The twelve days of Ridvan are kept by Baha'is as the holiest festival of their calendar, with the first, ninth and twelfth days observed as full holy days on which work is suspended, and the period as a whole is treated as the effective founding of the Baha'i Faith as a religion distinct from the Babi movement that had preceded it. Baha'i teaching holds that Baha'u'llah's declaration fulfilled not only the Bab's own explicit prophecy but also, in Baha'i understanding, messianic and eschatological expectations found across Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other world religions, a claim central to the Baha'i doctrine of progressive revelation.
The declaration also marked a practical turning point for the movement's organization, since Baha'u'llah's growing following required the Babi community's structures, still oriented around the Bab's own laws and teaching, to reorient themselves around a new, superseding revelation, a transition that was not uniformly accepted and that produced a lasting, though numerically much smaller, community of Babis who did not follow Baha'u'llah.
The Ridvan festival remains the occasion each year on which Baha'i local and national administrative bodies are elected, tying the anniversary of the faith's founding declaration directly to the ongoing life of its elected institutions.