When I became a Bahai about 37 seven years ago, I went to church
with much enthusiasm during Christmas time. I had never enjoyed
Christmas as a believer before, that is, as a believer in Christ. I was not a Christian. I just remember the many candle lights in those early mornings, at 05 or 06 , when I and my fosterparents went to the old wooden church which had so many old paintings, devils and triangels with an Eye and angles . But
at that time ,upon becoming a Bahai I really did appreciate visiting any church. I was so touched and
so filled with wonder and deep fashination that my eyes were filled with tears. Actually it's always
like that, I get so deeply touched by the wonder that there is God,
there is spirituality, there is this Reality, THE REALITY, a world
beside and overshadowing this one, a spriritual mysterious dimension
that can be experienced so fully, that it changes everything.Surely it has changed my lifeas a revolution. I am happy, and calm. Others
being around, woudn't imagine you are in heaven, being transported
there inside your heart, in that Extra divine heart, you didn't know
you had. Faith is such a cleverly hidden thing, a hidden treasure, a
secret. It is hidden, I guess, so that others too may have the chance to choose the path to God. If a true believers faith was to be transformed into a fire in the world, the world would just be burned and vanish.
By one's acts it is revealed,to some extent, and by your smiles, and who can help
smiling when you are in love... Surely the Creator is a Master. Being an artist I think in terms of an artist, a sculptor or a painter, that we humans are like paintings which are divinely
designed. We cannot create our beings= our paintings, through our own
help, but the divine Master has created us, and He alone can give
life to us paintings. And when He does, we fall in love, receiving
life. I was formerly a painting that had no life, it looked perfect but
life in it was lacking. The Divine Master, Bahaullah conveyed life into
it, with His Word for this Age.
O SON OF MAN!
I loved thy creation, hence I created thee. Wherefore , do thou love Me, that I may name thy name and fill thy soul with the spirit of life.
It is possible to hide such a
tremendous mystery and be right there, among people in the market, look
"as if it's raining" as we say, over here. They do not suspect a thing. They think
you are thinking like they do, feel what they feel, about what to
shop for dinner, that you have to wash clothes when you have come home
, move things hither and thither, or planning a trip to somewhere,
while in your heart you have already travelled into paradise. So it's a
secret.
O SON OF BEING!
Thy Paradise is My love, thy heavenly home reunion with Me. Enter therein and tarry not. This that whioch hath been destined for thee in Our Kingdom above and Our exalted dominion
O SON OF BEING!
Thou art My lamp and My light is in thee. Get thou from it thy radiance and seek none other than Me. For I have created thee rich and have bountifully shed My favour upon thee.
That
secret, the mysteriously enlightened heart is hinted at in the Bible as
the "white stone" with a password on it. In the Book of Revelation. And
which was to be given by Christ at His return. And none would know what
is on the stone except the one who gets it. You know where that quote
is. (Rev 2:17) It means the seekers has to find out all by
themselves, Him, Who speaks the Word of God. To know for one self. This
means, each one of us must again, anew , long for this confirmation,
wholly turned to God listen with his or her own inner ear, cause none
can interpret for you and say: believe me,this is the truth or that is
the truth. And This is because we have reached the Age of fulfillment,
or the Age of the Maturing of mankind. Therefore, we , Bahais, just
inform people about this Faith, show the texts, and people may partake
of this if they wish to. The concept or rather the sensation of Faith
is something which takes place between the seekers heart and the
Almighty. We, Bahais, are only trying to take away veils of prejudices
and preconceived opinions that is like dust on the hearts of men. They may have mistunderstood
some things and when we come to know those misunderstandings, while having a chat with someone, we can
show what God says, present the facts in print. Like here below:
O Son of Spirit!
The best beloved of all things is Justice; turn not away therefrom if
thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its
aid thou shalt see with your own eyes and not through the eyes of
others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the
knowledge of thy neighbour. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth
thee to be. Verily, justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My
loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes.
I didn't know God would stand for Justice and I did not seek it. But I would come to know. It is fair enough to be allowed to shape your own spiritual opinion, not to be forced upon the opinion of somebody who shapes opinions for a living.
I had no prejudice other than thinking that faith in a God is to
believe in an old man with a beard, painted , badly even,on old church walls and
whom people believed in during the medieval ages. I surely didn't give
much for the dead rituals at church. Drinking wine, believed to be blood!! In short,I was hindered to search the truth in Christianity because the believers seemed to adhere to superstition.
I believe in two miracles only , the one I am describing below and that Jesus Christ was born by a Virgin. I will tell you shortly, giving you the gist of it.
With time I realised more and more
that my life was empty, I even became filled with fear in my very
inmost hidden corner. A fear that meant I was afraid of becoming still
more filled with fear. The psychologists didn't know what to do with
me. In Swedish it is called the" existential anxiety." Understand?
I
was indeed like one dead a long time ago. And on top of that I could
feel that unknown fear. In the Bible we learn that when He Who is
promised to all mankind comes back He will resurrect you from death.
