The following continues our series on the Gospels and the Revelation of Baha’u’llah-

Even a cursory review of the Gospels reveals a significant amount of attention paid to the miracles of Jesus, and then later even his apostles.  These miracles are often described in very specific terms- like literally raising a person from the dead or giving sight to the blind.  The passage below, again from the Gospel of Matthew, is just a sample-

“While he was saying this, a synagogue leader came and knelt before him and said, “My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live.”  Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples.

 Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak.  She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”

 Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment.

 When Jesus entered the synagogue leader’s house and saw the noisy crowd and people playing pipes, he said, “Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him.  After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up.  News of this spread through all that region.

 As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!”  When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?”

“Yes, Lord,” they replied.

 Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you”;  and their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, “See that no one knows about this.”  But they went out and spread the news about him all over that region.

While they were going out, a man who was demon-possessed and could not talk was brought to Jesus.  And when the demon was driven out, the man who had been mute spoke. The crowd was amazed and said, “Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.”

 But the Pharisees said, “It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons.”

For the people in the time of Jesus, these stories would have likely been a major reason that they would have believed in Him.  In modern times, people are much more skeptical, and the miracles stories probably do more to hurt the cause of belief in Jesus than help it.  Thomas Jefferson, who was a Christian, famously created a Bible known as the “Jefferson Bible” in which he took out all the stories of Jesus performing miracles and only highlighted his spiritual and ethical teaching. Jefferson thought that the miracle stories clouded the picture of the true greatness of Jesus.

Baha’u’llah’s teaching on the miracles of the Manifestations is nuanced. Baha’u’llah discouraged His followers from focusing on miracles and asked them to believe in His Revelation based on the effects of His words on their heart.  The Bab had even stated that, in the past, the proof of the revelation of God came through “physical” proofs, but in our time, it needed to be through the heart, as humanity had advanced in its spirituality and needed to base its belief on a more sublime understanding of spiritual truth. 

In a Tablet to an Orthodox priest, Baha’u’llah describes the greatness of Christ-

“Know thou that when the Son of Man (Jesus) yielded up His breath to God, the whole creation wept with a great weeping. By sacrificing Himself, however, a fresh capacity was infused into all created things. Its evidences, as witnessed in all the peoples of the earth, are now manifest before thee. The deepest wisdom which the sages have uttered, the profoundest learning which any mind hath unfolded, the arts which the ablest hands have produced, the influence exerted by the most potent of rulers, are but manifestations of the quickening power released by His transcendent, His all-pervasive, and resplendent Spirit.

We testify that when He came into the world, He shed the splendor of His glory upon all created things. Through Him the leper recovered from the leprosy of perversity and ignorance. Through Him, the unchaste and wayward were healed. Through His power, born of Almighty God, the eyes of the blind were opened, and the soul of the sinner sanctified.

Leprosy may be interpreted as any veil that interveneth between man and the recognition of the Lord, his God. Whoso alloweth himself to be shut out from Him is indeed a leper, who shall not be remembered in the Kingdom of God, the Mighty, the All-Praised. We bear witness that through the power of the Word of God every leper was cleansed, every sickness was healed, every human infirmity was banished. He it is Who purified the world. Blessed is the man who, with a face beaming with light, hath turned towards Him.”

As one can see, He urges us to interpret the miracles of Jesus in a spiritual way.  Whether or not the leper was healed of their physical leprosy was inconsequential. It was the recovery from their “perversity and ignorance” that was the most important thing.  The Manifestations of God come to heal spiritual illnesses, not physical ones (and indeed Baha’u’llah explicitly left that job to science!) 

Baha’u’llah is clear however, that the Manifestations of God can do miracles, if need be. In fact, when a group of clergy in the time of Baha’u’llah sent an emissary to question him, Baha’u’llah told the emissary to gather the clergy and settle on a miracle for Him to perform and He would do it. However, the stipulation was that if He did it, they then had to accept His Revelation.  The clergy did not accept the challenge as they couldn’t agree on a miracle.  In another passage, Baha’u’llah further said that something is a miracle only if one doesn’t understand it, that “human reason is not the balance” as it is based on our experience, and human experience is limited. We wouldn’t believe a description of the sun in the sky if we didn’t see it every day. That the Manifestations of God can do a miracle is just because of the reality of who they are. It is not a miracle as it proceeds from their role as representatives of God.  

So did Jesus perform real miracles or were these just stories that reflect healing from spiritual sicknesses and not physical ones? Or did the Gospel authors, who wrote 100 years after Jesus, transmit these stories in order to convince people of His truth, irrespective of whether He actually did miracles?  We will probably never know. 

But Baha’u’llah’s Revelation does teach us something really important. Whether or not actual miracles did occur, the most important thing about Jesus was the effect His teachings had on human hearts.  The fact that we are still talking about Him, now 2000 years after His life, and He still profoundly impacts people on a daily basis, is the true testament to His greatness.

Next post in this series- The Way, the Truth, and the Life.