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’)