FIVE MESSAGES OF SHOGHI EFFENDI PROVIDING IRREFUTABLE PROOF OF THE
CONTINUANCE OF THE GUARDIANSHIP


These messages were inexcusably overlooked or ignored by the Hands of
the Cause in their reprehensible hasty abandonment of the Guardianship
on the very first day of their conclave in ‘Akká following the passing
of Shoghi Effendi with the result that the momentous significance and
implications of these messages were never perceived by them at the
time and have remained unperceived by the Bahá’í World to this day
with tragic consequences for the Faith.


1. Message of 9 January 1951.


Actually Shoghi Effendi’s one and only Proclamation which opened with
the words: "Proclaim to National Assemblies of East and West weighty
epoch-making decision of formation of first International Bahá’í
Council" — "this first International Institution" — and in which he
further acclaimed this "historic decision" as the "most significant
milestone in the evolution of the Administrative Order" and hailed
"with thankful joyous heart at long last the constitution of the
International Council" as one "which history will acclaim as the
greatest event shedding lustre upon the second epoch of the Formative
Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation." (emphasis added)


He stated he was induced to make this historic decision, for the
following significant reasons:


". . .the establishment of the Jewish State after the lapse of two
thousand years."

". . .construction of the superstructure of the Báb’s Sepulcher on
Mount Carmel."

". . .the present adequate maturity of nine vigorously functioning
national administrative institutions throughout the Bahá’í World. . ."


The present maturity of the nine National Assemblies mentioned by
Shoghi Effendi was vitally important because, as subordinate bodies to
the International Bahá’í Council, appointed some eleven months
earlier, they would be receiving direction from the Council in their
prosecution of the goals of the Ten Year Global Crusade scheduled to
commence in 1953, as projected in Shoghi Effendi’s message of 23
November 1951, discussed below.


2. Message of 2 March 1951.


This message identifies Mason Remey as the one whom Shoghi Effendi had
appointed as President of the International Bahá’í Council established
by him in his Proclamation. Significantly and for good reason, Shoghi
Effendi did not direct Mason Remey to convene the Council as a
functioning body during the remaining seven years of his ministry and
even appointed Rúhíyyih Khánum in his message of 8 March 1952 as the
"chosen liaison" between himself and the Council to preclude thereby
any semblance of the assumption of the Presidency himself of this
"first embryonic International Institution" which, upon its activation
as a functioning body, would necessarily be presided over by the
Guardian of the Faith.


3. Message of 23 November 1951.


It may be seen from this message that Shoghi Effendi projects the
future role of the " Central Body" — the International Bahá’í Council
— appointed by him some eleven months earlier in his Proclamation to
be a role in which the Council would be "directing these widely
ramified operations" of the "National Assemblies of the Bahá’í world"
at some period during the prosecution of the Ten Year Global Crusade
scheduled to commence at Ridván 1953. To direct these operations of
the Assemblies the International Council would have to emerge from the
inactive state in which it been carefully retained by Shoghi Effendi
during his ministry and its President would no longer be kept in
waiting as the unborn embryonic Guardian-to-be, but upon Shoghi
Effendi’s passing, be able to preside as the active President of an
actively functioning body which was none other than the embryonic
Universal House of Justice whose "sacred head" could be no one else
but the Guardian of the Faith under the terms of the Will and
Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.


It is evident therefore that, for Shoghi Effendi to state in this
message that the "Central Body" — the International Bahá’í Council —
would be directing the National Spiritual Assemblies in their
achievement of the goals of the Ten Year Global Crusade, he had to
have foreseen for, in fact, he had predicted in this indirect way,
that his ministry would be coming to an end sometime during that
Crusade and that his appointed successor, having actively assumed the
Presidency of a fully functioning Council coincident with his passing,
would then accede to the Guardianship of the Faith. Unfortunately, it
is obvious that neither the Hands of the Cause nor any of the
believers in the Bahá’í world perceived at the time of Shoghi
Effendi’s passing, or at any time subsequent thereto, the tremendous
implications that were attached to the active role that Shoghi Effendi
had projected for the International Council in this message, a role
that both clearly further confirmed the identity of his successor and
indirectly portended his own unexpected passing which, in fact, took
place at the mid-point of that Crusade in November 1957.


