Against the background of these afflictive disturbances--the turmoil and
tribulations of a travailing age--we may well ponder the portentous
prophecies uttered well-nigh fourscore years ago, by the Author of our
Faith, as well as the dire predictions made by Him Who is the unerring
Interpreter of His teachings, all foreshadowing a universal commotion, of
a scope and intensity unparalleled in the annals of mankind.
The violent derangement of the world's equilibrium; the trembling that
will seize the limbs of mankind; the radical transformation of human
society; the rolling up of the present-day Order; the fundamental changes
affecting the structure of government; the weakening of the pillars of
religion; the rise of dictatorships; the spread of tyranny; the fall of
monarchies; the decline of ecclesiastical institutions; the increase of
anarchy and chaos; the extension and consolidation of the Movement of the
Left; the fanning into flame of the smouldering fire of racial strife; the
development of infernal engines of war; the burning of cities; the
contamination of the atmosphere of the earth--these stand out as the signs
and portents that must either herald or accompany the retributive calamity
which, as decreed by Him Who is the Judge and Redeemer of mankind, must,
sooner or later, afflict a society which, for the most part, and for over
a century, has turned a deaf ear to the Voice of God's Messenger in this
day--a calamity which must purge the human race of the dross of its
age-long corruptions, and weld its component parts into a firmly-knit
world-embracing Fellowship--a Fellowship destined, in the fullness of time,
to be incorporated in the framework, and to be galvanized by the
spiritualizing influences, of a mysteriously expanding, divinely appointed
Order, and to flower, in the course of future Dispensations, into a
Civilization, the like of which mankind has, at no stage in its evolution,
witnessed.
Parallel with this process of progressive deterioration in human affairs,
now visibly gathering momentum outside the pale of the Faith of
Baha'u'llah, and recalling the convulsions which, on a far more restricted
scale, seized a declining empire in the opening centuries of the Christian
era, far less spectacular in its manifestation, has been the process of
integration, as demonstrated by the increasing cohesion, the
multiplication, and the reinforcement of the foundations, of the
institutions of the embryonic Baha'i World Order, which, now, under the
impact of the forces released by a World Spiritual Crusade, deriving its
authority from the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Baha, and launched for
the express purpose of executing the Divine Plan bequeathed by Him to His
followers in the evening of His life, is contributing, unnoticed by a
generation forgetful of its God, and already in the shadow of His
Visitation, to the building up, slowly but irresistibly, of that Ark of
human salvation, ordained as the ultimate haven of a society destined, for
the most part, to be submerged by the tidal wave of the abuses and evils
which its own perversity has engendered.