How do you know Bahaha is not making it all up? You don't know. Nobody speaks for God on Earth.
I know that because of the overwhelming evidence shows that Baha'u'llah was telling the truth, and thus He was truly a Messenger from God.
There is no reason to believe that God could not send a Messenger to speak for Him on earth and the preponderance of evidence shows that God did just that.
I do not accept any form of authoritarianism as a basis for a religion. Religion has been used for thousands of years to take a normal human being, elevate them to the status of monarch or king, and then claim the king is a direct spokesman for God. Manipulating people into submitted to authority in order legitimize monarchy is evil. The first thing the king does is try to create or expand his empire with endless wars because God's chosen people are being told by God this is what to do. It's hogwash.
You would be absolutely correct if the Messengers of God were just normal human beings who other human beings elevated to a higher status, but if God elevated them to that status by creating them with a different nature than we have, that is a complete different story. So the only question that needs to be answered is whether these were ordinary men or Messengers sent by God. If they were just ordinary men then they were either delusional or con-men who lied.
The problem with coming to that conclusion is that there is no evidence that they were deluded or con-men. First, no delusional man could do what Baha'u'llah did on His mission or write what He wrote, and no con-man would behave as Baha'u'llah behaved, suffering and sacrificing 40 years of his life. Thus we have to come up with another explanation for Baha'u'llah; and what I believe, that He was a Messenger of God, makes the most sense to me. Of course, I had no confirmation bias, so I was open to the possibilities.
An omnipotent God needs absolutely nothing from us. My faith is in an omnipotent God of unconditional love. God is whole, complete, and perfect without any needs or desires.
That is true. God is omnipotent and has unconditional love for all His creatures even though not all are equal in the sight of God be they good or evil.
That is true, God has no needs or desires for anything for Himself. Only humans have needs and desires.
God is fully self-subsisting and fully self-sufficient, independent of any of His creatures.
The idea God would send a messenger implies God has some kind of need or limitation. God needs nothing, and therefore, would never send anyone.
No, sending a Messenger does not imply that God has needs, it implies that humans have needs, because God sends the Messenger only for our benefit:
“Consider the mercy of God and His gifts. He enjoineth upon you that which shall profit you, though He Himself can well dispense with all creatures.” Gleanings, p. 140
“The one true God, exalted be His glory, hath wished nothing for Himself. The allegiance of mankind profiteth Him not, neither doth its perversity harm Him. The Bird of the Realm of Utterance voiceth continually this call: “All things have I willed for thee, and thee, too, for thine own sake.” Gleanings, p. 260
As I've said many times. Absolute authority comes from within. Anyone telling you otherwise is either trying to sell you something or trying to get you to join the power structure of their cult.
That makes absolutely no sense. If God is the absolute authority, absolute authority cannot come from within a human.
Since God has no needs or desires God is absolute perfection and goodness. This is because our needs and desires are the source of all that is evil in the World. When we die, we go into the light, we look into the face of God and experience God's infinite beauty. The experience of God's infinite beauty is so complete, so fulfilling, we no longer have any desires or needs. We become so enamored with God's beauty time stops because we no longer have conscious thoughts. This experience causes us to melt into God and experience eternal bliss. Our soul returns to God from whence it came. My evidence for this is the thousands of documented near death experiences over thousands of years. All basically claiming to have the same basic experience.
I agree that God has no needs or desires and God is absolute perfection and goodness. I agree that our needs and desires are the source of all that is evil in the World.
But I do not agree that every human dies and goes into the light and returns to God regardless of their deeds or their beliefs, because that would be unjust. I agree that souls returns to God from whence they came, but not all souls return to God. If a soul is faithful to God, it will reflect His light, and will, eventually, return unto Him. If it fail, however, in its allegiance to its Creator, it will become a victim to self and passion, and will, in the end, sink in their depths.
Near death experiences are oy death experiences because those souls were not fully dead, and not all NDEs are positive; you only hear about the positive ones. It would be a completely unjust God who would reward evil souls the same as good ones.
The whole idea of an authoritarian God of judgment is so the king can manipulate people into doing his will. I do not accept any Earthy king as being a direct spokesperson for God. All you need to do is look at the books written by King James. He was a strong proponent of the divine rights of kings. The Christian Bible was scrubbed and rewritten as government propaganda for promoting the legitimacy of monarchy as the only divine form of government. I refuse to accept any monarch is divine or more sacred than anyone else. It seems to me an omnipotent God of unconditional love would be slightly more egalitarian in nature.
I am not a Christian so I do not go by the Bible. I go by the Baha'i Writings, which correspond to afterlife experiences that have come to mediums who have communicated with souls in the spiritual world that are fully dead.
I do not believe in an authoritarian God of judgment, but I believe that we will judge ourselves are realize all that we have done in our lives, like a life review, and then we will go to the appropriate level in the spiritual world, our moral center of gravity. If you have ever read what has been communicated through mediums from souls on the other side that is the consensus from all souls who communicated. It is not the Christian heaven and hell, it is various levels or spheres we go to, depending upon our level of spiritual development. This is also what the Baha'i Faith teaches.
I don't need any messenger to tell me how to think. My faith is stronger than yours! My faith is in an omnipotent God of unconditional love who allows everyone through the gates of heaven to experience eternal bliss regardless of our Earthly sins or how we practiced or not practiced our religion. This is good news. All you have do when you die is show up at the gate and go into the light. Everyone is saved! No one is turned away. This is what unconditional love means. Any god with conditions on love is a lesser god. And lesser gods are not worth worshiping.
I do not have any Messenger telling me how to think. All the Messenger does is reveal the will of God.
With all due respect, I believe you have put your faith in an imaginary god, a god you made in your own image to suit your purposes. It is not the real God, it is a figment of your imagination, for the very simple reason that there is no way for you to know anything about the real God without a Messenger sent by God.
No real God would allow everyone through the gates of heaven because that is not just. We end up where we do according to out deeds and out faith. Everyone does not have the same deeds and faith so everyone does not go to the same level at the moment of death. That does not mean they cannot move up to a higher level by God's mercy and the prayers of others. I also believe that more advanced souls can help others advance to higher levels.
You don't have to respond to any of my posts. There is no amount of evangelizing on your part that would ever shake my faith or cause me to worship your lesser gods or messengers.
I do not read posts through to the end, I respond paragraph by paragraph so I only just saw this last paragraph. You do not have to respond to me, I wrote the post because I felt like responding and I had time.
Clearly, you have a belief you are happy with and it suits your purposes, and that is all the matters to you. You are not seeking truth, so even if my beliefs are true, you would not want them since they do not fit with your paradigm.
We will all find out what is true after we die because the truth will be inescapable. Meanwhile we can "believe" whatever we want to believe because we have free will. I wish you all the best.
