Fact Check: Cultish Podcast's Claims About the Baha'i Faith Examined

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over $50. Thanks, guys. All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Cultish: Entering the

Kingdom of the Colts. My name is Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co-hosts here. I am riding solo today on a

Saturday. Uh, but I'm here, uh, with Steve Matthews. Good to have you in the studio, my friend.

Great to be around. Awesome. So, uh, real quickly, we're going to be talking about a group that's

always had a little interest to me. I've driven by maybe a the Bahigh faith. Now, I've driven by their centers, you know,

every now and then over in Scottsdale. I'm here in Arizona. Uh, I know that they had an appearance in Walter

Martin's book. Besides that, I literally barely know anything about them. I know we chat back and forth. We've done some

other episodes together, but um, yeah. So, just uh, where's the starting point? Um, like who are Well, first of all,

tell a little tell them just a little about yourself and like what's your interest in the subject on the Bahigh

faith? So, I have studied cults for a long time and I'm finally doing more and more with

it. uh tune in to the uh website examiningthecults.com soon to be launched. We'll be doing

there's already an examining the SCJ on Shin Chani examining WSOG on the world mission site church of God soon coming

is examining um the Bahigh's so watch out for that where there'll be a whole bunch of

responses and you know exploration the history and some of the problems with bahism.

Yeah. Um, it'll all be under the rubric of examinethecults.com under the umbrella.

So, I have spoken, you know, a lot on some of the more recent groups, you know, that I'm concerned about because

nobody else is doing them. So, if nobody's going to do them, I have a saying. I don't want to write the 5,000

or first book on Mormonism when there's already 5,000 books out there. There's nothing on Burning Man or the World

Mission Side Church of God or Shining Jan Xi or the International Christian Church. These are groups that I've been

super concerned about. I've studied bahayism for a long time and it's definitely time to get this information

on this group and many more groups which we'll be doing on examining the cults and there'll be a podcast on that as

well. Awesome. So the official name of the Bahigh is

called the Bahigh faith. Sometimes they call it the Bahigh world faith. Bahai means follower of Bahalah who's the

founder of the Bahigh. Um they're all about creating a one world religion with the Bahigh's you know being over

everything. And you were saying about how, you know, there's not, you don't hear about them that much. Well, here's

an interesting statistic is that outside of Christianity, the Bahigh are the most widespread religion in the planet

geographically in a sense that they're in just about every country in the world. Maybe except for like Vatican

City, North Korea, but they're the most geographically widespread outside of Christianity.

Um, I believe it's in South Carolina, they're the second biggest religion outside of Christianity. in a bunch of

countries in, you know, South America and Africa, they've also kind of got statistics like that. Um, it's difficult

to say how many members they have. They're not really always open with membership,

but it's expected that there's somewhere close to 6 to 7 million people. Um, the thing is there's a lot of inactive

members who've left the faith or the cause as they will say. They'll do a declaration to become a Bahigh. It's

like a little pledge card they do. Yeah. And then they don't always send it in just like a Mormon, you know, they'll

won't always say, "Oh, no longer Mormon." They'll kind of be on the rolls. Well, that's kind of the case

with bahayism a lot. There's a lot of people who obviously left there, too. Yeah.

Well, just real quick, you mentioned one religion. I know like in one area that's just interesting. It sometimes within

our podcast, there'll be a documentary that'll come out or there'll be a movie that will come out in relation to a

specific cult. We'll start getting DMs about this specific group. Well, it just so happens I started getting these

videos uh from Rain Wilson aka Dwight from the office and he was talking it was some interview some podcast he was

on where he's talking about the distinction between the soul and the body and I didn't really know to equate

it with except oh it's just his own born spirituality I guess but then I realized oh he's actually Bahigh faith that's

actually he's so committed I mean Rain Wilson's whole point pretty much

every day is getting up to spread the Bahigh gospel I mean he is active in so many places

and pushing it he's got to new book out. He does podcasts. He's his whole point. He's very very involved is a pretty

dedicated behind. Yeah. I I And let me ask you this because we're talking about the origins

um and the history and and I'll let you just elaborate too. And um is that I think recently one of his social media

posts he was talking about um some persecuted uh subsects in Iran and and specifically women. He was making a big

point sort of the human rights activist point about it. So I'm just wondering is that connected to the history about it

or what's the story? I mean, as you know, there's not a lot of religious freedom in Islamic countries,

and the Bahigh have been terribly persecuted right from the beginning in Iran. It's pretty horrible.

Um, and Bahigh's do rally to that cause. But I I'll also say Rain Wilson is not the only celebrity out there in the

world of Bahai. Um, you know, they have a lot of other celebrity members. Uh, as far as actors,

Justin Beldoni, um, Carol Lombard, you know, the old school, um, musicians like Andy Grammar, uh, Seals and Croft back

in the day were Bahigh. They'd be promoting a lot of that there. Uh, Vic Deone, Dizzy Gillespie. I mean, there's

a whole bunch of guys back in the day. Yeah, absolutely. Who are the Bahigh that you might not know about? Uh, they

do claim to be like the fastest growing religion in the world, but then again, like so many cults claim to be the

fastest growing religion in the world. Scientology says we're the fastest and Shin Shan Xi and the World Missionite

Church of God, they all claim to be the fastest growing religion in the world, but they're not. Um, you know, so it's

it's it's just a really interesting group. They say that Jesus is one of nine great manifestations throughout

history, but now we're under the, you know, era, the cycle of Bahalah. So, this is like what Walter Martin

would talk a lot about. We can't do a show without paying homage to Walter, right? Of course,

it'd be wrong. Got love Uncle Wally. We'd have to We'd have to do an edit,

right? So Walter would talk about who is the Jesus of Mormonism? Well, Jesus is one God out of millions of gods. God the

father had sexual relations with Mary to have Jesus the spirit brother Lucifer who sweat in the garden of Gethsemane

for our sins. And who's and you know in our sometimes you know his blood is not enough for us. So we have to atone for

our own sins through blood atonement. Who's the Jesus the Jehovah's Witness? He's Michael the Archangel the first and

greatest creation of Jehovah God who came here invisibly present 1914. He was killed on a torture stake and arose as

an invisible spirit creature. Um, so that's the Jesus the Jehovah's Witness. Who's the Jesus of the Bahigh?

