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In the West the Baha'i Faith was made known through the interest which the 'episode of the Bab' aroused among European savants (such as Tolstoy, Renan, Gobineau and Browne) and pre-eminently through the journeys undertaken by the eldest son of Baha'u'llah, 'Abdul-Baha, after he was freed from prison by the Young Turks' Revolution in 1908. These journeys took him to Egypt, Europe and North America. Baha'u'llah had appointed him the authoritative interpreter of his writings. Innumerable contemporary publications testify to the deep respect accorded him in public by churches, universities and renowned personalities. He died in Haifa in 1921, leaving in his Will and Testament a charter for the future development of the Baha'i Faith under the guidance of Shoghi Effendi, whom He appointed Guardian of the Faith, and of the Universal House of Justice by Baha'u'llah himself. (12:1) During the thirty-six years of Shoghi Effendi's ministry, Baha'i teachings were disseminated in over two hundred and fifty countries and Baha'i communities began to grow in the farthest corners of the earth. In 1963, one hundred years after Baha'u'llah's declaration, the Universal House of Justice was elected for the first time by representatives of the whole Baha'i world, and is now the supreme administrative body of the Baha'i Faith, deriving its powers from the express command of Baha'u'llah and endowed by him with binding authority. (12:2) Baha'u'llah's call to the leaders of his time remained unheeded. None of the rulers addressed by Baha'u'llah was mindful of his warning and counsels. Today we are experiencing the significance of those monitory words. It becomes more and more obvious that we are living in a period of crisis, the most critical phase in the history of mankind, that the future of mankind is threatened as never before by its own destructive forces, that man is on the way to a catastrophe, to self-annihilation. Since the report of the Club of Rome about the situation of mankind has been published and become a bestseller, wider circles of the population are now aware of what eminent scientists and philosophers have been observing for a long time: mankind is on the way to destruction, if it does not come to a fundamental change in consciousness.
(12:3)
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