But I was given life by that mysterious unit called the Holy Spirit and
so I have been resurrected from the death of unbelief and ignorance of the spiritual reality, (which is the
real death,)and I also found spiritual truths in the Bible which I had not
cared for all since my so called "confirmation" when 14 years of age.
Well, hardly at that age either. My book was filled with drawings and portraits of the other pupils.I was a wild child and youngster. BUT I do not regret that I was totally deprived of the knowledge of God. I do withhold that I turned away for the right reasons, and it has turned out to be a good thing that I was for so many years roaming the desolated fields of unbelief and fear. Also a deep fear that all mankind would perish due to lack of oxygen. It makes me understand people here, how to speak to people who have been there, where I was.
Now, here is something new! Or, rather, in front of my regained vision, old truths were polished from the dust of centuries
gone by. I found that Bahaullah encourages us all to study the Bible,
so that I would be confirmed in that He is supported in His claims by
the Bible.That the Bible is really speaking of Him and His attributes,
Consequently a Bahai is a true Christian. If you threw away Christ on becoming a Bahai, you aren't a Bahai. I must mention this because there is an opinion floating around saying that "If you belong to one religion, automatically you think all others are false. So encouraged by Bahaullah,
I threw myself into Bible studies for many months and I truly found
that, when comparing with what I learned about His, Bahaullahs, Life
and His Teachings, He really was supported that way by lots of texts in
the Bible. I have written about it here at the Forum, that the Bible is flooded
with His Name, "The Glory of God" or "the Glory of the Lord", in both
parts of the Bible.And, this is the password, Bahaullah. He has fulfilled prophesies, none is sealed any
more (since 1844), He has given true divine fruits=teachings and divine
manners,(judge them" by their fruits "Jesus), by which we can judge who
is false, who is not. So therefore I was, as my
studies of the Bible widened, increasingly getting more amazed and
fashinated by this old Book. I even sought out the Christian sects of the town, I studied their history, especially about the enormous interest in the Holy Return there was in the 19th century around 1840ies. I found that all the so called sects had been founded for the sole reason that they wanted to welcome the Lord. Unfortunately they had forgotten that He would have a New Name. So they did not look around to find out. A friend here among the Forums has mentioned the Great Disappointment,that followed the great expectations but one person here is indeed very interested in the year 1844, which was the year when the first stirrings of the Bahai Faith took place, far, far from the western world, in Persia!!!!.You can see how it all started by pressing the blue link below my text.
I also, very eagerly sought out the Christians at their
cafées and libraries and tried to show them that the prophesies are
true, and fulfilled, but none were interested in the old promises, for
one thing,- they were satisfied with cooking their church- coffee and protecting their little cookies from drying on their church- coffée
tables, and they didn't as much as lift an eye-brow. Guess, guess what I was experiencing ,...I experienced what
the early Christians had experienced when meeting the doubters of the jewish society!Now it was the Christians who were the doubters! They, the believers in Christ whom I
happened to met in Lund, the university town in southern Sweden, had
turned "luke-warm". Knowing the Bible by heart, verses with numbers and
all, they were lacking the keen interest in the ageold promises and
prophecies that should have set them on fire? I was utterly surprised,
and much frustrated at first. My friends in the Bahai Faith said,"
their cups are full." I came to see that there would be a so called
"falling off" from faith and hearts would be cold. Actually I have
learned about the "falling off" here at AdlandPro. As well as in the Scripts by Bahaullah .I mean I have come across that term here, Again I am meeting
Christians here, after a lapse of more than thirty years, and I, for my
part, am still on fire. I have seen one person here at Adland who might be on fire. Therefore I present the Bahai Faith.
Bahaullah says regarding the falling off from the Faith:
The
vitality of men's belief in God is dying out in every land; nothing
short of His wholesome medicine can ever restore it. The corrosion of
ungodliness is eating into the vitals of human society; what else but
the Elixir of His potent Revelation can cleanse and revive it?...The
Word of God, alone, can claim the distinction of being endowed with the
capacity required for so great and far-reaching a change.
I
really became sad for their sake, for the sake of those people. I was
filled with a love and a vision that the world doesn't know and they were deprived
of that.!!!! I am not one who is mistaken in
this. I knew it is not just me being a lively person, quick and
impatient , a curious and searching artist, eager to know new things,
to try new methods and ways of developing myself and my art. No. But, they , those in Lund were really not interested in Christs Return at all, the
Return of the Holy Spirit. And the new Name of Christ, mentioned- in
Rev 3:12-13 nobody was interested in. I was truly shocked and I still
am, that there is so little interest in the Main Theme of the Gospel.
It, the holy return as I wish to call it, is mentioned at 250 places.
Count yourself.
The New Name of God in English means "He is the Glory of Glories".
In the 19th century, especially in the 1840ies,
there appeared, as I said, a fresh revival of interest in the Return of Christ ,and
thousands upon thousands of missionaries from all Christianity were
sent out to preach the Gospel in the whole world, themselves deliberately creating
that very Sign that Christ would soon return, but alas, when the
interior of Africa, as the last spot to be introduced to the Gospel,
had been reached by the 1844, most of the people thought that Christ
would come flying on a cloud in this space of oxygen and H2O. What a an anticlimax. Many are they who try to
repair this mistake in different ways.