He is one of nine great manifestations through church history. You know, they have these nine God acts to men in

different cycles when we need he needs to send a revelation. So they have nine different ones. They had Abraham,

Krishna, Zoraster, Moses, um they had Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, the Bob who was like the foreigner, the John the Baptist

we're going to get into of Bahala and today we're all under Bahala. When you say church history, is that

their version of church history? Well, it's not even what they call they don't really use the word church, but

they say in God's history. So, basically in they say that, you know, all religions

are from the same God. They're just basically updates and they're all from the same religion.

All religions are basically you know from the same God. So God that one time he sent Buddha to man to show man the

way to live and then Buddha came outdated. Then he had Jesus. Jesus got replaced by Muhammad.

Muhammad's you know after he was around for a thousand some years. He got replaced by a messenger in Iran called

the Bob. The Bob means gate or door in Persian Farsy. And after that or actually in Arabic, sorry, because

there's a lot of Arabic and Farsy back and forth in Bahigh. You got to keep track. And then today now we're under

Bahala and he is the God's newest manifestation. Uh we'll get into what manifestations

are. So in other words, this would be like on my iPhone right now, I've got my

settings. I think there's one or two updates I have to do that I've been putting off and I'm probably just going

to do the update just because I need this is the religious update. I'm tired of the notifications. So if I

do the iOS update, there'll be the be the Bahigh uh version of going from like Islam to Christianity. basically well

it's other way around yeah from Christianity Islam because Jesus got to get replaced by Muhammad in this in the

new cycle the new dispensation and now we're under the newest under the era of Bah so they're they're an offshoot of

Shia Islam they're out of they're from Iran which is Persia you know this same thing they call that the cradle of faith

you know the land and they have suffered terrible persecution there as we've covered um their spiritual

administrative headquarters not in Iran it's in Hifa Israel and they have a lot of you know

memorials, huge buildings back to those guys. The largest population of high in the world is at India where they have

about two million members. Wow. How many how many members in total? Um as I said it's kind of hard to

pinpoint somewhere around 6 to 7 million. Um they have [clears throat] beautiful

temples all around the world. Um all those fancy buildings in Israel and they have a really big temple outside of

Chicago in Wilmet Illinois. Okay. Nine is a big number. Nine and 19 are

huge numbers in Bahigh. It's like sacred numbers. So the Bahigh temple will have like nine sides with nine gardens. The

number nine appears all the time. It's a mystical number. We're going to come across nine on their calendar. Uh 19.

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billillsprovisions.com. Have a great day, guys. So, in the sense that I mean, I'm

thinking about just from my general understanding of them that are they sort of a spin-off then of of Islam or does

it come from Shia Islam? Shia Islam. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to I'll just say

first a few of the over high level things what they believe. Um

we'll get to some history and really see the Islamic connection there. Oh, interesting.

So [clears throat] the concept is they want a one world government. They want a one world religion which they call and

all you conspiracy people take off your aluminum foil hats here. But they they call it the new world order.

Oh dear. Yeah, my voice just got a little raspy here.

[laughter] I know who you're talking about. So [clears throat] they they're looking to

create establish a spiritual kind of millennial reign of the Bahigh faith. Okay.

But they want to create this one world government. So Bahalah uh was the founder. His name in Arabic means glory

of God. Okay. Um to be a Bahigh, it's a follower of glory. Follower Bahala. That's what it

means to be a Bahai. You're following you know Bahalah. Um and one of his most famous sayings in relation to this one

world government idea is the earth is but one country and mankind its citizens. M

that's a huge bahigh saying you're going to hear all the time. Um and it's it really in a sense I mean with this

liberal age now of wokeness and unity and brotherhood and peace I mean a lot of those things are really good that we

love each other and everybody eliminate prejudice and all you know a harmony of mankind a lot of that's very altruistic

but the spirituality behind it so it kind of in a sense is a religion for our times you know it's like a United

Nations kind of feel all religions loving each other kumbaya it's it's very big of that

that reminds me when Barack Obama was sort of becoming of age I mean both both of us were little. So remember so we

remember like when he was running for president even when he was a senator I remember he was doing some speech over

in Germany even before he was president and he said something in the sense like I'm coming to you as a citizen of the

world and I was like hm that could be a high sentence all I just I just that immediately just came

to mind when you said that. Yeah. I mean I mean you know whether we're now we're into like multicultural

multiculturalism, social justice. Yeah. You know we want unity of all religions, equality, men and women. Um you know uh

one one pe one world language one world one world religion. You know we want to push science education. So they want all

of that stuff. But there's a catch. It's got to be done under them. And then you got to be a follower Bahala. It's not

good enough just to be like a person who wants all these great causes, but you're actually buying into the spirituality.

That's kind of the way I get a most people get in. It's not a very I don't want to say an intellectual

religion. It's a very feelings-based religious sense because people join bahayism not because they have you know

it's like because I'm convicted that you know Jesus rose from the dead his resurrection I base my faith on that

fact. It's more like I like the idea of the harmony and the equality and the hyperincclusive. So it would be almost

it'd be very congruent with the cultural aesthetic of we are the world and imagine

absolutely all that stuff. So they have basically what they call three primary principles and you hear this one all the

time bahigh and the ideas are the oneness of god the oneness of religion and the oneness

of mankind. So basically this the one god who is part you know over all the human family and we're all part of that

one world religion which is bahism. The rest of the principles kind of fall into line with this. So there's different

ways they're worded, but this is the ideas are the equality of men and women, the harmony of science and religion, the

independent investigation into truth, huge um the they want a universal compulsory education, elimination of all

forms of prejudice, um ex elimination of extremes of wealth and poverty. Altruistic, but again, how's that going

to happen? [clears throat] They want spiritual solutions to economic problems. a universal auxiliary

language like an espiranto, you know, like one language for all countries and universal peace upheld by world

government which is enforced by an international tribunal. Now that raspy voice guy can have fun

with that one. Oh yeah, but I mean we're going to get into that.

