The Baha'i Faith

[zanOTK]

I hope I answered your questions satisfactorily?

In many ways you did. Thank you. I understand how jesus would trump mozes, and guess paul would trump jesus (if you hadn't included the part about Manifestations, which I'm guessing jesus is and paul isn't) and so on.

The Manifestation-thing is confusing however. And I feel I should ask for clarification because it appears to be the meat of my question now. How does one go about finding out if someone is a Manifestation?

I mean: could any books by Manifestations have been missed? I know there won't be a new one for a 1000 years but what about older ones? A good many new religious texts by ancients have been unearthed and published since your religion defined itself... Is there a committee/pope/whatever reading these and dismissing them?

We know a Manifestation is a Manifestation if they fulfill prophecy, or were mentioned as such in a Holy Book. If neither of those are true, then they're probably not Manifestations.

Could any books by Manifestations have been missed? Hell yes! In fact, we are specifically told that there were many, many more Manifestations than we have record of.
However, no. There is no comittee/pope/whatever which reads these texts and says yay or nay. If it is not mentioned in the official Writings of Baha'u'llah, then it is not (officially) considered authentic. However, there is nothing stopping individual Baha'is from acepting their authenticity.

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Hi zan, it seems that in trying to be all inclusive your religion just shouts the fact that it doesn't really believe any thing at all....if a new Manifestation came up next week Ba'hai would be happy to try to fit that in somewhere if it could ...to me, all religions are delusion anyway, not trying to insult you but you are on an atheist forum after all...ba'hai seems to be on a mission to portray and shape itself as a religion for everybody, a religion for the future..but I wouldn't trust anybody that wanted to be all things to all men but still tried to say there is a Diety.
This just seems half-way to Humanism.

Many seem to think this at first. But we're not inclusive in the way you're thinking. We believe other religions are true, but not that the current practice of that religion is true. Example: we accept Islam as the religion founded by Muhammad, and the Quran as the Word of God. Just like Muslims. However, unlike Muslims, we do not believe that Muhammad was, in fact, the last Messenger sent by God. Further, we accept the Christianity as the religion founded by Jesus, and we believe that the book of the New Testament are a semi-accurate account of His life (with some serious flaws). We do not, however, accept the Jesus was God, or that God is a trinity. We are strict Monotheists, meaning we believe there is only One God, One Person (if that word can be used. Using the term "person" implies anthropomorphism, which is totally against Baha'i belief).

We most certainly do not try to be "all things to all people." We believe very specific things. They don't always agree with what others believe. That does not stop us from believing in them.

Nor would we try to "fit in" a Manifestation that showed up next week. Mainly because our prophecies specifically state that the next Manifestation will not appear until (at minimum) 1'000 years have passed since Baha'u'llah. So far, less than 200 of those 1'000 have passed. We've got a while to go. And besides that, even if another Manifestation COULD appear next week, we wouldn't "fit" him/her in. We would accept them, and follow whatever laws they declared rather than the Baha'i laws. That's how it works. We don't just "fit in" Manifestations.