This final, shattering and most humiliating blow may well be
regarded as the culmination in the long series of reverses suffered
by these same relentless foes, marked by the repudiation of their
preposterous claims following the Passing of Bahá’u’lláh, by the
overwhelming majority of His followers, east and west; by the
abject failure of ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd, as well as the notorious Commission
of Inquiry, to banish ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to Fezzan; by the
ignominious defeat of the Turkish Commander-in-Chief, the cruel,
boastful Jamál Pá
shá, following his threat to crucify the Center of
the Covenant outside the main gate of the fortress City of ‘Akká;
by acquisition of the site for the construction of the Báb’s Sepulcher;
by the restitution of the keys to the Most Holy Tomb and
the recognition by the British authorities of the right of the Bahá’í
world community to the custodianship of the Bahá’í Shrines; by the
establishment of the international Bahá’í endowments on Mt.
Carmel; by the formation of the Palestine branches of the Bahá’í
National Assemblies; by exhumation of the Brother and Mother of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá and reburial in the neighborhood of the Báb’s resting
place; by the evacuation by these same adversaries of the Mansion
of Bahjí, after forty years’ occupancy; by the demise, in distressing
circumstances, of the archbreaker of the Covenant himself; by the
ignominious flight of his henchmen on the eve of the disturbances
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which rocked the Holy Land in recent years; by the deaths with
dramatic swiftness of this same lieutenant, his kindred and closest
associates; by the intervention of the Israeli government in denying
the competence of the civil courts to adjudicate the case brought
by the remnant of these same Covenant-breakers and the subsequent
authorization issued by the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign
Affairs to demolish the ruined building close to the vicinity of
Bahá’u’lláh’s Tomb; finally, by the extinction of the life of the
prime mover in the diabolical plans directed during the course of
three decades against ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.