Finally, I direct my appeal, through the assembled delegates, to the
entire body of the believers whom they represent, and indeed, on this
occasion, to all the upholders of the Faith of Baha'u'llah wherever they
reside in all the continents of the globe, to arise, at so auspicious an
hour in the fortunes of the Faith, synchronizing with so fateful and
perilous an hour in the fortunes of mankind, and consecrate themselves
afresh, throughout this last, fast-fleeting year of the present phase of
this momentous, world-girdling Plan, to the furtherance of the immediate
objectives enumerated in my last year's Convention Message, ensuring
thereby a befitting conclusion to a stage in its resistless unfoldment
destined to usher in its third and most brilliant phase--a phase on which
the triumphant consummation of the Plan itself must so largely depend.
It is indeed my fervent and constant prayer that the members of this
firmly-knit, intensely alive, world-embracing Community, spurred on by the
triple impulse generated through the revelation of the Tablet of Carmel by
Baha'u'llah and the Will and Testament as well as the Tablets of the
Divine Plan bequeathed by the Center of His Covenant--the three Charters
which have set in motion three distinct processes, the first operating in
the Holy Land for the development of the institutions of the Faith at its
World Center and the other two, throughout the rest of the Baha'i world,
for its propagation and the establishment of its Administrative Order--may
advance from strength to strength and victory to victory. May they hasten,
by their present exertions, the advent of that blissful consummation when
the shackles hampering the growth of their beloved Faith will have been
finally burst asunder, when its independent status will have been
officially and universally recognized, when it will have ascended the
throne and wielded the scepter of spiritual and temporal authority, when
the brightness of its glory will have illuminated the whole earth, and its
dominion will have been established over the entire planet.
--Shoghi
[April, 1955]