Bab
The True Founder of the Bahai Faith was Bab, Who was Martyred
It was around twelve hundred years after Prophet Muhammad that another Prophet came. And that was Bab. Bab means the door. Bab brought the teachings of the Babis, the teaching that has a very universal flavor in it ( 
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Actually Prophet Muhammad had predicted the coming of another Prophet. He said, If you do not believe, if you do not follow, or if you do not become completely submissive to God, God is going to send another Prophet and He is going to bring a new teaching. And that is exactly what happened.
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Prophet Muhammad warned Moslems in Surah the Table Spread (Al-Maidah), 54, that if they forget his teachings, in his stead, God will bring a people whom He loves and they would love Him This indirectly meant that another Prophet would come. Still the very word Moslem means to be surrendered to the Will of God, so if a new movement with a more progressive ideology was revealed to humanity, a Moslem (surrendered one) should accept it, or at least not oppose it.
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Bab came in the middle of a nation that was completely Islamic. He was from southern Iran, from a city called Shiraz. He preached the unity of all religions, and he said he was the Expected One. Later on he said that he was Bab, he was the door. He was the one who came before the Expected One.
A lot of people believed in him, and his followers were very strong so his mission started growing very fast. The Moslems became a little concerned, What is happening with this man who came and brought this teaching, and the people are following him, listening to him, and accepting him as such? The king even sent one of his closest scholars to see who is this man in Shiraz, who is proclaiming this new religion and teaching something else besides Islam.
So this scholar went to see Bab and was converted. Oh, the king said, That is dangerous. Even my closest scholar converted to his teaching. So the whole government and structure became very concerned.
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It was just like the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Roman Empire who became concerned about Christ going around and the people following him. They thought he was gong to start a revolution and tried to crucify him. But he said, My kingdom is not of this earth. My kingdom is from Spirit. I am not opposing any government. I am not here to destroy anything. However, the carnal mind thinks differently. It is very afraid to lose its power and prestige.
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That is sad, isnt it? Whenever a Truth comes from God, the Prophet has to go through such a struggle to convey the message. Many times we can see from the very beginning, from Noah, to Moses, to Christ, to Muhammad, to Bab, all of them suffered great sufferings at the hands of those who thought they were doing the right thing.
The person who was teaching the new religion was an infidel to them. Because of their human minds and ways, they thought that what he said was against their traditions and against what they believed. To them, they were doing the right thing because he was saying what they were not used to hearing and understanding.
They felt they were correct to destroy a man whom they thought was against them. But none of the Prophets were against anyone. Prophets bring a new teaching that actually guides humanity to progress to another step of understanding, to a higher level of realization.
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So a kind of opposition started rising toward Bab, and they imprisoned him. They moved him from one prison to another prison and eventually he was shot. He was killed by a firing squad. The story is that he had not finished his work with his secretary. So he told them, I am not finished yet. They insisted, No, you have to be killed. He said, Well, OK. And they shot at him. After the smoke was gone, they noticed he was not there. And they went and found him; he was dictating the last words to his secretary. By the time he was finished he said, OK, now I am ready, lets go. And that is how he was killed.
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So Bab was shot, and he was no longer on earth. But he chose a person by the name of Sub'I'azal as his successor. He was gong to continue after Bab. And SubIazal, of course, was a very mellow person, not a very strong personality. He just kept very low key, and eventually he moved from Iran to Iraq and started preaching there.
SubIazal had a brother called Bahaullah. (Bab also gave a title to himself, the name Bahaullah . So he also was called Bahaullah. Bahaullah means, The Beauty of God.)
Bahaullah started opposing his brother. He was more aggressive. He had more charisma. He could see that his brother was a mellow person, and was not really doing too much. He just continued receiving people. And so the Babis faith became kind of a mellow faith.
Eventually the problem between SubIazal and Bahaullah reached a point where Bahaullah left. He was kind of excommunicated from the Babi movement. He went and spent two or three years with the Sufis in Iraq. And after two years he came back and he said, I am the Expected One. I am the one who Bab was preaching would come after him.
Of course, Bab had already preached that the Expected One was going to come much later after him. That is why he wanted SubIazal to just keep the faith going until the Expected One came. But because SubIazal was such a mellow person, he was not aggressive enough to spread it out from where he was. Bahaullah was chosen to do that.
Bahaullah started getting in trouble himself. He was pushed out of Iraq to other countries and eventually ended up in Jerusalem. He lived in Jerusalem the rest of his life. Later he had a son, and his son brought the teaching to the West. It was Bahaullahs son who brought the Bahai Faith to Europe and America. That is how the Bahai Faith spread to the West, which is a good thing. Otherwise we would not know too much about the Bahai Faith and Bab. Probably it would be a small sect somewhere in Persia and Iraq, and we might have never heard about it.
So that again was Gods work that Bahaullah spread the Babis and Bahai Faith to the West, but that is what he was chosen to do. Of course, Bahai also changed some of the teaching of Bab to make it more livable in that hostile environment. He had to mellow down some of the things that Bab had taught.
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In fact, it was The Plan of God for this to happen, because a further evolutionary process was necessary. Still two more steps were needed to bring the highest realization to humanity. This imperfection is revealed in Rev.3:2, which says, I have not found thy works perfect before God.
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Actually, when Bab chose his successor, the one who was prophesied to come, he said, He is going to come from my beloved city. His beloved city was Tehran.
That is why Bahaullah, the disciple of Bab, proclaimed later on that he was the one who was going to come. It is accepted that he was from Tehran, but he was not (he was from north of Tehran, the Azerbaijan province); also Bab had said that he was going to come much later. Bahaullah, however, came out and said, Well, Im from Tehran, I am from the beloved city, only nine years after Bab.
So, the Bahai Faith ( ) is also part of the Mission, part of our teachings. It is a beautiful teaching and they cover a lot of beautiful, wonderful things. They are the people who have been prophesied in the Bible, in The Revelation, that many of them would be killed and they would be given the white robes when they go to heaven. And that is exactly what happened to the followers of Bab. Many of them were killed and destroyed, and they were strong followers, very faithful and very strong.
In later verses in The Revelation, they go to God and say, When is your justice going to come? And God tells them, Your brethren also have to be crucified, and have to suffer. We see that is coming true right now, because a lot of Bahais and Babis are still being persecuted in Iran.
They will see that their brothers are still continuing to be persecuted. So God even told them, This is not the time. It is not you who are going to bring the whole truth, or the highest, or the last one. You have to wait until later on. We can again see that there is another prophecy, another sign given to us, that it is going to come a little later. And later for God probably is two hundred years.