The Institution Provided For in Scripture

Most religious governing bodies are founded by their communities after the founder has died. This one was described in advance. Baha'u'llah names the House of Justice in the Kitab-i-Aqdas, sets out its standing and gives it authority over matters his own revelation has not addressed; Abdu'l-Baha, in his Will and Testament, describes its election and calls it the source to which all must turn. The institution therefore exists in the texts for something over a century before anybody sat on it.

The interval was long. Shoghi Effendi, who had directed the Baha'i world as Guardian since 1921, died in 1957 without having appointed a successor, and the Hands of the Cause of God acted as Custodians for the six years that followed. The first Universal House of Justice was elected in 1963, at the close of a ten year plan and at the centenary of Baha'u'llah's declaration, by the members of the national assemblies then existing.

Its seat is on the northern slope of Mount Carmel in Haifa, in a colonnaded building completed in 1983 that stands within the terraced gardens of the Baha'i World Centre. The site is not incidental: it is above the shrine of the Bab, and the arc of administrative buildings around it was laid out by Shoghi Effendi decades before most of them were built.