Christ and Bahá’u’lláh (Holley)/Text

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A Study Aid

CHRIST AND BAHA'U'LLAH By George Townshend

Foreword

The Guardian's reference to this book, and his direction to the National Spiritual Assembly to distribute copies widely among Christian clergy of all sects (Bahá’í News, June, 1957) makes it imperative for individual believers, by personal study and community discussion, to become thoroughly informed of its text.

For Christ and Bahá’u’lláh is not only an important source of clearer understanding of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, but also an effective presentation of the Faith to the masses of Christendom in America.

The purpose of this study aid is to assist the individual Bahá’í or study class in as similating its development of a theme connecting the Old and New Testaments, and the Qu'ran, with their fulfilment in the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh.

In approaching a new work it is essential to find its basic theme, follow the development of the theme, and concentrate on those key passages which give the work its particular distinction for the Bahá’í student and teacher. An effort has been made in this study aid to point out these essentials and thus facilitate lasting knowledge of Mr. Townshend's noble book.

Since the present function of the Hands of the Cause is to assist their National Spiritual Assemblies in their various teaching tasks, this study aid is offered to the American believers for whatever use they wi sh to make of it. Copies can be made and distributed by any Committee, Assembly, or individual Bahá’í desiring to do so.

Horace Holley

Hand of the Cause ********

THE THEME

This book is written to prove, from the undoubted facts of history, what is the true interpretation of Jesus's prophecies about the character of His era, to show the justice of His warnings, especially at the time when the events He foretold have reached the crisis of their fulfilment. (Pg. 13).

This book is directed especially to the Christians whose age-long prayer, given by Christ Himself, is "Thy kingdom come." Unfortunately, the Christian churches are in disagreement as to what this means, and they are therefore powerless to meet the crisis of our times. (Pg. 10).

DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEME

1. In all the revealed world religions the coming of the Kingdom is identified with the appearance of the World Redeemer. (Pg. 9).

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2. This outstanding pledge, originally given thousands of years ago, has never been taken up by any of the great Prophets until the nineteenth century, when Bahá’u’lláh, Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, announced to the rulers and religious leaders of the world that He was this Redeemer and the Bearer of God's Message to modern man. (Pg. 9).

3. God has ordained that the Christians of the West shall be foremost among all the peoples of the world in recognizing and acknowledging the second coming of Christ in the glory of the Father and in carrying the glad tidings through the earth. (Pg. 11).

4. The Kingdom of God has come! The Lord of Hosts has appeared with all the prophesied tokens! His teachings have gone through the earth. . . . . But the Christians hesitate, the churches will not acknowledge nor even investigate. (Pg. 11).

5. Now the promised change has come. This is the time which Christ foresaw when He affirmed that He had many things to tell the disciples but He must withhold them because they were not mature enough to hear them. (Pg. 12).

6. The story of the coming of the Kingdom runs through the whole Bible. It is the climax and consummation of God's grand redemptive scheme. (Pg. 14).

Jesus made mention of Noah and Abraham as Divine Prophets and Revelators . . . . . but their teachings apparently have been lost. . . . (Pg. 14).

It is therefore not until the wonderful and famous prophecy of Moses in Deuteronomy 30 that the real story of the coming of the Kingdom of, God to earth begins in the Bible. (Pg. 14).

7. Another great picture of the glory of the Kingdom is given in the Bible in the Revelation of St. John the Divine, bringing the Bible to its climax and its end. (Pg. 18).

8. Moses had announced, and great Prophets had described in inspired language, the establishment of the Kingdom and the restoration of the Jews.

Jesus's function was more intimate, more constructive, more creative.

Jesus created a power of perceiving God which was new, and in order that it might operate clearly, had to cleanse the spirit of man from all worldly encumbrances. (Pg. 20).

A new quality of love now characterizes the Kingdom, a love which united the believers not only with God, but with each other, and even extended to enemies. . . . . . . (Pg. 21).

9. The early Christians taught the sacredness of human life and the dignity of human nature. . . . . A new and Christian civilization arose, centered on Byzantium, which reached its height in the fourth century. (Pg. 22.).

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10. Wonderful is the story of Christ indeed! Yet where is the Gospel in the world today? (Pg. 24)

As Jesus had prophesied, the false prophets contrived to change the essential meaning of the Gospel so that it became quite different from that which the Bible recorded or Jesus taught. (Pg. 25).

11. The followers of every world religion have invented for themselves a similar belief in the uniqueness and finality of their own Prophet. The result has been that no religion has acknowledged a Prophet of a later religion. (Pg. 26).

