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Citadel of Faith
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Pages 48-50
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Brilliant Achievements [SECOND MESSAGE TO 1948 CONVENTION]
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Joyfully acclaim brilliant achievements transcending fondest hopes
and setting the seal of complete victory on the stupendous labors
undertaken by American Bahá'í Community in the second year of the
Second Seven Year Plan. The constitution of the National Spiritual
Assembly of Canada, the heroic feat of raising to almost two hundred
the number of spiritual assemblies in the North American continent,
the marvelous expansion of the daughter communities in Latin America,
the successful conclusion of the preliminary phase of the interior
ornamentation of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár, and the crowning exploit of
the formation of no less than seven assemblies in the newly opened
transcontinental field, endow with everlasting fame the second epoch
of the Formative Age, immeasurably enrich the annals of the opening
decade of the second Bahá'í century, and constitute a landmark in the
unfoldment of the second stage of the execution of `Abdu'l-Bahá's
Plan.
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The primacy of the American Bahá'í Community is reasserted,
fully vindicated and completely safeguarded. Recent successive victories
proclaim the undiminished strength and exemplary valor of the
rank and file of the community whether administrators, teachers or
pioneers in three continents regarded as the latest links in the chain of
uninterrupted achievements performed by its members in the council,
and teaching field for over a quarter of a century. I recall on this joyous
occasion with pride, emotion, thankfulness, the resplendent record of
stewardship of this dearly loved, richly endowed, unflinchingly resolute
community, whose administrators have assumed the preponderating
share in perfecting the machinery of the Administrative Order, whose
elected representatives have raised the edifice and completed the
exterior ornamentation of the Mother Temple of the West, whose trail-blazers
opened an overwhelming majority of the ninety-one countries
now included within the pale of the Faith, whose pioneers established
flourishing communities in twenty republics of Latin America, whose
benefactors extended in ample measure assistance in various ways to
their sorely pressed brethren in distant fields, whose members scattered
themselves to thirteen hundred centers in every state of the American
Union, every province of the Dominion of Canada, whose firmest
champion succeeded in winning royalty's allegiance to the Message of
Bahá'u'lláh, whose heroes and martyrs laid down their lives in its
service in fields as remote as Honolulu, Buenos Aires, Sidney, Isfahán,
whose vanguard pushed its outposts to the antipodes on the farthest
verge of the South American continent, to the vicinity of the Arctic
Circle, to the northern, southern, and western fringes of the European
continent, whose ambassadors are now convening, on the soil of one of
the newly won territories, its historic first conference designed to
consolidate the newly won prizes, whose spokesmen are securing
recognition of the institutions of Bahá'u'lláh's rising World Order in
the United Nations.
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Appeal to members of the community so privileged, so loved, so
valorous, endowed with such potentialities to unitedly press forward
however afflictive the trials their countrymen may yet experience,
however grievous the tribulations the land of their heart's desire may
yet suffer, however oppressive an anxiety the temporary severance of
external communications with the World Center of their Faith may
engender, however onerous the tasks still to be accomplished, until
every single obligation under the present Plan is honorably fulfilled,
enabling them to launch in its appointed time the third crusade
destined to bring glorious consummation to the first epoch in the
evolution of their divinely appointed world mission, fulfill the prophecy
uttered by Daniel over twenty centuries ago, contribute the major share
of the world triumph of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh envisaged by the
Center of His Covenant, and hasten the opening of the Golden Age of
the Bahá'í Dispensation.
[April 26, 1948]
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