"The Bahá'í Court to be established in Haifa will operate initially only for the Eastern world where religious law is recognized. The present President of the International Bahá'í Council will then become the Judge (the Guardian in an aside to Mason and with a smile asked 'Mason are you ready to become a Judge?')

"Rúhíyyih Khánum then asked whether when the Council became the Court, all the women would get off. The Guardian said, no – not even when the Court became elective but only when the International House of Justice was formed."

What were the tremendous implications of these remarks by Shoghi Effendi, implications that escaped all of us that evening and which would only become crystal clear following his passing, five years later, and then only to those believers who had retained an unwavering and unshakeable faith in the indestructibility of the Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh and the sacredness and immutability of the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and had been able to free themselves from preconceived ideas and the pernicious conditioning to which they had been subjected by those former Hands of the Cause and others who were convinced that the Guardianship had forever ended.

What were the tremendous implications of Shoghi Effendi's remarks, recorded above, that all of us failed to perceive that night at table with Shoghi Effendi?

• Whereas Shoghi Effendi had not given instructions to Mason Remey, as its President to convene the International Bahá'í Council into activity as a functioning body, (nor could he do so during the remaining years of his ministry) the Council would, of necessity, become a fully functioning and active body in the second stage of its development as the International Court.
  
  
• We did not realize the implication of Mason Remey's appointment as the President of the International Bahá'í Council even though the constitution of this Institution "at long last" had been identified by Shoghi Effendi as a permanent body in his Proclamation of 9 January 1951 and had been identified as "this first embryonic International Institution" and had been extolled as "the greatest event shedding lustre upon the second epoch of the Formative Age of the Bahá'í Dispensation." And, he was to confirm this fact when in his cablegram of 30 June 1952 he stated: "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. . ."
  
  
• As this International Court would exercise jurisdiction initially over six subordinate National Bahá'í Courts (identified by Shoghi Effendi) who would be applying the laws of the Aqdas over adherents of the Faith in their respective countries, and such subsidiary laws as might be required, an interpretative function would inevitably come into play which can only be exercised by the Guardian of the Faith. Therefore, only the Guardian of the Faith can preside as the Chief Judge of the International Bahá'í Court and these two terms Chief Judge and Guardian are synonymous.
  
  
• The foregoing being the case, Mason Remey could not preside as Chief Judge over this Court while Shoghi Effendi was alive, yet Shoghi Effendi had made as a goal the establishment of six National Courts by Ridván 1960 which, therefore, implied that he would not be living by the end of the Ten Year Global Crusade at Ridván 1963.
  
  
• It was highly significant, therefore, and it now becomes clear why he did so, that during the same evening Shoghi Effendi should have alluded so clearly to the imminence of his own passing (actually taking place five years later) that Rúhíyyih Khánum jumped up from the dinner table and in tears rushed out of the room only returning when she had composed herself. This allusion, oddly enough, did not fully register upon our minds, no doubt because it seemed so improbable at the time and even Rúhíyyih Khánum obviously dismissed it from her mind as she does not mention it in her book about Shoghi Effendi. She was reminded of this event in one of the four letters I have since sent to her which are now available on the Internet.
  
  
• We had lost sight of the words of 'Abdu'l-Bahá wherein He states: "the embryo possesses from the first all perfections . . . in one word, all the powers – but they are not visible, and become so only by degrees." The Head of the embryonic body of the International Bahá'í Council remains its head as it develops through its successive stages into its full development as the Universal House of Justice. Shoghi Effendi confirmed this fact in the question he posed to Mason Remey, quoted above.
  
  
• The Head of the International Bahá'í Council could only be the Guardian of the Cause of God under the terms of the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá. We did not perceive this fact then and only did so after the receipt of Mason Remey's Proclamation when it became clear that by Shoghi Effendi's appointment of Mason Remey "in his own life-time" as the Head of this embryonic body he had appointed his successor, in a way so unexpected by all of us who had been universally guilty of holding the obviously false expectation that a testamentary document would be the article of appointment and which upon our later reexamination of the terms of the Will and Testament proved to us to be the case.
  

The reason why Shoghi Effendi had to obscure his appointment of a successor in the way that he did is discussed elsewhere by the undersigned in documentation to be found on the Internet.

Joel Bray Marangella
Third Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith