When I was growing up, my father would make sure every once in a while (usually on Sundays) to get out his well-worn King James Bible and do a little scripture reading. As a man of science, he was very interested and intrigued by the book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation, two very dynamic, epic and often considered impossible to understand books of the Old and New Testaments. His interest in these prophetic books and extremely terrifying places was no doubt influenced by things he had seen in his life: the nuclear bombings of Japan, the Chinese communist revolution in which a good friend of his from Manchuria disappeared and was never heard from again. of the. , the Koren war in which he fought and saw the full scale of human horror, and then the true beginnings of our technological revolution in the famous passage in Revelation that states that without the number or mark of the beast or the devil, no one you can buy or sell anything: social security numbers, credit card numbers, credit scores, anyone?
In this background and context provided by my father, I also found myself very interested in all of the end time prophecies and writings of the Bible and sought to understand or at least be familiar with them. But, and let’s be honest, drawing direct links between any prophetic work of any religion and establishing it directly in modern day life is, at best, an almost hopelessly complicated exercise that really only serves to make one drop out of society altogether. and go live in a compound somewhere, or just as bad throw up your hands and dismiss all the prophetic books as nonsense from a scientifically illiterate age irrelevant to today. What I have discovered is that the true power of the prophetic books of the Bible is to inspire the mind, spirit, and soul to step back from the daily grind and try to see the big picture, the big picture: in fact , God’s plan for the world and how he carries it out.
The reason I say this is very simple because, around the age of 12, I started having a very vivid, full color, immersive dream of a vortex of energy and light at the end of which was this presence that was both almighty and yet all kindness, and an accompanying feeling of being buoyed forward and also feeling completely at home in this presence. This was the kind of dream that when you wake up you remember everything as if it really happened, as real as that car accident you almost had or the ladder you almost fell off of.
Along with these occasional dreams, I went on with the rest of my life: I went to school, attended Sunday school, where I was one of the few “weird ducks” who regularly attended classes, and eventually became a confirmed Catholic. and an altar boy who helped. with Sunday Mass and was considering the study of Divinity. But then came my first encounters with the Baha’i Faith around the age of 18 and the funny thing is I was trying to convert and save everyone I knew who was Baha’i to be a Catholic because I found it both sad and enjoyable. a group of people like these Bahá’ís would be condemning themselves to eternal Hell for not following the Mother Church of the West.
This miniature one-man Inquisition went on for about a year, during which time I was very impressed that none of the Bahá’ís responded with my predictions that they were all doomed. And, heresy no doubt, I began to read some of the writings of the Bahá’í Faith and found in them a very warm and glowing presence, like the feel of the Bible only much more alive. Now, being a pretty scientifically minded guy, I couldn’t let that alone make any decisions regarding the theological situation of these people who still thought they were stuck in a no-win situation since, at least as far as I could understand, they were not strictly Christian.
Finally, when I was 19 years old, I took a trip to Chicago basically to eat pizza, see the Sears Tower and just have a vacation and during this trip, a visit to the Temple in Willmette was proposed to which I said sure. I’ve been to Rome and seen St. Peter’s, the Vatican and Notre Dame in Paris so epic religious architecture was something I felt I could handle with a vengeance and size wise the Baha’i temple in Chicago is not the same size (but then again, it wasn’t built on the backs of peasants or on the near bankruptcy of a nation either), so I didn’t think I’d see anything I couldn’t handle. Arriving at this temple I was pleasantly surprised at first as it is a very beautiful structure located along the shoreline of Lake Michigan and was obviously built with a lot of love and devotion and it is certainly a place great. But then I walked into the temple’s visitor center and was immediately overcome with the same sense of calling and being completely at home. And it made sense, suddenly, that the slightly cooler or less energized but still wonderful feeling of spirit that I had always felt from the Bible and from the readings and conversations with my father and from Sunday school was the same as the feeling of spirit that I was getting from the Bahá’í Writings and now in this temple in Chicago I was feeling that again, but I had never felt this kind of spirit in St Peters or Notre Dame, instead of marveling at the outward grandeur from epic religious architecture this presence, this immersive energy completely at home, came to me from a building.
That was it, I decided that I had to learn much, much more about the Bahá’í Faith because nothing that caused such a deep feeling could be wrong, I was as certain of this feeling as can be gotten from any evidence in science or observation of nature. Call it a leap of faith. And now I am in a beautiful place: I come to recognize the majesty that was Jesus Christ and at the same time I have accepted his Return in the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh and his Religion. Who knew that “the end of the world” could be so enlightening and revolutionary? Now I think of the Apocalypse not so much as a forecast of the unraveling of a planet, but rather as the beginning of a wonderful new era in which humanity could finally feel the welcome, the amazing welcome that touches you deep inside. , that God provides through His Covenant.
