Leland Jensen

Dr. Leland Jensen, Knight of Baha'u'llah, Establisher of the Baha'i Faith

Dr. Leland Jensen (22 Aug.1914 - 6 Aug. 1996) was a third generation Bahá'í on his mothers side. He became the leader of a division of the Bahá'ís calling themselves the Bahá'ís Under the Provisions of the Covenant. Some of his titles that he claimed as his own were: the "seventh angel" of the Book of Revelation, the "establisher" of the Bahá'í Faith, Joshua the high priest from Zechariah chapter 3, and the return of Jesus the High Priest after the order of Melchezedek. [1]

He is well known for predicting that a nuclear attack would be launched on 29 April 1980 that would annihilate one-third of humankind. Before and after that date, three researchers conducted interviews with Jensen's followers in order to gauge their reactions to failed prophecy. (Balch)

As a group who believe that Charles Mason Remey was the 2nd Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, they are considered Covenant-breakers by the majority of Bahá'ís. Remey himself declared that the larger group of Bahá'ís were themselves covenant-breakers in his Proclamation in 1960. The disagreement between the two groups stems from a dispute over succession of leadership after the passing of the Bahá'í Faith's first Guardian, Shoghi Effendi.

Background

At an early age, Jensen began teaching the Bahá'í Faith to his friends. When he got older, he became more proficient, and was able to bring several of these young people into the Faith. Later on, after he got married, he and his wife, Opal, finished college and got their doctorates in natural medicine, becoming chiropractic doctors. They attended the School of Drugless Physicians and graduated in 1944. Opal was the valedictorian and Jensen graduated with distinction (cum laude).

After they graduated, and after practicing for a while, they moved to St. Louis, into a mansion, and they moved the Bahá'í Center into their home because it was very large. In 1953 Shoghi Effendi launched the Ten Year Crusade, which aimed at bringing the message of Bahá'u'lláh to the entire world. Jensen and his wife gave up their practice and their livelihood and went to two tiny islands in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar. The first island was called Reunion, it was a French-owned island, which practiced Catholicism as the State Religion.

Jensen and his wife were the first Bahá'ís to visit the island, and therefore received the title of "Knights of Bahá'u'lláh". 150 people were knighted by Shoghi Effendi during the Ten Year Crusade. Leland and Opal received this honor for their successful teaching.

The Guardianship Dispute

In 1960, three years after the passing of the first Guardian Shoghi Effendi, Mason Remey made his Proclamation in 1960 to being the next Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith. This claim came due to his appointment as President of the First International Bahá'í Council. For this action, Remey and all those who followed him were declared by the Hands of the Cause to be Covenant Breakers. In his Proclamation as the 2nd Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, Remey declared that the Hands of the Cause had no authority to "seize the helm of the Faith", but that their only function was to serve the Guardian. He claimed that they ceased to be Hands of the Cause at all upon the passing of Shoghi Effendi. He declared that what the Hands of the Cause had done after the passing of Shoghi Effendi was Covenant-breaking, and that all those who went along with them would be considered covenant-breakers as well.

Although the majority of Bahá'ís do not accept that Shoghi Effendi appointed any successor, Jensen and his Bahá'ís Under the Provisions of the Covenant maintain that the Guardianship is an essential feature of the Administration, and that it is in fact confirmed by Shoghi Effendi's writings that the Faith must have a Guardian:

"Divorced from the institution of the Guardianship the World Order of Bahá'u'lláh would be mutilated and permanently deprived of that hereditary principle which, as `Abdu'l-Bahá has written, has been invariably upheld by the Law of God." (Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh, p. 148)

After his Proclamation in 1960, Remey attracted a following of several thousand people under his "Hereditary Guardianship". Leland Jensen was one of the people that followed Remey, and in 1963 was elected to the National Assembly of United States Bahá'ís Under the Hereditary Guardianship. While serving on this Assembly he began disputing over issues with Rex King, the Secretary of the Assembly. Jensen had accused King of having "gained control" of the United States group, and King had thereupon proposed to set up a "Bahá'í court" to have Jensen "thrown out of the Bahá'í Faith". Mason Remey became dissuaded with Rex King's activities on the National Assembly, and in a letter to Jensen in Sept. 1969 he (Remey) wrote:

"I told Rex that no one of my acquaintance has a better knowledge of the Bahá'í Faith than he but as Lucifer in Old Testament Days chose to put truth aside and espouse the cause of Satan, so had he done in these modern times....therefore obliging me to cast him out from all association in this world with the people of God that included the life to come as well as his life here upon earth – his station to be ever and eternally that of Satan for evermore."

