BAHAISM

THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION

By D. M. PANTON, B.A.

BAHAISM: THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION

It is remarkable that Persia, the land of the forbidden prayer to any but the god-Emperor (Daniel 6: 7), has given birth to the supreme movement yet for a composite world-religion. Three Persians, of successive generations - the Bab, the Door; Baha Ullah, the Glory of God; and Abdul Baha, the Branch - all appropriating titles exclusively our Lord’s, have founded a sect now exceeding six millions. The Bahais number a third of the Persian nation, though at first 20,000 were massacred in that land; they include ten thousand Jews; they have adherents in every part of the Orient; and their chief organ, The Star of the West, together with a huge metropolitan temple now in course of construction, are lodged in Chicago.

A MESSIANIC FAITH

The Theosophical theology of the Bahais was latent in the creed of the Shia Moslems, out of which it sprang. “The Shia Moslems,” says Dr. W. A. Shedd, of Persia, “claim that although Mohammed was the last of the prophets, after him there is an order of infallible Imams, beginning with his son-in-law Ali, and continuing in the line of Ali. The twelfth Imam is believed about the year 260 of the Mohammedan era to have disappeared, and to be still alive in some mysterious place. His return is looked for constantly. An instance of this expectation is found in the new Persian constitution, in which it is specified that a certain provision is valid perpetually till the appearance of the hidden Imam. The honour given to these Imams approaches in many cases deification, and the popular religion of Persia is largely connected with them. Besides expecting his appearance, there is also the attempt to maintain a connection with the hidden Imam; and there has been in some sects a belief in certain intermediaries between him and his followers. This intermediary was called the Bab, an Arabic word meaning The Gate.” “I am that person,” said the Bab, “for whose appearance ye have waited a thousand years.” For Bahaism accepts and absorbs all the Messiahs of the world, with the remarkable proviso, pregnant with hellish deceit, that each is greater than the last.” “The manifestations of universal prophet-hood,” it says, “are Abraham, Moses, Christ, Mohammed, the Bab, and Baha Ullah. Know that the attributes of perfection, the splendour of the Divine bounties, and the lights of inspiration are visible and evident in all the Holy Manifestations; but the glorious Word of God, Christ, and the Greatest Name, Baha Ullah, are manifestations and evidences which are beyond imagination; for they possess all the perfections of the former manifestations, and more than that, they possess some perfections which make the other manifestations dependant upon them.” So Abdul Baha’s claims logically soar into the fullest Messianism. “I am all these (earlier Messiahs) together. I supersede all previous teachers. Christ was the highest until I came, and now it is the duty of mankind to listen to me, instead of listening to the teachings of those who preceded me.” Thus his followers apply to him the words of Isaiah (60: 1), “Thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee”;* and he himself described his advent as the fulfilment of our Lord’s prophecy of the lightning out of the east shining into the west.

[*E. J. Rosenberg’s Brief Account of the Bahai Movement, p. 12.]

A UNIVERSAL RELIGION

Now the one fundamental of Bahaism is the unity of all religions, culminating in a Supreme Teacher yet to come: a universal language, a universal calendar, a universal religion without atonement, prest, or ritual, are all to culminate in the world-worship of a Universal Imam - for there is no finality in these emanitions of Deity. “The century has come,” said Abdul Baha in San Francisco in 1913, “when all the religions are to be unified.” The Mashrak-el-Azkar – “the dawning place of the mention of God” - a huge temple nine-flanked, with nine approaches, and nine minor halls around the central marble temple, since nine (because it includes all preceding digits, and beyond it there is none)* is the Bahai symbol, now rising on the shores of Lake Michigan, is the first temple ever erected since Babel by the combined effort of many races and many religions. “I feel greatly interested in the Bahai movernent,” said Dr. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, “as it is one of the great world-movements which, like our own, is insisting upon the brotherhood of mankind, and is calling on men to understand one another and learn to love each other and I feel certain that the Bahais will carry the language into many places where ordinary European propagandists would never have gone.” Compounded of Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Brahmanism, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, together with such remarkably modern elements as compulsory education, sex equality, universal disarmament, and work for all, it claims to be “the universal religion of the world, and the basis of the great universal civilization that is to be.”

[* The nine gateways also symbolize the nine chief religions of the world; and the temple decorations therefore include the swastika, the Bahai nine-pointed cross, the Latin cross, the Greek cross, the circle, the triangle, and the fife-pointed star.]

A STUDIED COUNTERFEIT

The daring Bahai counterfeit of the Christian Faith is most startling and studied. In the official organ, The Star of the West (Nov. 23, 1912), the Bahai creed is thus expressed: “Know, O people, that upon the day when GOD, the Almighty - in the form of man, known as BAHA' O' LLAH - declared Himself (on April 21, 1863, in the Garden of El-Rizwan (Paradise) in Baghdad), and uttered to the inhabitants of the contingent world, to the mountains, hilltops, trees, grass, shrubs, flowers, weeds, stones, sands, seas, waves, and every atom comprising the earth, and all the ethers comprising the air: ‘I Am GOD AND THERE IS NO GOD BUT ME!’ the old heaven and the old earth passed away, and was no more, and from that moment all things became new, and that which was, was not!

“That day marked the era of a new creation, a new people, a new heaven and a new earth. And the secret Word - the word of Mystery mentioned first by Adam, then by the Prophets, Messengers, Christ, and later by Mohammed, then by the Bab - that Word became flesh and dwelt among men. Its power and glory was flashed from heaven to earth when BAHA’ O’ LLAH stood up and declared: ‘I Am GOD, AND THERE IS NO GOD BUT ME, THE ANCIENT, THE EVERLASTING, THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS, THE ALMIGHTY, THE POTENT!’