Many of these false interpretations involve repudiation of the Word of God in favor of the word of man. . . . Probably few church-goers realize today that the Gospel of Christ as known to the few in the pulpit is wholly different from the Gospel which Christ preached in Galilee as recorded in the Bible. (Pg. 28).

Having thus closed God's Covenant with the Bible, sacred hi story - God-directed - came to an end, and secular history, having no sense of divine destiny nor unity, began. (Pg. 28).

Moreover, none of the complex order, of ceremonies, rituals and litanies of the Church can be attributed to Christ. All are man-made, by inference or invention. (Pg. Z9).

12. God foretold to Abraham that the Prophetic succession was to run through Him and be fulfilled not only in Isaac but in Ishmael. (Pg. 31).

He became the progenitor of the people of Arabia and the twelve Princes which he begot are interpreted as the twelve Imams who followed Muhammad. (Pg. 31).

13. Mankind had now had the experience of organizing the family, the tribe, and the city state. Before humanity could proceed to the task of organizing the far superior government of the Commonwealth of Bahá’u’lláh, a preliminary lesson in the art of building a nation had to be given. This constituted . . . . the special mission of the Arabian Prophet whose advent Moses had foretold. (Pg. 32).

It was evidently the intention of Muhammad to make Islam not only a model organization but a model in its international relations. The Prophet insisted that the Muslim state was to observe its treaties as sacred. (Pg. 36).

The wars which He waged were not like those of earthly conquerors undertaken for spoliation or aggrandizement, but were called for by the lawless conditions of the time. They were intended to protect the Faith and its followers and were not pursued further than was necessary for this protective service. (Pg. 37).

14. To the Christians Muhammad showed the greatest kindness. Insisting that all Muslims should fully accept both Jesus Christ and His Gospel. . . (Pg. 40).

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No Christian student reading Muhammad's teachings can miss the fact that His ethical system corrected many of those corruptions which had crept into the Christian Faith of the seventh century. (Pg. 41).

15. Muhammad, without naming him, designated Ali, His son-in-law. . . . . . (as His successor). . . . But sectional loyalties, tribal jealousies and personal ambition all conspired to defeat Muhammad's purpose. (Pg. 43).

Deprived of the guidance of Muhammad's family and ruled by descendants of Muhammad's enemies, Islam was transformed into a secular state whose rulers used religion for secular ends. (Pg. 44).

This heinous violation swept away all possibility of Muhammad's love for Christendom . . . . from developing and thereafter the relationship of these two chief civilizations followed its tragic course, continuing right down to our own day to disturb the order of the world. . . . . (Pg. 44).

16. Umar and the Caliphs who followed him rapidly extended the Muslim empire from the Pillars of Hercules to Calicut. In the midst of a dark and stagnant world there sprang up as if by magic a brilliant civilization. (Pg. 45).

17. Gradually . . . . the obscurantism of the medieval church in Western Europe gave way and finally, at the Renaissance, wentdown to defeat. . . . . From the Renaissance flowed those features of the Islamic culture with which the awakened Europeans began to build a richer, happier, more eager civilization. . . (Pg. 48).

18. The true Christian civilization is in fact not that of modern Europe, but that of the age of Constantine, which far more perfectly mirrored the teachings of Christ and was inspired by the religious spirit of the early Church. (Pg. 50).

But in, and after, the Dark Ages, Christianity showed more interest in rites and doctrines than in moral conduct. (Pg. 51).

So far did the traditional religion of Europe, in its character and effects differ from that of the Gospel, that it became the chief cause of unchristian feeling and behavior. It promoted hatred and schism, discontent, strife, cruelty and injustice, suppression of truth and reason. (Pg. 55).

The whole progress of our Western civilization has been, therefore, not the intensifying of Christianity but the opposite. (Pg. 56).

19. About the beginning of the eighteenth century a new influence swept across Europe affecting the minds of all men. (Pg. 57).

It was the time for the Jewish Renaissance. (Pg. 58).

What could all this mean but .the approach. of the second coming of Christ? (Pg. 58).

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The time was one of religious revival, of church building, of missionary expansion, the central motive being always the belief in the imminent coming of Christ. (Pg. 62).

The old established historic churches of Christendom showed themselves irresponsive and uninterested. The false prophets had done their deadly work with full success. (Pg. 63).

20. The Bible throughout has for its constant theme mankind's toilsome journey towards the Kingdom of God. . . . (Pg. 64).

With the Báb the Kingdom actually begins. He stands both as a Revealer Prophet bringing His own Di spensation and Laws and also as a Forerunner of

One, Bahá’u’lláh, bearing a Revelation immeasurably greater than His own. (Pg. 64).

