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Introduction
The words of jesus, “In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so,,I would have told you,” (John 14:2) when read and understood in their context with the remainder of the chapter, certainly implies that there are unseen worlds beyond this one; and that Jesus’ disciples, and those of us who c‘ome after them, are not the only “Chosen Ones” of the Father—God!
God, being the Source of all Life, His creation in one form or another has inhabited this planet ever since the beginning of time. And the planet being so vast, and His human creation so diversified and widely separated by distances, His Will concerning His creatures would need to be conveyed to them by a continuing line of Special Creatures, these being raised up in the midst of them. Such Special Beings would be manifestations of Himself; perfect mirrors reflecting Him to his creatures.
“O Son of Man! Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty . . . O Son of Being! With the hands of power I made thee and with the fingers of strength I created thee; and within thee have I placed the essence of My light. Be thou content with it and seek nought else, for My work is perfect and My command is binding. Question it not, nor have a doubt thereof.”* .
We have in the world today followers of each of those early Manifestations —Jews, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Christians, Muslims and so on. Each group continuing to worship the reflection of God, as seen in its own beautiful Mirror. But, alas, many of those beautiful Mirrors have become tarnished, disfigured and defaced by one’s personal reflection intruding itself into the Mirror, and making the uppermost appeal to us because of our tendency to over-value selfopinion.
- Arabic Hidden Words 3,12
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jesus was undoubtedly a Manifestation of God, seeing Himself as
the Son of God. But in our records of His life, there is a period of
time sometimes referred to as the Silent Years.
In the past there has been speculation as to what happened to Jesus during the years between His boyhood in the Temple, and His reappearance as a man and an active teacher. It will probably be many years yet before we have anything absolutely authentic on this matter, but I would like to draw your attention to some revealing information found in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Scrolls, as you may know, were discovered toWard the end of 1947: in a cave not far from the Dead Sea. What made them leap to instant fame was that among the writings were originals of the Book of Isaiah, and other writings of about the same period. And, too, it was proved the Scrolls had been found in a remarkable cave leading to the ruins of other buried buildings, which were obviously none other than an ancient monastry and its adjoining library. Other scripts discovered there told the story of a sect known as Essenes. * These men (for they lived alone and did not marry) were a breakaway group from the main Jewish sects, and much of what we have learned about them indicates that Jesus might well have lived among them as a member of their Order, but He certainly broke away from them, and founded His Own religion when the revelation was made clear to Him that He was a “Christos”, an Anointed One.*
I do not wish to elaborate on the Essenes, but I would draw your attention to some statements found in the writings which seem to indicate that Jesus, if not a member, was at least aware of their beliefs and teachings, and that He appears to have used a good deal of the Essenic teachings, as well as that of the Old Testament into His own teachings.
Firstly, the Essenes were bound by a very strict code set out in a ‘Manual of Discipline’. * This manual has a remarkably close similarity to the fundamentals of the doctrine later taught byJesus, and suggests a link between what He taught and the doctrine of the Essenes. In it we find the doctrine of human brotherhood; the practice of ritual washing, of which baptism was a prominent feature; and there was a form of communism, which the early Christians practiced among
- For further study read, ‘The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls’ by
A. Powell Davies, Minister, All Souls Church, Washington.
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themselves, as related in Acts 2:44-45, “And all who believed were
together, and had all things in common . . . ”
Secondly, we find echoes ofjesus’ preaching when Philo says: “. . . the Essenes did not store up treasure of silver and gold, nor acquire vast sections of the earth out of desire for ample revenues”. That recalls Matt.6, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, . . . etc.” And when Josephus tells us that the Essenes held the body to be corruptible, but the soul immortal, we recall 1 Corin.15:5, “For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality.” And as a last illustration, let me give some quotations from these Scrolls: they seem to me to throw further light on the Life and teachings of Jesus. ‘
Amongst the literature of the Sect there is one Scroll, ‘The Testament of The Twelve Patriarchs’.* In this we find a strong likeness to the
language and ideas in the Christian Scripture. In another Scroll, ‘The
Two Ways’, * there are many passages which remind us of the Gospels, but the most striking parallel is between Matt.25:35-36, and a passage from the ‘Testament of Joseph. “I was sold into slavery, and the Lord of all made me free; I Was taken into captivity, and His strong hand succored me. I was beset with hunger, and the Lord Himself nourished me. I was alone and God comforted me. I was sick and the Lord visited me; I was in prison, and my Lord showed favour to me. In bonds and He released me.”
Such is the “Testament of Joseph”. Now hear Matthew: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”
So much in the Dead Sea Scrolls approximates words and ideas later expressed by Jesus, that one is forced to conclude that it is highly probable that He was, in His youth, a member of the Essene Sect. Should that be so, it helps to clear away much of the mist that hitherto surrounded His teachings, especially in matters relating to His “Return”. It is this which is of great interest to us.
' It is my belief that jesus would be fully conversant with Old Testament prophecy concerning the end of the world. He would know of Gabriel’s visit to Zacharias, and to His own mother, Mary, and of His own unusual birth. He would also know of the mission of repentance being carried by His second-cousin, John the Baptist,
- See note on page 10.
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Zacharias’s son. And He would recall that it’was while John was
warning the people of the coming of the ‘last days’, that He submitted
Himself for baptism.
