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                     Citadel of Faith 
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                     Pages 123-124 
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 CHIEF EXECUTOR OF DIVINE PLAN
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     The first to respond to the call of the New Day in the western 
world; for many years, in concert with the small band of Canadian 
believers residing in its immediate neighborhood, the sole champion of 
the newly proclaimed Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh; foremost in its decisive 
contribution to the creation of the pattern, the erection of the fabric, 
the enlargement of the limits, and the consolidation of the institutions 
of the embryonic World Order, the child of that same Covenant and 
the harbinger of a still unborn world civilization; singled out by the pen 
of the Center of that same Covenant for a unique and imperishable 
bounty as the principal custodian and chief executor of `Abdu'l-Bahá's 
Divine Plan; doubly honored in the course of His extensive visit to the 
shores of its homeland through the distinction conferred by Him on the 
community's two leading centers, the one as the site where He laid the 
cornerstone of the holiest House of Worship in the Bahá'í world, and 
the other the scene of the proclamation of His Father's Covenant; the 
triumphant prosecutor of two successive historic Plans, boldly initiated 
by its elected national representatives for the propagation of the Faith it 
has espoused in the land of its birth, in the Dominion of Canada, in 
Central and South America and in the continent of Europe and for the 
erection of its own House of Worship, the Mother Temple of the West; 
outstanding in its role as the defender of the Faith, as the supporter of 
its down-trodden, long-persecuted sister communities in both the Asiatic 
and African continents, and as the formulator of the national 
Bahá'í constitution, embodying the by-laws regulating the internal 
affairs of the members of the Bahá'í communities; incomparable 
throughout the Bahá'í world as the dynamic agent responsible for the 
opening of the vast majority of the over two hundred sovereign states 
and chief dependencies of the globe to the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh; 
surpassing even its over a hundred-year old sister community in the 
cradle of that Faith in the number and variety of isolated centers, 
 
groups and local assemblies it has succeeded in establishing over the 
face of the Union stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific seaboards 
and from Alaska to Mexico; noteworthy in the rapid accumulation and 
wise expenditure of material resources, often involving a self-abnegation 
reminiscent of the self-sacrifice of the dawn-breakers of the 
Apostolic Age of the Faith, for the sole purpose of systematically 
propagating the Faith it has pledged itself to serve, of enhancing its 
prestige, of multiplying and perfecting its administrative agencies, of 
enriching its literature, of erecting its edifices, of launching its manifold 
enterprises, of succoring the needy among the members of its sister 
communities, of warding off the dangers confronting it from time to 
time through the malice of its enemies--the American Bahá'í Community, 
boasting of such a record of exalted service, can well afford to 
contemplate the immediate future, with its severe challenge, its complex 
problems, its hazards, tests and trials, with equanimity and confidence.  
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     For there can be no doubt that the entire community, limited as is 
its numerical strength and circumscribed as are its meager resources, in 
comparison with the vastness of the field stretching before it, the 
prodigious efforts demanded of it, and the complexity of the problems it 
must resolve, stands at a most critical juncture in its history.  
 
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