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Talisman Books #5
Ladrón en la noche. El extraño caso del milenio perdido
El periodista William Sears narra su aventura espiritual rastreando las profecías sobre el retorno de Cristo. Con la misma intriga de una novela policíaca, recorre pistas, versículos de la Biblia, datos históricos, movimientos apocalípticos… hasta descubrir los hilos profundos de la historia. Lo que descubre es asombroso. Las esperanzas del judaísmo, del cristianismo y del islam se entretejen y hallan un cumplimiento armónico inesperado. La vuelta de Cristo es como la llegada del Ladrón en la Noche y puede hallar a muchos dormidos en su sueño.
401 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1961
57 people are currently reading
386 people want to read
About the author
William Sears
13 books31 followersWilliam Sears (March 28, 1911 - March 25, 1992) was a prominent American Bahá'í teacher and writer.
Sears was appointed a Hand of the Cause by Shoghi Effendi in the last contingent of Hands prior to his death in 1957.
Sears was a United States television and radio personality. He remains an extremely popular author in the Bahá'í community.
(source: Wikipedia June 28, 2008)
Picture reproduced with permission of the Bahá’í International Community.
Sears was appointed a Hand of the Cause by Shoghi Effendi in the last contingent of Hands prior to his death in 1957.
Sears was a United States television and radio personality. He remains an extremely popular author in the Bahá'í community.
(source: Wikipedia June 28, 2008)
Picture reproduced with permission of the Bahá’í International Community.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 7, 2011
This is a truly amazing book describing the advent of the most recent messenger of God, Baha'u'llah. I thought if there was a chance that the Christ spirit had returned I wanted to know about it. This book proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was indeed a second coming, but just like in Christ's time, he went unrecognized by most who were awaiting him.
The author is an investigative reporter who takes his task seriously as he searches for clues about the second coming in the Christian Bible, as well as other religious works. He knocks down each of his concerns one by one, challenging the words from the Bible to make sure this man from the East is truly the Savior come again.
This book should convince anyone, Christian or not, that Baha'u'llah is the real thing, and that the Baha'i faith is the true new faith that will gather us all together in one religion to save this world.
The author is an investigative reporter who takes his task seriously as he searches for clues about the second coming in the Christian Bible, as well as other religious works. He knocks down each of his concerns one by one, challenging the words from the Bible to make sure this man from the East is truly the Savior come again.
This book should convince anyone, Christian or not, that Baha'u'llah is the real thing, and that the Baha'i faith is the true new faith that will gather us all together in one religion to save this world.
Read
August 21, 2015This book isn’t a novel, it’s a religious tract. I’m not being sarcastic or anything, it’s the story of how one man journeyed from a born-again Christian to becoming a Baha’i.
I was given this book by some friends of mine who are Baha’i and who wanted my input on why this book may or may not be effective in the hands of someone who isn’t Baha’i. I don’t think of this as a conversion tool, because the people I know don’t seem that interested in winning converts, but at the same time, that’s clearly the purpose of this book.
So, how was it? Well, honestly, for me, not very convincing. I could get into detail here, but I don’t feel the need for it. I’m of the opinion that any apologetics type of book, regardless of the faith it’s defending/sharing, is really intended for the already converted, to sort of strengthen their faith. I don’t think it’s really good for anything else other than a rhetorical device for believers.
But, as it stands, about 2/3rds of its space is taken up by prophecies regarding the return of Christ and how that occurred in 1844 in the person of Bahaullah. In all, I immediately got bogged down in the details of this book, having a very hard time following the leaps in logic the author makes in order for prophecies to be fulfilled in the manner he lays them out.
And look, I’m being vague here because, honestly, I don’t think anyone would care. Because going through something like this one line at a time would take me weeks, months, or most likely, years.
And, again, no one would care.
Believers would ignore or dismiss me, and non-believers would wonder why I was wasting my time. And if there is anything I’ve learned over the years, no one changes their mind on religious matters based on a point by point rebuttal of an apologetics book written 50 or more years ago.
