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The
Baha’i faith now numbers some five million souls and the
Encyclopedia Britannica lists Baha’i as the second-most
widely spread independent religion in the world, after
Christianity. With Haifa, Israel as the site of its
international headquarters, its strong presence in the
United Nations, and within other international groups,
Baha’i is in a position to play a prominent role in the
fulfillment of end times prophecy. In fact, they state
in their literature that their goal is to do just that.
They eagerly await the man who will usher in global
peace (known to Christians as Antichrist), and
hold as one of their central missions the establishment
of a united global commonwealth that will control all
things political, financial, and spiritual. At times,
while reading from Baha’i writings, one begins to feel
like you’ve picked up a Bible and began reading directly
from the book of Revelation.
The
ultimate deception of the end times will involve the
worldwide worship of the Antichrist. But the Antichrist
will not rise to power alone. His success will result
from a worldwide spiritual deception perpetrated by his
sidekick, the False Prophet. The Antichrist will not
appear until after the falling away (2 Thess. 2:3), but
the spirit of Antichrist is already at work perverting
the gospel and corrupting the church. The False Prophet
will look religious, sound religious and use religious
terms, but his message will be straight from Satan (Rev.
13:11). The final phase of apostasy before the
Antichrist arrives on the scene will introduce a
religious system to be led by the False Prophet. It will
be an ecumenical, interfaith religion much like the
Baha’i faith.
There are nearly 130 agencies and organizations
operating within the UN system, each overseeing programs
that require vast sums of money and massive
bureaucracies to operate. These UN programs are all
strategic parts of a plan to achieve global governance
and eliminate national sovereignty from the planet. Most
of these programs are never covered in the world’s media
and are able to operate outside of the awareness of the
public they hope to govern. This giant bureaucracy is so
far outside the realm of accountability that most people
have no idea how it is operating or what agenda it is
moving forward. Most Christians would be shocked to know
how deeply involved the United Nations is in the
spiritual agenda of the interfaith movement. Just as
they are striving for a world government, they are also
working with religious leaders and organizations to
create the one world religion found in Bible prophecy -
the religion that is to be an integral part of the
Antichrist’s rise to power.
The Baha'i community has, as a duly accredited
non-governmental organization, long worked closely with
the United Nations, supporting many of its goals and
programs, and taking a leadership role in several
international gatherings. Its involvement in the United
Nations dates back to the founding of the UN in 1945.
In 1947, the Baha’i communities of the United States and
Canada were recognized by the UN Department of Public
Information (DPI), and the next year, the Baha’i
International Community itself was recognized by the UN
DPI as an international non-governmental organization.
In May 1970, they were granted consultative status with
the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), allowing
for a greater degree of interaction with the Council and
its subsidiary bodies. Since then they have also been
granted consultative status with the United Nations
Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and relationships with the
many UN bodies have deepened and expanded over the
years. Today for example, the Baha’i organization has a
working relationship with the World Health Organization
(WHO), is associated with the United Nations Environment
Programme, and is involved in joint activities with
UNIFEM and UNICEF as well as many other religious,
environmental and social programs within the UN, to
include peace-building, human rights, women’s affairs,
education, health, and sustainable development.
When you examine the beliefs and writings of the Baha’i
community, it is not hard to understand the United
Nations’ support and confidence in this organization.
Their end goal is the same. Just as the United Nations
believes that a new world order is just around the
corner, the Baha’i believe the human race is nearing the
next stage in their spiritual evolution - a phase that
brings us one rung higher on the evolutionary ladder
toward world peace and utopia. In their belief statement
they write that, “The current world confusion and
calamitous condition in human affairs is a natural phase
in an organic process leading ultimately and
irresistibly to the unification of the human race in a
single social order whose boundaries are those of the
planet.” They use their voice at the United Nations
to convince global leaders of the need for a spiritual
element in the development of the new world order. In
the Baha’i document “A Vision of World Peace”, written
by the Universal House of Justice, they state that “no
serious attempt to set human affairs aright, to achieve
world peace, can ignore religion.” The Baha’i
“incarnation of God”, Abdu’l-Bahá, said, “religion is
the greatest of all means for the establishment of order
in the world.” They refer to the organized religions
of today as “stuff of history” and claim that these
religions of exclusivity, intolerance, and perversions
of truth are the root of all evil and the cause for all
of the world’s social, political, and economic ills.
