Covenant of Baha’u’llah

Ark of the Cause of God

The Baha’i Faith began with the mission entrusted by God to two Divine Messengers—the Bab and Baha’u’llah. Today, the distinctive unity of the Faith They founded stems from explicit instructions given by Baha’u’llah that have assured the continuity of guidance following His passing. This line of succession, referred to as the Covenant, went from Baha’u’llah to His Son, ‘Abdu’l-Baha—the Centre of the Covenant.

Source: The Covenant of Baha’u’llah by Adib Taherzadeh

At a time when [‘Abdu’l-Baha] was being attacked on every side by the Covenant-breakers (a term used for those who, while claiming to be faithful exponents of the religion of Baha’u’llah, reject the authority established in Baha’u’llah’s own writings or in the authorized interpretations of ‘Abdu’l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi, and seek to divert the Faith to their own ends), and the believers were dispirited and disconsolate, He cheered the friends, strengthened their faith, assured them of the invincibility of the Covenant and widened their vision to see the greatness of the Cause and its ultimate victory.

‘Abdu’l-Baha’s trusted secretary and confidant Dr Yunis Khan has left to posterity his reminiscences of the Master during this most turbulent period of His Ministry. The following is a summary translation of his celebrated memoirs.

“In those days when the showers of sedition and conspiracy were raining down, and the storms of tests and trials were blowing with fury, a fierce hurricane was raging around the Ark of the Cause of God. But it was the Centre of the Covenant who was at the helm. Through the potency of His words and the authority of His directives, He was navigating the Sacred Ark toward the shores of salvation. The sway of His pen and the influence of His utterances were both means whereby He was guiding the people to the highway of blissfulness and prosperity. In the same way that the traces of His pen are imprinted for all time upon the pages of His Tablets, His blessed words were engraved upon the hearts of those who were privileged to hear Him and their recollections were transmitted from heart to heart. His utterances in those days were as varied as His Writings.

“In His talks He often used to share with us many glad tidings of the future progress of the Cause of God. He likened our days of anguish and sadness to the early days of Christianity and Islam which had also been very turbulent; but these religions were later exalted in the land. Similarly, He assured us in clear terms of the ascendancy and victory of the Cause of Baha’u’llah… His utterances on the future of the Cause were delivered with eloquence and effectiveness and were imbued with a power and authority born of the heavenly realms such that they penetrated the depths of our hearts. Our souls were so assured and uplifted that we, His hearers, did not have to imagine forthcoming events. Rather, we found ourselves experiencing all the bountiful happenings of the future. The eternal glory and ultimate successes of the Cause of God were so vividly portrayed by Him that the passage of time was irrelevant, for we saw the past, present and the future at the same time. All of this was because the promises of the Master concerning the ascendancy of the Cause were absolutely clear, explicit and irrevocable… Now [after a few decades] many of the prophecies of ‘Abdu’l-Baha have already been fulfilled, for instance who could ever have imagined that the small village of Haifa would become, within so short a period, as foreshadowed by ‘Abdu’l-Baha, a great city and an important port…”