AFRICAN BELIEVERS RECOGNIZE THE LIVING GUARDIAN

AFRICAN BELIEVERS RECOGNIZE THE LIVING GUARDIAN

 

Quoted below are significant statements recently made by African believers, including in their number Judges, lawyers and magistrates, in a letter received by the Guardian of the Faith and in another case by Hand of the Cause, Frank Schlatter, which reflect their exemplary fidelity to the Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh and the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, their thorough knowledge of its sacred and immutable provisions and the outstanding evidence of their intimate knowledge of the writings of Shoghi Effendi in which he has emphasized the divinely-conceived genesis of the Administrative Order and the evident essentiality and indispensability of the Guardianship to the World Order of Bahá'u'lláh: They have also expressed their determination to fearlessly spread the word in support of the Faith under the Guardian throughout Africa.

Extracts from these letters follow:

From a believer in the Democratic Republic of Congo:

"Acting on the basis of the Bahá'ís sacred principle of self-investigation of the truth, we have spent 2 years exchanging letters, e-mails, documents and consulting each other thanks to the internet and trying to deeply understand the status of our Faith and many failures in its progress."

"By this letter, we are pleased to inform you that have compared the claims made by the ORTHODOX BAHÁ'ÍS and the HETERODOX BAHÁ'ÍS, we have decided to form the first Orthodox Bahá'í community in Africa."

"We have come to understand:

  1. That the Bahá'í Faith MUST have a Guardian living on earth amongst us because the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, which was identified by the first Guardian of the Faith, Shoghi Effendi, as "the Charter of the New World Order," provides for a Guardian.

  2. That the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and Bahá'u'lláh's Most Holy Book, the Kitab-i-Aqdas, "are inseparable parts of one complete unit" and thus the Will and Testament is Bahá'í Holy Writ, which only the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith is divinely authorized to interpret, no other person or group.

  3. That the Guardian of the Cause of God is its sacred head and the distinguished member for life of that body. The Will and Testament contains no expression authorizing a headless Universal House of Justice.

  4. [That] the first Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith Shoghi Effendi, on page 56 of The Dispensation of Bahá'u'lláh wrote about "…instruments which must for all time preserve the unity of the organized followers of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh." We believe that the Guardianship of the Baháˆí Faith, as defined and provided for in the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá is one of those "instruments," even an essential one.

  5. We fully believe that the provision in Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá for not only a living Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, but also for the institution [of] the Hands of the Cause, appointed exclusively by the Guardian, as defined in the Will and Testament, is a provision, the neglect or rejection of which, seriously violates the Sacred Plan of Bahá'u'lláh for the Administration of the New World Order, as outlined and defined by that "Charter of the New World Order," the immortal "Child of the Covenant," the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá

"…We would like to declare before the world that we have accepted Joel Bray Marangella as the 3rd Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, appointed by the 2nd Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, Charles Mason Remey."

"… We have reserved a copy to Haifa to let them know that we will be acting openly for the Guardian until we are informed that he has been reinstated on his seat in Haifa and his status recognized."

From a believer residing in the Democratic Republic of Congo:

"I am a lawyer and judge so I and others (mostly intellectuals) have decided over the case (Guardian or without a Guardian) the same way it should be if the matters have been brought to the court. We have to give a fair ruling."

"We have now a lot of material on the net and be assured we were prepared to read any single material that has been published on the net from criticisms against the Orthodox Bahá'ís to Bahá'í forums with liberal exchanges. We could not find ANY single relevant reading to oppose the simple truth that the Bahá'í Faith MUST BE HEADED BY A GUARDIAN and is HEADED BY A GUARDIAN."

"So at the end of that endeavor, accompanied by prayers, meditations, etc. we all have objectively come to make that simple decision.

"There is less to lose spiritually being a Bahá'í under the guidance of a living Guardian than under a complicated system that has obviously lost the divine guidance: the UHJ."

"We have said that no matter our deprivations in terms of material possessions, we shall be the community that will bring to the Guardian the support that he needs in the restoration of the true Bahá'í Faith and for that we shall not be ashamed to PROCLAIM THAT WE ARE BAHÁ'ÍS UNDER THE GUARDIANSHIP."

Future spiritually minded scholars of the Faith who will become well versed in the divinely-conceived, sacred and immutable provisions of the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and the writings of Shoghi Effendi and particularly the "epoch-making" and "historic" messages he dispatched to the Bahá'í world during the last seven years of his ministry, as he "at long last" established the international institutions of the Faith, will inevitably reach the same inescapable conclusions and decisions reached by the African believers, as stated above, and like them, be satisfied with nothing less than the restoration of the divinely-appointed Administrative Order, delineated by 'Abdu'l-Bahá in His Will and Testament.


Joel Bray Marangella

Third Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith

P.S. Emphasis in the letters above was that made by the writers of the quoted letters.

JBM