- In the Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh where the institutions of the International and Local Houses of Justice are specifically designated and formally established;
- in the institution of the Hands of the Cause of God which first Bahá’u’lláh and then ‘Abdu’l Bahá brought into being;
- in the institution of both local and national Assemblies which in their embryonic stage were already functioning in the days preceding ‘Abdu’l Bahá’s ascension;
- in the authority with which the Author of our Faith and the Center of His Covenant have in their Tablets chosen to confer upon them;
- in the institution of the Local Fund which operated according to ‘Abdu’l Bahá’s specific injunctions addressed to certain Assemblies in Persia;
- in the verses of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas the implications of which clearly anticipate the institution of the Guardianship;
- in the explanation which ‘Abdu’l Bahá, in one of His Tablets, has given to, and the emphasis He has placed upon, the hereditary principle and the law of primogeniture as having been upheld by the Prophets of the past—
in these we can discern the faint glimmerings and discover the earliest intimation of the nature and working of the Administrative Order which the Will of ‘Abdu’l Bahá was at a later time destined to proclaim and formally establish.
- Shoghi Effendi
(‘The Dispensation of Baha’u’llah; included in ‘The World Order of
Baha’u’llah’)