“A Vision of World Peace” goes on to say that “those
who have held blindly and selfishly to their particular
orthodoxies, who have imposed on their votaries
erroneous and conflicting interpretations of the
pronouncements of the Prophets of God, bear heavy
responsibility for the confusion and artificial barriers
erected between faith and reason, science and religion”.
They blame the resurgence of “fanatical religious
fervor” occurring across the globe for what they call a
“dying convulsion that is undermining the spiritual
values which are conducive to the unity of mankind”.
In 2 Peter 3:3-5, the Bible warns the following: “First
of all, you must understand that in the last days
scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own
evil desires. They will say, Where is this 'coming' he
promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes
on as it has since the beginning of creation. But they
deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the
heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water
and by water.”
Always eager to fulfill prophecy, a Baha’i statement
reads: “The time has come when those who preach the
dogmas of materialism, whether of the east or the west,
whether of capitalism or socialism, must give account of
the moral stewardship they have presumed to exercise.
Where is the “new world” promised by these ideologies?
Where is the international peace to whose ideals they
proclaim their devotion?” Of course the new world of
peace will come when our Lord Jesus Christ returns to
establish His kingdom on earth.
I Thessalonians 1:10 “..and wait for his Son from
heaven, whom he raised from the dead--Jesus, who rescues
us from the coming wrath.”
God warns us not to be deceived by those who will try to
pave the way for the Antichrists false peace and
deception.
II Thessalonians 2:3, 6-7 "Let no one in any way
deceive you for it (the Day of the Lord) will not come
unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of
lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction. And you
know what restrains him now, so that in this time he may
be revealed. For the mystery of lawlessness is already
at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he
is taken out of the way."
The Bible teaches us that in the end times a global
religion will be established. It is referred to as
Mystery Babylon, the mother of all harlots, and it will
ride in on the Beast that is Antichrist. We can see the
beginnings of this global faith today in our
increasingly ecumenical religious leaders, such
organizations as the United Religions Initiative, the
Parliament of World Religions, and in the United
Nations.
The Baha’i faith sees the United Nations as the vessel
by which the unifying of the world’s religions into one
faith will come to fruition. Their plan for the future
of our world and the role of the United Nations and a
regionalized world, are an eerily complete and detailed
picture of Bible prophesy. Baha’i writings state “the
oneness of humanity implies an organic change in the
structure of present-day society, a change such as the
world has not yet experienced…It calls for no less than
the reconstruction and the demilitarization of the whole
civilized world – a world organically unified in all the
essential aspects of life, its political machinery, its
spiritual aspiration, its trade and finance, its script
and language.” They also promote a redistribution of
wealth and a communist system of government that would
be able to bring about this leveling of the playing
field. This brings to mind the Antichrist’s future
financial system in which no one will be able to buy or
sell without the mark of the Beast.
While the Baha’i praise the United Nations as the only
hope for the “world peace promised by all the major
religions”, they are not satisfied with its progress and
are a loud voice on the international stage for stepping
up the pace of our “spiritual evolution”.
