Sequential excerpts from the book ‘God Passes By’, written in 1944 by Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith

2/8/26

Bahá’u’lláh explains to one of the believers what prompted Him to return to Baghdad from Kurdistan

The tragic situation that had developed in the course of His two years’ absence now imperatively demanded His return. “From the Mystic Source,” He Himself explains in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, “there came the summons bidding Us return whence We came. Surrendering Our will to His, We submitted to His injunction.” “By God besides Whom there is none other God!” is His emphatic assertion to Shaykh Sultán, as reported by Nabíl in his narrative, “But for My recognition of the fact that the blessed Cause of the Primal Point was on the verge of being completely obliterated, and all the sacred blood poured out in the path of God would have been shed in vain, I would in no wise have consented to return to the people of the Bayán, and would have abandoned them to the worship of the idols their imaginations had fashioned.” 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)

2/1/26

1856: Bahá’u’lláh “refused for some time to leave His house”

Such was the sadness that overwhelmed Him on His arrival that He refused for some time to leave His house, except for His visits to Káimayn and for His occasional meeting with a few of His friends who resided in that town and in Baghdád. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)