forty-year-long

Updated: May 4, 2025

This infinitely precious Faith, despite eleven decades of uninterrupted persecution, on the part of governments and ecclesiastics, involving the martyrdom of its Prophet-Herald, the four banishments and forty-year-long exile suffered by its Founder, the forty years of incarceration inflicted upon its Exemplar, and the sacrifice of no less than twenty thousand of its followers, has succeeded in firmly establishing itself in all the continents of the globe, and is irresistibly forging ahead, with accelerating momentum, bidding fair to envelop, at the close of the coming decade, the whole planet with the radiance of its splendor.

Effendi Shoghi - Messages to the Bahá'í World: 1950–1957