However, upon Shoghi Effendi’s passing, the Hands of the Cause never
permitted the International Council to perform the role projected by
Shoghi Effendi as they usurped supreme authority over the Faith,
shamelessly ignored the role assigned the Council in this message,
relegated the International Council to a minor role in which it would
perform only its originally assigned limited functions confined to the
Holy Land although Shoghi Effendi had stated, in referring to the
initial functions he had assigned the Council in his Proclamation that
"To these will be added further functions in course of evolution of
this first embryonic International Institution." Having, in their
blindness, usurped leadership of the Faith and clearly ignoring the
projected role Shoghi Effendi had envisaged for the International
Council, the Hands of the Cause appointed an illicit body of nine
Hands from their own number to which they gave the appellation,
"Custodians of the Bahá’í Faith," a body completely outside the sacred
and immortal provisions of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and
to which they, in spite of this fact, incredulously delegated "all
such functions, rights and powers in succession to the Guardian of the
Bahá’í Faith." Yet, according to their own announced plans, this body
would reign over the Faith for only a brief life-span of some five and
one half years, terminating at Ridván 1963, when it would be replaced
by an elected equally illicit body, a headless, sans-Guardian
Universal House of Justice which they had the temerity to identify as
the "Supreme Body" of the Faith. In the intervening period before the
election of their sans-Guardian Universal House of Justice in 1963 the
Custodians requested all National Spiritual Assemblies of the Bahá’í
World to recognize their body as the "supreme body in the Cause" in an
official letter that would be addressed to them, with one NSA, in its
response, even referring to this short-lived and temporarily
constituted body as the "Most Supreme Body in the Bahá’í World Faith."
This illicitly established body of Custodians then shamelessly took
over direction of the National Spiritual Assemblies of the Bahá’í
World during the remaining years of the prosecution of the Ten Year
Crusade.


As for the International Council, Mason Remey as President of the
Council was never permitted by the Hands of the Cause to exercise his
rightful role and, the Secretary General of the Council, Hand of the


secretaries" (Ethel Revell and Lotfullah Hakim respectively), also
appointed to their positions by Shoghi Effendi, ever correspond, to my
knowledge, in a secretarial capacity with National Spiritual
Assemblies on behalf of the Council.


4. Message of 30 June 1952


This significant message read as follows: "At the World Center of the
Faith, where, at long last the machinery of its highest institutions
has been erected, and around whose most holy shrines the supreme
organs of its unfolding Order, are in their embryonic form, unfolding
.. . ." The Hands of the Cause, following the passing of Shoghi
Effendi, obviously and inexcusably failed to realize, as discussed
above, that the International Bahá’í Council appointed by Shoghi
Effendi was not a provisional or temporary body but, in fact, nothing
less than the Universal House of Justice, albeit in its embryonic
form, even though he had clearly referred to this body in his
Proclamation of 9 January 1951, as "this first International
Institution" and this "Nascent Institution" and had assigned it a role
that could only rightfully be exercised by the Universal House of
Justice. Certainly, had they taken the time to review his messages to
the Bahá’í World, before reaching their hasty and ill-considered
conclusion that the Guardianship of the Faith had forever ended, they
should have perceived, as further corroboration of this fact, that the
passage in Shoghi Effendi’s message quoted above, left no doubt that
he had unquestionably brought into being the embryonic Universal House
of Justice under the provisional name of the International Bahá’í
Council. In his earlier message of 8 March 1952 they would have
further noted that he had again clearly identified not only its
embryonic President — the Guardian-to-be — but had designated, as
well, its Secretary General, its Treasurer and its assistant
secretaries for the East and West. Certainly Shoghi Effendi’s
statement that the "machinery of its highest institutions" had been
erected at the World Center could be a reference to none other than
the embryonic Universal House of Justice — the International Council —
and the institution of the Hands of the Cause, the first contingent of
whom he had been appointed six months earlier in his message of 25
December 1951. It would have then been clear why the International
Council had been carefully retained by Shoghi Effendi in an inactive
state during his ministry and why he never directed its President to
convene the Council into a functioning administrative body during the
remaining seven years of his ministry, so as to preclude its embryonic
head — his successor — from emerging into active life. And it would
also be clear now why he had assigned tasks only to individual members
of the Council during his ministry.