So they they love to portray themselves as a world religion. They say just like Christianity is a world religion, we're

a religion. Just like Buddhism or Islam, we are a religion. Even though they started like 100 some years ago, you

know, it's not like, you know, Mormons will say, "Yeah, we're the restoration of Christianity." But they say, "We are

a legitimate world religion." But I call cult, you know, like more anybody can say that they're a world religion.

Mormons say they're, [snorts] you know, the [clears throat] Mormon, Jim Jones, whoever, they could all say that, you

know, they're the real deal. But I'm calling cult here because there's cults of Christianity like the Jehovah's

Witnesses. There's cults of Hinduism like Hari Krishna. There's cults Rajnish, [clears throat]

Buddhism like Soka Gakai, uh cults of Judaism like the Cabala Center, cults of Islam, the Nation of Islam,

yeah, is one and these guys. So there's cults of different world religions. They all

have their cults. Hey, what's up everyone? We love that you are enjoying our content on a weekly

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monthly. Also, make sure you check out our merchandise store. Go to shopculish.com. You can see all of our

great designs. A lot of you have gotten merchandise from us already. So again, either go to shopcultish.com and check

out all the awesome merch. Back to the show. Yeah. One one distinction that just sticks out to me is that even when

the conversations I've had with Muslims that they're very sincere and they're very passionate about their beliefs, but

they're not they're they're exclusivists. They are very I always appreciate their upfronts like you're

wrong. Like Oh, they draw a hard line. Yeah. They they draw a hard line, but

it's very interesting when when this is a a branch off. Uh it seems though if you're a branch of Islam, you'd be

making your own hard lines versus at least the appeal to this is that they're saying we're all sort of one. We're all

kind of one and the same. We're going to go to the back of the book here and

it's like a pendulum swing. Here's a spoiler. Bahigh's kind of talking out of two sides of their mouth.

On one sense, they're saying come to us all. You can you can continue to be a Christian in a bahigh. You can continue

to be a Jew in a Bahai. You can be part of this religion where we embrace everybody. But the b at the end of the

day you have to believe in you know bahalah abdul baha shogiendi the universal house of justice you have to

kind of give over to that and then not embrace what you did anymore you can't believe when bahigh's [clears throat]

deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus you can no longer hold on to that as a Christian now you have to adopt the

bahigh view which we'll explain so in other words you would have to you they're what they would say is that you

have you kind of it's syncratistic you can synchretatize it with any rel. Yeah. But when you actually if you put

the weights and measures together, it would tilt towards Bahala. Bahala

regardless of whether Tinder or Christian has been replaced is done. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So, I think history is the best way to

go from here. I really understand it. So, this part's going to be a little long, but it's going to be really

valuable because I haven't heard a lot of people talk about this. Yeah. Just real quick, when you mention

history, you've got a also I was going to say you've got a couple books here, too. So, are these in relation to the

history or do you want to talk about this later or um I've got some stuff I've could

recommend for other stuff. This is going to be a powerful apologetic part and okay,

you know, this is their scriptures the capabas sorry I'm coughing here. Yeah,

these are the scriptures. So, you know, I got the kitabia. These uh bah books have been translated into many

many languages. So, there's four important characters in bahayism. Mhm.

So you have the Bob like we said that's Arabic for Gatorador. Yeah. He his name was Ali Muhammad and he was the

manifestation before Bahala. They'll often call him like say Ali Muhammad or Maha Ali Muhammad. S is a Arabic word

meaning master or lord is used by those who claim to be descendants of Muhammad. Yeah.

Where ma is more like an honorific title like sir. So you often hear you know m Ali Muhammad but his name was Ali

Muhammad. So he we we'll find out who he was in a minute. um Bahala his name was Hassin Ali Muhammad or Nuri sorry Hassan

Ali Nuri his name is Arabic for um glory of God as we said uh he's a current manifestation he wrote scripture and he

had three wives but he never met the Bob the the manifestation before him so those are called the twin

manifestations in Bahai in Bahayism you have three central figures uh I'll get that in a sec let's not run too far

ahead here so we got so after the death of Bahala uh um he passed on authority to his son Abdul Baha. His real name was

Abasendi and his name means servant of glory like servant of Baha Abdul Baha and um he was one of the he was the son

of Bahalah and the second leader in Bahayazm. Uh he was an infallible interpreter of the teachings and the

writings of Bahala. Um some of his titles were the master, the exemplar, the mystery of God and the center of the

covenant. Mhm. So he had these like real lofty titles.

they really rever him. Um, and then his grandson became the next leader was Shogi Aendi. His real name was, his

birth name was Shogi Rabbani, and he was the grandson, like I said, and the great-grandson of Bahalah. He was

appointed as the guardian of the faith in 1921 at the death of Abdul Baha. He was the infallible interpreter of

Bahala. He helped spread the faith around the world a lot. And he did not have any children, so he didn't have a

successor. Um, he died in 1957. He didn't leave a will, which is a big no no in Bahigh. you're supposed to have a

willing testament to appoint the next person and he never did. There's a big controversy about that.

