The opening years of the second century of the Baha'i Era have
synchronized with the termination of the first epoch of the Formative Age
of the Baha'i Dispensation, a Dispensation which posterity will recognize
as the most glorious and momentous in the greatest cycle in the world's
religious history.
The first seventy-seven years of the preceding century, constituting the
Apostolic and Heroic Age of our Faith, fell into three distinct epochs, of
nine, of thirty-nine and of twenty-nine years' duration, associated
respectively with the Babi Dispensation and the ministries of Baha'u'llah
and of 'Abdu'l-Baha. This Primitive Age of the Baha'i Era, unapproached in
spiritual fecundity by any period associated with the mission of the
Founder of any previous Dispensation, was impregnated, from its inception
to its termination, with the creative energies generated through the
advent of two independent Manifestations and the establishment of a
Covenant unique in the spiritual annals of mankind.
The last twenty-three years of that same century coincided with the first
epoch of the second, the Iron and Formative, Age of the Dispensation of
Baha'u'llah--the first of a series of epochs which must precede the
inception of the last and Golden Age of that Dispensation--a Dispensation
which, as the Author of the Faith has Himself categorically asserted, must
extend over a period of no less than one thousand years, and which will
constitute the first stage in a series of Dispensations, to be established
by future Manifestations, all deriving their inspiration from the Author
of the Baha'i Revelation, and destined to last, in their aggregate, no
less than five thousand centuries.
We are now entering the second epoch of the second Age of the first of
these Dispensations. The first epoch witnessed the birth and the primary
stages in the erection of the framework of the Administrative Order of the
Faith--the nucleus and pattern of its World Order--according to the precepts
laid down in 'Abdu'l-Baha's Will and Testament, as well as the launching
of the initial phase of the world-encompassing Plan bequeathed by Him to
the American Baha'i Community. That epoch was characterized by a twofold
process aiming at the consolidation of the administrative structure of the
Faith and the extension of the range of its institutions. It witnessed on
the one hand, the emergence and the laying of the groundwork of that
embryonic World Order whose advent was announced by the Bab in the Bayan,
whose laws were revealed by Baha'u'llah in the Kitab-i-Aqdas, and whose
features were delineated by 'Abdu'l-Baha in His Will and Testament. It was
marked on the other hand by the launching, in the Western Hemisphere, of
the first stage of a Plan whose original impulse was communicated by the
Herald of our Faith in His Qayyumu'l-Asma, to whose implications the
Author of the Baha'i Revelation alluded in His Tablets, and whose Charter
was revealed by the Center of His Covenant in the evening of His life.
The epoch we have now entered is destined to impart a great impetus to
this historic, this twofold process. It must witness, on the one hand, the
consummation of a laboriously constructed Administrative Order, and, on
the other, the unfoldment of successive stages in the development of
'Abdu'l-Baha's Plan beyond the confines of the Western Hemisphere and of
the continent of Europe.