Báb's Dispensation

The upper floor the the House of the Báb in Shiraz, Iran, where He declared Himself to His first believer in May 1844. Photo courtesy of Médiathèque bahaie at http://www.bahai-biblio.org/

The short duration of His Dispensation, the restricted range within which His laws and ordinances have been made to operate,  supply no criterion whatever wherewith to judge its Divine origin and to evaluate the potency of its message. “That so brief a span,” Bahá’u’lláh Himself explains, “should have separated this most mighty and wondrous Revelation from Mine own previous Manifestation, is a secret that no man can unravel and a mystery such as no mind can fathom. Its duration had been foreordained, and no man shall ever discover its reason unless and until he be informed of the contents of My Hidden Book.”
“Behold,” Bahá’u’lláh further explains in the Kitáb-i-Badí’, one of His works refuting the arguments of the people of the Bayán, “behold, how immediately upon the completion of the ninth year of this wondrous, this most holy and merciful Dispensation, the requisite number of pure, of wholly consecrated and sanctified souls had been most secretly consummated.”

The Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh, Shoghi Effendi