Um so the central figures in bahayism um the writings of or were the central figures the Bob Bahalah and Abdul Baha

the writings of Bahalah the Bob and Abdul Baha are sacred and the writings of Shogi offender are not sacred but

they're authoritative but you know there's a difference between the four figures. So the history where it came

from is super interesting. So Muhammad, you know, he lived in Arabia from 570 to 632. And when he died, um the majority

of his followers followed a guy called Abu Becker. And you know, he was basically a khalif who was kind of, you

know, lead um the followers. Khalif is Arabic for vicar or successor. Um and along with three other leaders, they

became what they call the rightly guided khifs in Islam. So during this time Islam you know the centuries during

these khifs Islam did spread around the world and went to Iran where it took root and other countries and many of the

people there rejected these khifs Muhammad's successors saying you know that these people shouldn't be appointed

by man but they should be appointed by God. Yeah.

So they kind of had a split in Islam and it became Shiism the Shiites and um Shiites that means separatists

you know in Arabic. Um so they rejected the khifs. Instead they started believing these imams in in so you have

the Sunni Muslims and you have the Shiites. See they the the Sunnis believe in the Khalifs. The Shiites believed in

the imams. And what happened is the the first imam [clears throat] was the uh was his name was Ali. He was um you know

descendant of Muhammad. And he they had basically you know him and a bunch of other imams. There's like 11 others.

They're all violently killed until there was a 12th Imm. So after 941 when this Imam Madi disappeared, he is said to be

continuing to communicate to mankind through his bobs, the gates. So he was hidden and that went on for like 70

years of his occultation. And they said this Imam Mi they created his whole esquetology in Shiite Islam that you

know one day uh the Imam Mati would return to earth with his faithful 313 followers and they were also hidden all

the time. They never died. So they think this Imam Mati figure is still alive for like a thousand some years. And after

the fourth uh Bob died, this gate, this channel communication, you know, the succession of the four Bobs, there was

no way to get communication uh to Allah, to God through that. So, they've been waiting for like over a

thousand years for the 12th imam to live, to return. So, there's a whole theology in Iran because a lot of these

Shiites are what they call the 12vers. And one of the beliefs of the 12 is that God had sent 124,000 sinless prophets to

man like Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. And each of these prophets, you know, they had Moses uh

Muhammad as the final prophet, the seal of Allah, the seal of the prophets. He would, you know, each prophet would in

that time would come in his own age and bring a a book of laws and reveal God to men. Well, that went on and they had all

these different Shia groups. And one of these 12 groups was this heretical Islamic sect called the Shikis. And it

was kind of another like cult of Islam. They were followers of a guy called like the Shakers.

Yeah. The Islamic Shake. Yeah. So Shik Shik Ahmad, he died in 1826. He was a um Muslim leader who taught that he was

uh the successor. He was like one of the the bobs able to speak you know to this imam mati this hidden character

and he was along with his successor was say kazim rashi they were the that channel well these two Islamic cultists

were called by the title Bob with the you know so just like the first four intermediaries back you know with the

12th imam when he was a child who died they were able to reveal the will of Allah and say that the return of the

Imam Mi was shortly to appear so I did say there's a bit of history here but this stuff's super important so when the

other successor died, Sim Kazim, there was a split among the Shaky cult. And one man, you know, he continued to say,

well, he was the new, you know, Shaky, the other said, well, he's going to call himself the Bob and this is the man who

would go on to lead the Bobby movement. And Bob, by the way, is Bab, not like Bob Robert. That means gate, right? So,

he was going to be the uh the forerunner Bahala and the manifestation of God for this time.

So, the Bob wrote, he wrote about 80 books. The most important was the bayion and he wrote in details about laws for

this new world order is supposed to come. He also spoke of he who God will manifest. So he basically said as a John

the Baptist figure that even though I'm the manifestation from God, there's a greater manifestation is about to come.

And but he he did say in his writings it' be between 15 uh 15001 years and 2001 years in the future till this you

know this other manifestation appear in his bionic scriptures. Can I just give a comment real quickly because when you're

going over a lot of different timelines is that a lot of times people will from apologetic standpoints people will give

objections to Christianity just because well there's so many Christian denominations therefore Christianity

can't be the true religion but when you look at this you've got scores not just the Sunnis and Shia but even where this

came from there's all these splintering fragmentations not not just of Bahigh but then you have Bahigh offshoots so

this is the idea of fragmenting and splintering this is not something that's just a Christianity issue No, you had

you had the death of Muhammad. You split the Shia came out and then you had the shakys come out of there and then you

had, you know, the Bob come out of that as his group and then then it went on the

Bahigh. So it's like all these offshoots and offshoots and offshoots. So the government you know got involved over

there and they wanted to crush the this movement because there was this conflict between these two people the the shaky

successor and the Bob and um you know after the the government what they did is they executed the Bob in 1850. um

they thought he was a problem. But he did appoint one of his faithful followers and his name was Yaya

Sububazal and he was supposed to be the rightly appointed successor of this Bob from this this weird cult.

Well, what happened is he had a brother who was kind of a better speaker and everything and his that was Hussein Ali

Nuri who became Bahalah. Um so he basically pulled apart more of the people and that's how kind of bahayism

started. So the two groups they had violent conflicts a number of men on both sides were murdered in 1868. The

Turkish government stepped in and they sent Hussein Ali Bahalah they sent him under house arrest and he was a penal

colony for a couple years and then 1892 he dies. So that was kind of a lot of the stuff.

