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Citadel of Faith
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Pages 31-33
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THE WORKINGS OF TWO SIMULTANEOUS PROCESSES
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How could it forfeit its birthright or mar its heritage, when the
country from which the vast majority of its members have sprung, the
great republic of the West, government and people alike, is itself,
through experiment and trial, slowly, painfully, unwittingly and irresistibly
advancing towards the goal destined for it by both Bahá'u'lláh
and `Abdu'l-Bahá? Indeed if we would read aright the signs of the
times, and appraise correctly the significances of contemporaneous
events that are impelling forward both the American Bahá'í Community
and the nation of which it forms a part on the road leading them to
their ultimate destiny, we cannot fail to perceive the workings of two
simultaneous processes, generated as far back as the concluding years of
the Heroic Age of our Faith, each clearly defined, each distinctly
separate, yet closely related and destined to culminate, in the fullness of
time, in a single glorious consummation.
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One of these processes is associated with the mission of the
American Bahá'í Community, the other with the destiny of the
American nation. The one serves directly the interests of the Administrative
Order of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh, the other promotes indirectly
the institutions that are to be associated with the establishment of His
World Order. The first process dates back to the revelation of those
stupendous Tablets constituting the Charter of `Abdu'l-Bahá's Divine
Plan. It was held in abeyance for well-nigh twenty years while the
fabric of an indispensable Administrative Order, designed as a divinely
appointed agency for the operation of that Plan, was being constructed.
It registered its initial success with the triumphant conclusion of the
first stage of its operation in the republics of the Western Hemisphere.
It signalized the opening of the second phase of its development
through the inauguration of the present teaching campaign in the
European continent. It must pass into the third stage of its evolution
with the initiation of the third Seven Year Plan, designed to culminate
in the establishment of the structure of the Administrative Order in all
the remaining sovereign states and chief dependencies of the globe.
It must reach the end of the first epoch in its evolution with the
fulfillment of the prophecy mentioned by Daniel in the last chapter of
His Book, related to the year 1335, and associated by `Abdu'l-Bahá with
the world triumph of the Faith of His Father. It will be consummated
through the emergence of the Bahá'í World Commonwealth in the
Golden Age of the Bahá'í Dispensation.
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The other process dates back to the outbreak of the first World War
that threw the great republic of the West into the vortex of the first
stage of a world upheaval. It received its initial impetus through the
formulation of President Wilson's Fourteen Points, closely associating
for the first time that republic with the fortunes of the Old World. It
suffered its first setback through the dissociation of that republic from
the newly born League of Nations which that president had labored to
create. It acquired added momentum through the outbreak of the
second World War, inflicting unprecedented suffering on that republic,
and involving it still further in the affairs of all the continents of the
globe. It was further reinforced through the declaration embodied in
the Atlantic Charter, as voiced by one of its chief progenitors, Franklin
D. Roosevelt. It assumed a definite outline through the birth of the
United Nations at the San Francisco Conference. It acquired added
significance through the choice of the City of the Covenant itself as the
seat of the newly born organization, through the declaration recently
made by the American president related to his country's commitments
in Greece and Turkey, as well as through the submission to the
General Assembly of the United Nations of the thorny and challenging
problem of the Holy Land, the spiritual as well as the administrative
center of the World Faith of Bahá'u'lláh. It must, however long
and tortuous the way, lead, through a series of victories and reverses, to
the political unification of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, to
the emergence of a world government and the establishment of the
Lesser Peace, as foretold by Bahá'u'lláh and foreshadowed by the
Prophet Isaiah. It must, in the end, culminate in the unfurling of the
banner of the Most Great Peace, in the Golden Age of the Dispensation
of Bahá'u'lláh.
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