How could it forfeit its birthright or mar its heritage, when the country
from which the vast majority of its members have sprung, the great
republic of the West, government and people alike, is itself, through
experiment and trial, slowly, painfully, unwittingly and irresistibly
advancing towards the goal destined for it by both Baha'u'llah and
'Abdu'l-Baha? Indeed if we would read aright the signs of the times, and
appraise correctly the significances of contemporaneous events that are
impelling forward both the American Baha'i Community and the nation of
which it forms a part on the road leading them to their ultimate destiny,
we cannot fail to perceive the workings of two simultaneous processes,
generated as far back as the concluding years of the Heroic Age of our
Faith, each clearly defined, each distinctly separate, yet closely related
and destined to culminate, in the fullness of time, in a single glorious
consummation.
One of these processes is associated with the mission of the American
Baha'i Community, the other with the destiny of the American nation. The
one serves directly the interests of the Administrative Order of the Faith
of Baha'u'llah, the other promotes indirectly the institutions that are to
be associated with the establishment of His World Order. The first process
dates back to the revelation of those stupendous Tablets constituting the
Charter of 'Abdu'l-Baha's Divine Plan. It was held in abeyance for
well-nigh twenty years while the fabric of an indispensable Administrative
Order, designed as a divinely appointed agency for the operation of that
Plan, was being constructed. It registered its initial success with the
triumphant conclusion of the first stage of its operation in the republics
of the Western Hemisphere. It signalized the opening of the second phase
of its development through the inauguration of the present teaching
campaign in the European continent. It must pass into the third stage of
its evolution with the initiation of the third Seven Year Plan, designed
to culminate in the establishment of the structure of the Administrative
Order in all the remaining sovereign states and chief dependencies of the
globe. It must reach the end of the first epoch in its evolution with the
fulfillment of the prophecy mentioned by Daniel in the last chapter of His
Book, related to the year 1335, and associated by 'Abdu'l-Baha with the
world triumph of the Faith of His Father. It will be consummated through
the emergence of the Baha'i World Commonwealth in the Golden Age of the
Baha'i Dispensation.
The other process dates back to the outbreak of the first World War that
threw the great republic of the West into the vortex of the first stage of
a world upheaval. It received its initial impetus through the formulation
of President Wilson's Fourteen Points, closely associating for the first
time that republic with the fortunes of the Old World. It suffered its
first setback through the dissociation of that republic from the newly
born League of Nations which that president had labored to create. It
acquired added momentum through the outbreak of the second World War,
inflicting unprecedented suffering on that republic, and involving it
still further in the affairs of all the continents of the globe. It was
further reinforced through the declaration embodied in the Atlantic
Charter, as voiced by one of its chief progenitors, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
It assumed a definite outline through the birth of the United Nations at
the San Francisco Conference. It acquired added significance through the
choice of the City of the Covenant itself as the seat of the newly born
organization, through the declaration recently made by the American
president related to his country's commitments in Greece and Turkey, as
well as through the submission to the General Assembly of the United
Nations of the thorny and challenging problem of the Holy Land, the
spiritual as well as the administrative center of the World Faith of
Baha'u'llah. It must, however long and tortuous the way, lead, through a
series of victories and reverses, to the political unification of the
Eastern and Western Hemispheres, to the emergence of a world government
and the establishment of the Lesser Peace, as foretold by Baha'u'llah and
foreshadowed by the Prophet Isaiah. It must, in the end, culminate in the
unfurling of the banner of the Most Great Peace, in the Golden Age of the
Dispensation of Baha'u'llah.