I know there's a lot of numbers and names and a lot of Arabic strange sounding people and Persian people, but

well, it's just important to show that this is it's very interesting because when I first heard the video of Rain

Wilson on this podcast where he's making the distinction between soul and body, it sounded very eastern. So it sounded

like, oh, he might be like Hindu or something like that. So then when I heard it was Bahigh,

Islamic. I made so it's funny because I made the correlation well it must be Bahigh must be a eastern religion

knowing barely anything about it just because of the the sort of relativistic unit universalist language that Ray

Wilson was using but then it goes to show this actually came from Islam which is very exclusivist

no reincarnation none of that stuff yeah it's it's pretty different so um I just running through the history

real quick so that as say shogi Abdul Baha was the authorized interpreter Baha That was his son. He ruled from 1892 to

1921. Then in 1921, um, Shogi Fendi took over in 19 like he ruled in 1957. Didn't have that will. And before he died, he

appointed successors to be what they called the hands of the cause. The hands of the cause or the hands of the cause

of God were custodians who would oversee the protection and propagation of the faith for a few years during the interim

period after the guardian Shogi Feni suddenly passed away. Mh. And then after that now the universal

house of justice is the infallible bahigh leading stuff. So it's amazing how they

pick all these successors who are all supposed to be infallible like shogiandi infallible um Abdul Baha infallible

because they're able to somehow from God interpret the words of Baha and his laws and his administration so perfectly for

the cause that they have the ability to do that. So um I don't if they're not divinely direct, I don't see how this is

possible. Yeah. So, we're at the 1920s here and this is primarily a lot of this history

is really taking place in Iran or in the Middle East. Um, I have heard I just listened to just a little bit of uh I

read a little bit of just Walter Martin segment just some of his take on the history. What I stuck out to me was that

as they kind of moved over to the west, they kind of utilized the aspects of the persecution that they experienced and

they used it as a way to build empathy with them. Like what was sort of the appeal? Did it grow a whole lot?

Abdul Baha would come over to America. Um, Shogi Offendi was trained in English at a university and he was very, you

know, big on the expansion. Um, definitely the empathy thing, but the the one world religion, the idea of all

men and women be equal. Yeah. Uh, harmony, elimination of prejudice, that's that's the real hook gets people

in. It's not the theological. It's not like, hey, I've sinned before a god. I need forgiveness. It's more about Yeah.

building like man building a kingdom on earth almost. And they appeal to celebrities. Was that

something that happened organically or was it something with Scientology how they had a celebrity center where they

sought people out like Travolta? I I don't know if you know this Jeremiah, but I mean some celebrities

are kind of left-leaning. No, it's serious. It's true. Well, I mean you're from you're from

California, so you wouldn't have any insight about stuff that's lefting. [laughter]

If you look at the United States, California is literally leading to the west, which I'm from California too, by

the way. I get that. But anyways, um yeah, so you're left-leaning, right? So that's part of and given that

it's the worldview. It's the whole idea of like the whole brotherhood of man, the oneness, everybody, the

multiculturalism, woke, social justice, all of it fits in really well for B. Yeah, definitely.

Religion of our times. Okay. And that that would that would really be the appeal. Um and so then

when it comes to that, maybe is this I mean also you think about the organizational structure is that how

does that fit into the culture? The supreme uh author uh body of authority in

bahayism is this universal house of justice. They have nine u leaders elected every 5 years and they have an

incredible building over there in Israel where they rule. One thing that's really kind of some people say is very

hypocritical is that none of the people who are allowed to be in the house of justice are women. They have to be men.

So one side of the mouth they're talking about equality men and women and their principles but then how come there's no

Yeah. Really? Huh? Yeah. Well, that that was kind of like um with like Jim Jones when he was going around, you know, he

was in California as well too, like and building in San Francisco and he had a whole message on racial equality and

equality of women, but pretty much his whole governing body were white men, which is just kind of interesting. So, a

lot of times you'll see groups where it's all rules for the not for me, which is also very interesting. But when it

comes to organizational structure too, um let's just say I if I went up to the Bahigh faith that's over in Scot that

I've driven by multiple times. The person who heads it up, you call them the minister, whatever you call them.

Are they So they don't have any clergy. They don't have any clergy.

No clergy. No clergy. So how does a how would a service operate?

So they basically have over everything. They have universal house of justice. Then they have a national spiritual

assembly and they have local spiritual assemblies under that. So that would be the local spiritual assembly over here

in Arizona. Right. But they don't have clergy. Do they have to get sort of volunteers? And they'll they'll start

with groups of nine. They always that that number nine comes up all the time behind them.

And what's the uniqueness of that? Well, how many manifestations is there?

Nine. Okay. And it's the number of completion of God

and um we we'll we'll take a look at some of the calendar stuff in Bahigh. Ask ask me about that later. But

so biblically we usually like the seven tends to show up a lot in in biblically, but Bahigh it's 9 versus seven

and 19. Nine and 19. 19 is huge. That came from the Bobbies the Bob cult that he they came out of.

Yeah. It's pretty wild. Yeah. No, can you hear what you're saying? This is so fascinating.

Yeah. So, um, as far as scriptures, authoritative, uh, writings, um, Bahala, his books are

basically almost like, well, they're pretty much scripture because he was the man.

Are any of them here? Well, yeah. As as I held up, I just have a few of them here. This is uh I've got

a ginormous library of high stuff, but the Kitabi Actas is is uh the most holy book

and um we'll talk about the suppression of Bahigh material a bit later. Kitabi Actan um is a book of certitude. We'll

go over these in a little bit, but this is their most holy book written in 1870s.

What would be the most uh if you're going to compare it to any book of the Bible, are these like historical

narratives or these like Paul's epistles giving doctrines? No, more about laws and you

know some of the stuff meant for the new world order. Okay. So very like Torahish

Islamic hadithi maybe more like that kind of flavor. Yeah. It has a real Arabic flavor kind

of a Muslim flavor even though they're going to say they're not Muslim but there's a lot of similarities with

Islam. Okay. A lot a lot.