In a statement to the World Summit on Sustainable
Development in August 2002, the Baha’i Community wrote,
“despite significant achievements, the United Nations
has yet to grasp fully both the constructive role that
religion can play in creating a peaceful and prosperous
global order, and the destructive impact that religious
fanaticism can have on the stability and progress of the
world.” They go on to say “while the United
Nations’ human rights machinery has been used to condemn
religious intolerance and persecution, UN development
policies and programs have hardly begun to address
religious bigotry as a major obstacle to peace and
well-being.” While we do not deny that the world has
seen a great deal of death and violence due to religious
fanaticism (most prevalently today from Islamic
fundamentalists), the Baha’i view goes further. The
Baha’is won’t be satisfied until Bible-believing
Christians join them in believing that all paths lead to
God, and all claims to truth are silenced. In response
to what they call religious fanaticism, they suggest
that religious leaders need to “work untiringly to
exorcise religious bigotry and superstition from within
their faith traditions and renounce claims to religious
exclusivity and finality”. And who decides what is
superstition and what is truth? The Baha’i and the world
community, of course. “Abdul’-Bahá, the Baha’i
“incarnation of God”, in “The Promulgation of Universal
Peace”, defined superstition as “beliefs and opinions
that are found contrary to the standards of science; for
the antithesis of knowledge is ignorance, and the child
of ignorance is superstition.”
Baha’i writings also stress that force and coercion in
matters of religion and belief are violations of the
Divine command. This sounds reasonable. No one should be
forced to accept a religion. However, Baha’i writings
also consider simple proselytizing to be coercive. They
believe humans should be able to investigate reality for
themselves, and to present your truth to another is to
violate that spiritual right. They believe all
religions are equally valid and just different
expressions of the same God, so there is no reason share
your faith with others.
The Baha’i make no distinction between the government
and private citizens when condemning intolerant
religious speech and expression. They support building
on the “Convention Against Discrimination in Education”
to include sanctions for those who, in the name of
religion, would use education and media to oppress
freedom of conscience and to promote division. Whether
public or private, they say, there should be no
tolerance for educational institutions and initiatives,
or media policies and programs that promote intolerant
attitudes and behaviors. Remember, as proselytizing to
others, claiming an exclusive path to salvation, or
condemning a lifestyle like homosexuality is deemed
intolerant, this would apply to private religious
schools and quite possibly churches. In a statement to
the United Nations on the spiritual dimension of
Sustainable Development, the Baha’i International
Community wrote “Ultimately, the creation of a
peaceful and just global civilization, in which the
diverse peoples of the world live in harmony with one
another and with the natural world, will require a
significant reorientation of individual and collective
goals and a profound transformation in attitudes and
behaviors.”
So, just how do they plan to bring about this
transformation? In a statement to the World Summit on
Sustainable Development, the Baha’i community presented
several possible next steps for transforming the United
Nations. As a first priority, they proposed holding a
convention on freedom of religion and belief to be
drafted and ratified as expeditiously as possible by all
of the governments of the world. They suggested the
foundation within the United Nations system of a
permanent religious forum, patterned on the UN’s
recently founded Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
The creation of this body would be responsible for
beginning the integration of religion into the UN’s work
of establishing a peaceful world order.
Of course, to participate in this forum, religious
leaders would need to meet certain criteria. Their
proposal states “only those religious leaders who
make it clear to their followers that prejudice, bigotry
and violence have no place in the life of a religious
person should be invited to participate in the work of
this body.” You can be sure that any religious
leader who actually believes that Jesus is “the way, the
truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father
except through Him”, would be disqualified from
participation. A belief in the Bible as absolute truth
puts you in the category of intolerant and would make
you guilty of prejudice.
The statement closes by saying that “until the
religions of the world renounce fanaticism and work
wholeheartedly to eliminate it from within their own
ranks, peace and prosperity will prove chimerical. It is
they who must raise their voices to end the hatred,
exclusivity, oppression of conscience, violations of
human rights, denial of equality, opposition to science,
and glorification of materialism, violence and
terrorism, which are perpetrated in the name of
religious truth.” How very tolerant! Oppress
someone’s conscience, have the nerve to believe the
Bible is the only absolute truth, or claim there is only
one path to God, and you will be eliminated. Once again,
the Baha’i have written their script for the world’s
future directly from the prophecies of the Bible, and
have given us a perfect example of the Spirit of
Antichrist that marks all false prophets and false
religions.
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