# Baha'ism: A Warning

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-19 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Peter Easton, Baha'ism: A Warning, Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1998, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Bahá'ísm:
> 
> A Warning
> 
> Peter Easton
> published in Brilliant Proof
> 
> Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1998
> original date
> 
> Evangelical Christendom, London, 1911-09
> 
> [1] Nineteen hundred years ago our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ stood before a
> Roman tribunal. The Governor was convinced of His innocency, and proposed to
> release Him. The Jews, however, cried out, "Not this man, but Bar-abbas!" "Now
> Barabbas was a robber." Thus it was that God's chosen people, they who, for
> 2,000 years from the time of Abraham on, had been the special recipients of His
> grace and mercy, "denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer
> to be granted unto" them.
> 
> Is this scene being re-enacted before our eyes to-day? In this year of our
> Lord 1911, on the 17th day of September, at St. John's, Westminster, an
> Archdeacon of the Church of England, a man who bears an honoured name, placed
> in the Bishop's chair, in front of the altar, the leader of an Oriental sect,
> of whom, in a previous speech, he had spoken in terms of high praise, calling
> him "Master." Who is this man? His name is Abbas Effendi. He prefers, however,
> to be called Abdul-Bahá, servant of Bahá, his father, who died at Acre, in
> Syria, in 1892. In order, therefore, to know what this man represents and
> stands for, we must ask, what sort of man was Bahá, the head of this sect,
> after whom it is named? A worse than Barabbas — betrayer, assassin, and
> blasphemer — a worthy successor of that long line of Persian antichrists from
> the beginning of its history down to the present day. The story is a long one,
> and would need more time and space than can here be given to it. In the
> accompanying article, "The Babis of Persia," a short sketch is given of the
> principle and practice of this antichristian system.
> 
> How was it possible that a minister of Jesus Christ could commend such a
> faith? Was he ignorant of the true character of the sect? Why, then, did he
> commend it? Why, too, was he ignorant? Did he not know that the Church
> Missionary Society has had a mission in Persia for forty years, and that he
> needed but to inquire from missionaries of the Society in and about London to
> know the facts of the case? For over twenty years Professor Browne, of
> Cam-bridge, has been writing on this subject. Has the Archdeacon no knowledge
> of the damning facts, set forth in his works, in regard to the character of
> Bahá? Did he wish to inquire from those in the neighbourhood of Acre? How easy
> would it have been to get information from the English and American
> missionaries of Syria and Palestine.
> 
> Eighteen months ago Archdeacon Wilberforce wrote to Abdul Bahá, saying, "We
> are all one, there behind the veil." Is this the teaching of the Word of God?
> Does the Apostle say that we should be unequally yoked with unbelievers, that
> righteousness hath fellowship with iniquity, light with darkness, Christ with
> Bellial, the temple of God with idols? That, indeed, is the teaching of the
> pantheism on which Bahá'ísm and all its kindred sects are founded. from the
> hoary antiquity of 2,500 years, the beginning of Persian history, comes the
> blasphemous declaration, "God and devil yoked together." Men of upright
> character are, it is true, welcome to the ranks of these pantheistic sects.
> They make excellent stool pigeons. When, however, the deed of hell is to be
> done, another kind of man is needed; one whose conscience is seared as with a
> hot iron. Not what a man is, but what use can be made of him, is the
> determining factor. "Evil is a name of one of the conditions of progress — is as
> necessary, aye, more so, than what you call good, to your and our elevation to
> higher spheres." This idea is carried out in these pantheistic sects, in that
> the morally upright members are confined to the outer circle, the children of
> the evil one are admitted into the inner sanctuary. Here, then, we have the
> much vaunted unity, from which God preserve us.
> 
> Archdeacon Wilberforce calls Abdul Bahá, "Master." What about Christ? Does He
> teach that we can serve two masters? No. Then the archdeacon must choose whom
> he will serve, whether the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ or the
> Antichrist, Bahá. He cannot serve both. What say the people of England? Will
> they choose this modern Barabbas?
> 
> A word as to the bearing of the Archdeacon's declarations upon missionary work
> in Mohammedan lands. That work, as is well known, is not easy work. So
> difficult indeed is it, that men like Lord Curzon are utterly incredulous that
> anything can be accomplished. Surely, then, men who profess to be followers of
> our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ — above all, those who are looked upon as
> leaders in the Church, should do nothing to make that work still more
> difficult. Whatever else may be said of the Bahá'ís, it cannot be said that they
> are not wise in their generation, quick to use every means, fair or foul, which
> will advance their interests. That Abdul Bahá has been greatly encouraged by
> what he has seen and heard here in England to persevere in his scheme to make
> Bahá'ísm "the universal religion of the world, and the basis of the great
> universal civilization that is to be," is evident from his own words. That it
> will have a like effect upon his followers, to whom the news will be
> transmitted, not in cold English, but in the glowing phrases of Oriental
> imagination, cannot be doubted. Like Paul, on the road to Rome, they too will
> be encouraged; but it will not be to advance the kingdom of God, but the reign
> of Antichrist.