So yeah. So any that writings Bahala that's the most holy book and you know so it's kind of like text mix or just

it's a mix of both. [laughter] Right. a baby. Okay. First thing goes, mind kind of

hungry. I need some food soon. But anyways, um yeah, so that so you have this and you have the uh so you have the

different uh scriptures that are just this sort of unique beliefs. Yeah, the unique beliefs that come from

that. And so how does that how what else are they adhered to as far as his teachings or are there are there current

sort of continuing revelations on top of that? kind of like how Mormonism has a book Mormon but

because we don't have the Mormonism about his current presidents but how said there would not be another leader

for a thousand years. Okay. So he's the current manifestation for

God to be more. So let's go over some of the beliefs there. We've talked about you know um 919. We've talked that a few

times. There's symbols of nine pointed star. Um the there's no such thing as evil in bahism. There's only an absence

of good. I know. Let that sink in for a second. I know. I can see the look on your face.

That would that would that would probably put a big conflict of interest for any of Rain Wilson's outcries

against any injustice in the world because he talks about that. I listen to a little bit of his book Soul Boom on

Audible and just from what I listen to he that seems to be kind of would be problematic. Well, what bahigh say is

that man is basically good and he has needs to fix himself by education and that you know it's basically moral

improvement, self-reformation basically by doing good and you know listening to doing a lot of the Bahigh rituals but

that's it. So there's there's no sinful nature not even such a thing as evil anyway.

So Satan's not a personal being. Satan's just basically man's lower nature. Um as far as God's concerned um they held a

very Islamic kind of God. Um they God is like a unitarian God of one person. Um he's unknowable in his essence.

So that's kind of like out of Islam. Um the real important a real center of bahayism is to understand the idea of

manifestations. So they believe in progressive revelation. Um you know you've seen those coexist bumper

stickers right with all it's kind of that flavor a little bit but I you think more of like the Indian parable. They

don't use this but it kind of fits more the Indian parable of the elephant the six blind men. Yeah. So, you know, these

six blind men went to the elephant. They started feeling the elephant. And one of them says, "Hey, it feels like a wall

because he's feeling the side of the elephant." Another one's feeling a tusk. And goes, "This feels like a spear."

Another one is feeling the trunk. He said, "No, no, this is not it doesn't feel like a wall. It feels like a a

snake." And another one's grabbing its leg and no, it feels like a tree to me. And another one said, grabbing the ear

said it's a fan. Or the one grabbing the tail said it's a rope. So, this is kind of like mankind. We're all trying to

understand God, but we're all touching the elephant in different ways. So whether you're a Buddhist or whether

you're a Muslim or a Zorastrian, Zorastra, by the way, was a leader Zarathra uh in in Persia, and he was

supposedly a prophet. It's a smaller group. There's a few, you know, temples around, but so they believe all

these these uh are people from God kind of like that. So, like we said before, you know, he's

got um you know, it's it's wrong for you to think your religion is special in any way. I don't think Christianity is

special anymore than any other religion. You need to understand how God works. He sends these different leaders in these

different cycles or dispensations. Like I said, they have Abraham, Krishna, Zar, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, the Bob

and Bahala. Those are nine manifestations. And then they talk about some of these smaller manifestations

around too. Now in regards to Jesus and you're talking about every everybody has, this

is what always fascinates me too. There's a book I really enjoy called putting Jesus in his place. Yeah. uh in

it like the opening segment of this chapter he says everybody has has to have Jesus on their team which is always

interesting like you can have Walter Martin would call him the calling the what the calling card of the cults

right yes like but you can't do that with any

other world leader like Muhammad doesn't show up in every other religion like there's no other other religious figure

that does that but Jesus you always have to you have to do something somewhere yeah

so when it comes to the Bahai do they think he was a real historical figure oh yeah oh yeah they'll

in a response We'll definitely go through who they say Jesus is and a lot of that stuff. Um they say the way the

best way to explain the manifestations of Bahigh, they say like God is like the sun

and the reflection the mirror is like the manifestations. You're not you're not really you know seeing God in his

glory but you're seeing the rays of the sun in the mirror. They use that they use that all the

time. Yeah. And also you may have mentioned this before but you you've given it so

information. And so I feel like you know when I whenever we're doing this episode I'm going to have to listen to a couple

times it could take and everything which it's always awesome to have all this study that you've done and just get it

out there but just the name Bahai like what is that? Follow

you know follower of glory. So someone who's a follower of Bahala is a bahigh. Okay follow Bahala who was the original

who was the current manifestation of the nine manifestations. He's the current manifestation that we need to follow.

Okay. So Jesus is obsolete. Muhammad kind of made him obsolete and then the Bob took

over. Yeah. He was like he he was like so four prophets ago Jesus, you know, he was like so yesterday. So

it was like Jesus and he got replaced by Bham and then Muhammad got replaced with the Bob and then now it's Bah.

And then it's a thousand years later. So Bahala is like the prophet of the day, the flavor of the week, you know.

So if we're going to use modern day tech terms, Bahigh would see the most current iPhone. Jesus to them would be an

iPhone. Not to be irreverent to them. Yeah, of course. We're not trying to using a

analogy. Yeah. Yeah. Would be like an iPhone 4S. Yeah. Exactly. That's it. So we can

maybe, you know, do a little cartoon thing of this. Yep. Yeah. Okay.

I was thinking also we need to maybe have this game on the show where we every time we mention Walter Martin, we

have a shot, right? [laughter] His name comes up. He nailed it. So well,

so as far as the um the manifestations, they're very different than humans like regular humans. They're not divine.

They're not God, but they're all sinless. So that means do the math. That means

not only Bahala was sinless, Buddha was sinless, Moses was sinless, Muhammad was sinless, they're all sinless. They say

all the prophets and they all lived in a pre-existence. So that's an interesting thought because, you know,

[clears throat] didn't Moses kill an Egyptian and bury him in the sand? Mhm.

