The Bab

Mick said:
Peace will prevail on earth. God has chosen that. There are hundreds of examples that could be cited of the people of the world expecting this or even demanding this. Are their atrocities. Yes, enough to make our hearts bleed with pain. Remember, man has free will. The only answer is a spiritual answer. Each heart that quickens with the love of God will be one less that is willing to cause pain for others.

Mick
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I may be a bit out of place posting on this thread. But when I read the above statement, I was compelled to highlight it. We humans so often allow ourselves to get bogged down in who it is among us that God has chosen. Perhaps what God has chosen is a much more helpful thing to contemplate. If we can do this, then I think the "who" factor becomes much clearer. :)

I hope no one minds the brief interruption. I just appreciated the comment so much.

InPeace,
InLove
 
There is no interruption "in-love" and your commnets are most welcome..

I think many people have a child-like perspective on how peace on earth will be established. Some think it will happen miraculously from the Lord descending from the physical heavens and we won't have to do really very much except up rise up in the air to meet Him.

Scripture prophecy says it will come.. but recall that Jesus suggested to pray that His kingdom would come and I think that meant that as human beings we are to keep that heavenly paradigm in view...

Baha'u'llah addressed the rulers of His time in 1868-1871 and basically summoned them to do several things...

Reduce their armaments

Set up a world parliament

and set up an International Court of Arbitration

Had the rulers responded to this plan in the late nineteenth century and international law and world government were established, the disastrous wars and violence of the twentieth century would have been avoided. But it took the carnage of WWI to begin to set up the League of Nations which eventually came to be ignored and it took the carnage of WWII to establish the United Nations which is still viable today. We do have an International Court of Arbitration. Technological and economic forces are at work that have already created a global economy. So the time has finally now come when a world system is being established but it's not without travail or crises or labor.

- Art
 
I have one last comment on this. Sometimes it seems to take forever for things to happen. To some, it may seem like a lifetime, which to most individuals is a long, long, long, long, time. But when compared to eternity, our lifetime is but a dot on the eye of a gnat. The word Mankind isn't just referring to those that are living today. Mankind refers to all of mankind forever. We believe the world will unite one heart at a time. As much as we would love to see peace today, as much as we pray for peace in our time, we also know that mankind will only come to peace if we continue to share with the people of the world that this is God's wish and that there is hope and that we do have a choice.

My goodness, in the 80's, when I would mention world peace, many people would be quick with me to point out "The Iron Curtain" and would ask how can we even consider world peace with that sort of injustice. I would answer I didn't know, but, what I did know was that peace would prevail. Need I remind you of the brave actions of the people of Eastern Europe when they stood up in unison and said, no yelled, "enough is enough". The wall came down in such a dramatic way that nobody could have foretold of the events.

I predict when the people of the world stand up and say Enough is Enough, the old ways of resolving conflict between nations, war, may become something relegated to the history book. When the people of the world stand up and say No More Evil People Running Our Nations, tortures and atrocities will only be a faint memory to the peoples of the world. We have seen an acceptance of diversity wash across the world, we are watching as equality is being granted to women, we are a part of the acceptance of the need for every child to become educated and we can be part of the building of the "Kingdom on Earth" as Jesus said we should pray for.

Join us, Postmaster, in this celebration of God's will. Espouse these principles of Hope and Love.

warmly,

Mick
 
Hi again!

Postmaster said:
But when someone comes to establish peace on earth and then atrocites continue to occur as they did previously, whats the point? Is it just to say that peace will eventually be established, if so even the bible said that was going to be the case.
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The key, I'd say, is that all this is not going to happen by itself: it doesn't come floating down on a silver platter!

Rather, it's something that WE OURSELVES must construct, gradually and carefully, over time.

It's as the famous phrase says (which, BTW, happens to contain a semi-outrageous Baha'i pun!):


THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH

......(Some assembly required.)......


Best,

Bruce
 
I think the Bahai Faith teaches and acknowledges that humans are part of an unfolding process. God is calling us into being. Through revelations we get guidelines and processes which we must strive to understand and partake of in order to build a never before seen civilization and attain new spiritual abilities. Peace cant necessarily be given to us immediately otherwise it would violate our capacity for spiritual growth. It is our response to God's revelation that determines spiritual growth. Just because He may have given us a revelation does not mean we perfectly understand it, but if we strive to understand and put it into practice then we draw closer to Gods revelation and the fufillment of His promise.
 