And I’m sure if I were to look for it, there are probably whole websites dedicated to doing just that very thing.
You know what, I feel like I’m dismissing a thing without explaining why I’m dismissing a thing. So, I guess one quick example would be okay.
So to get you into the idea of where my head is at, and how far I’m apart from the anticipated audience, this book starts off with the author discussing in a very conversational tone how the decades between 1830 – 1850 were so odd. About how the world universally believed Christ was returning during this time. And about the fever that overtook the Christian world in particular.
Okay, I can buy that. I’m not surprised by it, segments of the Christian world have been overcome with apocalyptic fever, it seems, every few decades since the first century.
I remember when I was a teenager, standing in a church youth service, and the minister (A man in his late 20’s) stating that Christ would come before he turned 30. I remember sitting in Ms Hurley’s Algebra II class and seeing a classmate with a thin hardback book mixed in with his school stuff, it was “88 Reasons Christ will Return in ‘88.” I was intrigued then.
I remember seeing the ‘Plain Truth’ television show where every week a respectable man would go on and on about the coming return of Christ with a very deep voice. I remember Jack Van Impe and his show with his wife where he would rail-off fulfilled bible prophecies so fast that I’d be left dizzy watching it.
So, yeah, I was pretty convinced that the return of Christ, complete with the blowing trumpets and parting of clouds, was imminent.
For me, this book is the literary equivalent to those prophecy-laden television shows I watched. Stuff is thrown at you (the reader) so fast that you don’t have time to think about what he’s said before the next prophecy is thrust in your face.
The overall impression is that there is the overwhelming abundance of evidence that so clearly points to the end coming (or having already come – we just didn’t notice) that you're almost forced to admit that you’re a fool for not accepting.
Except, well, I’m not exactly old, but I’ve been around. I’ve been taken in by this way of thinking before, and have no problem at all slowing down and looking at things a bit more closely than some people might. So, yeah, all these prophecies.
Turns out, the intelligencia of the time had settled on 1844 as the hard date for Christ’s return. The logic? Well, three prophecies must be fulfilled before the End Times could begin, according to the Gospels, at least. Well, according to a particular interpretation of the Gospels.
1) Jesus’ Gospel would be preached over the whole earth
2) The time of the Gentiles would be fulfilled, and Jews would return to Palestine
3) All mankind would see the ‘Abomination that causes Desolation’ foretold by Daniel
Got it? Good, me too. He then goes on to explain how the Gospel of Christ had covered the earth by then, fulfilling prophecy #1, how the Edict of Toleration (put in place 1844) by the Muslims in Jerusalem allowed Jews to enter into the city fulfilled prophecy #2 and finally, well, #3 was fulfilled back in the 5th century B.C and Daniel said to add 2300 years to it and that is 1844. Or something.
Honestly, at this point I wasn’t sure he was even trying to make sense. In the discussion of point #2 he emphasizes how days don’t mean days in prophecy – they mean years, and that years are really 360 days long (which might not sound that far off, but multiply that out by a few thousand years and your dates start getting put off by decades) and that sometimes you use a solar calendar, then if that doesn’t work, switch to a lunar one, then remember that when the bible actually says years, it means weeks (one year is fifty-two weeks), which are multiplied back into years (so 3 ½ years is really 1260 years).
Let’s see, carry the one… subtract every other Tuesday… yep, 1844 is when it all happened.
It’s not just me, is it? I mean, you have to be crazy to believe that, right? Using the power of numerology he seems to think he’s uncovered something powerful. I just see someone (or many people) just pulling numbers out of thin air and saying that those are all adding up to 1844.
And look, I’ve not even touched on why those three prophecies are the three that are most important. This book, quite simply, assumes the answer it’s trying to prove. It’s a logical fallacy from page one.
And that did bother me. What followed was more and more leaps of logic that I simply could not follow. All the prophecies mentioned in the book (hundreds of them!) were fulfilled. Some of them literally, others symbolically - you know it was fulfilled symbolically when it isn't literally fulfilled, but there is no way that it wasn't fulfilled, so don't even bother asking that question.
