Bab
The True Founder of the Baha’i
Faith was Bab, Who was Martyred
It
was around twelve hundred years after Prophet Muhammad that another
Prophet came. And that was Bab. Bab means “the door.”
Bab brought the teachings of the Babis, the teaching that has a very
universal flavor in it (
).
***
Actually
Prophet Muhammad had predicted the coming of another Prophet.
He said, “If you do not believe, if you do not follow, or if you do
not become completely submissive to God, God is going to send
another Prophet and He is going to bring a new teaching.” And
that is exactly what happened.
***
Prophet
Muhammad warned Moslems in Surah the Table Spread (Al-Maidah), 54,
that if they forget his teachings, ”in his stead, God will bring a
people whom He loves and they would love Him…” This indirectly
meant that another Prophet would come. Still the very word
Moslem means to be surrendered to the Will of God, so if a new
movement with a more progressive ideology was revealed to humanity,
a Moslem (surrendered one) should accept it, or at least not oppose
it.
***
Bab
came in the middle of a nation that was completely Islamic. He
was from southern Iran, from a city called Shiraz. He preached
the unity of all religions, and he said he was the Expected One.
Later on he said that he was Bab, he was the door. He was the
one who came before the Expected One.
A lot of people
believed in him, and his followers were very strong so his mission
started growing very fast. The Moslems became a little
concerned, “What is happening with this man who came and brought
this teaching, and the people are following him, listening to him,
and accepting him as such?” The king even sent one of his
closest scholars to see who is this man in Shiraz, who is
proclaiming this new religion and teaching something else besides
Islam.
So this scholar
went to see Bab and was converted. “Oh,” the king said, “That
is dangerous. Even my closest scholar converted to his
teaching.” So the whole government and structure became very
concerned.
***
It
was just like the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Roman Empire who became
concerned about Christ going around and the people following him.
They thought he was gong to start a revolution and tried to crucify
him. But he said, “My kingdom is not of this earth. My
kingdom is from Spirit. I am not opposing any government.
I am not here to destroy anything.” However, the carnal mind
thinks differently. It is very afraid to lose its power and
prestige.
***
That
is sad, isn’t it? Whenever a Truth comes from God, the Prophet
has to go through such a struggle to convey the message. Many
times we can see from the very beginning, from Noah, to Moses, to
Christ, to Muhammad, to Bab, all of them suffered great sufferings
at the hands of those who thought they were doing the right thing.
The person who
was teaching the new religion was an infidel to them. Because
of their human minds and ways, they thought that what he said was
against their traditions and against what they believed. To
them, they were doing the right thing because he was saying what
they were not used to hearing and understanding.
They felt they
were correct to destroy a man whom they thought was against them.
But none of the Prophets were against anyone. Prophets bring a
new teaching that actually guides humanity to progress to another
step of understanding, to a higher level of realization.
***
So
a kind of opposition started rising toward Bab, and they imprisoned
him. They moved him from one prison to another prison and
eventually he was shot. He was killed by a firing squad.
The story is that he had not finished his work with his secretary.
So he told them, “I am not finished yet.” They insisted, “No,
you have to be killed.” He said, “Well, OK.” And they
shot at him. After the smoke was gone, they noticed he was not
there. And they went and found him; he was dictating the last
words to his secretary. By the time he was finished he said,
“OK, now I am ready, let’s go.” And that is how he was killed.
***
So
Bab was shot, and he was no longer on earth. But he chose a
person by the name of Sub'I'azal as his successor. He was gong
to continue after Bab. And Sub’I’azal, of course, was a very
mellow person, not a very strong personality. He just kept
very low key, and eventually he moved from Iran to Iraq and started
preaching there.
Sub’I’azal had a
brother called Baha’u’llah. (Bab also gave a title to himself,
the name Baha’u’llah . So he also was called Baha’u’llah.
Baha’u’llah means, “The Beauty of God”.)
Baha’u’llah
started opposing his brother. He was more aggressive. He
had more charisma. He could see that his brother was a mellow
person, and was not really doing too much. He just continued
receiving people. And so the Babi’s faith became kind of a
mellow faith.
Eventually the
problem between Sub’I’azal and Baha’u’llah reached a point where
Baha’u’llah left. He was kind of excommunicated from the Babi
movement. He went and spent two or three years with the Sufis
in Iraq. And after two years he came back and he said, “I am
the Expected One. I am the one who Bab was preaching would come
after him.”
Of course, Bab
had already preached that the Expected One was going to come much
later after him. That is why he wanted Sub’I’azal to just keep
the faith going until the Expected One came. But because
Sub’I’azal was such a mellow person, he was not aggressive enough to
spread it out from where he was. Baha’u’llah was chosen to do
that.
Baha’u’llah started getting in trouble himself. He was pushed
out of Iraq to other countries and eventually ended up in Jerusalem.
He lived in Jerusalem the rest of his life. Later he had a
son, and his son brought the teaching to the West. It was
Baha’u’llah’s son who brought the Baha’i Faith to Europe and
America. That is how the Baha’i Faith spread to the West,
which is a good thing. Otherwise we would not know too much
about the Baha’i Faith and Bab. Probably it would be a small
sect somewhere in Persia and Iraq, and we might have never heard
about it.
So that again
was God’s work that Baha’u’llah spread the Babi’s and Baha’i Faith
to the West, but that is what he was chosen to do. Of course,
Baha’i also changed some of the teaching of Bab to make it more
livable in that hostile environment. He had to mellow down
some of the things that Bab had taught.
***
In
fact, it was The Plan of God for this to happen, because a further
evolutionary process was necessary. Still two more steps
were needed to bring the highest realization to humanity. This
imperfection is revealed in Rev.3:2, which says, “I have not found
thy works perfect before God.”
***
Actually,
when Bab chose his successor, the one who was prophesied to come, he
said, “He is going to come from my beloved city.” His beloved
city was Tehran.
That is why
Baha’u’llah, the disciple of Bab, proclaimed later on that he was
the one who was going to come. It is accepted that he was from
Tehran, but he was not (he was from north of Tehran, the Azerbaijan
province); also Bab had said that he was going to come much later.
Baha’u’llah, however, came out and said, “Well, I’m from Tehran, I
am from the beloved city, “only nine years after Bab.
So, the Baha’i
Faith (
)
is also part of the Mission, part of our teachings. It is a
beautiful teaching and they cover a lot of beautiful, wonderful
things. They are the people who have been prophesied in the
Bible, in The Revelation, that many of them would be
killed and they would be given the white robes when they go to
heaven. And that is exactly what happened to the followers of
Bab. Many of them were killed and destroyed, and they were
strong followers, very faithful and very strong.
In later verses
in
The Revelation, they go to God and say, “When is your justice
going to come?” And God tells them, “Your brethren also have
to be crucified, and have to suffer.” We see that is coming
true right now, because a lot of Baha’is and Babis are still being
persecuted in Iran.
They will see
that their brothers are still continuing to be persecuted. So
God even told them, “This is not the time. It is not you who
are going to bring the whole truth, or the highest, or the last one.
You have to wait until later on.” We can again see that there
is another prophecy, another sign given to us, that it is going to
come a little later. And later for God probably is two hundred
years.
