John 14, 15 and 16 are about the holy spirit, nothing to do with Baha’u’llah.
"But
the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,
he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you."
John 14:26 clearly identifies the
holy spirit as the helper....so its not Baha’u’llah.
I already discussed this verse with a Trinitarian Christian for months on end and he still could not grasp the concept that the Father sent the Holy Spirit to Baha’u’llah just as the Father had sent the Holy Spirit to Jesus. So here is one of the dialogues with that Christian that I saved:
There is no twisting of the verse; there is simply
interpretation of the verse. The Comforter is the Holy Spirit that Jesus and Baha’u’llah brought after it was SENT to them by God.
John 14:26
But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
The Holy Spirit has to be associated with a Personin order to do its work. It does not just float around in the sky. The Holy Spirit was sent by God to Baha’u’llah and Baha’u’llah brought it to humanity. It was the power of the Holy Spirit that enabled Baha’u’llah to DO what it says in John 14:26.
You say that the Holy Spirit can dwell inside of believers and teach all things and call them to remembrance so why can’t it be working through Jesus and Baha’u’llah? You cannot have this both ways. Either the Holy Spirit can work through people or not.
Sorry, but you just don’t like the FACT that Baha’u’llah was given the title of Comforter, but if the Comforter was a title given to Jesus then it can also be given to Baha’u’llah –
another Comforter.
Why not just put your cards on the table. This is all about the Return of Christ. In the context of the following verses, Jesus is the Comforter and Jesus is saying that He will send another Comforter, which was Baha’u’llah.
John 14:16
And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
John 14:17
Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for hedwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
John 14:18
I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
John 14:19
Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.
Then you make a liar out of Jesus who clearly identified the holy spirit as the one that would "teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you."
As I said above, the Holy Spirit has to work through a Person, it does nothing disembodied.
Baha'i's seem so bent on making Baha’u’llah into something he is not, that you have to ignore so much scripture to make it so.....but he never was part of the divine plan.
I do not have to ignore any scripture. I just INTERPRET it differently than you do. The day you and other Christians finally realize that will be a great day indeed because it is logic 101. Simply put, the fact that Christians have many
different interpretations of scripture means there is more than one interpretation. The Baha’i interpretation is different from the Christian interpretations but that does not mean it is incorrect.
Trailblazer said:The Holy Spirit is the Bounty of God which is the Comforter/Spirit of truth because it comforts people and brings them the truth. God sent the Holy Spirit (Bounty of God) to Baha’u’llah and then Baha’u’llah brought the Holy Spirit (Bounty of God) to humanity. That is why Baha’u’llah has been referred to as the Comforter/Spirit of truth.
Deeje said:Only to Baha'i's. He doesn't mean that to anyone else.
Why would it matter what it means to other people? There is no consensus among Christians as to what it means, so that means it can mean more than one thing.
Again you think that the holy spirit is "living inside Christians" because....? The holy spirit is God's active force. It empowers humans and angels to carry out the divine will. It emanates from God and results in doing what Jesus said it would do, affecting his followers in various ways.
I do not think that the Holy Spirit is living inside Christians, Christians believe that. They call it the “indwelt” Holy Spirit.But the Holy Spirit cannot dwell within a man. Rather, as you said, the Holy Spirit is God’s active force, and that is really no different from what I said, that it is the Bounty of God.The Bounty of God is released and it becomes active in the world when it is sent to a Manifestation of God such as Jesus or Baha’u’llah and they shed the splendor of their glory upon all created things. When the Holy Spirit is released into the world it empowers humansto carry out the divine will.
At Pentecost, it empowered Jesus' disciples to speak in foreign languages so that they could preach the gospel to those visitors in Jerusalem who came for the festival, in their mother tongue.
You just confirmed what I have been saying all along. The Holy Spirit was sent to the disciples at Pentecost and it empowered them to preach the gospel. Likewise the Holy Spirit was sent to Bahaullahand it empowered Him to do what it says the Comforter/Spirit of truth would do.
