The brief interval separating the hard-pressed, valiantly struggling,
resistlessly expanding American Baha'i Community from the anticipated
consummation of the second, fate-laden collective enterprise launched so
auspiciously by its national elected representatives is speedily drawing
to a close. The sixteen months that still lie ahead constitute in view of
the tasks that still remain to be achieved, and the sacrifices still to be
made, a period at once critical and challenging. This memorable period
commemorates, if we pause and call to mind the stirring events and bloody
episodes linking the Dispensation of the Bab with the dawning Mission of
the Founder of our Faith, the centenary of what may be truly regarded as
the darkest, the most tragic, the most heroic, period in the annals of a
hundred-year-old Revelation. This period, moreover, affords the last and
irretrievable chance to a ceaselessly striving, repeatedly victorious
community of setting the seal of triumph upon a momentous undertaking, on
whose fate hinges the launching of yet another glorious Crusade, the
consummation of which will mark the successful conclusion of the initial
epoch in the unfoldment of 'Abdu'l-Baha's Divine Plan--an evolution that
must continue to blossom and fructify in the course of successive epochs
of the Formative Ages of the Faith, and yield its fairest fruit in the
Golden Age that is yet to come.