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Citadel of Faith
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Pages 36-37
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TRIBULATIONS ARE INEVITABLE
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Many and divers are the setbacks and reverses which this nation,
extolled so highly by `Abdu'l-Bahá, and occupying at present so unique
a position among its fellow nations, must, alas, suffer. The road leading
to its destiny is long, thorny and tortuous. The impact of various forces
upon the structure and polity of that nation will be tremendous.
Tribulations, on a scale unprecedented in its history, and calculated to
purge its institutions, to purify the hearts of its people, to fuse its
constituent elements, and to weld it into one entity with its sister
nations in both hemispheres, are inevitable.
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In one of the most remarkable Tablets revealed by `Abdu'l-Bahá,
passages of which have already been quoted on previous occasions,
written in the evening of His life, soon after the termination of the first
World War, He anticipates, in succinct and ominous sentences, the
successive ebullitions which must afflict humanity, and whose full
force the American nation must, if her destiny is to be accomplished,
inevitably experience. "The ills from which the world now suffers," He
wrote, "will multiply; the gloom which envelops it will deepen. The
Balkans will remain discontented. Its restlessness will increase. The
vanquished powers will continue to agitate. They will resort to every
measure that may rekindle the flame of war. Movements, newly born
and world-wide in their range, will exert their utmost effort for the
advancement of their designs. The Movement of the Left will acquire
great importance. Its influence will spread."
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The agitation in the Balkan Peninsula; the feverish activity in
which Germany and Italy played a disastrous role, culminating in the
outbreak of the second World War; the rise of the Fascist and Nazi
movements, which spread their ramifications to distant parts of the
globe; the spread of communism which, as a result of the victory of
Soviet Russia in that same war, has been greatly accelerated--all these
happenings, some unequivocally, others in veiled language, have been
forecast in this Tablet, the full force of whose implications are as yet
undisclosed, and which, we may well anticipate, the American nation,
as yet insufficiently schooled by adversity, must sooner or later experience.
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