5. Message of October 1957.


In this last message of Shoghi Effendi to the Bahá’í World, a month
before his passing, he appointed a final contingent of the Hands of
the Cause of God and referred to the Hands, for the first time, as the
"Chief Stewards of Bahá’u’lláh’s embryonic World Commonwealth" Having
reached their hasty and unwarranted conclusion that the Guardianship
had come to an end with his passing, they interpreted Shoghi Effendi’s
reference to them in this message as "Chief Stewards" to mean, as they
stated in their "unanimous proclamation" of 25 November 1957, that
they had become "the supreme body of the Bahá’i World Community" The
body of the Hands, ignoring the role that the International Bahá’í
Council should have rightfully performed, appointed a body of nine
from their own number, whom they identified as the "Custodians of the
Bahá’í World Faith" and whom they stated in this same proclamation
would assume "all such functions rights and powers in succession to
the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith." Yet, at the same time, they
announced in their ill-conceived plans that the collegiate pseudo
Guardianship role that they had illegitimately delegated to the
Custodians would come to an end some six years later when the
temporary ill-gotten authority of this body would be turned over to
what would be a headless sans-Guardian so-called Universal House of
Justice to be elected in April 1963 that would be nothing more than an
incomplete, deformed fallible and illicitly formed body . They also
ignored the inconsistency to be found in the fact that, under their
plans, the "Chief Stewards,"–this once so-called "supreme body of the
Bahá’í World Community," as they had termed themselves, would have
long ceased to exist when the Commonwealth of Bahá’u’lláh had attained
its maturity in the fullness of time. For, fallaciously convinced as
they were that the Guardianship had forever ended, there would be no
future Guardians in their sans-Guardian Faith to appoint Hands of the
Cause and therefore there would be no future "Chief Stewards."
Moreover, what these Hands of the Cause tragically failed to realize
and most importantly failed to perceive in this last message penned by
Shoghi Effendi was the undeniable implication and paramount
significance to be found in the phrase, "of Bahá’u’lláh’s embryonic
World Commonwealth." that followed Shoghi Effendi’s designation of
them as Chief Stewards. Shoghi Effendi’s insertion of the word
"embryonic" in this phrase definitely implied that these Chief
Stewards would remain an integral and inseparable part of that
embryonic Commonwealth as it developed and finally attained the full
plenitude of its power, for has not ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explained in His
writings (p. 312, BWF) that "the embryo possesses from the first all
perfections . . . in one word, all the powers" and therefore the Hands
of the Cause, as Chief Stewards, would continue to exist as an
Institution and were destined to remain an inseparable and eternal
Institution in Bahá’u’lláh’s Commonwealth. Having failed to perceive
the above, the Hands of the Cause obviously overlooked the further
significant fact that, as future Hands can only be appointed by future
Guardians, Shoghi Effendi had assured the believers, once again, in
this indirect way, in his very last message to the Bahá’í World, that
the Guardianship of the Cause of God would continue to exist as long
as the Commonwealth of Bahá’u’lláh itself endured together with all of
its other divinely-appointed Institutions equally preserved and
completely intact, as delineated in the divinely-conceived sacred,
immortal and immutable terms of the Will and Testament of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá.


Joel Bray Marangella
Third Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith
Australia, 2003


NOTE: A faithful believer recently queried one of the heterodox
believers considered to be one of the learned Bahá’ís and therefore
supposedly thoroughly conversant, not only with the Teachings but the
writings and messages of Shoghi Effendi as well, including
particularly those contained in the book titled: "Messages of Shoghi
Effendi to the Bahá‘í World 1950-1957." It is understood that this
believer surprisingly admitted unfamiliarity with that book and
ignorance of the significant messages discussed above. It would have
been even more unlikely that this believer would have been aware of
Shoghi Effendi’s message of 23 November 1951, which inexplicably was
not included in the book cited above, and appears only in a pamphlet
published by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the
United States, in 1952 titled: World Order Unfolds." Little wonder
therefore that most of the present-day believers remain similarly
ignorant of these historic and significant messages that prove so
conclusively and irrefutably that Shoghi Effendi, ever faithful to the
sacred provisions of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, had
unquestionably provided for the continuance of the Guardianship and
that these believers have, as a tragic result, so readily fallen prey
to the fallacious and deceptive arguments of those who, having lost
their faith in the indestructibility of the Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh
and in the immortality of its divinely-conceived "Child" — the Will
and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá — have abandoned forever the
Guardianship of the Faith.


JBM