Join us, Postmaster, in this celebration of God's will. Espouse these principles of Hope and Love.
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I feel like I'm a Baha'i by nature. All through my life I used to wonder about the afterlife and i had my own personal view towards it. The Baha'i concept of the afterlife of a non physical resurrection that can not be comprehended nor by any religious literature. I always used to think that, so it was a surprise to me that it has been said and written. Often a Prophets job is for him to make sense of what lays in peoples subconscious, it's the ability to speak Gods words and bring them to the conscious mind. By nature I might well be a Baha'i, I just don't belong to the admin part of it. Recently I had a personal revelation on my view of God and it came with the death of my grandfather yesterday. He is the closest person I've lost in my life so far. I've lost other family members, and I've had dreams, thought and even phsycial pains before there death to signify its occurance. But with my grandfather I had nothing! Not even the slighest hint before his passing. And realised that those who are closest or connected to you, are also the most unconstrained, I figured that God is so invisiable to us because he is so close and apart of us.
 
Postmaster,

Please accept my condolences on the passing of your grandfather and my prayer is that his soul will progress through the spiritual worlds of God... The Baha'i view of life after death is I think fairly simple. It does not consist of belief in specific places so much as accepting the spiritual realities of life after death.

We are here on this earth in this life for a purpose...to reflect the attrributes of God.. Just as the foetis in the womb is growing material legs and arms for it's life on this earthly plane so we are growing our spiritual limbs and attributes to prepare us for the next life.

Baha'is believe the soul is immortal and continues... Prayers and intercession for the soul are also accepted and they in their turn can intercede for us.


!







Verily, I beseech Thee to forgive the sins of such as have abandoned the physical garment and have ascended to the spiritual world.
O my Lord! Purify them from trepasses, dispel their sorrows, and change their darkness into light. Cause them to enter the garden of happiness, cleanse them with the most pure water, and grant them to behold Thy splendors on the loftiest mount.
- `Abdu'l-Bahá​
 
Thanks for the sympathy, it’s a very sad time for us. Makes me think about where he is at this moment. 4 weeks ago I lost my great grandmother. On the exact moment of her death, I woke up in the middle of the night with extreme chest pains, the next day when I heard the news of her passing I related the 2 instances as they happened at the same time, these kind of things are common with me. However for my grandfather nothing at all. He was a great man, I'm not just saying that, he really was, may he rest in peace.
 
Lifting you up to the heart of Love, Postmaster. I truly believe that physical death does not part us with our loved ones forever. In the meantime, we hold them in our hearts. And there will be reunion in some wonderful way.

InPeace,
InLove
 
imranshaykh said:
1. Music is prohibited in Islam, yet the Bahais who claim that their religion is from the same Allah as that of Mohammed assert that music is permissible. This is one amongst many differences in the beliefs of the Muslims and the Bahais. Why would Allah prohibit something on one community and condemn it so harshly and then open the floodgates, permit it and also encourage it? Music is one such element.
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Muhammad was greeted with a song called Tala'a al-badru 'alayna ("The Full Moon Has Risen over Us") when he first entered Medina, and the song has been sung ever since then. The fact it still exists tells us music isn't prohibited in Islam. Better to say Wahhabism, for example, prohibits music. Wahhabis often quote the same ayah you quoted as a proof-text (31.6) .

When did some Muslims first start attacking music consistently?


Other Muslims even compared human beings to musical instruments in relation to the divine:

"The 10th century philosophical group, the Ikhwan as-Safa, argue that the truest audio art is the Voice of God, which the Prophet Moses heard at Sinai. When Moses heard the Voice, he moved beyond the need for earthly music. Based on this moment, the Ikhwan as-Safa believe that human audio arts are necessary echoes to remind us of the true music. The 15th century Persian mystical poet Jami says that in the Qur’an, when God says He is blowing life into the form of man (38:72) it should be understood that human beings are the first musical instrument. The famous Sufi poet Rumi (13th century) also plays with the idea of human beings as musical instruments. He opens his work the Mathnawi, perhaps one of his most famous poems, with the lines, “Listen to the reed as it tells a tale/ a tale of separation,” a statement on the human condition of removal from the Divine. It is also argued that the Prophet David (who authored the Psalms according to Muslims) and the Prophet Solomon both had beautiful voices and sang freely."
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With such a rich tradition to draw from, we see numerous Muslim scholars have given an okay to certain kinds of music:

". . . contemporary scholars including Shaykh al-Azhar Mahmud Shaltut, Shaykh Yusuf Qaradawi, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini have all issued legal rulings that audio arts that do not encourage people to go against the faith are permitted."​
 
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