So in the end I was very disappointed with what I had in front of me. I read it, and, to be honest, I plan on reading it again. The Baha’i friends I mentioned earlier don’t seem to take any of my opinions about this personally, and said they’d love for me to go through each of these points the author is making to show them why I feel this book isn’t very useful as a tool for research.
Not to expose myself as crazy, but that kind of sounds fun to me. It’s a chance to talk about logical fallacies and burdens of proof and what constitutes as evidence in researching historical events.
So, who knows. I may run out of gas pretty quickly on this, but for now. I’m looking forward to really digging in and picking things apart.
As it stands, I can't rate this book. If you're a convert to Baha'i then maybe you'd find this cool. Otherwise I have to think it will leave you scratching your head and wondering what the hell is going on here.
I was given this book by some friends of mine who are Baha’i and who wanted my input on why this book may or may not be effective in the hands of someone who isn’t Baha’i. I don’t think of this as a conversion tool, because the people I know don’t seem that interested in winning converts, but at the same time, that’s clearly the purpose of this book.
So, how was it? Well, honestly, for me, not very convincing. I could get into detail here, but I don’t feel the need for it. I’m of the opinion that any apologetics type of book, regardless of the faith it’s defending/sharing, is really intended for the already converted, to sort of strengthen their faith. I don’t think it’s really good for anything else other than a rhetorical device for believers.
But, as it stands, about 2/3rds of its space is taken up by prophecies regarding the return of Christ and how that occurred in 1844 in the person of Bahaullah. In all, I immediately got bogged down in the details of this book, having a very hard time following the leaps in logic the author makes in order for prophecies to be fulfilled in the manner he lays them out.
And look, I’m being vague here because, honestly, I don’t think anyone would care. Because going through something like this one line at a time would take me weeks, months, or most likely, years.
And, again, no one would care.
Believers would ignore or dismiss me, and non-believers would wonder why I was wasting my time. And if there is anything I’ve learned over the years, no one changes their mind on religious matters based on a point by point rebuttal of an apologetics book written 50 or more years ago.
And I’m sure if I were to look for it, there are probably whole websites dedicated to doing just that very thing.
You know what, I feel like I’m dismissing a thing without explaining why I’m dismissing a thing. So, I guess one quick example would be okay.
So to get you into the idea of where my head is at, and how far I’m apart from the anticipated audience, this book starts off with the author discussing in a very conversational tone how the decades between 1830 – 1850 were so odd. About how the world universally believed Christ was returning during this time. And about the fever that overtook the Christian world in particular.
Okay, I can buy that. I’m not surprised by it, segments of the Christian world have been overcome with apocalyptic fever, it seems, every few decades since the first century.
I remember when I was a teenager, standing in a church youth service, and the minister (A man in his late 20’s) stating that Christ would come before he turned 30. I remember sitting in Ms Hurley’s Algebra II class and seeing a classmate with a thin hardback book mixed in with his school stuff, it was “88 Reasons Christ will Return in ‘88.” I was intrigued then.
I remember seeing the ‘Plain Truth’ television show where every week a respectable man would go on and on about the coming return of Christ with a very deep voice. I remember Jack Van Impe and his show with his wife where he would rail-off fulfilled bible prophecies so fast that I’d be left dizzy watching it.
So, yeah, I was pretty convinced that the return of Christ, complete with the blowing trumpets and parting of clouds, was imminent.
For me, this book is the literary equivalent to those prophecy-laden television shows I watched. Stuff is thrown at you (the reader) so fast that you don’t have time to think about what he’s said before the next prophecy is thrust in your face.
The overall impression is that there is the overwhelming abundance of evidence that so clearly points to the end coming (or having already come – we just didn’t notice) that you're almost forced to admit that you’re a fool for not accepting.
Except, well, I’m not exactly old, but I’ve been around. I’ve been taken in by this way of thinking before, and have no problem at all slowing down and looking at things a bit more closely than some people might. So, yeah, all these prophecies.
