What is the Covenant?

“Gather them … together around this Divine Law, the covenant of which Thou hast established with all Thy Prophets and Thy Messengers, and Whose ordinances Thou hast written down in Thy Tablets and Thy Scriptures.”

Bahá’u’lláh, Prayers and Meditations by Bahá’u’lláh, LXV.

“Follow not, therefore, your earthly desires, and violate not the Covenant of God, nor break your pledge to Him. With firm determination, with the whole affection of your heart, and with the full force of your words, turn ye unto Him, and walk not in the ways of the foolish. The world is but a show, vain and empty, a mere nothing, bearing the semblance of reality. Set not your affections upon it. Break not the bond that uniteth you with your Creator, and be not of those that have erred and strayed from His ways.”

Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, CLII.

“In all these journeys the traveler must stray not the breadth of a hair from the ‘Law,’ for this is indeed the secret of the ‘Path’ and the fruit of the Tree of ‘Truth’; and in all these stages he must cling to the robe of obedience to the commandments, and hold fast to the cord of shunning all forbidden things, that he may be nourished from the cup of the Law and informed of the mysteries of Truth.”

Bahá’u’lláh, The Seven Valleys, p. 39.

“The Covenant of God in this Day of Manifestation is a Lifeboat, an Ark of Salvation. All true followers of the Blessed Perfection are sheltered and protected in this Ark. Whoever leaves it, trusting in his own will and strength, will drown and be destroyed. For the Blessed Perfection left no possibility for discord, disagreement, and dissension. The Covenant is like the sea, and the believers are as the fishes in the sea. If a fish leaves the water, it cannot live.”

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, quoted in “Ten days in the Light of ‘Akká”, p. 49.

“A Covenant in the religious sense is a binding agreement between God and man, whereby God requires of man certain behaviour in return for which He guarantees certain blessings, or whereby He gives man certain bounties in return for which He takes from those who accept them an undertaking to behave in a certain way.”

The Universal House of Justice, 23 March 1975, The Covenant compilation.

“… an institution which protects the Cause from individuals who, through the assertion of their own wills, would try to force God’s Cause into the paths of their own preference and thus divide the faithful and subvert the world-wide establishment of divine justice.”

Excerpt of a letter written by the Universal House of Justice, 23 March 1975 quoted in Power of the Covenant, Part Two, Bahá’í Canada Publications 1976.