> 
> The Babis of Persia
> 
> The origin of Babism is to be sought in Persian pantheism, a system which goes
> back more than 1,000 years, during which time it has produced many sects, of
> which Babism is one of the latest. All these sects hold one fundamental
> doctrine, viz., that the murid, or disciple, is to give himself up absolutely,
> body and soul, to the murshid, or guide. To say that the murshid is, to all
> intents and purposes, in the place of God to the murid is to understate the
> matter. When God speaks to us He speaks to us as men, honouring the faculties
> of reason, conscience, and will with which He has endowed us. Does anything
> claim to be a new revelation, it must meet the demands of the old revelation,
> and stand or fall thereby. The pantheistic idea is other than this. Revelation,
> conscience, reason, will, are all annihilated. At every moment of existence
> there is nothing but absolute power; bare power on the one hand, and absolute
> passivity and negativity on the other. The murid is not a man in any true sense
> of the term, but mere material, a mere receptacle which is constantly being
> created and then taken to pieces, or filled and then emptied. What he is has
> nothing to do with the nature of the communications or commands which are made
> to him or laid upon him. Judged by ordinary standards, they may be reasonable
> or unreasonable, wise or unwise, holy or unholy; but with all this he has
> nothing to do. Is he commanded to tell the truth, he tells the truth. Is he
> commanded to lie, he lies. Are counsels of wisdom given to him, he carries them
> out. Are the wildest vagaries of a madman enjoined upon him, this duty of
> obedience is exactly the same. Let me say —
> 
> First — The system is an essentially vicious one, based as it is on the
> degradation of the murid, who is robbed of all that makes him a man and reduced
> to a mere automaton. The honour and glory of the murshid is built up on the
> ruin of the murid. A more perfect contrast to Christianity it is impossible to
> conceive. "Because I live," says the Saviour, "ye shall live also" (John xiv.
> 19). "And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be
> one, even as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made
> perfect in one, and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast
> loved them as Thou has loved Me" (John xvii. 22, 23).
> 
> Second — It cannot be reformed, seeing that the first step in the way of reform
> is to destroy the system root and branch.
> 
> Third — Every attempt to carry out the principle of this system has been
> fraught with the most terrible evil. The career of Mokanna in the eighth
> century, of which we have a true and faithful description in Moore's "Lalla
> Rookh," that of Babek in the ninth, and of Karmath in the tenth, both of whom
> turned the Oriental world into an Aceldema, or field of blood; more than all,
> that of Hassan Sabah and his followers, the Assassins, who for 170 years, from
> 1090 on, inaugurated a reign of terror compared with which that of the French
> Revolution was child's play. These and other instances which might be given,
> both in ancient and modern times, amply prove our assertion.
> 
> We are now asked to believe that Babism is an exception to the rule, that this
> devilish, this Satanic system — and no other words can describe it — has been
> transformed; that the serpent has lost its fangs, and that the wolf has become
> the true protector of the sheep. Where, we ask, is the evidence for this
> amazing claim? Is it to be found in the blasphemous declarations of Bahá, that
> he was not only Christ, but God the Father? Is it to be found in his life,
> stained with the basest of crimes? Is the man that attempted to poison his own
> brother, whom he had invited to eat with him, the inaugurator of a new
> dispensation of peace on earth? And what, forsooth, have we on the other side?
> Naught but honeyed words. The wolf arrayed in sheep's clothing — ergo, he is not
> a wolf. What makes the matter still worse is that no excuse can be pleaded for
> this man. He was a cold-blooded villain, not a madman, like the founder of the
> Druses, or a deluded enthusiast, such as we may suppose the original Bab to
> have been. Good men there are among the Babis, men who have been drawn towards
> the system, hoping to find in it truth which they had vainly sought in
> Mohammedanism; good, not because of the system, but in spite of it. Xavier was
> a holy man, but Jesuitism is anything but holy. We are to remember, moreover,
> that in all these pantheistic systems it is only a few who at first are fully
> initiated into "the depths of Satan," that it is the policy of the leaders to
> keep the multitude in ignorance, and to have some whose pure lives shall serve
> to mask their own corruption. In the case of the Assassins, the character of
> the sect was not fully exposed to the public view until more than seventy years
> after it was founded.
> 
> There is no need of wasting any sympathy on the sufferings of the Babis. That
> they have suffered terribly is true. That they have endured suffering with
> marvellous fortitude and constancy is also true. So, however, it has always
> been in the case of these sects. When the infamous Babek, whose rule was to
> cause the wives and daughters of his captives to be violated before their eyes,
> had his hands and feet struck off, "he laughed and smilingly sealed with his
> blood the criminal gaiety of his tenets" (Von Hammer's "History of the
> Assassins," p. 27). As teachers and practisers of assassination, the Babis
> richly deserve all they have been called upon to suffer.
> 
> It is idle to talk about their not interfering with governments, when, in the
> eyes of a Babi, there is no government but that of his leader. So long as that
> leader is in a state of semi-captivity, the exercise of his authority over
> rulers and countries may well slumber, lest he bring down vengeance on his own
> head. Let him, however, once become an independent sovereign, and we may then
> expect the return of that time when there was no security for sovereign or
> people; save as they became the slaves of the most awful despotism which ever
> showed itself on earth. More freedom for women! Yes, but from the days of
> Mazdak these sects have taught the community of women. The millennium to be
> inaugurated is one of absolute science. (Von Hammer, pp. 105, &c.)
> 
> After reading this and much other such stuff which finds its way into the
> public Press, one wonders how it is that Christian men and women can be so
> deceived. Nevertheless, it is true that there is a terrible fascination about
> these pantheistic schemes, which does seem for a time at least to rob men of
> sight, hearing, and understanding. Unquestionably, too, they contain grand
> views of truth, but the pity of it, the horror of it, is that the truth, which
> should be so presented as to be uplifting and inspiring, is but the bait upon
> the hook to drag down the soul to hell.
> 
> Note:
> 
> 1 Reprinted from Evangelical Christendom (Sept.-Oct., 1911), pp.
> 186-88.
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views12968 views since posted 1998; last edit 2025-01-20 19:55 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../easton_bahaism_warning;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> — *Baha'ism: A Warning (Used by permission of the curator)*