Turns out, the intelligencia of the time had settled on 1844 as the hard date for Christ’s return. The logic? Well, three prophecies must be fulfilled before the End Times could begin, according to the Gospels, at least. Well, according to a particular interpretation of the Gospels.
1) Jesus’ Gospel would be preached over the whole earth
2) The time of the Gentiles would be fulfilled, and Jews would return to Palestine
3) All mankind would see the ‘Abomination that causes Desolation’ foretold by Daniel
Got it? Good, me too. He then goes on to explain how the Gospel of Christ had covered the earth by then, fulfilling prophecy #1, how the Edict of Toleration (put in place 1844) by the Muslims in Jerusalem allowed Jews to enter into the city fulfilled prophecy #2 and finally, well, #3 was fulfilled back in the 5th century B.C and Daniel said to add 2300 years to it and that is 1844. Or something.
Honestly, at this point I wasn’t sure he was even trying to make sense. In the discussion of point #2 he emphasizes how days don’t mean days in prophecy – they mean years, and that years are really 360 days long (which might not sound that far off, but multiply that out by a few thousand years and your dates start getting put off by decades) and that sometimes you use a solar calendar, then if that doesn’t work, switch to a lunar one, then remember that when the bible actually says years, it means weeks (one year is fifty-two weeks), which are multiplied back into years (so 3 ½ years is really 1260 years).
Let’s see, carry the one… subtract every other Tuesday… yep, 1844 is when it all happened.
It’s not just me, is it? I mean, you have to be crazy to believe that, right? Using the power of numerology he seems to think he’s uncovered something powerful. I just see someone (or many people) just pulling numbers out of thin air and saying that those are all adding up to 1844.
And look, I’ve not even touched on why those three prophecies are the three that are most important. This book, quite simply, assumes the answer it’s trying to prove. It’s a logical fallacy from page one.
And that did bother me. What followed was more and more leaps of logic that I simply could not follow. All the prophecies mentioned in the book (hundreds of them!) were fulfilled. Some of them literally, others symbolically - you know it was fulfilled symbolically when it isn't literally fulfilled, but there is no way that it wasn't fulfilled, so don't even bother asking that question.
So in the end I was very disappointed with what I had in front of me. I read it, and, to be honest, I plan on reading it again. The Baha’i friends I mentioned earlier don’t seem to take any of my opinions about this personally, and said they’d love for me to go through each of these points the author is making to show them why I feel this book isn’t very useful as a tool for research.
Not to expose myself as crazy, but that kind of sounds fun to me. It’s a chance to talk about logical fallacies and burdens of proof and what constitutes as evidence in researching historical events.
So, who knows. I may run out of gas pretty quickly on this, but for now. I’m looking forward to really digging in and picking things apart.
As it stands, I can't rate this book. If you're a convert to Baha'i then maybe you'd find this cool. Otherwise I have to think it will leave you scratching your head and wondering what the hell is going on here.
February 25, 2008
I am currently reading this book on the explanation of the "missing millenium". Quotes and passages from the Bible back up the argument of renowned Baha'i author as he searches for truth amid the spoon fed religion that we have been indoctrined with since birth. Definitely a read for an open mind!
October 28, 2013
As someone with a Christian upbringing it really shook me and showed me a new way of looking at the scripture. Many times throughout the book I got excited seeing where it was going and piecing it together.
December 1, 2018
Convincing perponderance of evidence of the Return of Christ. The Glory of God is mentioned over 300 times in Hebrew and Christian Scripture. The Glory of God is the English language version of Baha'u'llah.
February 27, 2021
I read this book whilst I was in High School at the end of the 60s and after I had read Baha'u'llah and the New Era - Thief in the Night had the advantage of not being written by an academic - it really made me think about whether Baha'u'llah was - in a spiritual sense - the return of Jesus. In 1969 I had the great bounty of meeting Mr Sears for lunch when he visited Oxford and realised what a spiritual giant he was (his publisher was based in that city) and all this made me question many long-held beliefs. Read the book and start thinking about whether there is a pattern to the world's major faiths.
