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Old 06-15-2009, 09:15 AM
jeffchick1449's Avatar
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Default What do Baha'i's believe about their prophet?

all I know is that he's supposed to be a messenger of God like other messengers in history such as Muhammed (pub), Jesus, the Buddha, etc...
I know a lot of you wouldn't consider the Buddha or Jesus or Muahmmed as messengers of God, but from what I read, Bahai's believe they were all messengers of God.
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Old 06-17-2009, 09:15 AM
Max Marie, SFO's Avatar
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For all are messengers of God. Are you not? Am I not?

I tell you this much, one who is living is a messenger of "God."
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Old 06-20-2009, 09:15 AM
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God is a distant but all powerful force that loves us and is helping us achieve spiritual development. Human nature causes us to forget his teachings so every era has a new prophet to "re-interpret" gods will in a way that others will understand.

Wikipedia will tell you all you need to know
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Old 06-24-2009, 09:15 AM
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Muqtari Muslims believe Muhammad died from a disease which he contracted as a result of giving oral "relations" to male pigs.

Baha'i's don't believe this.
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Old 06-28-2009, 09:15 AM
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Apart from what you've already got, that Baha'u'llah is a Messenger of God, Bahais believe that He is the one whom previous Messengers have been expecting, that his arrival marks the beginning of a new cycle in history.

Baha'u'llah writes, "?Through the movement of Our Pen of glory We have, at the bidding of the omnipotent Ordainer, breathed a new life into every human frame and instilled into every word a fresh potency. All created things proclaim the evidences of this world-wide regeneration.?
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/se/WOB/wob-37.html#pg107

While the historic moment is pivotal, and is known as the "Day of God", this does not mean that Baha'u'llah is essentially different to the other messengers of God, or greater than them, or God Incarnate, or the like. Shoghi Effendi writes

"That Bah??u?Lelah should, notwithstanding the overwhelming intensity of His Revelation, be regarded as essentially one of these Manifestations of God, never to be identified with that invisible Reality, the Essence of Divinity itself, is one of the major beliefs of our Faith ... Nor does the Bah??? Revelation, claiming as it does to be the culmination of a prophetic cycle and the fulfillment of the promise of all ages, attempt, under any circumstances, to invalidate those first and everlasting principles that animate and underlie the religions that have preceded it. The God-given authority, vested in each one of them, it admits and establishes as its firmest and ultimate basis. It regards them in no other light except as different stages in the eternal history and constant evolution of one religion, Divine and indivisible, of which it itself forms but an integral part."
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/se/WOB/wob-37.html#pg114

A Manifestation of God is not God, but something more like vessel emptied of everything but God. Baha'u'llah writes:

?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, and in My movement but His Movement, and in My acquiescence but His Acquiescence, and in My pen but His Pen, the Mighty, the All-Praised. There hath not been in My soul but the Truth, and in Myself naught could be seen but God.?
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/se/WOB/wob-37.html#pg109

Shoghi Effendi says :

"The human temple that has been made the vehicle of so overpowering a Revelation must, if we be faithful to the tenets of our Faith, ever remain entirely distinguished from that ?innermost Spirit of Spirits? and ?eternal Essence of Essences??that invisible yet rational God Who, however much we extol the divinity of His Manifestations on earth, can in no wise incarnate His infinite, His unknowable, His incorruptible and all-embracing Reality in the concrete and limited frame of a mortal being. Indeed, the God Who could so incarnate His own reality would, in the light of the teachings of Bah??u?ll?h, cease immediately to be God. So crude and fantastic a theory of Divine incarnation is as removed from, and incompatible with, the essentials of Bah??? belief as are the no less inadmissible pantheistic and anthropomorphic conceptions of God"
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/se/WOB/wob-37.html#pg112

The point being that He manifests the attributes of God, such as love and mercy, law-giving and justice, and shows us the Will of God for today, but he doesn't incarnate God's self.
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