WE MUST TURN TO THE EAST AGAIN for MIRACLES I and my friends
in the Bahai Faith believe, that He indeed came as a Thief from the Heaven of the love of God in a country, old Persia, which was not even
Christian.The Holy Spirit carried by Jesus from Nazareth came to a dark and oppressed country 2000 years ago. Persia was also during the 19th century a very dark country,
spiritually,socially, economically, politically, ruled by
"religious"fanatics as has been reported by several western deputees
and ambassadors. Most people were analphabetic, and all were dominated
and oppressed by a clergy of ayatollahs and mullas, swelling with selfpride, holding
their sway over ignorant masses with an unprecedented fanatiscism and
ruthlessness. It was a most hostile climate, each religious sect hating
and shunning all others in the most acrid way. It is well documented
how deep Islam had sunk into religious bigotry and superstition in Persia, a
country though with a glorious past.
The atmosphere of hatred and
stupidities that was holding its devastating grip of the people of Persia, also meant that Bahaullah and His Herald, the Báb were met
accordingly. See the link below for glimpses of the early days of the
Faiths Inaugurators. The Báb (meaning Gate) was shot in Tabriz 1850 and 20 000 of His adherents were mercilessly tortured in the most beastly ways and percecuted for their belief in the promised One. The Swedish Newspaper, Afton-Bladet wrote in 1850: Messias shot in Persia! Bahaullah was imprisoned as He was also one of the Bábies and thrown into the dark pit of Teheran to die.. See the blue link below.
A Miracle
This spiritual drama of the East , which went unheeded for the most part in the West, witnessed how the Promised One of the Moslems, the Báb, Whose mission was to prepare the way for "Him Whom God would Manifest", was condemned to death, and shot by a firingsquad. The authorities, the clergy and the Iranian government well knew Whom they had condemned, so therefore they were planning to let a Christian regiment handle the execution, so that the old Moslem prophecy would NOT be fulfilled ---a prophecy that said that" the Promised One will be slain by His own people". The Christian squad, headed by a pious Christian man, Sam Khan was called. But he did not want to let his men kill the Báb, so he turned to the Báb saying." I confess the Christian Faith and I harbour no ill will against you. If your Cause is the Cause of truth, please make it possible for me do be released from the duty to spill your blood." Then Báb comforted him saying these words: "Follow your instructions and if your intentions are upright, surely the Almighty will make it possible to release you from your dilemma."
The bullets of the Christian squad were fired, but they all went through the rope with which the Báb was suspended against the wall. God had intervened. The Báb had disappeared. The place was filled with gunsmoke. All this was witnessed by the thousands and is counted as a miracle. In the end the Báb was found, who was caught at the very minute when He had finished His last counsels to one of His adherents.
THEN A MOSLEM SQUAD WAS CALLED and so, then, the Promised One of the Moslem world was shot by His own people.
None can avert the prophesies of either the Christian or the Moslem world.
I will again tell about this drama on a prison yard of Tabriz. This is the gist of it and is well documented.
A Christian may object and say that "not even
the angles" will know "When the World Redeemer is to come, so who am,
little Laila, to tell. Why am I telling the execution of the Báb. Who was He?
For the time being look into the blue link below.
Now back to other prophecies, more familiar to the Christians.
Prophesies were indeed sealed, it is said.To David for example .Yes, but not after the time of the end. When
they are unsealed it will be due to the Redeemer having come. He it is
who unseals the prophesies. It happened in 1844. I have pointed that out at James Wrights Forum that by that year the three promises by Christ were fulfilled:. The return in 1844 by the Jews through the establishment of the Edict of Toleration and that by the year 1844 the Gospel had been preached all around the world. The third promise is based on a prophesy by king David, James explains that very elegantly.
So I believe...
He
Who is the Quickener of all mankind is come in the person of Bahaullah,
a name meaning "The Glory of God", the One Whom the Báb has predicted to come . I believe He came when the world
was fast asleep, when engulfed by warfare, misery and unbelief,and in my opinion,the worst of all, religious
superstition.It killed the Báb. Womens status was the lowest in history by that time, a
clear indication of the low mental state of mankind. The West was
starting off the industrial revolution while in the East people
experienced a spiritual revolution. Old Persia saw the Babi movement,
which you may see glimpses of on this link, and after 9 years of His,
the Babs proclamation, Bahaullah made His, in Iraq,(old Assyria) in 1863. For
this very exiting part of the history of this Faith see this link:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bahaullah+and+the+bahai+faith&search=Search
I
have tried with my falthy English to present my way towards truth,
received Faith although being quite illiterate in spiritual things.
But, to reflect a little,
so where the early Christians, Peters and
many of his friends. It's not so bad, really. I feel they like my way, because
I am one of them, 2000 years later, it is again an apostolic age.
Surely, but see for yourself. I will give texts but they are also to be
found at www.Bahai.org and www.Bahai.us.
Bye for now
Laila
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