The occasion of His (the Báb‘ s) martyrdom provides the history of martyrdom with an undoubted miracle, attested by witnesses on both sides. (Pg. 67).

The Babis refused to be discouraged, even by the execution of their Lord, and continued to make converts to His Cause.

Two years later an effort to assassinate the Shah was made by two obscure and irresponsible youths and this gave the priests the excuse they were looking for. Throughout the whole of Persia the Babis were hunted out and hounded down, and the ordeal of torture and massacre did not cease till the soil of Persia was incarnadined with the blood of martyrs and the authorities felt absolutely assured that the Faith of the Báb was dead and could never rise again. (Pg. 68).

21. Bahá’u’lláh was descended from Abraham by his wife Katurah, thus fulfilling the prophecy to Abraham that in Him would all the families of the earth be blessed. (Pg. 69).

22. On reading a portion of this manuscript (the Báb's Qayyumu'l-Asma) Bahá’u’lláh at once discerned that the spiritual note of the writing was the same as that of the Qu'ran and He accepted its message. (Pg. 71). c

During the years of the Báb‘ s Ministry He showed Himself a loyal and devoted coadjutor, not only-by His outstanding character and His extraordinary ability but also by His heart-whole enthusiasm and personal devotion to the Báb. (Pg. 71).

The two Prophets never met on this earth but kept in closest touch by letter and otherwise. (Pg. 72).

23. At the time of the attempt on the Shah's life Bahá’u’lláh. . . . went to the headquarters of the Imperial Army . . . . and was conducted thence under escort and in chains, bareheaded and with bare feet, to Tihran. There he was taken to the Siya.h-Chal, the most terrible of all the dungeons in the capital. (Pg. 72).

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Such was the place and such the occasion which God chose for the Call of Bahá’u’lláh to the office of Prophethood, and to the assumption of His Ministry. (Pg. 73).

Thus it was that Bahá’u’lláh's Ministry began in the year 9 (1853 A. D. 1269 A. H.) as the Báb had already indicated, a time which imbued the whole world with unimaginable potentialities (Pg. 75).

24. Two months later He was proved innocent of any connection with the crime (the attempted assassination of the Shah).

Delivered from the Síyáh-Chál, Bahá’u’lláh found Himself still the prisoner of the Shah . . . . and under sentence of banishment from His native land to Baghdad in Iráq wither He was to start within one month. (Pg. 75).

During the ten years He spent in Baghdad His fame and personal influence reached their highest point (Pg. 75). . . . He made the Faith more universal than it had been before, and bringing into prominence higher teachings of the Báb, long disused, lifted the religion to a higher level . . . . The ethical level of the Bab's community was exalted beyond recognition and the good name of the Faith began to extend itself in all directions. (Pg. 76).

His great religious revelation, the Book of Certitude, written in Baghdad, summarizes . . . . the grand universal scheme of Redemption . . . . (Pg. 76).

25. So rapid was Bahá’u’lláh's ascent to heights of brilliance and spiritual power that the ecclesiastical authorities . . . . were moved to bitter jealousy . . . . (Pg. 76).

By 1863 His enemies had secured His sentence of exile to Constantinople. (Pg. 77).

On the Zlst of April, for a period of twelve days, Bahá’u’lláh in the beautiful . . . . garden . . . . outside Baghdad instituted the great Feast of Riḍván which is held as the most joyous and triumphant of all Bahá’í Feasts. He assumed before His followers and the wide world the supreme authority which He had received from the Most High at the time of His Call. (Pg. 77).

26. It was during this period and chiefly during His residence in Adrianople that Bahá’u’lláh made His proclamation of His station and His mission to the rulers of the world. (Pg. 79).

Bahá’u’lláh made it clear that He was going to establish the Kingdom of God throughout the world . . . .. Unless they obeyed the directions . . . . which He gave He warned them that assuredly calamities, heavy and many, would descend upon them from every direction; they would not be able to escape but would be caught and overwhelmed. (Pg. 80).

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27. Bahá’u’lláh had now been rejected by all the rulers of the world and His removal to Akka cut Him off completely from active touch with world affairs. It should be noted, however, that in exiling Him to Akka, the Holy Land, the Sultan had fulfilled the ancient prophecy that the Lord of Hosts would give His Revelation there, and thus made it impossible for anyone to say that Bahá’u’lláh had fulfilled the prophecy of His own free will. (Pg. 84).

