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No lesser tribute can be paid the memory of the glorious Báb, the immortal Quddús, the lion-hearted Mullá Ḥusayn, the erudite Vahíd, the audacious Hujjat, the illustrious seven martyrs of Ṭihrán and a host of unnumbered heroes whose lifeblood flowed so copiously in the course of the opening decade of the first Bahá’í century, by the privileged champion-builders of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh during the present critical stage in the unfoldment of the Formative Age of His Dispensation, than a parallel outpouring of their substance by the builders of the most holy House of Worship laboring in the corresponding decade of the succeeding century.
At four of these five conferences, in the proceedings of which four, the members of the American Bahá’í Community—the principal executors of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Divine Plan and the keepers and defenders of the stronghold of the Bahá’í Administrative Order—will participate, through their official representatives, the voice of the champion-builders of Bahá’u’lláh’s embryonic World Order, who can well claim to have had a decisive share in the great strides made by this Crusade, should be raised in a spirit and manner that will galvanize these conferences into action, and produce such results as will reverberate round the world.
Its members, the executors of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Plan, the champion-builders of Bahá’u’lláh’s embryonic Order, the torchbearers of a world-girdling civilization, must, in the years immediately ahead, bestir themselves, and, as bidden by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “increase” their exertions “a thousandfold,” lay bare further vistas in the “range” of their “future achievements” and of their “unspeakably glorious” mission, and hasten the day when, as prophesied by Him, their community will “find itself securely established upon the throne of an everlasting dominion,” when “the whole earth” will be stirred and shaken by the results of its “achievements” and “resound with the praises of majesty and greatness,” when America will “evolve into a center from which waves of spiritual power will emanate, and the throne of the Kingdom of God will, in the plenitude of its majesty and glory, be firmly established.”
The rise of the World Administrative Center of their Faith, within the precincts and under the shadow of its World Spiritual Center, a process that has been kept in abeyance for well nigh thirty years, whilst the machinery of the national and local institutions of a nascent Order was being erected and perfected, presents them with an opportunity which, as the champion-builders of that Order and the torchbearers of an as yet unborn civilization, they must seize with alacrity, resolution and utter consecration.
As the tribulations, humiliations and trials inflicted on the Cause of God in Persia, a century ago, moved inexorably towards a climax, so must the present austerity period, inaugurated a hundred years later, in the continent of America, to reflect the privations and sacrifices endured so stoically by the dawn-breakers of the Heroic Age of the Faith witness, as it approaches its culmination, a self-abnegation on the part of the champion-builders of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, laboring in the present Formative Age of His Faith, which, at its best, can be regarded as but a faint reflection of the self-sacrifice so gloriously evinced by their spiritual forbears.
Theirs will be the duty and privilege, in their capacity first as the establishers of one of the most powerful pillars sustaining the edifice of the Universal House of Justice, and then as the champion-builders of that New World Order of which that House is to be the nucleus and forerunner, to inculcate, demonstrate, and apply those twin and sorely needed principles of Divine justice and order—principles to which the political corruption and the moral license, increasingly staining the society to which they belong, offer so sad and striking a contrast.
In the United States of America, the home of the champion-builders of a fast-evolving Order, an official invitation was extended to the Bahá’í Community by the San Francisco Council of Churches to send representatives to attend a Service of Prayer for Peace and Divine Guidance to the United Nations, an invitation to which the Community warmly responded.
Carmel and in the Plain of Akká, the embellishment of the sacred precincts of the two holiest Shrines of the Bahá’í world; the formation of the Israel Branches of four national spiritual assemblies, the preparation and completion of the designs of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkárs to be erected in the Asiatic, the African and Australian continents, and the setting in motion, through the instrumentality of various departments of the Israeli government, of a long-drawn-out process, culminating in the expropriation by the state of the entire property, owned and controlled by the remnants of the breakers of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant, immediately surrounding His resting-place and the Mansion of Bahjí, the evacuation of this property by this ignoble band, and the final and definite purification, after the lapse of no less than six decades, of the Outer Sanctuary of the Most Holy Shrine of the Bahá’í world, of the defilement, which had caused so much sorrow and anxiety to the heart of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá—these are among the enduring achievements which four brief years of unremitting devotion to the interests of the Ten-Year Plan have brought about, and which will eternally redound to the glory of the champion-builders of Bahá’u’lláh’s embryonic World Order, holding aloft so valiantly the banner of His Faith in the great republic of the West.
At the World Center of the Faith, where, at long last the machinery of its highest institutions has been erected, and around whose most holy shrines the supreme organs of its unfolding Order, are, in their embryonic form, unfolding; amidst the diversified tribes and races, peopling the Dependencies and Principalities of the Dark Continent of Africa; in the far-flung territories of Central and South America so alien in culture, temperament, habits, language and outlook; in the capital cities and traditional strongholds of a materially highly advanced yet spiritually famished, much tormented, fear-ridden, hopelessly-sundered, heterogeneous conglomeration of races, nations, sects and classes overspreading the continent of Europe; in the heart of the African continent, in the capital city of the Indian sub-continent; in one of the leading capitals of the Scandinavian countries in Northern Europe; in the very heart of the leading Republic of the Western Hemisphere, the standard-bearers of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, the champion-builders of the Administrative Order, the vanguard of the Heralds of His World Order, and the Chief and appointed executors of the Master Plan of the Center of His Covenant, have, in the course of the few, fast-fleeting months ahead, separating them from the grandest crusade thus far launched in Bahá’í history, been assigned tasks, obligations and responsibilities that they can afford to neither minimize, neglect or shirk for a moment.
The American Bahá’í Community—the champion-builders of an Order which posterity will hail as the harbinger of a civilization to be regarded as the fairest fruit of the Revelation proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh; the principal trustees of a Plan which future generations will acclaim as one of the two greatest legacies left by the Center of His Covenant; marching in the van of a Crusade which history will recognize as the most momentous spiritual enterprise launched in modern times; beset by the same anxieties and perils by which the nation of which it forms a part finds itself, to an unprecedented degree, afflicted and surrounded—such a community is, at this hour, experiencing the impact of a challenge unique in its sixty years of existence.
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