This unholy trinity exerted its baleful and all-pervasive influence over twenty-six of the twenty-seven Hands of the Cause of God, gathered at their conclave in ‘Akká, following the passing of Shoghi Effendi, and, as a result, they decided and announced to the Bahá’í world, to their eternal discredit and shame, that he had been unable to appoint a successor, and thereupon nefariously set about rendering null and void the major provisions of the Bahá’í Administrative Order as delineated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in His divinely-conceived and sacred Will and Testament.

In this decision, made with undue haste but a few days after his passing, and on the basis of a patently false premise, the Hands, (with a single notable exception) demonstrated a lamentable and shocking loss of faith in the Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh and in the immutability of the sacred, and divinely-conceived Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá that Shoghi Effendi had repeatedly emphasized in his writings should be considered an expression of the Will of Bahá’u’lláh, as well, even referring to it as “their Will,” (W.O.B. p.22), a Document which, therefore, would remain in force as long as the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh itself endured. This Will clearly provides for an unbroken line of Guardians of the Cause of God, each appointed by his predecessor “in his own life-time” and who, as “the Center of the Cause,” the sole interpreter of Bahá’í holy Writ and “the sacred head for life of the Universal House of Justice,” are called upon to exercise these unique, irreplaceable and essential functions in the Bahá’í Administrative Order. In their unpardonable abandonment of the Guardianship that would bring about the demise of their own institution, upon the death of the last Hand of the Cause appointed by Shoghi Effendi, these now errant Hands, in effect, had shamelessly abrogated the major provisions of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá that Shoghi Effendi had further equated in its sacredness and immutability with Bahá’u’lláh’s Most Holy Book, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, in further stating that these two Documents: “are not only complementary, but that they mutually confirm one another and are inseparable parts of one complete unit.” (W.O.B. p.4).

Having thus in their faithlessness incredibly abandoned the Guardianship, and decreed their own ultimate demise, these fallen Hands then set about establishing a substitute organization of their own making in which the twin Institutions of the Administrative Order, delineated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, would be initially replaced with a single sans-Guardian organization comprised of nine members whom they selected from their own number, and which would now be identified as the “Custodians of the Bahá’í World Faith<” to which they assigned both executive and legislative functions and which they had the effrontery to claim would exercise, “all such functions, rights and powers in succession to the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith” until Ridván 1963 when it would be replaced by an equally illegitimate sans-Guardian and hence HEADLESS body that they would nevertheless claim to be the Universal House of Justice, and which they would then blatantly and falsely pretend, had been “established and elected in conformity with the Sacred Writings of Baha’u’llah and the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.”

On the other hand, what should have been obvious to the Hands was that the very last thing that Shoghi Effendi would have failed to do would have been to faithfully fulfill the supreme and sacred mandate of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to appoint his successor. However In their undue haste to end the Guardianship the Hands failed to discover, that Shoghi Effendi, obligated as he was by the specific terms of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to name his successor “in his own life-time,” and not by testamentary document, had purposely obscured, for a very critical and valid reason, this appointment that he had made in January 1951, some six years before his passing, in such a manner that, while the identity of his chosen successor would not be discerned, at the time, by the believers, he had every reason to believe that the key would be found, upon their reflection, in the “epoch making decision” he had made on 9 January 1951 when he had proclaimed the formation of the “first International Bahá’í Council,”—“this first embryonic International Institution” — whose establishment, “at long last,” he had hailed as “marking the most significant milestone in the evolution of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh in the course of the last thirty years” (i.e. since the Ascension of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. And they were very much aware that Shoghi Effendi had appointed Mason Remey President of this embryonic International Council but had retained it in an inactive status during his ministry. Upon activation, and future development in successive stages, Shoghi Effendi had pointed out it would, in its final, or efflorescent stage of development, be none other than the Universal House of Justice whose “sacred head” can only be the Guardian of the Faith.

Moreover the identity of his successor would have certainly been discerned by the Hands, if the explicit instructions with respect to the International Bahá’í Council, as outlined in his message of 23 November 1951, had been faithfully carried out and this “Central Body” of the Faith, had perforce become, for the first time, an actively functioning body under the Presidency of Mason Remey, as it directed the “widely ramified operations” of the National Assemblies of the Bahá’í world in their prosecution of the goals of the Ten Year Global Crusade, soon to commence at Ridván 1953.

However, to reiterate, the Hands obviously never considered or they ignored the import of Shoghi Effendi’s Proclamation of 9 January 1951 and his message of 23 November 1951 and the International Bahá’í Council was never permitted by the Hands to exercise this primary role. If, on the other hand, Shoghi Effendi’s instructions had been faithfully carried, out, his appointed successor would then have become obvious, as well as his reason for effecting this appointment in a veiled and unexpected, yet perfectly legitimate manner to conceal the devastating prospect of his early demise (foreseen by Shoghi Effendi) that would otherwise have been clearly discerned when they had realized that his successor was 23 years his senior and yet was destined to outlive him.

For further elucidation of the facts supporting the accession of Mason Remey to the Guardianship refer to the web page: Bahá’í-Guardian. com