“Then know, O ye who are seeking for knowledge, that the first creature of his new and extraordinary creation to come forth, recognize, and acknowledge ‘The-Word-Made-Manifest,’ was his first begotten Son, in the form of man, ABDUL‑BAHA, who professed, testified, and confessed to the appearance of GOD the Almighty, the Heavenly Father, by saying: ‘THOU ART GOD! THOU ART THE WORSHIPPED! THOU ART THE FATHER OF THE SPIRITS! THOU ART THE CREATOR OF THAT WHICH WAS AND NOW IS! O GOD! HERE I AM. I AM READY!’”

AN EXCLUSIVE CREED

So the universal religion distils at last into an exclusive and intolerant creed. “Whosoever desireth to come to God,” said the Bab, “and to know the religion of God, cannot do so untl he seeth me and receiveth permission from me.” Professor E. G. Browne, a Cambridge professor of Arabic and lecturer in Persian, himself (1 believe) a Bahaist, says: “The only essentials in Bahai eyes are the love of Baha Ullah and his accredited successor, the belief in their Divine character, and the eager desire to hearken to their words, the Bahai Tablets, or Scriptures.” For the teaching of Abdul Baha is infallible and sacrosanct. “Whatsoever he says is correct. In numerous tablets, He (BAHA’ O’ LLAH) has explicitly recorded it, with clear, sufficient, valid, and forceful statements. In the Tablet OF THE BRANCH He explicitly states: Whatsoever THE BRANCH says, is right, or correct, and every Person must obey the BRANCH with his life, with his heart, with his tongue. Without his will, not a word shall any one utter. This is an explicit text of the Blessed Beauty.” Therefore refusal of the new deity is fatal. “Whosoever, in this day, turns unto Abdul Baha is of the people of the Kingdom: whosoever turns away from Abdul Baha is one of the letters of hell.”*

[* Phelps’ Abbas Effendi, p. 140.]

THE BAHAI SPELL

A curious spell seems to weave itself about this new religion. “The spirit which pervades the Babis,” says Professor E. G. Browne, “is such that it can hardly fail to affect most powerfully all subjected to its influence. It may appalorattract: it cannot be ignored or disregarded. Let those who have not seen disbelieve me if they will: but, should that spirit once reveal itself to them, they will experience an emotion which they are not likely to forget.”* For its origin is spiritistic. After two years spent in the solitudes of Mesopotamia, in 1863, Baha Ullah wrote thus to the Shah of Persia: “Know, O King, I was asleep on my couch, when the breezes of the Lord, the Merciful, passed over me, and bade me preach between the heaven and the earth: this was not my work, but the work of him who sent me.” So the fascination of a false Christ on the modern world, and even on deeply ignorant sections of the Christian Church, is almost incredible. Dr. John Kelman, presiding at a meeting in Edinburgh in 1913 at which Abdul Baha spoke, said: “We recognize in this movement part of that great hope and promise of the Kingdom of God upon the earth, for which all true hearts in every nation pray.” On visiting New York, Abdul Baha was placed on the right of the altar in the Episcopal Church of the Ascension; and Archdeacon Wilberforce, seating him in the bishop’s throne in St. John’s, Westminster, from which Abdul Baha spoke, addressed him as The Master, and, asking him to pronounce the benediction, said, “I think we should take the Benediction kneeling.”** So a disentigrated Christianity will find its ultimate home in a de-Christianized worship. Dr. Cheyne, of Oxford, one of the two foremost Higher Critics in England during the nineteenth century, died an ardent Bahaist.

[*A Traveller’s Narrative, p. 39. ** The Christian Commonwealth, Sept. 20, 1911.]

Nevertheless Grace can call out of the Universal Religion into the Catholic Faith. Dr. Robert Speer gives this testimony of a Persian, Mirza Khan: “I was a Bahai because my father and grandfather and all my family were Bahais. But I have found nothing more perfect than the teaching of Jesus Christ. Whoever has ears to hear, can arrive at real happiness, and I think I have found this happiness in Christianity.”

SUMMARY

Thus we have seen that these errors have two aspects, a negative and a positive: (1) the negative, the denial of some truth - truths vital to the Christian Faith; and (2) a positive - a designed web of co-related error, deliberate avenues of approch all leading to the Arc de Triomphe of Antichrist. Thus Christadelphianism counterfeits watchfulness; Christian Science, the First Resurrection and its sanctity; Millennial Dawnism, the Parousia; Mormonism, the Kingdom; the Order of the Star in the East, the re-appeared Lord; Seventh Day Adventism, the elect remnant in the Great Tribulation*; and Bahaism, the coming universal worship of Jehovah. Scripture is the spear of Ithuriel, that unmasks every deceit it touches and as Satan, when squatted under the form of a toad close to the ear of Eve, - was touched by lthuriel’s spear, and lo, the Fiend! - so these counterfeits, probed by the Word of God, stand unmasked for what they are - Satanic Counterfeits of the Second Advent.

[* As the last two articles were not drafted for this series, I have not brought out this point; but Seventh Day Adventism stresses with enormous emphasis that Sabbath-keepers alone are the ‘sealed’ of God, on whom the last storms burst. See Canwright’s Seventh Day, Adventism Renounced, p. 89.]