This is why I believe in progressive revelation. |
When I read the sacred scriptures, God speaks to me through the presence of the Holy Spirit. I was reading the Holy Bible, the first time I experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit. As I read the verses Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount, a feeling of peace and tranquility came over me. I was awestruck, breathless; I had never experienced any thing like this before. It was a feeling of complete love and acceptance, as if God Himself embraced me. The next time I experienced the Holy Spirit’s presence, I was reading The Hidden Words of Baha’u’llah. Again, I felt as if God embraced me. I set awestruck at the feeling of complete peace and tranquility, of complete love and acceptance. However, this was not the last time I experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit when reading verses from a Holy Book. I, also, encountered the sensation of God’s embraced, when I read the words of Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita. I set mesmerized, wondering: How could I encounter the same sensation, when reading verses from the Holy Books of three different religions? I asked God for an answer. The answer did not come immediately. I had to search for it through the Sacred Scriptures themselves. As I searched, I continued to experience the embrace of God. I encountered the presence of the Holy Spirit when I read verses from the Qur’an, the Rig Veda, the Dhammapada, the Torah, the Zend-Avesta, and Selections from the Writings of the Bab. The answer came from the verses revealed by Baha’u’llah, in the Kitab-i-Iqan, on progressive revelation. It was at that point, I experienced a paradigm shift. That is when I started viewing the separate religions as chapters in a single Holy Book. That is when the concept of progressive revelation - the idea that periodically God sends prophets or messengers to humanity - became an integral part of my belief system. |