shathaway

Do Covenant Breakers still have influence? The answer is [YES]!

Years ago, I remember hearing of an organization of Covenant Breakers, They claim to have organized as "The National Spiritual Assembly of the Covenant-breakers of Eastern Oregon and Tiajuana." Their presence still exists on the Internet today. If you think the persecution in Iran is bad, just the presence of these Covenant Breaker groups is soul chilling.

Their writings are down-right sacrilege. Their blasphemy is destrictive to the soul. Please encourage all seekers to research the authentic sources of Baha'i writings for information -- those sources sponsored and published by our beloved Baha'i institutions!

Sincerely,
Steven J.Hathaway

P.S.
We must continually pray for protection so that we can keep strong our faith and not be swayed in our beliefs by these religious fringe groups.

I shall not continue this thread, because the content tends to make me ill.
:wacko

daniel

Yeah that doesnt sound too good!

Jafar

everyone should become accostomed to criticially reflecting on what they learn. not only that, but the first couple pages of the Iqan seem to be intended on teaching us how to learn, know and love. not sure many other things are as important, and the whole covenant breaking issue is tightly wrapped up in it....

arthra

If you look back in Baha'i history there have been quite a few people who became covenant breakers but usually for reasons of personal concern and promotion I think.

I wouldn't worry that much about the presence on the internet as most of the sites representing covenant breakers are easily discerned and even those only partially familiar with the Faith can sense they are "off" somehow.

- Art

ocean_drop

My friend converted from Sunni Islam to the so-called 'Baha'is under the Provisions of the Covenant.' They are led by Dr Leland Jensen, an evidently false teacher. My question is, does my friend count as a covenant-breaker, or is it only those who were already registered with the Universal House of Justice and THEN joined the schismatics, that count as covenant breakers?

arthra

You know that's a very good question and my understanding is that only those persons who have been so identified as having been Baha'is and turned their backs on the covenant of Baha'u'llah can be considered covenant breakers. But it's also true that we are advised not to associate with those who have broken Baha'u'llah's covenant ... so we leave them to themselves. We can pray that someday they will repent and return to the Faith.

Leland Jensen by the way was a "Knight of Baha'u'llah" and went to the Seychelles Islands at some point. There were many who arose to the call of the beloved Guardian to open up areas that had not had any Baha'is and so these persons were recognized as Knights of Baha'u'llah. I've met oh probably six of these persons and they were exemplary Baha'is.. but you know anyone can later in life decide to reject the Faith or maybe try to set up their own version of it but none of the attempts have ever been successful in dividing the Faith.

- Art:wink

Eftekhar Be Khoda

I could tell something was up with the BUPC crowd. For one thing, Jensen loves to take things out of context. Ezekiel is discribing a temple -- I think the second one, but somehow this becomes a prison. A reference to an actual high priest (who AFAIK was actually living at the time of Ezekiel) is Jensen himself.

Plus, they really really love the idea of an apocalypse, which will of course put them in power.

I think they're still predicting the nuking of New York.

RuhiWarrior19

I remember investigating the Faith about two years ago mostly on the internet and finding there were two types of Baha'i websites:

1. Those that talked largely about Progressive Revelation and spiritual principles I wholeheartedly loved.
2. Those that talked almost exclusively about succession and threw some talk about the Egyptian Pyramids and literal eschatology.

If I wanted literalistic eschatology and a weird mixing of history/science with religion I would join one of the fundamentalist churches near me. Needless to say I could tell which one the spirit of `Abdu'l-Baha (Who I had fallen inexplicably and spiritually in love with at that point ) flowed in.

That said, when we are talking about Covenant Breakers we ought to be careful. Speaking harshly when evaluating them to learn what not to do is one thing, but the fact remains that all forms of backbiting and calumny are forbidden to us. Although they have committed spiritual crimes, we do not have a free license to commit spiritual crimes against them. It is a very fine line that I don't claim to have mastered myself.

Yes we shouldn't worry to much about them. Even a little spiritual discernment can make the difference obvious. Instead of worrying about the online presence of Covenant Breakers we ought to concern ourselves with making the resources for learning about the Faith online even better!

prarchefeux

There are a few covenant breakers organisations, small groups, separated. But they do a lot of propaganda and information on Internet. It all started while the international baha'i council was created by Shoggi Effendhi. It cames after the guardian passed away in 1957, with the Masson Remey case.
There is a good document published by the UHJ and Amatu'l Bahà about it. While this document truly believes that after Masson Remey passed away and nominate his mecanician "Pepe", new guardian, all have collapsed and thos organisations are no more.

There has been in fact a long transition between 1957 and 1963, election of the first Universal House of Justice in Haifa by the "hands of the cause". In fact, if all hands of the cause that didn't had the executive power to create it as mentioned in Abdu'l Bahà's testament at this time, they believed that they had to do it. Because the executive power in the community was inside the international baha'i council. And the international council was exploding, dividing itself due to multiple intervention of different covenant breakers ! the Masson Remey pretention was only one of them. The creation of the Universal House of Justice was a necessary positive évolution of the baha'i faith !

Tooday you can find all kind of small "covenant breaking baha'i organisations", calling themselves "orthodox baha'is" or "baha'i under the protection of the covenant", all kind of things like this. They all pretend that Haifa UHJ have themselves "broke the covenant", just to accuse without understanding. It was big trouble times for the faith between 1957 to 1963.

Those tooday organisations pretends on different kinds of guardianship invented by their own. But they have no power and influence on the baha'i community. Some pretends that all religions comes from egypt and the great pyramid keeps all the secret of the bible. Following this, you fall into new age squizophrenia and false imaginations.

The best thing to do is to ignore them and never take care of it !