Didn't Muhammad kill people by the edge of the sword? Didn't you know, I mean, you get there's so many arguments

against some of these previous and there's actually apologetic books by Bahigh showing how no no you're

misunderstanding. They never really sinned. All the manifestations of God are sinless

because Bahala said so. Okay. So, it's it's pretty wild. Um, you're

not allowed to show the prophet's faces, the manifestations faces. That's a lot like Islam, too, where you're not

allowed to show what Muhammad looks like. So, you know, when there's movies about the Bob or Bahalah, you can't show

his face. Interesting. You can't reproduce the face. Now,

there's two pictures that we have, old old [clears throat] black and white pictures, like a passport photo, it's

like a Bahala, and you know, they don't even like you posting those pictures. Would that be the same thing with images

of Jesus with uh behind? No. Yeah, they'd probably say the same thing, but yeah. Sorry. Yeah, I

understand the question. Yeah, absolutely. So, you're not show supposed to show the faces of the manifestations.

That's very interesting. I know that for example, you know, there's certain Christians who have convictions about

images of Christ, whether it's a second commandment or 2CV. That's I mean, that's that could be a whole another can

of worms. But but it would just be interesting to see that if they believe that it would be from a very different

reason, the same sense. Well, if they're saying that Jesus is sinless, it's not because scripture is the authority where

it comes from that. It's because Bahala said so. And it it comes out of Islam. There's a

lot of things we'll see that since it had that Islamic roots, it kind of has those similarities like you know

these things. So really just one last thing before you jump in here. So really when it comes

down to authority, the position of authority ultimately someone who's Bahigh is because Bahala said so.

Yeah. Basically he's like the current manifestation for today. Okay. You know, you you you're not supposed to follow

Jesus. Okay. In one sense, you they could say, like I said, it's one-sided mouth. Yeah. You

can be [clears throat] a Christian in a bahigh, a Hindu in a Bahigh, but you're not supposed to be because Bahala is the

prophet for Gotcha. Okay. So, and the next one, as I said, it's

supposed to be a thousand years from now. So, there's there's just so many

contradictions behind thousand years from now. It takes the press of having to get continued

revelation. That's always good. So,

moving on to Jesus. So, how do bahigh see Jesus? Well, they say that all the biblical prophecies about Jesus in the

Bible have been fulfilled in Bahalah. He is the second coming of Christ. So he literally is and they kind of say

this for all religions. So just like the Jews are looking for Messiah or Islam is looking for the 12th imam. Well, it's

all been filled in Bahalah, you know. Um Buddhism is looking for Lord Maitraa to come back. That's Bahalah. Or the 10th

incarnation of Vishnu, the 10th avatar in Hinduism, that's him. Azor Aastrians are looking for the world saver Shabaram

that's also Bah. So he's like the fulfillment of all these kind of you know esological

figures that different religions are waiting for. So in other words if I'm having a

conversation with someone who's of the Bahigh faith and say we're talking about the advent if you're talking about

defining terms of the language bear if I'm talking about that from their perspective they would think that I'm

actually really I'm truly longing for the manifestation of Bahala. I'm just looking to the advent of it of Christ in

his place. Well, it's already it's already happened,

right? It's done. Bah like when it talked about the spirit of truth, like I was, you

know, the spirit of truth is going to come. Um, you know, Shin Jean Gi, we did an

episode on that. They say that's Lee Manhei. And Muslims say that's Muhammad. Yeah. The spirit of truth who's coming,

that's Bahalah. He's the comforter. So, um, there's there's a lot of Bahigh writers like

William Sears wrote a book called Thief in the Night. And actually that's the book that got Dizzy Gillespie converted.

There's Michael Sours, there's Gary Matthews, no relation, but these guys have all written books trying to prove

how the fulfillment of um Bahala is the fulfillment of the second coming of Christ already. It's a

done deal. So um as far as Jesus uh why did Jesus come? That's a really good

question in Bahigh. So they say that the only reason he came was to do one thing. Here's um here's a

quote from Abdul Baha. The purpose of the appearance of the manifestations of God is the training of the people. That

is the result of their mission. The real outcome. The outcome the whole life of Jesus was the training of the 11

disciples and two women. I'll read that again. The outcome of the whole life of Jesus was the training of the 11

disciples and two women. He didn't come to die. He came to do teach his moral upgrade of teaching. Um why did he

suffer troubles or calamities? For the training of these few followers. Mhm.

Um this was a result of his life. The product of the life of Christ was not the churches but the illuminated souls

of those who believed in him. Afterwards they spread his teachings. Just real quick just a quick commentary. It's

almost if you're going to make it off of that you would have to say that Jesus was not the greatest teacher because how

many times in the in the New Testament do you see Jesus explaining something to his disciples and they are clueless.

They have no clue. Right. And then like he goes up and he does the transfiguration and basically how they

respond to it. Jesus responds with saying get behind me Satan. Exactly.

So if Jesus if that's the goal of it then there's a huge communication barrier between Jesus and disciples from

the you know if takes away from our Christian view because if to us why did Jesus come? He

died to lay down his life as a ransom for many and he gave his life for God so loved

the world. He gave his son. It's for us to have eternal life. And for behind, no, he just came to teach.

Yeah. So, as far as the resurrection is concerned, um they say that Jesus did

not rise bodily from the dead. A lot of people get this wrong when they talk about Bahigh. They think he raises an

invisible spirit creature like Jehovah's Witnesses. They basically say that Jesus didn't raise physically from the dead,

but his teachings caught on. They suddenly went three days later went, "Oh, that's what he meant."

So, here's a great another quote um from some answered questions, pretty famous Bahai book. We say that the meaning of

Christ's resurrection is as follows. The disciples are troubled and agitated after the martyrdom of Christ.

