knowledge, and the
recipients of Our hidden grace. We beseech God to strengthen thee with
His power, and enable thee to recognize Him Who is the Source of all
knowledge, that thou mayest detach thyself from all human learning,
for, "what would it profit any man to strive after learning when he
hath already found and recognized Him Who is the Object of all
knowledge?" Cleave to the Root of Knowledge, and to Him Who is the
Fountain thereof, that thou mayest find thyself independent of all who
claim to be will versed in human learning, and whose claim no clear
proof, nor the testimony of any enlightening book, can support." P. 176
Gleanings LXXXIX
regards,
doug
On Jul 26, 2008, at 1:34 AM, Carl Brehmer wrote:
| Quote: | Perhaps if we abandon saying that Bahá’u’lláh is the
“retur
n of
Christ” and began pointing out that Christ was a previous appearance
of Bahá’u’lláh we might have better success. After all,
Bahá’u
’lláh’s
historical proximity and hand-written and lucid Revelation make His
reality much easier to study and understand.
In my view the failure of many Christians to recognize
Bahá’u’lláh has less to do with their failure to understand
Christ
’s
prophecies than with their failure to understand Christ, Himself
(primarily because His reality is buried under centuries of
superstition and human interpretation.)
This line of argument might be helpful. The belief that Jesus
will return physically from the physical sky presupposes that He is
now physically present somewhere in the physical heaven, just out of
sight. This in turn presupposes that He ascended physically into the
sky in the first place. A physical ascension, in its turn,
presupposes that He rose physically from the dead. A belief in the
necessity of physical resurrection presupposes that Christ is a
physical being or at least cannot exist without a physical body. The
belief that Christ is a physical being or at least cannot exist
without a physical body ignores that fact that He has existed from the
“beginning,” long before Mary, the mother of His physical body,
was
born. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and
the Word was God.” John 1:1
Are we to believe that in His original state (in the “beginning”
when the “Word” was “with God”) He was somehow incomplete and
only
achieved completeness or only became alive, upon taking on a physical
body in Nazareth two thousand years ago and now cannot return to His
original state of perfection without a physical body? Such a
perception would be roughly equivalent to believing that the sun only
comes into existence when it is reflected in a mirror and dies if the
mirror breaks.
Focusing on teaching Christians who Christ actually was may very
well be a more productive way to lead them to a recognition of
Bahá’u’lláh than arguing the fine points of Biblical prophecy,
sinc
e
many of them don’t even apply to this Day and were fulfilled with
the
coming of Muhammad centuries ago.
Carl Brehmer
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