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Citadel of Faith
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Pages 80-83
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Centenary of the Martyrdom of the Báb
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1 |
Moved to share with assembled representatives of American Bahá'í
Community gathered beneath the dome of the Most Holy House of
Worship in the Bahá'í world, feelings of profound emotion evoked by
this historic occasion of the world-wide commemoration of the First
Centenary of the Martyrdom of the Blessed Báb, Prophet and Herald
of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh, Founder of the Dispensation marking the
culmination of the six thousand year old Adamic Cycle, Inaugurator of
the five thousand century Bahá'í Cycle.
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Poignantly call to mind the circumstances attending the last act
consummating the tragic ministry of the Master-Hero of the most
sublime drama in the religious annals of mankind, signalizing the most
dramatic event of the most turbulent period of the Heroic Age of the
Bahá'í Dispensation, destined to be recognized by posterity as the most
precious, momentous sacrifice in the world's spiritual history. Recall the
peerless tributes paid to His memory by the Founder of the Faith,
acclaiming Him Monarch of God's Messengers, the Primal Point
round Whom the realities of all the Prophets circle in adoration.
Profoundly stirred by the memory of the agonies He suffered, the glad-tidings
He announced, the warnings He uttered, the forces He set in
motion, the adversaries He converted, the disciples He raised up, the
conflagrations He precipitated, the legacy He left of faith and courage,
the love He inspired. Acknowledge with bowed head, joyous, thankful
heart the successive, marvelous evidence of His triumphant power in
the course of the hundred years elapsed since the last crowning act of
His meteoric ministry.
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The creative energies released at the hour of the birth of His
Revelation, endowing mankind with the potentialities of the attainment
of maturity are deranging, during the present transitional age, the
equilibrium of the entire planet as the inevitable prelude to the
consummation in world unity of the coming of age of the human race.
The portentous but unheeded warnings addressed to kings, princes,
ecclesiastics are responsible for the successive overthrow of fourteen
monarchies of East and West, the collapse of the institution of the
Caliphate, the virtual extinction of the Pope's temporal sovereignty, the
progressive decline in the fortunes of the ecclesiastical hierarchies of
the Islámic, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Hindu Faiths.
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4 |
The Order eulogized and announced in His writings, whose laws
Bahá'u'lláh subsequently revealed in the Most Holy Book, whose
features `Abdu'l-Bahá delineated in His Testament, is now passing
through its embryonic stage through the emergence of the initial
institutions of the world Administrative Order in the five continents of
the globe. The clarion call sounded in the Qayyúmu'l-Asmá, summoning
the peoples of the West to forsake their homes and proclaim
His message, was nobly answered by the communities of the Western
Hemisphere headed by the valorous, stalwart American believers, the
chosen vanguard of the all-conquering, irresistibly marching army of
the Faith in the western world.
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The embryonic Faith, maturing three years after His martyrdom,
traversing the period of infancy in the course of the Heroic Age of the
Faith is now steadily progressing towards maturity in the present
Formative Age, destined to attain full stature in the Golden Age of the
Bahá'í Dispensation.
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6 |
Lastly the Holy Seed of infinite preciousness, holding within
itself incalculable potentialities representing the culmination of the
centuries-old process of the evolution of humanity through the energies
released by the series of progressive Revelations starting with Adam and
concluded by the Revelation of the Seal of the Prophets, marked by the
successive appearance of the branches, leaves, buds, blossoms and
plucked, after six brief years by the hand of destiny, ground in the
mill of martyrdom and oppression but yielding the oil whose first
flickering light cast upon the somber, subterranean walls of the Síyáh-Chál
of Tihrán, whose fire gathered brilliance in Baghdád and shone
in full resplendency in its crystal globe in Adrianople, whose rays
warmed and illuminated the fringes of the American, European,
Australian continents through the tender ministerings of the Center
of the Covenant, whose radiance is now overspreading the surface
of the globe during the present Formative Age, whose full splendor
is destined in the course of future milleniums to suffuse the entire
planet.
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Already the crushing of this God-imbued kernel upon the anvil of
adversity has ignited the first sparks of the Holy Fire latent within it
through the emergence of the firmly knit world-encompassing community
constituting no less than twenty-five hundred centers established
throughout a hundred countries representing over thirty races and
extending as far north as the Arctic Circle and as far south as the Straits
of Magallanes, equipped with literature translated into sixty languages
and possessing endowments nearing ten million dollars, enriched
through the erection of two Houses of Worship in the heart of the
Asiatic and North American continents and the stately mausoleum
reared in its World Center, consolidated through the incorporation of
over a hundred of its national and local assemblies and reinforced
through the proclamation of its independence in the East, its recognition
in the West, eulogized by royalty, buttressed by nine pillars
sustaining the future structure of its supreme administrative council,
energized through the simultaneous prosecution of specific plans conducted
under the aegis of its national councils designed to enlarge the
limits and extend the ramifications and consolidate the foundations of
its divinely appointed Administrative Order over the surface of the
entire planet.
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8 |
I appeal on this solemn occasion, rendered doubly sacred through
the approaching hundredth anniversary of the most devastating holocaust
in the annals of the Faith, at this anxious hour in the fortunes of
this travailing age, to the entire body of the American believers, the
privileged occupants and stout-hearted defenders of the foremost citadel
of the Faith, to rededicate themselves and resolve, no matter how
great the perils confronting their sister communities on the European,
Asiatic, African and Australian continents, however somber the situation
facing both the cradle of the Faith and its World Center, however
grievous the vicissitudes they themselves may eventually suffer, to hold
aloft unflinchingly the torch of the Faith impregnated with the blood of
innumerable martyrs and transmit it unimpaired so that it may add
luster to future generations destined to labor after them.
[July 4, 1950]
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