Dear Jance and to all, The events that have occured in the last fifty years of the Faith are not unlike the events that occured fifty years before that or fifty years even before that. From the beginning the Path of God is continually cluttered with every conceivable machination and theology brought upon by people intent to make the straight path crooked. The pathway is easy if you follow the path, but is extremely difficult when one gets muddled in all the different theologies and methodologies. And a theology is just another excuse for breaking the Covenant. The difficulty, it seems, is in agreeing who exactly has the authority in the Baha’i Faith. That is, who is the group who is speaking with the voice of the author. The foundation of the Faith is the Covenant which is the books of the Kitab’i-Ahd and the Will & Testament. It is very simple. The line of authority comes from the Author who is Baha’u’llah. Baha’u’llah, in the Kitab’i-Ahd, names two individual successors to Himself and then the House of Justice. He appoints Abdu’l-Baha and then after Abdu’l-Baha Muhammad Ali who later broke the Covenant. So the quesion here would be, “If Baha’u’llah was divinely inspired, how come He made a mistake?” Of course Baha’u’llah didn’t make a mistake, He knew Muhammad Ali would break Covenant. Why would He purposely appoint, as His second successor after Abdu’l-Baha, someone He knew would break the Covenant? Baha’u’llah created a dichotomy where He created two infallible individual successors to Himself and this infallibility is then passed on to the ‘House of Justice’. Muhammad Ali broke the covenant so he was out, so Abdu’l-Baha appoints Shoghi Effendi and everybody is in an uproar after they hear Shoghi Effendi is named in the Will. This type of wrangling over the point of successorship is constant in the Baha’i Faith. Nothing has gotten any better, you just have to stick to the facts, maam.
Shoghi Effendi inherited conferred infallibility from the Covenant and he knew from the Will that he was to implement the House of Justice as Shoghi was the executor of the Will. He translated it and he executed it. Shoghi was unique in his Guardianship. This is why he is addressed in the W&T as the “unique and priceless pearl”. Shoghi Effendi was infallible in his mission by himself which was for him to establish this House of Justice. The House of Justice is both the legislative and judicial body and the executive head. In the Will it is the Aghsan who sits at the head or president of the House of Justice. Shoghi Effendi was an Afnan through the male line. This is why Shoghi didn’t sit at the head of the IBC which was the House of Justice in its first stage of development. The Guardian that is the head for life of that body is the Aghsan lineage of whom Mason was as he was adopted according to the laws of the east and an adopted son has all the rights and priveledges of a natural son. Abdu’l-Baha addressed Mason as his “Aghsan”. The straight path is to follow the line of Baha’u’llah today. This is what is stated in the W&T. Mason was the Aghsan head of the House of Justice and later Mason adopted a son whose name was Pepe and Pepe adopted Neal Chase who is a blood-line descendant of David and collateral descendant of Baha’u’llah. This, as I stated before, is in the prophecies from both the bible and Baha’i scriptures. So that’s easy enough, huh? The web pages are better, as I don’t write as well.
The path is easy if you just follow the Aghsan lineage.
Victor