October 22, 2023
Mr Sears writes with purpose and direction. The sincerity of his beliefs shines through his writing.
However, he made a critical error in logic and research near the start of his work.
He claims that the prophecies of Daniel concerning the 1290 Days must equal to 1290 Years due to poetic passages in Pslam 90 concerning the eternality and timelessness of God.
And again in 2 Peter 3.
He says this is 'proven' by Ezekiel being told to lay on his side to represent the years.
The problem, is that Ezekiel (Chapter 4) was told by God directly that his laying was representative of years and the ratio.
When Jesus later says He would raise up 'this temple' in 3 days (John 2:19), He was crucified on Friday (John 19) and rose to life on the first day of the week. (John 20).
A more thorough study of scripture would show that prophecies in the Bible are given to specificity and are fulfilled according to those details.
Daniel's prophecies concerning the coming of Jesus were accurate to the year ('70 Weeks- groups of 7 years' from the rebuilding of the Temple), with the Temple and Walls being started under the rule of Artaxerxes.
Other failures of historical accuracy concerning the 30 prophecies of Baha'ullah can be forgiven, as his resources were not as vast or as easily accessible as they are today for the average person.
Except for saying Baha'ullah said the coming age was going to be full of technological invention. Everyone everywhere was reading the newspapers talking about new inventions nearly every week. Just go onto wikipedia and look at a list of inventions by year, and see how the 100 years leading up to Baha'ullah saying so were bloated with world changing inventions.
All in all, a book written passionately by a man who really believed what he wrote.
Just honestly wrong.
However, he made a critical error in logic and research near the start of his work.
He claims that the prophecies of Daniel concerning the 1290 Days must equal to 1290 Years due to poetic passages in Pslam 90 concerning the eternality and timelessness of God.
And again in 2 Peter 3.
He says this is 'proven' by Ezekiel being told to lay on his side to represent the years.
The problem, is that Ezekiel (Chapter 4) was told by God directly that his laying was representative of years and the ratio.
When Jesus later says He would raise up 'this temple' in 3 days (John 2:19), He was crucified on Friday (John 19) and rose to life on the first day of the week. (John 20).
A more thorough study of scripture would show that prophecies in the Bible are given to specificity and are fulfilled according to those details.
Daniel's prophecies concerning the coming of Jesus were accurate to the year ('70 Weeks- groups of 7 years' from the rebuilding of the Temple), with the Temple and Walls being started under the rule of Artaxerxes.
Other failures of historical accuracy concerning the 30 prophecies of Baha'ullah can be forgiven, as his resources were not as vast or as easily accessible as they are today for the average person.
Except for saying Baha'ullah said the coming age was going to be full of technological invention. Everyone everywhere was reading the newspapers talking about new inventions nearly every week. Just go onto wikipedia and look at a list of inventions by year, and see how the 100 years leading up to Baha'ullah saying so were bloated with world changing inventions.
All in all, a book written passionately by a man who really believed what he wrote.
Just honestly wrong.
November 21, 2019
As a Christian this man, Bill Sears, a journalist, researched the Bible, and many other sources for the time, place, date, name of, etc. and all the prophecies regarding the time of the end and the return of the Spirit of Christ in the Last Days. He spent many years on this book. It is fascinating reading, a book I couldn't put down, with my Bible next to me, writing in the margins. By the end of the book he deduced that Baha'u'llah, which means "The Glory of God" was the "Return" foretold by Christ and he became a Baha'i.
June 22, 2022
My favorite Bill Sears book. He was appointed to the station of "Hand of the Cause of God" by Shoghi Effendi. He helped bring blacks and whites together during Apartheid South Africa. The Story of how Jesus (Yeshua) has already come back and gone, like a thief in the night (back in 1844CE, just as William Miller, during the "Great Awakening of 1844" predicted).
Want to read
April 10, 2020Thief in the Night is a book that. Reveals all Christian prophesies that leads to the coming of Baha'ulla'h the Messenger of God for this Day and Age
August 30, 2023
Got a chance to read this in a group setting. Would definitely need to read it again to grasp its full wisdom. Nevertheless a great read on the miracles behind the founding of the Baha'i Faith.