Dr. Jensen remained loyal to Mason Remey until Remey's passing in 1974. Upon his passing, several members of Remey's following came forward claiming to be his successor. Jensen believed that the only valid appointment Remey had made (of the three total appointments during his lifetime) was Remey's adopted son Pepe Remey.

Leadership

Leland and Opal took up residence in Missoula, Montana in 1964, continuing their chiropractic practice and teaching the Faith. Jensen was convicted in 1969 of a "lewd and lascivious act",and served 4 years of a 20 year sentence in the Montana State Prison. There, Jensen had converted over two dozen fellow inmates to his claim that an angelic visitor had told him he was the promised "Joshua" of Zechariah Chapter 3 in the Bible. Jensen claimed not only to be "Joshua", and the "return of Jesus the High Priest", but also the "Seventh Angel" of Revelations Chapter 11 whom `Abdu'l-Bahá explains on pg.56 of Some Answered Questions would "establish" the Kingdom on Earth and appear in 1963. He also claimed to be the "embryonic" Universal House of Justice as it was his belief that he was the one charged by God to re-establish it according to the Provisions of the Covenant.

Jensen had taught these inmates (and students for many years to come) that like Jesus and Bahá'u'lláh, he fulfilled Biblical and Bahá'í prophecies, and that these "proofs", as he called them, could be examined by anyone to verify that they were true. Throughout his many years of teaching the Faith he developed a series of "Fireside Classes" which served to show the student the "Proofs" for certain beliefs. The main tenet of these Proofs were that Jesus, Bahá'u'lláh, and Jensen himself were prophesied in the Bible by their names, the dates they'd appear, the missions they'd accomplish, and where they would appear. He taught a total of 7 Fireside classes to students which also included a class on the "Purpose of Life", "The Covenant", and the "Prophecies in the Great Pyramid". It was in Jensen's own "Proof for the Establisher" fireside that one would be shown where in the Bible his "mission" was outlined, and why he believed he was chosen by God to "Establish the Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven". (view "Proofs for the Establisher Fireside" in PDF).

While in prison he also claimed to have decoded prophecies hidden in the inner passageways of the Great Pyramid of Giza. He noted that if one equates each inch along it's inner passageways to a solar year that there was a correspondence to historical events marked off along these passageways. He taught that the Flood of Noah, Exodus of Moses, Birth of Jesus, appearance of the Báb, proclamation of Bahá'u'lláh, and the Establishment of the Kingdom (2001) could all be found in the prophecies of the Great Pyramid. View his decade of research on the subject here

These activities suffered some setbacks starting in May 1980 when Jensen's widely predicted "Apocalypse" failed to materialize. A number of Jensen's followers abandoned him at that time. He continued to teach his beliefs, raise up followers, and write books and essays about the Faith until his death on Aug. 6th, 1996, with more than one hundred of his followers in attendance.

Re-Establishing the International Bahá'í Council

Under his leadership he established the Second International Bahá'í Council (sIBC) on Jan. 9th, 1991. Believing that the rest of the Bahá'ís were deceived after the passing of Shoghi Effendi by the Hands of the Cause, he believed that he had been "chosen" by God to re-establish the administrative order that Shoghi Effendi had outlined. He believed that Mason Remey's adopted son Joseph Pepe Remey was the Guardian of the Faith when this council was formed, so thereby invited him, as Guardian, to be the President of the Second International Bahá'í Council. Pepe declined the position which began a long series of debates between the two.

After his passing in 1996 the leadership of Jensen's group of Bahá'ís Under the Provisions of the Covenant passed on to the Second International Bahá'í Council with the one they believe to be the Guardian, Neal Chase, as it's President. Jensen created the Council in accordance to the Four Stage Plan (see article) of Shoghi Effendi and the provisions of The Will and Testament of `Abdu'l-Bahá. Most notable of these provisions was a place for the Guardian of the Faith in the position of President, as the Will and Testament states on pg. 14: "the guardian of the Cause of God is it's [Council's] sacred head and distinguished member for life."

