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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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