POSTED ON BEHALF OF THE GUARDIAN OF THE BAHA'I FAITH
"THIS MOST GREAT ORDER"
It should be noted, in this connection, that in the third Vahid of this
Book
[the Bayan] there occurs a passage which, alike in its explicit reference
to
the name of the Promised One, and in its anticipation of the Order which,
in
a later age, was to be identified with His Revelation, deserves to rank as
one of the most significant statements recorded in any of the Bab's
writings, "Well is it with him," is His prophetic announcement, "who
fixeth
his gaze upon the Order of Baha'u'llah and rendereth thanks unto his Lord.
For He will assuredly be made manifest. God hath indeed irrevocably
ordained it in the Bayan." It is with that self-same Order that the
Founder
of the promised Revelation, twenty years later -- incorporating that same
term in His Kitab-i-Aqdas -- identified the System envisaged in that Book,
affirming that "this most great Order" had deranged the world's
equilibrium
and revolutionized mankind's ordered life. It is the features of that
self-same Order which, at a later stage in the evolution of the Faith, the
Center of Baha'u'llah's Covenant and the appointed Interpreter of His
teachings, delineated through the provisions of His Will and Testament. It
is the structural basis of that self-same Order which, in the Formative
Age
of that same Faith, the stewards of that same Covenant, the elected
representatives of the world-wide Baha'i community, are now laboriously
and
unitedly establishing. It is the superstructure of that self-same Order,
attaining its full stature through the emergence of the Baha'i World
Commonwealth -- the Kingdom of God on earth -- which the Golden Age of
that
same Dispensation must, in the fullness of time, ultimately witness.
Shoghi Effendi
GOD PASSES BY
(pp.25-26)
How can any faithful Baha'i after reading the above words of Shoghi
Effendi
and gaining thereby an understanding of the momentous significance of the
"most great Order," prophetically announced by the Bab, subsequently
identified by Baha'u'llah with the System revealed in His Most Holy Book
and
then formally delineated by 'Abdu'l-Baha in His divinely-conceived,
sacred
and immortal Will and Testament, believe that this God-given Order
destined
in the fullness of time to usher in the long-promised Kingdom of God on
earth as it is in Heaven in this, the Day of God, was brought to an
untimely
and premature end, a mere thirty-six years after its inception, while
still
in its embryonic form, upon the passing of Shoghi Effendi? Or, how can
any
true believer suffer under the illusion that this "most great Order" --
"this Divine Masterpiece which the hand of the Master-builder of the world
has designed for the unification of the world-wide Faith of Baha'u'llah"
--
will ever be supplanted by a man-made imperfect system, minus the living
Guardian presiding as its "sacred head," that has now been ignominiously
erected outside the sacred provisions of 'Abdu'l-Baha's Will and Testament
by those who, in their lack of faith in the indestructible Covenant of
Baha'u'llah and in the immortality of this divinely-conceived "Child,"
have
repudiated this glorious Testament and have declared that the Guardianship
of the Cause of God came to an end with the passing of Shoghi Effendi?
Joel Bray Marangella
Third Guardian of the Baha'i Faith
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