May 14, 2025
Amazing telling of one of the most important and imposing questions facing human and religious life.
June 19, 2024
Those who know, know. Those who don’t will one day see.
June 26, 2016
Sears is an apologist for the Bahá’í faith, an international religion founded in Persia in the 19th century, which purports to be the fulfillment of all the major religions. Its founder, Bahá’u’lláh, claimed to be the second coming of Christ, as well as the fulfillment of prophecies in various other religions.
In this book, Sears primarily treats of biblical prophecies which, he says, were fulfilled by the rise of the Bahá’í faith. Sometimes these interpretations are quite interesting and compelling -- it seems significant, for example, that a sect of premil Christians completely independent of the Bahá’í faith came to the conclusion from their own interpretation of biblical prophecy that Christ was to return in 1844, a date which is significant in the history of the Bahá’í faith.
Nevertheless, the tenets of the Bahá’ís contradict Christian doctrine in many key respects. Perhaps most significantly, the literal and physical resurrection of Christ is denied (Abdu'l-Baha, the son of Bahá’u’lláh and the authorized interpreter of the faith after his father's passing, interprets the resurrection in a manner comparable to that of the hyper-liberal Jesus Seminar in his apologetic work Some Answered Questions), and consequently no singular value is attributed to Christ's sacrificial death. The Trinity is accepted according to their own interpretation, but it is hardly Nicene in content. The Manifestations of God (a category which, for the Bahá’ís, includes Moses and Muhammad alongside Jesus) are reflections of God and in a sense reveal God to us, but not are incarnations in the Christian sense. Shoghi Effendi, the successor to Abdu'l-Baha, asserted that the Christian and Hebrew scriptures are "not completely authentic" (granted, it is not entirely clear what he meant by that -- among some Bahá’ís this is interpreted as authorizing an almost liberal stance on their scriptural inspiration, among others it is a milder assertion that we do not possess the original autographs, so that some error is possible in our present copies of scripture, a position not wholly inconsistent with the beliefs of many evangelicals), and in general the Qur'an is regarded as a more reliable revelation. Thus Bahá’ís side with the Qur'an in some of its more curious inconsistencies with Hebrew and Christian scripture, for example in asserting that it was Ishmael and not Isaac that Abraham offered in sacrifice to God.
It is clear, then, that despite some admirable stands that Bahá’ís have taken over the years (including in cases where the Christian faith was both embarrassingly behind the times and inconsistent with their own professed teaching, as in the controversies over racial integration in the sixties), and whatever intriguing parallels there may be between biblical prophecy and the history of the Bahá’í Faith, a Christian is bound to regard it as an accursed "new gospel" fundamentally at odds with the Christian faith it purports to fulfill. Nevertheless, for the sake of understanding some aspects of apologetics, interfaith dialogue, and comparative religion, this book is still worth a read.
In this book, Sears primarily treats of biblical prophecies which, he says, were fulfilled by the rise of the Bahá’í faith. Sometimes these interpretations are quite interesting and compelling -- it seems significant, for example, that a sect of premil Christians completely independent of the Bahá’í faith came to the conclusion from their own interpretation of biblical prophecy that Christ was to return in 1844, a date which is significant in the history of the Bahá’í faith.
