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                     Citadel of Faith 
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                     Pages 6-8 
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 FOURFOLD OBJECTIVE TO PRESENT REQUIREMENTS
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     Not ours, however, to unriddle the workings of a distant future, or 
to dwell upon the promised glories of a God-impelled and unimaginably 
potent Revelation.  Ours, rather, the task to cast our eyes upon, and 
bend our energies to meet, the challenging requirements of the present 
hour.  Labors, of an urgent and sacred character, claim insistently our 
undivided attention during the opening years of this new epoch which 
we have entered.  The Second Seven Year Plan, intended to carry a 
stage further the mission conceived by `Abdu'l-Bahá for the American 
Bahá'í Community, is now entering its second year, and must, as it 
operates in three continents, be productive of results outshining any as 
 
yet achieved since the Divine Plan itself was set in motion during the 
concluding years of the first Bahá'í century.  Unlike the plans which 
Bahá'í communities in Europe and on the Asiatic continent have 
spontaneously inaugurated since the commencement of the present 
century, the Plan with which the community of the "Apostles of 
Bahá'u'lláh" stands identified is divine in origin, is guided by the 
explicit and repeated instructions that have flowed from the pen of the 
Center of the Covenant Himself, is energized by the all-compelling will 
of its Author, claims as the theater for its operation territories spread 
over five continents and the islands of the seven seas, and must continue 
to function, ere its purpose is achieved, throughout successive 
epochs in the course of the Formative Age of the Bahá'í Dispensation.  
As it propels itself forward, driven by forces which its prosecutors can 
not hope to properly assess, as it spreads its ramifications to the furthest 
corners of the Western Hemisphere, and across the oceans to the 
continents of the Old World, and beyond them to the far-flung islands 
of the seas, this Plan, the birthright of the North American Bahá'í 
Community, will be increasingly regarded as an agency designed not 
only for the enlargement of the limits of the Faith and the multiplication 
of its institutions over the face of the planet, but for the acceleration 
of the construction and completion of the administrative framework 
of Bahá'u'lláh's embryonic World Order, hastening thereby the 
advent of that Golden Age which must witness the proclamation of the 
Most Great Peace and the unfoldment of that world civilization which 
is the offspring and primary purpose of that Peace.  
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     The fourfold objective, which the prosecutors of the Plan, in the 
present early stage of its development, are now pursuing, and which is 
designed to stimulate the dual process initiated during the opening 
phase of the Formative Age of the Faith, must be strenuously and 
unfalteringly pursued.  The second year of the Second Seven Year Plan 
must witness, on all fronts, on the part of young and old alike, rich and 
poor, colored and white, neophyte and veteran, a rededication to the 
tasks undertaken and an intensification of effort for their furtherance 
wholly unparalleled in the annals of American Bahá'í history.  In every 
state of the United States, in every province of the Dominion of 
Canada, in every republic of Central and South America, in each of the 
ten selected sovereign states of the European continent, the ever-swelling 
legions of Bahá'u'lláh's steadily advancing army, obeying 
 
the Mandate of `Abdu'l-Bahá, launched on the second stage of their 
world-wide crusade, deriving fresh courage from the exploits that have 
distinguished the opening phase of the present stage of their enterprise, 
must strain every nerve to scale loftier heights of heroism, and deploy, 
over a wider range, their divinely sustained forces, as their present Plan 
unfolds and moves towards a climax.  
 
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