Prophecies

Jensen made several predictions of apocalypse based on his interpretations of Biblical prophecies. This is an account of one:

"...on a brisk April 29 morning in 1980, Leland Jensen, a chiropractor and leader of a small religious sect called the Bahá'ís [sic] Under the Provisions of the Covenant, led his devoted followers into fallout shelters in Missoula, Montana, to await the end of the world. Within the first hour, Jensen believed, a full third of the Earth's population would be annihilated in a nuclear holocaust of fire and fallout. Over the course of the next twenty years most of the remaining population would be ravaged by conquest, war, famine, and pestilence."

(Michael Shermer, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, page 192)

The story was picked up by UPI and published in the Florida Union Times in Jacksonville Fla, Tues. April 29th, 1980. It reads:

"He sees the current World Order as the Beast of the Apocalypse, which he says will begin to die in the holocaust...Then the Kingdom of God will establish itself in 2001.

Jensen won't be concerned if his prophecy doesn't come true. "There will be a nuclear holocaust some day," he said "and by having a definite date established we've accomplished tremendous things.

After providing for themselves they began a public relations campaign on the inadequacy of public shelters in an effort to better prepare the general public for the holocaust."

In Jensen's hometown of Missoula, Mt. the local newspaper, the Missoulian, published this on April 30th, 1980:

"Based on his interpretations of the Bible and on measurements of the Great Pyramid of Kuhfu in Giza, Egypt, Jensen said, ‘either a provocative act that will escalate into World War III, or World War III itself,’ was to occur at 5:55 p.m. MDT Tuesday [4/29/80]." (Missoulian, Vol. 107 No. 311 April 30, 1980)

Jensen claimed this prediction was fulfilled although it was not known exactly how when April 29th came and went. He said that on the very day that he gave for a "provocative act", April 29th 1980, the Soviets launched a nuclear powered U-23 spy satellite (Cosmos mission 1,176), the type of satellite that was a sophisticated surveillance satellite designed to track deep-running American nuclear submarines.

"Washington- Soviet Union last week launched a radar ocean surveillance spacecraft of a type normally powered by a nuclear fission reactor. The spacecraft, launched APR. 29..." (Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 5, 1980)

At the launching of this satellite and its completion of one revolution around the earth, the entire American nuclear submarine force was located and targeted. The ability for America’s nuclear submarine force to secretly navigate the oceans without being detected by the Russians was now gone and every submarine was in the Soviet cross-hairs. This last buttress of the nuclear deterrence "MAD" (Mutually Assured Destruction) was pulled away, and it was due to this act by the Soviets that President Carter signed Presidential Directive 59 which instituted the new "First Strike Initiative" policy that the United States has been operating under ever since. The last time the Soviets launched a similar spacecraft in September of 1977, it crashed in northern Canada in 1978 and the U.S. said that if the Soviets were to launch another of the same type, "it would be an act of war". So, Jensen claimed he got it right, that a "provocative act" occurred on the date he predicted, but that the media failed to understand why the world hadn’t come to an end. Dr. Jensen claimed he never said the world would "come to an end", but that "either a provocative act that will escalate into World War III, or World War III itself ",would occur.

Publications

Jensen was a prolific writer, and, having worked in a print shop while in college, became a prolific publisher. The Bahá'í Publishers Under the Provisions of the Covenant published several of his and other believers books on the Bahá'í Faith. A few of his more notable books are:

"The Most Mighty Document" (1979, 1992, & 1996) in PDF- the 7th Epistle to Joseph Pepe Remey explaining their roles, the Covenant, and Dr. Jensen's beliefs on the succession of the Guardianship.
Jeanne Dixon Was Right! (1994) Bahá'í Publishers Under the Provisions of the Covenant.
The Seventh Angel Sounded (1994) Bahá'í Publishers Under the Provisions of the Covenant.

References

Robert Balch, Gwen Farnsworth, and Sue Wilkins, "When the Bombs Drop: Reactions to Disconfirmed Prophecy in a Millennial Sect," Sociological Perspectives 26 (1983), 137-58.

External links