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The words of Baha'u'llah carry no weight with present-day churchmen. But what ground is there for supposing that in his invective against the Pharisees Jesus meant only the priests of his time and not a general phenomenon, the attitude of the priesthood to a new revelation? And what guarantee is there that the Christian divines of today are any less "blind guides" than the rabbis of old? Where is the certainty that what happened in the days of Jesus could not be repeated at His second coming? Do not the Gospels contain many warnings which make one conclude that the returned Christ might also be rejected? Jesus's question, "Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8), his parable of the wise and foolish virgins, (Matt 25:1) and the promise "Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame," are warnings to remain vigilant. Jesus left no doubt at all as to how much faith he would find on his return: "But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." (Matt 24:37-9). (107:1) see It is likely that the Pharisees, in rejecting Jesus by appeal to Scripture, had worse grounds and were less convinced of their rightness than the Christian and Islamic priests when they pronounce judgment on Baha'u'llah? The Jewish objections to Christ in the Christian era almost two thousand years ago were based-- like Christian objections to Baha'u'llah-- on scripture. Yet these apparently compelling theological grounds were false, because God had revealed Himself otherwise than men expected. Had (the theologian).. been a Jew at the time of Jesus, is he sure that he would have been on the side of the "small handful," the "tiny band" (his terms for the Baha'i communities), of the despised and obscure sect of Christians, and not on the side of those who "occupied the seats of authority and learning?" (Baha'u'llah).
(107:2)
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