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"When Bahá'u'lláh proclaimed His Message to the world in the nineteenth..."
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When Bahá'u'lláh proclaimed His Message to the world in the nineteenth
century He made it abundantly clear that the first step essential for the peace
and progress of mankind was its unification. As He says, "The well-being of
mankind, its peace and security are unattainable unless and until its unity is
firmly established." ("The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh", p. 203) To this day,
however, you will find most people take the opposite point of view: they look
upon unity as an ultimate, almost unattainable goal and concentrate first on
remedying all the other ills of mankind. If they did but know it, these other
ills are but various symptoms and side effects of the basic disease --
disunity.
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Bahá'u'lláh has, furthermore, stated that the revivification of mankind
and the curing of all its ills can be achieved only through the instrumentality
of His Faith....
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...
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We are told by Shoghi Effendi that two great processes are at work in the
world: the great Plan of God, tumultuous in its progress, working through
mankind as a whole, tearing down barriers to world unity and forging humankind
into a unified body in the fires of suffering and experience. This process
will produce, in God's due time, the Lesser Peace, the political unification of
the world. Mankind at that time can be likened to a body that is unified but
without life. The second process, the task of breathing life into this unified
body -- of creating true unity and spirituality culminating in the Most Great
Peace -- is that of the Bahá'ís, who are labouring consciously, with detailed
instructions and continuing Divine guidance, to erect the fabric of the Kingdom
of God on earth, into which they call their fellow men, thus conferring upon
them eternal life.
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(8 December 1967, published in "Wellspring of Guidance: Messages
1963-1968", 1st rev. ed. (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1976),
pp. 131-34) [70]
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