Nevertheless, the tenets of the Bahá’ís contradict Christian doctrine in many key respects. Perhaps most significantly, the literal and physical resurrection of Christ is denied (Abdu'l-Baha, the son of Bahá’u’lláh and the authorized interpreter of the faith after his father's passing, interprets the resurrection in a manner comparable to that of the hyper-liberal Jesus Seminar in his apologetic work Some Answered Questions), and consequently no singular value is attributed to Christ's sacrificial death. The Trinity is accepted according to their own interpretation, but it is hardly Nicene in content. The Manifestations of God (a category which, for the Bahá’ís, includes Moses and Muhammad alongside Jesus) are reflections of God and in a sense reveal God to us, but not are incarnations in the Christian sense. Shoghi Effendi, the successor to Abdu'l-Baha, asserted that the Christian and Hebrew scriptures are "not completely authentic" (granted, it is not entirely clear what he meant by that -- among some Bahá’ís this is interpreted as authorizing an almost liberal stance on their scriptural inspiration, among others it is a milder assertion that we do not possess the original autographs, so that some error is possible in our present copies of scripture, a position not wholly inconsistent with the beliefs of many evangelicals), and in general the Qur'an is regarded as a more reliable revelation. Thus Bahá’ís side with the Qur'an in some of its more curious inconsistencies with Hebrew and Christian scripture, for example in asserting that it was Ishmael and not Isaac that Abraham offered in sacrifice to God.
It is clear, then, that despite some admirable stands that Bahá’ís have taken over the years (including in cases where the Christian faith was both embarrassingly behind the times and inconsistent with their own professed teaching, as in the controversies over racial integration in the sixties), and whatever intriguing parallels there may be between biblical prophecy and the history of the Bahá’í Faith, a Christian is bound to regard it as an accursed "new gospel" fundamentally at odds with the Christian faith it purports to fulfill. Nevertheless, for the sake of understanding some aspects of apologetics, interfaith dialogue, and comparative religion, this book is still worth a read.
April 7, 2016
The mystery which lies in this book are but glistening gems that provide the mind an insight and profound discovery that, indeed, what was prophesied centuries ago of the advent of Christ or His second coming, would come to be.
Just as the author discovers so will the reader. I felt I was wholeheartedly following the author every step of the way as he found prophecies from the Christian and Muslim faith, among other faiths. From one discovery to another, these were truths that showed that the advent of Jesus had happened in 1844. Inwardly, one simple proof of knowing that Baha'u'llah was the prophet, was the quality and character that He embodied similar to the life of Jesus and other prophets, while only differing in appearance. (There are far more proofs on the matter, but the beauty is in the book to discover for yourself.)
I was enlightened and reinvigorated as I read the book; my mind on the subject has undoubtedly given me more inclinations to discover and find truths for myself and not fall and conform unto someone else's thoughts or footsteps. That is the delight and joy of being an individual as you find your own steps on this earthly plain. This was what William Sears did as he went through with his research to find the mystery that was in Persia.
Just as the author discovers so will the reader. I felt I was wholeheartedly following the author every step of the way as he found prophecies from the Christian and Muslim faith, among other faiths. From one discovery to another, these were truths that showed that the advent of Jesus had happened in 1844. Inwardly, one simple proof of knowing that Baha'u'llah was the prophet, was the quality and character that He embodied similar to the life of Jesus and other prophets, while only differing in appearance. (There are far more proofs on the matter, but the beauty is in the book to discover for yourself.)
I was enlightened and reinvigorated as I read the book; my mind on the subject has undoubtedly given me more inclinations to discover and find truths for myself and not fall and conform unto someone else's thoughts or footsteps. That is the delight and joy of being an individual as you find your own steps on this earthly plain. This was what William Sears did as he went through with his research to find the mystery that was in Persia.
October 17, 2009
Epic. I first read this in the late 90's and remember my father (RIP) telling me he had to put it down a few times to allow its compelling evidence and profound conclusions to sink in.
Having re-read it in the mid 00's, its unique style retained its engaging influence, though its shortcomings were also more obvious. For example, a small number of prophecies about Jesus of Nazareth are taken and applied to Jesus' Second Coming; overall, however, its good points vastly outweigh its dubious ones. This book is rightly celebrated for its effectiveness in communicating a controversial and very important message.
Having re-read it in the mid 00's, its unique style retained its engaging influence, though its shortcomings were also more obvious. For example, a small number of prophecies about Jesus of Nazareth are taken and applied to Jesus' Second Coming; overall, however, its good points vastly outweigh its dubious ones. This book is rightly celebrated for its effectiveness in communicating a controversial and very important message.
Read
May 6, 2016Very inspiring.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews