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Shoghi Effendi feels that the unity of the Baha'i Revelation as one complete whole embracing the Faith of the Bab should be emphasized... The Faith of the Bab should not be divorced from that of Baha'u'llah. Though the teachings of the Bayan have been abrogated and superseded by the laws of the Aqdas, yet due to the fact that the Bab considered Himself as the Forerunner of Baha'u'llah, we would regard His Dispensation together with that of Baha'u'llah as forming one entity, the former being introductory to the advent of the latter (8:1)

The Bab states that His laws are provisional and depend upon the acceptance of the future Manifestation. This is why in the Book of Aqdas Baha'u'llah sanctions some of the laws found in the Bayan, modifies others and sets aside many (8:2)

Just as the Bayan had been revealed by the Bab at about the mid-point of His Ministry, Baha'u'llah revealed the Kitab-i-Aqdas around 1873, some twenty years after He had received, in the Siyah-Chal of Tihran, the intimation of His Revelation. In one of His Tablets He indicates that even after its revelation the Aqdas was withheld by Him for some time before it was sent to the friends in Iran. Thereafter, as Shoghi Effendi has related: (8:3)

The formulation by Baha'u'llah, in His Kitab-i-Aqdas, of the fundamental laws of His Dispensation was followed, as His Mission drew to a close, by the enunciation of certain precepts and principles which lie at the very core of His Faith, by the reaffirmation of truths He had previously proclaimed, by the elaboration and elucidation of some of the laws He had already laid down, by the revelation of further prophecies and warnings, and by the establishment of subsidiary ordinances designed to supplement the provisions of His Most Holy Book. These were recorded in unnumbered Tablets, which He continued to reveal until the last days of His earthly life.. (8:4)

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