The gates of heaven opened for his return�
L M Leteane | Friday September 19, 2014 14:27
Etymologically, per my Dictionary of Protolanguage Terms, ‘Bab’ and ‘Baptist’ are ancient, related terms referring to one charged with ‘opening the gate [to Heaven/Salvation]’ – of initiating. Baptism rituals, often involving cleansing or sprinkling with water, were practiced in pre-Christian times and are so ancient that we must accept the distinct possibility that bapto (Greek) – ‘to dip’ – is semantically derived from ‘bab’.
There are other similarities between the Babs. John the Baptist was beheaded while the Bab was executed by firing squad. Those whose God-blessed coming they foretold – as in Jesus and Bahaullah – were nevertheless accepted with great difficulty by the populace and there were always detractors around. Beyond even these similarities, Baha’i’s view Bahaullah as the fulfilment of Jesus’ return in the ‘Glory of God’. Indeed, we noted, ‘Baha-u-‘llah’ literally means ‘Glory of God’!
On the other hand, using Daniel’s prophecy, Christian Adventists like William Miller – a Baptist lay preacher – calculated and pinned Jesus’s glorious return ‘in the clouds’ to 1844. They easily associated this event with the appearance, in Rev.14:14, of ‘one like the son of man’ who sat on a white cloud. This, per Mark 13:26, was indeed the manner, Jesus reveals, by which he was projected ‘to come’. But reading closely, we find that it was not him who returns, but one like him. His own coming is properly understood from Gnosticism. The [real] Kingdom of God, he says, is within [the body] and no one can ever point to it externally. –Luke 17:20-21. His heavenly Transfigured Form (the Holy Ghost), he thus warns his disciples, will appear to each within, in the Path of Seven Heavens, when least expected – like ‘a thief in the night’, so they must be ready and vigilant at all times; ready and worthy of being led to the Father.
So, while the disciples were being told to ‘clean their inner sanctuary’ (their minds, their inner thoughts, in preparation for their spiritual awakening, their resurrection from the ‘dead’), Paul’s externalisations and deferments of Gnostic truth made Christians await an external, ‘heavenly’ cleansing of the sanctuary as a sign of Jesus’ literal coming, whereupon even bodies buried in graves will come to life. Cremation became feared because the thinking was: how will the ‘neck-a-bone join the shoulder-bone…and so forth’ – until the complete skeleton has taken on new, non-aging flesh – if these bones were reduced to ashes!?
On ‘finer’ reading of the prophecies in Daniel, William Miller pinned the ‘End of Days’ to precisely 21st to 22nd May, 1844 (compare with first paragraph). Taking this to be the day Jesus will have ‘cleansed the sanctuary’ and is now ready to gather up all believers, women excitedly sewed Ascension Day robes (ostensibly to protect their modesty when they rise up in the air to meet Jesus in the clouds). When nothing happened on that day, somewhat embarrassed, Miller stated that he had made an error in calculation and that in reality it was 22nd October, 1844. Still, nothing happened on that day, leading to ‘the Day of Great Disappointment’. Many left the Adventist movement and today’s Adventists call themselves ‘the Remnant Church’ (Masala in Setswana).
There is yet another similarity between Jesus and Bahaullah. The coming of Jesus coincided with a 2160-year celestial pattern based on the Precession of the Equinoxes – a properly scientific and astronomical phenomenon based on the tilt of the Earth rather than a purely ‘astrological’ one. Jesus was born as Aries (BC 2160 to AD 0) dipped out of sight on the horizon and Pisces (AD 0 to 2160) henceforth took its place when viewed from the same place each Spring Equinox.
Bahaullah’s coming was timed on the smaller cycle of 1260 years. It began BC 676 (my Harmonized Chronology) with the First of Seven Chastisements of the Jews (Leviticus 26:27ff) and the first cycle led to AD 584 (solar calendar: AD 622 lunar calendar). Another 1260 solar years later (1222 lunar years), in 1844, the Bab announced the advent of Bahaullah. 1260 years is also described as a time (1 x 360 years), times (2 x 360 years), and half a time (0.5 x 360 years). Thus, “I will chastise thee seven times” also meant 7 ‘prophetic’ years (7 x 360), or 2520 years (1260 x 2), after which only then will the ‘anger of the Lord’ cool and a New Jerusalem prepared for the hapless Jews through the Edict of Toleration. This prize, we saw, would come only after the seventh and final refinement (see Psalms 12:6).
Bahaullah, it is clear, was meant to fulfil the expectations of many religions: in Christianity, the return of Christ ‘in the glory of the Father’; in Zoroastrianism, the return of Shah Bahram Varjavand – a Zoroastrian messiah predicted in various late Pahlavi texts of the Parthians; in Islam (Shi’ite), the return of the Third Imam, Imam Husayn; in Sunni Islam, the return of Jesus (Isa); and in Babism, ‘He whom God shall make manifest’.
Although only implied by Bahaullah himself, Abdu’l-Baha later stated that Bahaullah was the Kalki avatar, who in the classical Hindu Vaishnavas tradition is the tenth and final Avatar (great incarnation) of Vishnu who will come to end Kali Yuga, the Age of Darkness and Destruction. Baha’is also believe that Bahaullah is the fulfilment of the prophecy of appearance of the Maitreya Buddha – a future Buddha who will eventually appear on Earth, achieve complete enlightenment, and teach the pure Dharma. Did all this fit and find fulfilment in the person of Bahaullah? We investigate next week.
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Digging Tswana Roots (Vol. 153) by L.M. Leteane