Apocalyptic concerns and the Baha'i faith

‘Abdu’l-Bahá had predicted World War I and called it “Armageddon,”…a number of Baha’is in the 1950s evidently had apocalyptic concerns (Piff 2000, 122–30;Piff and Warburg 2003), the extent of these beliefs is unknown, and there is no evidence that such concerns dominated the community as a whole (Collins 2002b, 10–11). By contrast, the small (mostly American) sectarian Remeyite Baha’i splinter groups that developed after Shoghi Effendi's death in 1957 often held strong apocalyptic millennialist beliefs. [These groups originated with the claims of a senior Baha’i leader, Charles Mason Remey (1874–1974) to be Shoghi Effendi's successor (hence the rubric “Remeyite”). …Remey began to stress the immediacy of a final “great global catastrophe” (Johnson 1974, 362–64). His followers soon split into several contending sects, the most studied of which were the Baha’is Under the Provisions of the Covenant headed by Leland Jensen (d. 1996) from Missoula, Montana… (Balch, Farnsworth, and Wilkins 1983; Balch et al. 1997)] A third episode of apocalyptic expectation developed in the final years of the twentieth century in association with the widespread belief that the Lesser Peace would be established by the year 2000, and the anticipation by some Baha’is that this would be preceded by catastrophic events. While it is not possible to assess the number of Baha’is who held such views, it is of note that the Universal House of Justice felt it necessary to discourage Baha’is from speculating on the subject (Collins2002b, 12–13,17–18).

(Babi and Baha’i Millennialism by Peter Smith, William P. Collins)

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