…the fate that has overtaken those kings, ministers and
ecclesiastics, in the East as well as in the West, who have, at various stages
of Bahá’u’lláh’s ministry, either deliberately persecuted His Cause, or have
neglected to heed the warnings He had uttered, or have failed in their manifest
duty to respond to His summons or to accord Him and His message the treatment
they deserved, particular attention…
Nicolaevitch Alexander II, the all-powerful Czar of Russia,
who, in a Tablet addressed to him by name had been thrice warned by
Bahá’u’lláh, had been bidden to “summon the nations unto God,” and had been
cautioned not to allow his sovereignty to prevent him from recognizing “the
Supreme Sovereign,” suffered several attempts on his life, and at last died at
the hand of an assassin. A harsh policy of repression, initiated by himself and
followed by his successor, Alexander III, paved the way for a revolution which,
in the reign of Nicholas II, swept away on a bloody tide the empire of the
Czars, brought in its wake war, disease and famine, and established a militant
proletariat which massacred the nobility, persecuted the clergy, drove away the
intellectuals, disendowed the state religion, executed the Czar with his
consort and his family, and extinguished the dynasty of the Romanoffs.
- Shoghi
Effendi (‘God Passes By’)