Distinctive attributes of the Administrative Order of Bahá’u’lláh’s Dispensation

A word more in conclusion. The rise and establishment of this Administrative Order—the shell that shields and enshrines so precious a gem—constitutes the hall-mark of this second and formative age of the Bahá’í era. It will come to be regarded, as it recedes farther and farther from our eyes, as the chief agency empowered to usher in the concluding phase, the consummation of this glorious Dispensation.

Let no one, while this System is still in its infancy, misconceive its character, belittle its significance or misrepresent its purpose. 

• The bedrock on which this Administrative Order is founded is God’s immutable Purpose for mankind in this day. 
• The Source from which it derives its inspiration is no one less than Bahá’u’lláh Himself. 
• Its shield and defender are the embattled hosts of the Abhá Kingdom. 
• Its seed is the blood of no less than twenty thousand martyrs who have offered up their lives that it may be born and flourish. 
• The axis round which its institutions revolve are the authentic provisions of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l Bahá. 
• Its guiding principles are the truths which He Who is the unerring Interpreter of the teachings of our Faith has so clearly enunciated in His public addresses throughout the West. 
• The laws that govern its operation and limit its functions are those which have been expressly ordained in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. 
• The seat round which its spiritual, its humanitarian and administrative activities will cluster are the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár and its Dependencies. 
• The pillars that sustain its authority and buttress its structure are the twin institutions of the Guardianship and of the Universal House of Justice. 
• The central, the underlying aim which animates it is the establishment of the New World Order as adumbrated by Bahá’u’lláh. 
• The methods it employs, the standard it inculcates, incline it to neither East nor West, neither Jew nor Gentile, neither rich nor poor, neither white nor colored. 
• Its watchword is the unification of the human race; its standard the “Most Great Peace”;
• its consummation the advent of that golden millennium—the Day when the kingdoms of this world shall have become the Kingdom of God Himself, the Kingdom of Bahá’u’lláh. 

Shoghi.

Haifa, Palestine,

February 8, 1934.

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Dispensation of Baha’u’llah; included in ‘The World Order of Baha’u’llah’)

1934: “the tumult which the birth of this mighty Organ of the Religion of Bahá’u’lláh has cast into the world”: - “will grow in scope and in intensity”

•  The catastrophic fall of mighty monarchies and empires in the European continent, allusions to some of which may be found in the prophecies of Bahá’u’lláh; 
• the decline that has set in, and is still continuing, in the fortunes of the Shí‘ih hierarchy in His own native land; 
• the fall of the Qájár dynasty, the traditional enemy of His Faith; 
• the overthrow of the Sultanate and the Caliphate, the sustaining pillars of Sunní Islám, to which the destruction of Jerusalem in the latter part of the first century of the Christian era offers a striking parallel; 
• the wave of secularization which is invading the Muhammadan ecclesiastical institutions in Egypt and sapping the loyalty of its staunchest supporters; 
• the humiliating blows that have afflicted some of the most powerful Churches of Christendom in Russia, in Western Europe and Central America; 
• the dissemination of those subversive doctrines that are undermining the foundations and overthrowing the structure of seemingly impregnable strongholds in the political and social spheres of human activity; 
• the signs of an impending catastrophe, strangely reminiscent of the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West, which threatens to engulf the whole structure of present-day civilization

—all witness to the tumult which the birth of this mighty Organ of the Religion of Bahá’u’lláh has cast into the world—a tumult which will grow in scope and in intensity as the implications of this constantly evolving Scheme are more fully understood and its ramifications more widely extended over the surface of the globe. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Dispensation of Baha’u’llah; included in ‘The World Order of Baha’u’llah’)

“process of steady deterioration which is insidiously invading so many departments of human activity”

Compare these splendid manifestations of the spirit animating this vibrant body of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh with the cries and agony, the follies and vanities, the bitterness and prejudices, the wickedness and divisions of an ailing and chaotic world. Witness the fear that torments its leaders and paralyzes the action of its blind and bewildered statesmen. How fierce the hatreds, how false the ambitions, how petty the pursuits, how deep-rooted the suspicions of its peoples! How disquieting the lawlessness, the corruption, the unbelief that are eating into the vitals of a tottering civilization!

Might not this process of steady deterioration which is insidiously invading so many departments of human activity and thought be regarded as a necessary accompaniment to the rise of this almighty Arm of Bahá’u’lláh? Might we not look upon the momentous happenings which, in the course of the past twenty years, have so deeply agitated every continent of the earth, as ominous signs simultaneously proclaiming the agonies of a disintegrating civilization and the birthpangs of that World Order—that Ark of human salvation—that must needs arise upon its ruins? 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Dispensation of Baha’u’llah; included in ‘The World Order of Baha’u’llah’)

1934: The growth of the “mighty administrative structure” of the Faith and “evidences of a power which a disillusioned and sadly shaken society can ill afford to ignore”

• The vitality which the organic institutions of this great, this ever-expanding Order so strongly exhibit; 
• the obstacles which the high courage, the undaunted resolution of its administrators have already surmounted; 
• the fire of an unquenchable enthusiasm that glows with undiminished fervor in the hearts of its itinerant teachers; 
• the heights of self-sacrifice which its champion-builders are now attaining; 
• the breadth of vision, the confident hope, the creative joy, the inward peace, the uncompromising integrity, the exemplary discipline, the unyielding unity and solidarity which its stalwart defenders manifest; 
• the degree to which its moving Spirit has shown itself capable of assimilating the diversified elements within its pale, of cleansing them of all forms of prejudice and of fusing them with its own structure—

these are evidences of a power which a disillusioned and sadly shaken society can ill afford to ignore. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Dispensation of Baha’u’llah; included in ‘The World Order of Baha’u’llah’)