Not ours, however, to unriddle the workings of a distant future, or to
dwell upon the promised glories of a God-impelled and unimaginably potent
Revelation. Ours, rather, the task to cast our eyes upon, and bend our
energies to meet, the challenging requirements of the present hour.
Labors, of an urgent and sacred character, claim insistently our undivided
attention during the opening years of this new epoch which we have
entered. The Second Seven Year Plan, intended to carry a stage further the
mission conceived by 'Abdu'l-Baha for the American Baha'i Community, is
now entering its second year, and must, as it operates in three
continents, be productive of results outshining any as yet achieved since
the Divine Plan itself was set in motion during the concluding years of
the first Baha'i century. Unlike the plans which Baha'i communities in
Europe and on the Asiatic continent have spontaneously inaugurated since
the commencement of the present century, the Plan with which the community
of the "Apostles of Baha'u'llah" stands identified is divine in origin, is
guided by the explicit and repeated instructions that have flowed from the
pen of the Center of the Covenant Himself, is energized by the
all-compelling will of its Author, claims as the theater for its operation
territories spread over five continents and the islands of the seven seas,
and must continue to function, ere its purpose is achieved, throughout
successive epochs in the course of the Formative Age of the Baha'i
Dispensation. As it propels itself forward, driven by forces which its
prosecutors can not hope to properly assess, as it spreads its
ramifications to the furthest corners of the Western Hemisphere, and
across the oceans to the continents of the Old World, and beyond them to
the far-flung islands of the seas, this Plan, the birthright of the North
American Baha'i Community, will be increasingly regarded as an agency
designed not only for the enlargement of the limits of the Faith and the
multiplication of its institutions over the face of the planet, but for
the acceleration of the construction and completion of the administrative
framework of Baha'u'llah's embryonic World Order, hastening thereby the
advent of that Golden Age which must witness the proclamation of the Most
Great Peace and the unfoldment of that world civilization which is the
offspring and primary purpose of that Peace.
The fourfold objective, which the prosecutors of the Plan, in the present
early stage of its development, are now pursuing, and which is designed to
stimulate the dual process initiated during the opening phase of the
Formative Age of the Faith, must be strenuously and unfalteringly pursued.
The second year of the Second Seven Year Plan must witness, on all fronts,
on the part of young and old alike, rich and poor, colored and white,
neophyte and veteran, a rededication to the tasks undertaken and an
intensification of effort for their furtherance wholly unparalleled in the
annals of American Baha'i history. In every state of the United States, in
every province of the Dominion of Canada, in every republic of Central and
South America, in each of the ten selected sovereign states of the
European continent, the ever-swelling legions of Baha'u'llah's steadily
advancing army, obeying the Mandate of 'Abdu'l-Baha, launched on the
second stage of their world-wide crusade, deriving fresh courage from the
exploits that have distinguished the opening phase of the present stage of
their enterprise, must strain every nerve to scale loftier heights of
heroism, and deploy, over a wider range, their divinely sustained forces,
as their present Plan unfolds and moves towards a climax.