The Guardian’s Unfinished Plans

Now, people have asked, “Did the Guardian have any conception that he was going to pass away? Did he have fore-knowledge, being divinely guided, that he was going to pass away?” Again, friends, the answer to the question is that we don’t know. The preponderance of evidence seems to be that he did not know, that he did not expect to pass away.

…

We knew perhaps he was sick. We knew he was overburdened. We were all trying to do everything we could to relieve him. And yet, as you know, when he passed away in England, I had many cables from him, many letters from him letting me know the things he wanted to be done, the things he wanted finished by the time he got back because of the things he wanted to do, and he said he can’t do, until other things were finished. He wanted me to press the government, to press different sources in order to finish them. This is one thing which was very important, he considered one of the most important accomplishments of the past years, was the freeing of the Most Holy Place in the Bahá’í world, Bahji, and the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh, freeing it from the poisonous and insidious influence of the covenant breakers, who lived right next to the Shrine, which I was working on. Finally, we got these people disposed, we got the people out of these buildings, we got title to the buildings, and I cabled to the Guardian, and I asked him if, because he had said that he wanted them destroyed immediately when they were out of the buildings , so I cabled him that we now had the title transferred to the American NSA, that is, their branch, and should we proceed with the destruction of these buildings? And he cabled back, and he said, no, wait until I return. I want to supervise the destruction of those buildings. Well, there was a direct statement that there were certain things that he wanted to do. Now certain other things that he wanted to do in Haifa, and certain other things that he wanted to do in Akka. He asked me to arrange the details for him so that he could just handle them when he got back.

It seems likely that if he had had knowledge that he was going to pass away, he would have given us some written instructions as to what should be done after his ascension.

Source: Hand of the Cause Leroy Ioas, “In the Days of the Guardian”, a talk given in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 31 October 1958 (issued on cassette by the US Bahá’í Publishing Trust; transcript at bahai.works).

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: shoghi-effendi-premonition-death).

Various. *bahaistories.com archive*. https://bahaistories.com/subject/shoghi-effendi-premonition-death