We have only to refer to the warnings uttered by 'Abdu'l-Baha in order to
realize the extent and character of the forces that are destined to
contest with God's holy Faith. In the darkest moments of His life, under
'Abdu'l-Hamid's regime, when He stood ready to be deported to the most
inhospitable regions of Northern Africa, and at a time when the auspicious
light of the Baha'i Revelation had only begun to break upon the West, He,
in His parting message to the cousin of the Bab, uttered these prophetic
and ominous words: "How great, how very great is the Cause! How very
fierce the onslaught of all the peoples and kindreds of the earth. Ere
long shall the clamor of the multitude throughout Africa, throughout
America, the cry of the European and of the Turk, the groaning of India
and China, be heard from far and near. One and all, they shall arise with
all their power to resist His Cause. Then shall the knights of the Lord,
assisted by His grace from on high, strengthened by faith, aided by the
power of understanding, and reinforced by the legions of the Covenant,
arise and make manifest the truth of the verse: 'Behold the confusion that
hath befallen the tribes of the defeated!'"
Stupendous as is the struggle which His words foreshadow, they also
testify to the complete victory which the upholders of the Greatest Name
are destined eventually to achieve. Peoples, nations, adherents of divers
faiths, will jointly and successively arise to shatter its unity, to sap
its force, and to degrade its holy name. They will assail not only the
spirit which it inculcates, but the administration which is the channel,
the instrument, the embodiment of that spirit. For as the authority with
which Baha'u'llah has invested the future Baha'i Commonwealth becomes more
and more apparent, the fiercer shall be the challenge which from every
quarter will be thrown at the verities it enshrines.