Planet Bahá'í

With the coming of the year 2000, there has been a lot of speculation about the return of Christ, but Bahá'ís are not engaged in such speculation. It's not that we don't believe that Christ will return. We do. In fact, we believe that He already has!

You're probably asking how such a thing could be. What about the Rapture? What about the Antichrist? What about the battle of Armageddon? The book of Revelation is full of fantastical images and events worthy of a major motion picture. None of that could possibly have happened without drawing the attention of the entire world.

True enough. But what if that entire scenario, based on a more-or-less literal reading of Revelation, is in error? After all, religious authorities have been wrong before. Consider the history of the Prophets. Whenever a Prophet appeared fulfilling the prophecies of the past and showing forth the signs of God, He was rejected by the people. In the Kitáb-i-Iqán (The Book of Certitude), Bahá'u'lláh goes to some length to demonstrate this. In particular, He shows how the Jewish people failed to understand the prophecies relating to the Messiah and therefore rejected Jesus, and how the Christians likewise failed to understand certain prophecies and therefore rejected Muhammad. Speaking of the former case, He writes:

And when the days of Moses were ended, and the light of Jesus, shining forth from the dayspring of the Spirit, encompassed the world, all the people of Israel arose in protest against Him. They clamoured that He Whose advent the Bible had foretold must needs promulgate and fulfil the laws of Moses, whereas this youthful Nazarene, who laid claim to the station of the divine Messiah, had annulled the law of divorce and of the sabbath day--the most weighty of all the laws of Moses. ... As [Israel] never grasped their true significance, and, to outward seeming, such events never came to pass, she, therefore, remained deprived of recognizing the beauty of Jesus and of beholding the face of God. And they still await His coming!

(p. 18-19)

So what if the standard theory of the second coming is likewise in error? What will the real second coming look like? Bahá'u'lláh's answer is very simple: it will look very much like the first one. The appearance of a Prophet, His rejection by the people, and the ultimate triumph of His religion are features repeated each time the cycle begins anew. In fact, Bahá'u'lláh identified Muhammad with Christ's promise to return:

... [Jesus] addressing one day His disciples, referred unto His passing, and, kindling in their hearts the fire of bereavement, said unto them: "I go away and come again unto you." And in another place He said: "I go and another will come Who will tell you all that I have not told you, and will fulfil all that I have said." Both these sayings have but one meaning, were you to ponder upon the Manifestations of the Unity of God with divine insight. Every discerning observer will recognize that in the Dispensation of the Qur'án both the Book and the Cause of Jesus were confirmed. As to the matter of names, Muhammad, Himself, declared: "I am Jesus." He recognized the truth of the signs, prophecies, and words of Jesus, and testified that they were all of God. In this sense, neither the person of Jesus nor His writings hath differed from that of Muhammad and of His holy Book.... Consider the sun. Were it to say now, "I am the sun of yesterday," it would speak the truth. And should it, bearing the sequence of time in mind, claim to be other than that sun, it still would speak the truth. ... Conceive accordingly the distinction, variation, and unity characteristic of the various Manifestations of holiness, that thou mayest comprehend the allusions made by the creator of all names and attributes to the mysteries of distinction and unity, and discover the answer to thy question as to why that everlasting Beauty should have, at sundry times, called Himself by different names and titles.

(p. 20-22)

In other passages, Bahá'u'lláh identifies Himself with Christ's return, and in still others He refers to Himself as the return of all of the Prophets who went before Him, including the Báb, who was actually born two years after Himself. "Return" signifies the reappearance of the light of God and the spirit of the Prophet, not the reappearance of the same body or even the same personality. Therefore, Bahá'ís believe that Christ already has returned, not just once, but three times.

And they still await His coming...

Postscript: Not convinced? In the early 1800's, a group of Christians following the lead of William Miller believed they had unlocked the secret of the second coming when they calculated that Christ would return in 1844. Even so, they failed to take note of the Báb's appearance in that very year. Next week we'll see what led them to that conclusion.