Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Paragraph 144

Similarly, call thou to mind the day when the Jews, who had surrounded Jesus, Son of Mary, were pressing Him to confess His claim of being the Messiah and Prophet of God, so that they might declare Him an infidel and sentence Him to death. Then, they led Him away, He Who was the Day-star of the heaven of divine Revelation, unto Pilate and Caiaphas, who was the leading divine of that age. The chief priests were all assembled in the palace, also a multitude of people who had gathered to witness His sufferings, to deride and injure Him. Though they repeatedly questioned Him, hoping that He would confess His claim, yet Jesus held His peace and spake not. Finally, an accursed of God arose and, approaching Jesus, adjured Him saying: “Didst thou not claim to be the Divine Messiah? Didst thou not say, ‘I am the King of Kings, My word is the Word of God, and I am the breaker of the Sabbath day?’” Thereupon Jesus lifted up His head and said: “Beholdest thou not the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and might?” These were His words, and yet consider how to outward seeming He was devoid of all power except that inner power which was of God and which had encompassed all that is in heaven and on earth. How can I relate all that befell Him after He spoke these words? How shall I describe their heinous behaviour towards Him? They at last heaped on His blessed Person such woes that He took His flight unto the fourth Heaven.

"Similarly"? Similar to what?

In the previous number of paragraphs we have seen how the wealth and sovereignty wielded by the Manifestations are not the wealth and sovereignty that most people think of when they consider these terms. And so similarly Jesus was sitting at the "right hand of power and might", although to those around Him He seemed devoid of those things.

Again and again Baha'u'llah is showing us how those standards by which we judge those around us fail when considering the Messengers and the Holy Ones.

This is another example of how we often fail to look at the spiritual reality, dwelling instead on the material.

But let's look at this from the perspective of the uncle of the Bab. How would he have seen this example?

To start, he was probably not all that familiar with Christian apologetics, so we won't go into that. But we know that he recognized Jesus as a Manifestation of God, and he would have agreed with what Jesus was saying. He also would have likely made a connection between this story from the Bible and the stories of Muhammad being asked to prove His Station, too. When asked to demonstrate a miracle, Muhammad pointed out that the Qur'an itself was a miracle. Was Muhammad a ruler over men, in the material sense? Of course not. Was He a sovereign? Again, not in the material sense.

Over and over Baha'u'llah is showing these, and similar stories, reminding us that we should not judge the Bab by these deficient standards. It is as Baha'u'llah says, way back in the first couple paragraphs of this book: that no one "shall attain the shores of the ocean of true understanding" until we cease "to regard the words and deeds of mortal men as a standard for the true understanding and recognition of God and His Prophets".

Interestingly enough, we were looking at this and wondering where we had seen this notion of a deficient standard. We knew that there was a quote we had read about it that sort of nailed it, but could not remember where it was. And then, after a quick search, we discovered, to our vast amusement, that it was in the first two paragraphs of this book. Even now, so far into it, Baha'u'llah is still bringing us back to the very beginning of this same volume.

Now, as for how this applies to us, it is nothing short of a stark reminder that we, too, need to keep the standard of God firmly in our sight. It is so easy to be distracted by the arguments of those who would deny this Faith, claiming that it does not fulfill the various prophecies or promises in the way that they would demand. Here, Baha'u'llah is alluding to that quote from Gleanings, number 42, "Follow thou the footsteps of thy Lord, and remember His servants even as He doth remember thee, undeterred by either the clamor of the heedless ones or the sword of the enemy.... Spread abroad the sweet savors of thy Lord, and hesitate not, though it be for less than a moment, in the service of His Cause."

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