Over and above such meritorious accomplishments, the members of this
community are called upon to demonstrate their solidarity with their
sister communities in East and West, and indeed to assert their divinely
conferred primacy, through assuming a leading role in providing for the
erection of the first Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar to be raised in the heart of
the African continent--a continent which by virtue of the innumerable
exploits which, throughout its length and breadth, colored and white,
individuals as well as assemblies, have achieved in recent years, and
which, with the sole exception of Australasia, is the only continent
deprived of the blessings of such an institution, fully deserves to
possess its own independent House of Worship--a House that will gather
within its walls members of communities whose prowess has, in the opening
years of the second epoch of the Formative Age of the Baha'i Dispensation,
eclipsed the feats performed in both the southern part of the Western
Hemisphere and the European continent, and conferred such luster on the
annals of our Faith.
Africa, long dormant and neglected, and now stirring in its potential
spiritual strength, is, at this very hour, under the eyes of the clamorous
multitudes of the adversaries of the Faith pressing for its extirpation in
the land of its birth, being called upon to redress the scales so weighed
down through the ferocious and ignoble acts of bloodthirsty ecclesiastical
oppressors. The erection of such an institution, at such a time, through
the combined efforts of the undismayed, undeflected and undefeatable
upholders of the Faith of Baha'u'llah in both the East and the West,
posterity will regard as a worthy answer to the challenge flung down by
its bitterest, most powerful and inveterate enemies. Let them give heed to
the warnings and admonitions uttered, at an hour of similar danger, by the
Founder of the Faith Himself, on the morrow of His third banishment, and
addressed in clear and unmistakable language to the "Minister of the
_Sh_ah" in Constantinople: "Dost thou believe thou hast the power to
frustrate His will, to hinder Him from executing His judgment, or to deter
Him from exercising His sovereignty? Pretendest thou that aught in the
heavens or in the earth can resist His Faith? No, by Him Who is the
eternal Truth! Nothing whatsoever in the whole of creation can thwart His
purpose.... Know thou, moreover, that He it is Who hath by His own behest,
created all that is in the heavens and all that is on the earth. How can,
then, the thing that hath been created at His bidding prevail against
Him?"