That is one of the greatest misapplications of scripture that I have ever seen.
You can't fit Islamic prophets into Jewish or Christian scripture without a lot of tap dancing. That is worthy of Broadway!
Believe as you wish. You, just like all Christians, believe
you and you alone have the correct interpretation of scripture, but that is logically impossible, because you cannot all have the correct interpretation, since interpretations differ. But your solution to that is to say that YOU and your sect of Christianity has
the one and only correct interpretation and all the other Christians are wrong. The salient problem with THAT is that you have nothing to base that upon but your own ego. After all, the other Christians are reading the same verses and you are no more qualified to interpret the verses than anyone else. Why do you think you know more than the Trinitarian who has a Master’s degree in theology about what the verses mean?
Jesus fulfilled all the prophesies about him in the OT....what he didn't fit was the Pharisees misinterpretation of those prophesies. He wasn't what they expected, but he was what they got.
You are dead wrong that Jesus fulfilled all the OT prophecies and I could easily prove it by pointing out the many prophecies that Jesus did not fulfill. But you are correct that Jesus fulfilled many prophecies that the Jews did not acknowledge owing to their lack of understanding. Baha’u’llah wrote about that:
“And when the days of Moses were ended, and the light of Jesus, shining forth from the Day Spring of the Spirit, encompassed the world, all the people of Israel arose in protest against Him. They clamored 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 laws of divorce and of the sabbath day—the most weighty of all the laws of Moses. Moreover, what of the signs of the Manifestation yet to come? These people of Israel are even unto the present day still expecting that Manifestation which the Bible hath foretold! How many Manifestations of Holiness, how many Revealers of the light everlasting, have appeared since the time of Moses, and yet Israel, wrapt in the densest veils of satanic fancy and false imaginings, is still expectant that the idol of her own handiwork will appear with such signs as she herself hath conceived! Thus hath God laid hold of them for their sins, hath extinguished in them the spirit of faith, and tormented them with the flames of the nethermost fire. And this for no other reason except that Israel refused to apprehend the meaning of such words as have been revealed in the Bible concerning the signs of the coming Revelation. As she 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! From time immemorial even unto this day, all the kindreds and peoples of the earth have clung to such fanciful and unseemly thoughts, and thus have deprived themselves of the clear waters streaming from the springs of purity and holiness...” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 20-21
It is apparent to me that no one could ever accept Bahá’u’lláh as a prophet of God unless they had no idea what the Bible teaches. The more I speak to those of your faith, the more I see complete ignorance of scripture. The cherry picking just makes me shake my head.
That is EXACTLY what my Trinitarian Christian friend said to me for years on end.
The salient problem with your statement is that most Baha’is in the Western world were formerly Christians, so they knew the Bible as well as any Christian.So why is YOUR Bible interpretation better than the Baha’i interpretation and the Trinitarian interpretation? That is the 100 dollar question you need to ask yourself. I think the answer is that you have settled upon one interpretation that supports your beliefs, what you WANT to believe, so you are unwilling to look at any other interpretations that differ
. I do hope you at least understand that there is MORE than ONE WAY to interpret the Bible.If you do not understand that ten you are acting upon emotion and not logic.
As with Tony, I do not doubt your sincerity for a moment, but IMO, you have simply been led to believe so many things that are just not scripturally true according to my studies.
I can say the exact same thing to you, that you are sincere, but according to the Baha’i Writings you have been led to believe many things that are not true. And according to your studies, the other Christians are wrong in their interpretation of scripture, so why are you right and they are wrong? After all, I am sure other Christians have also studied the Bible extensively. Do you at least understand the logical problem?
Incidentally, you never answered me.....why does Bahá’u’lláh have such an elaborate tomb, when Jesus does not have one at all?
I see that Tony answered that sufficiently.
Do you have a point to make about the tomb of Baha’u’llah?