Does not 'Abdu'l-Bahá in His own Will -- in a tone and language that might well confound the most inveterate among the breakers of His Father's Covenant -- rob of their chief weapon those who so long and so persistently had striven to impute to Him the charge of having tacitly claimed a station equal, if not superior, to that of Bahá'u'lláh? "The foundation of the belief of the people of Baha is this," thus proclaims one of the weightiest passages of that last document left to voice in perpetuity the directions and wishes of a departed Master, "His Holiness the Exalted One (the Bab) is the Manifestation of the unity and oneness of God and the Forerunner of the Ancient Beauty. His Holiness the Abha Beauty (Bahá'u'lláh) (may my life be a sacrifice for His steadfast friends) is the supreme Manifestation of God and the Day-Spring of His most divine Essence. All others are servants unto Him and do His bidding."
From such clear and formally laid down statements, incompatible as they are with any assertion of a claim to Prophethood, we should not by any means infer that 'Abdu'l-Bahá is merely one of the servants of the Blessed Beauty, or at best one whose function is to be confined to that of an authorized interpreter of His Father's teachings. Far be it from me to entertain such a notion or to wish to instill such sentiments. To regard Him in such a light is a manifest betrayal of the priceless heritage bequeathed by Bahá'u'lláh to mankind. Immeasurably exalted is the station conferred upon Him by the Supreme Pen above and beyond the implications of these, His own written statements. Whether in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the most weighty and sacred of all the works of Bahá'u'lláh, or in the Kitáb-i-'Ahd, the Book of His Covenant, or in the Suriy-i-Ghusn (Tablet of the Branch), such references as have been recorded by the pen of Bahá'u'lláh -- references which the Tablets of His Father addressed to Him mightily reinforce -- invest 'Abdu'l-Bahá with a power, and surround Him with a halo, which the present generation can never adequately appreciate. (Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah)