28. Bahá’u’lláh appointed in His written Will His son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as His successor and with this successorship joined powers to which no successor of any earlier Prophet had attained and which gave Abdu’l-Bahá a position unique in religious history. Bahá’u’lláh designated Him as the Center and pivot of His peerless Covenant, as the perfect mirror of His life, to exemplify His teachings; as the unerring interpreter of His Word; as the embodiment of every Bahá’í ideal and virtue. (Pg. 87).

In 1910, although in poor health owing to His prison suffering, He (‘Abdu’l-Bahá) set out to visit the We st and made two tours occupying three years.

As He knew well, the position of the West at this time was already one of great danger, although the Christians of the West had no idea whatever of the retribution that was confronting them. (Pg. 88).

His appeal was not to authority as was that of Bahá’u’lláh addressing the kings. He did not command. His appeal was to reason, to logic, to faith and to facts. (Pg. 94).

‘Abdu’l-Bahá's first aim in His western journey was, as He says Himself, to create in the minds of His hearers capacity to understand and appreciate this great new Revelation. (Pg. 95).

Completing His western tours, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá . . . . reluctantly announced the imminent outbreak of the Fir st World War. (Pg. 96).

2.9. The Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá sets forth the administrative order . . . . and, fathered by Bahá’u’lláh, provides the Bahá’í Faith with its historically unique feature - and administrative system based on the inviolable written Scriptures, establishing the succession, defining the institutions, conferring authority, preventing schism, guarding the Revealed Word from adulteration, providing for its authoritative interpretation, and perpetuating the Divine guidance of the Lord of Hosts Himself. (Pg. 98).

Nothing in the Will and Testament is more striking or more important than the immensity of the power conferred by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá on the Guardian. . . (Pg. 99).

The effect of this appointment is to make the Guardian the source of Divine guidance . . . . (Pg. 100).

These "twin pillars" (Guardianship and Universal House of Justice) of the Kingdom . . . . provide mankind with the fullest opportunity of ordering its own

[Page 8]Page .7 ('33/"Y affairs through its elected representatives, whilst conferring upon it the supreme benefit through the Divine Guidance of the Guardian, of an inviolable constitution the house built upon the rock of the unimpeachable, incorruptible Word of God Himself. (Pg. 103).

Thus does the Prophetic cycle come to its end with the appearance of the Kingdom, conceived, established and governed by God. The age of fulfillment now opens when countless generations, never bereft of Divine Guidance, upraised and loved by those Prophets Whom the Most High will, in His mercy, eternally send down, will pursue an ever-advancing civilization to the full development of man and the greater glory of God. (Pg. 103).

The establishment of this Divine, yet earthly Kingdom, has always been associated, both in the Bible narrative and in its prophecies, with the Holy Land, which has become the home of the Bahá’í Faith. (Pg. 108).

It is the ancient vision coming true at last, the glorious Kingdom of hope and faith descending from heaven to encompass all the earth. "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea . . . . (Pg. 110).

KEY PASSAGES

1. "Abraham had already been told" (Pg. 14) to "changed and uplifted. " (16)

Z. "The result was that" (Pg. 21) to "in the fourth century". (Pg. 22).

3. "Another opinion which Christians." (Pg. 26) to "is not of this world." (2.8) 4. "Moses confirmed this promise" (Pg. 31) to "ten thousands of saints." (P 32) 5. "Western scholars" (Pg. 33) to "was a theocratic state." (Pg. 34)

6. "Islam gave to the people" (Pg. 38) to "was irresistible." (Pg. 39)

7. "Quoting this charter" (Pg. 40) to "would have been different indeed." (P 42) 8. "Inevitably, and in spite of" (Pg. 47) to "of the human spirit." (Pg. 48)

9. "The civilization of the West" (Pg. 51) to "changed or challenged." (Pg. 53) 10. "But now another divergence" (Pg. 55) to "united and harmonized." (Pg. 56) 11. "Standing at the close" (Pg. 65) to "had been stamped out." (Pg. 66)

12. "One day, when (Pg. 71) to "true rank to anyone." (Pg. 71)

13. "Ba.ha'u'llah announced" (Pg. 82) to "whatever to His counsels." (Pg. 84).

14. "The people of Europe and America" (Pg. 88) to "the Western mind." (P 92.)

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16. "Nor can the Bahá’í Administrative Order." (Pg. 102) to "of its affairs." (Pg. 103)

17. "Whatever the conception" (Pg. 104) to "of God on earth." (Pg. 105) 18. "Bahá’u’lláh was endowed" (Pg. 108) to "which is the planet itself." (Pg. 109) 19. "Meantime the Bahá’í Message" (Pg. 115) to "our rulers rejected." (P 116)