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Citadel of Faith
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Pages 4-6
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The Challenging Requirements of the Present Hour
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1 |
The opening years of the second century of the Bahá'í Era have
synchronized with the termination of the first epoch of the Formative
Age of the Bahá'í Dispensation, a Dispensation which posterity will
recognize as the most glorious and momentous in the greatest cycle in
the world's religious history.
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2 |
The first seventy-seven years of the preceding century, constituting
the Apostolic and Heroic Age of our Faith, fell into three distinct
epochs, of nine, of thirty-nine and of twenty-nine years' duration,
associated respectively with the Bábí Dispensation and the ministries of
Bahá'u'lláh and of `Abdu'l-Bahá. This Primitive Age of the Bahá'í Era,
unapproached in spiritual fecundity by any period associated with the
mission of the Founder of any previous Dispensation, was impregnated,
from its inception to its termination, with the creative energies generated
through the advent of two independent Manifestations and the
establishment of a Covenant unique in the spiritual annals of mankind.
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3 |
The last twenty-three years of that same century coincided with the
first epoch of the second, the Iron and Formative, Age of the Dispensation
of Bahá'u'lláh--the first of a series of epochs which must precede
the inception of the last and Golden Age of that Dispensation--a
Dispensation which, as the Author of the Faith has Himself categorically
asserted, must extend over a period of no less than one thousand
years, and which will constitute the first stage in a series of Dispensations,
to be established by future Manifestations, all deriving their
inspiration from the Author of the Bahá'í Revelation, and destined to
last, in their aggregate, no less than five thousand centuries.
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4 |
We are now entering the second epoch of the second Age of the
first of these Dispensations. 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 epoch was characterized by a twofold process aiming at
the consolidation of the administrative structure of the Faith and the
extension of the range of its institutions. It witnessed on the one hand,
the emergence and the laying of the groundwork of that embryonic
World Order whose advent was announced by the Báb in the Bayán,
whose laws were revealed by Bahá'u'lláh in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, and
whose features were delineated by `Abdu'l-Bahá in His Will and
Testament. It was marked on the other hand by the launching, in the
Western Hemisphere, of the first stage of a Plan whose original
impulse was communicated by the Herald of our Faith in His
Qayyúmu'l-Asmá, to whose implications the Author of the Bahá'í
Revelation alluded in His Tablets, and whose Charter was revealed by
the Center of His Covenant in the evening of His life.
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5 |
The epoch we have now entered is destined to impart a great
impetus to this historic, this twofold process. It must witness, on the one
hand, the consummation of a laboriously constructed Administrative
Order, and, on the other, the unfoldment of successive stages in the
development of `Abdu'l-Bahá's Plan beyond the confines of the Western
Hemisphere and of the continent of Europe.
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