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Happy are they who in the days of world-encompassing trials have stood fast in the Cause and refused to swerve from its truth. Release yourselves, O nightingales of God, from the thorns and brambles of wretchedness and misery, and wing your flight to the rose-garden of unfading splendor. O My friends that dwell upon the dust! Haste forth unto your celestial habitation.
At the World Center of the Faith, in response to the urgent call for action, necessitated by the imperative needs of the rising Sepulcher of the Báb, the formation of the Bahá’í International Council, and the establishment of the State of Israel, as well as in the continent of Africa, where the appointed, the chief trustees of a divinely conceived, world-encompassing Plan could not well remain unmoved by the sight of the first attempts being made to introduce systematically the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh and to implant its banner amongst its tribes and races, the American Bahá’í Community have assumed responsibilities well exceeding the original duties they had undertaken to discharge.
Already the crushing of this God-imbued kernel upon the anvil of adversity has ignited the first sparks of the Holy Fire latent within it through the emergence of the firmly knit world-encompassing community constituting no less than twenty-five hundred centers established throughout a hundred countries representing over thirty races and extending as far north as the Arctic Circle and as far south as the Straits of Magallanes, equipped with literature translated into sixty languages and possessing endowments nearing ten million dollars, enriched through the erection of two Houses of Worship in the heart of the Asiatic and North American continents and the stately mausoleum reared in its World Center, consolidated through the incorporation of over a hundred of its national and local assemblies and reinforced through the proclamation of its independence in the East, its recognition in the West, eulogized by royalty, buttressed by nine pillars sustaining the future structure of its supreme administrative council, energized through the simultaneous prosecution of specific plans conducted under the aegis of its national councils designed to enlarge the limits and extend the ramifications and consolidate the foundations of its divinely appointed Administrative Order over the surface of the entire planet.
This world-encompassing enterprise, embarked upon, three years ago, on the occasion of the world-wide celebrations commemorating the centenary of the birth of the Mission of the Founder of our Faith, has, in all phases of its operation, throughout five continents, as well as the islands of the seas, gathered swift momentum, and is demonstrating, in both its territorial and institutional aspects, a vitality, and has registered successes, that have far exceeded the expectations of even the most sanguine among its promoters.
The first epoch witnessed the birth and the primary stages in the erection of the framework of the Administrative Order of the Faith—the nucleus and pattern of its World Order—according to the precepts laid down in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Will and Testament, as well as the launching of the initial phase of the world-encompassing Plan bequeathed by Him to the American Bahá’í Community.
That the members of this community, of either sex and of every age, of whatever race or background, however limited in experience, capacity and knowledge, may arise as one man, and seize with both hands the God-given opportunities now presented to them through the dispensations of an all-loving, ever-watchful, ever-sustaining Providence, and lend thereby a tremendous impetus to the propelling forces mysteriously guiding the operations of this newly-launched, unspeakably potent, world-encompassing Crusade, is one of the dearest wishes which a loving and longing heart holds for them at this great turning point in the fortunes of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh in the American continent.
—Shoghi Implications and Requirements Impelled at this grave hour in the chequered history of the over century-old, world-encompassing, repeatedly-persecuted yet undefeatable Faith, to summon the entire body of the valorous upholders of its institutions who, severally and collectively, stand pledged to the prosecution of the mightiest crusade launched since its inception, whether residing in homelands or overseas, however repressive the regimes under which they labor, to ponder anew the full implications and essential requirements of their stewardship of the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh.
The Community of the German and Austrian believers, the recipient of such signal honours from the Center of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant in the past; born and nurtured in its infancy under His fostering care in the course of the concluding decades of the Apostolic Age of the Faith; eminently successful in laying the foundations of its Administrative Order in the years immediately following His Ascension; emerging, purified and strengthened, from the fire of a severe and prolonged ordeal after the conclusion of the second world war; demonstrating its capacity and resilience through the initiation and prosecution of a carefully designed Plan, despite the exhaustion of a terrible and harrowing conflict that endangered its life and shook it to its foundations,—such a community has now risen to assume its rightful place in the world-encompassing Crusade launched by the followers of Bahá’u’lláh; has splendidly initiated its Ten-Year Plan through the inauguration of its glorious Mission in foreign fields, and is now forging ahead, with magnificent courage, resolution, thoroughness, and fidelity, in its endeavour to win fresh laurels in the course of this second and newly opened stage in the unfoldment of the Plan to which it stands committed.
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