Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I do not have time to address this all right now, but regarding the abomination and desolation Abdu’l-Baha addresses that in Some Answered Questions.So this guy at the end of having gone through the promises reach this conclusion:
I found that all three of Christ’s prophecies to His disciples had been fulfilled exactly as He promised.
1. The Gospel had been preached in all the world for a witness.
2. The times of the Gentiles had been fulfilled.
3. The prophecy of Daniel given by Christ as the time to stand in the holy place had come to pass.
Each of these prophecies had been fulfilled in the year 1844!
It makes little sense I think. If the verses he used in promise 3 is not taken out of context, then the text from the very same passage that he reference must be true as well. Meaning that what Jesus talk about in Matthew 24 29-35 is how it will occur. Reading 34 and 35, Jesus say that all of these things will happen, so:
“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[b]
10: TRADITIONAL PROOFS EXEMPLIFIED FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL
The title Son of man does not apply exclusively to Jesus. It also applies to Baha’u’llah.Ill give Jesus a pass on the nonsense description of what will happen, as it seems to be the ancient people understanding of how the universe works. But also no angels with loud trumpets calls or Son of Man have descended from heaven as Jesus say will happen. Yet the person examining these promises have simply ignored this part and cherry picked some of the verse to then jump straight to Daniels and then draw up his conclusion that all of it is fulfilled exactly as he promised.
To explain in brief, Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven means that the return of the Christ Spirit promised in the Bible (who was Baha’u’llah) will be made manifest from the heaven of the will of God, and will appear in the form of a human being. The term “heaven” means loftiness and exaltation. Although Jesus was delivered from the womb of His mother, in reality He descended from the heaven of the will of God. Though dwelling on this earth, His true habitation was the realms above. While walking among mortals on earth, Jesus soared in the heaven of the divine presence.
Baha’u’llah explained the meaning of clouds in The Kitáb-i-Íqán. He devoted quite a bit of text to explaining what clouds means. To paraphrase Baha’u’llah, Son of man coming on the clouds means that the return of the Christ Spirit will appear in the form of another human being. The term “clouds” as used in the Bible means those things that are contrary to the ways and desires of men. Just like the physical clouds prevent the eyes of men from beholding the sun, the desires of men hindered men from recognizing the return of Christ. Thus the meaning of clouds is symbolic, not literal. Their judgment was clouded.
The reason Christians missed recognizing Baha’u’llah in the mid-19th century (and still do not recognize Him) is because they are waiting for the “literal fulfillment” of those Son of man in the clouds of heaven prophecies. They expect the same physical body of Jesus to come floating down on a physical cloud from heaven.... but I am sure you already know this since it is a basic Christian belief you must have held once upon a time.
You are in luck, because I also posted on my forum what Baha’u’llah said it means that the Son of man will come in the clouds.
Son of Man Coming in the Clouds
63.1 63.2
It is not a bit biased, those things either happened or they did not happen. Sears could not make all those prophecies fit Baha’u’llah if they did not fit. So even if I had no other evidence that Baha’u’llah was a Manifestation of God and the return of Christ and the Messiah, the fulfilment of all these prophecies would be enough evidence, IF I believed in the Bible.To me this is basically what I would expect from a religious study into the validity of such claims. Its biased, because it have an agenda which is decided before hand and stuff that doesn't fit into the conclusion that need to be reached is either left out or manipulated to fit.
I do not want to argue about this but you are employing the Fallacy of Hasty Generalization and the Fallacy of Jumping to conclusions. You ask me why there are not more people do not recognize Baha’u’llah and you are a case in point. You just assume he was trying to reach a certain conclusion but that is the exact opposite of what he was trying to do. He researched these prophecies and went to the holy land to verify the places he was researching for seven years. He was trying to discover the truth about Baha'u'llah, whether he was the return of Christ or not.I have a very hard time taking stuff like this serious, because it reminds me of when JWs used to come up with date for the end times, its "research" done by people without any rational or objective approach to these topics. So when it all comes down to it, promise 1 and 2 we can't validate as being true or false, because we have no clue what exactly the criteria is for them to be so. Promise 3 is cherry picked verses to reach a specific conclusion. Yet this guy have no issue accepting all of them as if they were absolute truth. Which makes me highly doubt that anything he have written in this book is to be trusted and therefore would have to double check everything in it, meaning all his sources etc. Because I really don't trust that this person is capable of critical and rational thinking to adresse issues as these.
There you go, jumping to conclusions. Clearly it is you who is biased and you accuse him of that. That is called projection in psychology.But lets put some more light on this, now that we are looking at it. So this book you linked is the first edition published in 1961 by William Sears. So went to look him up and not very surprising he have been a devoted follower of Bahai since 1940. So how surprising is it that he reach the conclusion that he does? Imagine if he had reach the conclusion that none of the stuff were actually fitting, now that would have surprised me greatly .
William Sears was a devoted Christian all his early life. He researched the prophecies and compared them to everything that transpired around the Revelations of the Bab and Baha’u’llah and what happened afterwards in order to prove to himself that Baha'u'llah was really the return of Christ.
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