It was during that great occasion that He realised His future station in the world; that He heard the voice of God naming Him as a forerunner of the Kingdom. And we are told He retired to a desert for forty days. Here He must have fought out with Himself all that this would entail; what it would mean for Him in the end—to say nothing of having to break away from His former religious colleagues.
Over the centuries I feel we have been unwittingly misledin our Christian thinking by a mingling of Gospel, Pauline and Petrine theories, with the result we find today great division amongst the various Christian sects. In the earliest days of the Church, numerous writings appeared bearing the name of an Apostle simply to lend authority to the idea expressed, irrespective of its truth.
A study of the historical Jesus shows conclusively that He did not consider His coming to be the end of the world; He did not know when the “last days” would be. Of that time, He said, no one knew . . . ” Not even the Son, but the Father.” And Bahá’u’lláh, to whom I make frequent references in the following pages, is the latest of those Manifestations of God. He is the perfect Mirror for this Age. His followers accept that He is the Divine Synthesis to bring together all the different groups into one fold, as one great family of God. In one of His most remarkable writings He records: “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 . . . ”**
The Greek word “Christos”, from which comes our word Christ, means an' Anointed One. Over the aeons of time since the beginning of creation, many Christs have appeared. And there could have been many Scriptures written which have long since been lost and forgotten.
In this very brief account of the Gospels, we will see how changes have been made to the writings, and to such an extent that today we have left in our bibles only a portion of what was originally written. Beautiful and precious as are those portions, they certainly cannot be taken as being exact with the originals. That fact enhances the real value of Bahá’í Scripture. Bahá’u’lláh wrote His Own Message; appointed His Son, Abdu’l-Bahá, as the Exemplar of His teachings;
- Mark 13:32.
- World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, p109.
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and Abdu’l-Bahá (meaning Servant of the Glory) had his grandson
(Shoghi Effendé) educated at Oxford University in order that he would
be fully accomplished in languages to check translations of Bahá’u’lláh’s
words into the most perfect English. Consequently, there is nothing
ambiguous about Bahá’u’lláh’s Message from God for mankind today,
and for centuries to come.
Our ideas of the Manifestations of the past have become so encrusted with imagery of the supernatural, that we fail to appreciate that they were as human as ourselves. All religious truth is revealed for the purpose of stimulating our spiritual growth, along with our temporal growth. Over the ages, God has caused Manifestations of Himself to appear in the midst of humanity to strengthen it spiritually and not, as has been imagined, to create different religions. Men have wrongly reasoned that because of variations'in the teachings of these Founders of spiritual comprehension that different religions were established. Not so. That would require different Gods. Manifestations are progressive steps in the unfoldment of spiritual knowledge. God is One! Religion is One! Just as, under the broad term “Education”, various disciplines are taught; so, too, under the term “Religion,” various spiritual truth’s are revealed.
The Bahá’í Faith had its earliest beginnings in 184-4, when the Báb (meaning Gate) heralded the imminent Return of the long-awaited Promised One. Mirza Hasayn Ali, a young man from a socially prominent Persian family, took a keen interest in the claims by the Bab. Subsequently, he became one of His followers.
Growing opposition to the Báb’s teachings by both Church and State brought about the Báb’s execution by firing squad. Thousands of His believers, also, were done to death; others were rounded-up and incarcerated in dungeons. Among these was Mirza Husayn Ali. His social status and his father’s high-standing in government circles availed him nothing.
With an iron ring around his neck, he was chained in a stinking dungeon, among scores of villainous criminals. It was while thus imprisoned, that he had a vision. A light seemed to illumine his heart, and a mystic power attuned his ears to hear wondrous words, words spoken from out the ether; words from the Great Intelligence we term God . . . ” Verily, we will aid thee to triumph by thyself and by thy pen. Grieve not for that which hath befallen thee, and have no fear. Truly thou art of them that are secure. Ere long shall the Lord send forth and reveal the treasures of the earth, men who shall give thee
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the victory by thyself and by they name wherewith the Lord hath
revived the hearts of them that know.”*
A mystic is not a mysterious person; he is a person who has a deep inner sense of Life and of his unity with the Whole. Mysticism and psychism are entirely different. One is real, the other may, or may not be an illusion. There is no mystery about the Truth, and a mystic is one who intuitively perceives Truth.
And such was Mirza Hasayn Ali. He knew the Truth; and he knew also, that his future life was to be linked indissoluably with God.
Some time later, he was released from prison to be, along with members of his family, banished from the country. Before leaving, He met with His closest friends in a garden, and there He revealed, in 1863, all that had transpired in the dungeon. He was the Promised One! Unbeknown to them, unbeknown‘ even to Himself until that fateful hour in the prison, He was the Chosen One upon Whom God had lain His Hand and anointed Him the Messiah returned.
This was nineteen years after the Báb’s announcement!
From henceforth He would be the Voice of God in this troubled world; He would be the focal point for the uniting of all men everywhere; for the uniting of nations; for the fulfilment of all spiritual truth. He became for us, Bahá’u’lláh, the “Glory of God” manifested for this Age. “Verily this is that Most Great Beauty foretold in the Books of the Messengers, through Whom truth shall be distinguished from error and the wisdom of every command shall be tested. Verily He is the Tree of Life that bringeth forth the fruits of God, the Exalted, the Powerful, the Great . . . Be thou assured in thyself that verily, he who turns away from this Beauty hath also turned away from the Messengers of the Past and showeth pride towards God from all Eternity to all eternity.”**
- “Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era”
- Tablet of Ahmad—Bahá’u’lláh