So he was a good teacher who didn't come to die for your sins. He was a martyr. Again, majorly contradicting, you know,

scripture and the words of Jesus himself. The reality of Christ, which signifies

his teaching, his bounties, his perfections, and his spiritual power was hidden and concealed for two or three

days after his martyrdom and was not respplendant manifest. No, rather it was lost. For the believers were few in

number and troubled and agitated, the cause of Christ was like a lifeless body. And when after three days the

disciples became assured and steadfast, began to um serve the cause of Christ and resolve to spread the divine

teachings, putting his counsel in the practice of rising to serve him, his religion found life. His teachings and

his admonitions became evident and visible. In other words, the cause of Christ was a like a lifeless body until

the life and the bounty of the Holy Spirit surrounded it. So basically they kind of said oh now we understand that

was the resurrection it resurrected spiritually in their mind their understanding what Bahala was teaching

for that time sorry what he was teaching all that time they never got the resurrection so

so they so they would adhere to then a spiritual resurrection not the physical resurrection

it's not even it's not a resurrection of spirit it's the fact that it resurrected in the consciousness of the followers

when they understood what he's been talking about for all that time. Yeah. Well, it's interesting too that

they would adhere in in some sense to the historicity of Jesus, but once it comes to the resurrection, it's almost

their pre-commitments all of a sudden they have to sort of move mold history in its image in concordance to their

pre-commitments. Well, they really have a low view of it. Yeah, they have a low view of it. like

um Bahala's son, he was up on a roof and he fell through a skylight and he fell and landed on this wooden crate and he

was killed like he's punctured through the crate and he died and Bahala made that equivocated that to

the death of Jesus that his that his son died like that and he even said that um even offered up uh

as a ransom for the regeneration of the world and the unification of its peoples. That's how he talked about his

son dying. He made that like a ransom for the world. So they they don't have a concept of Jesus being God. Obviously he

was just a manifestation. None of them are divine. He came here just as a teacher not to give his life as a ransom

for many. He they deny his resurrection. Uh they deny you know evil and everything. Why you would need a

resurrection the con conquest of evil and um they deny you know they just kind of make light of his his purpose of

dying is it's pretty a pretty different view than Christianity. Wow. So they're very spiritualized

hermeneutic. They don't think anything literal. And one of the big problems I was going to mention later but I can

mention it now is when Bahigh's kind of have this idea that you know Bahala now is the new manifestation they become de

facto infallible experts on all other world religions. So now that you understand that he's the manifestation

Buddha and Christian and Zarash all before him. We don't know our Bibles. Well, the

bahigh current manifestation is the real interpreter of what the Bible is, what the Quran was, the Zen Devesta of you

know Zorastaster. So basically they become like the divine interpreters of all the religions where we have to

listen to Balah. We don't even know our own religions properly. We have to take his word for the Bible really was

teaching that we're missing mindblowing. Yeah. So in other words, one of the episodes we covered you know you before

was Shin Chan Gi. In other words, what you're kind of looking at then is in the same way how he sort of took revelation,

mold it to its liking, they're basically taking their it's a world religions class, but it's fitting all but it's

fitting it all in, but molding it in the image of and taking certain parts literally,

certain parts figuratively where it supports their context. Mostly [clears throat] figurative. They

totally have they take figurative interpretations of Bible. The B we talk about the

historical grammatical method in hermeneutics and you understand the intent of the author and what they were

trying to communicate. They throw that all out the window as long as it can fit in with what Bahala was trying to say.

Yeah. And so just real quickly as as we kind of uh are sort of wrapping up starting to wrap up part one here. In

part two we're going to more into the apologetic sort of response. uh that what is maybe you'll get to those two

when you think about like salvation and how does that work in relation to bahigh like is that is there a point where you

know you have somebody who is Buddhist who's seeking reincarnation we look at Christians we're looking at

glorification you know what um how does that

we'll take a look I think this is going to take enough time that next week we can maybe pick up with their view of

life after death they have a whole view of you know where would man know who man is, where what man's problem is, and

where he's going to go after death. Um, there's it's a it's a group that's been

around for a while. They've got a lot of literature, a lot of teachings, and it takes a bit of time to go through,

you know, a religion that's been around hundreds of years. I'm sure there's more even before you

have here. I'm sure there's a lot more they could even expand upon this for sure.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. What are thought What are thoughts do you have kind of giving an overview of the Bahigh faith? I mean,

I know for me it's I'm probably going to give this a couple lessons, like I said, when this comes out because I this has

been so uh informative. What what's really what else is really important for our audience to understand u as we kind

of in the final parts of this episode kind of like I said where there people become bahigh for emotional reasons.

They don't become bahigh for intellectual reasons. They don't they it's a it's almost like a big social

club. They're trying to build a kingdom man on earth. They're not looking for, you know, God's a sovereign God's

redemptive plan where he invades time and space to save man. But as opposed he's try, they're just kind of building

their own utopia on the world through love, harmony, equality, that kind of thing. And there's no sense of it's it's

it's a very shallow kind of spirituality to me in a sense.

Yeah. They're going to argue and say they got the deepest thing going, but you know,

especially philosophically, there's there's not much meat in the bones. Okay. It's very broad, very very

emotional, very experiential. But when you start looking at the internal consistencies, that's where it starts to

fall apart. And we'll definitely I'm definitely look forward to hearing more. If this Mormons, they say, "Oh, we're

all about the family." Yeah. See, that's why we're a great religion. That's why we're the Well, these guys,

we're all about humanity and like wider than the family. We want to bring you into the fold to love on everybody.

Kumbaya and then So instead of families are forever, it's like humanity is forever pretty much.

We are the we are the world. That bumper sticker. Gotcha. Gotcha. So, in other words, it's

sort of like Yeah, it makes Yeah, it makes sense. All right. Well, uh this has been really good. So, if you have

enjoyed this, uh definitely where can people find out more about you? I know you have a website in the making or

and and a podcast examining the cults.com and we're going to have a dedicated site going through a lot of

the teachings and problems in bahayism which are going to hit hard next episode. But yeah, that's all going to

be on examining the bahigh.com. Awesome. Well, thank you again so much. And if you guys have enjoyed part one of

this episode, definitely let us know what you thought. And we will talk to you all in part two where we examine the

Bahigh faith on cultist where we enter into the kingdom of the cults. Talk to you guys soon.