Vision of the Future

by Shoghi Effendi

compiled by Iscander Micael Tinto
2013

1. INTRODUCTORY SECTION

November 28, 1931

To claim to have grasped all the implications of Bahá‘u‘lláh’s prodigious scheme for world‑wide human solidarity, or to have fathomed its import, would be presumptuous on the part of even the declared supporters of His Faith. To attempt to visualize it in all its possibilities, to estimate its future benefits, to picture its glory, would be premature at even so advanced a stage in the evolution of mankind.

(World Order, The Goal of a New World Order, p. 34)

November 28, 1931

All we can reasonably venture to attempt is to strive to obtain a glimpse of the first streaks of the promised Dawn that must, in the fullness of time, chase away the gloom that has encircled humanity. All we can do is to point out, in their broadest outlines, what appear to us to be the guiding principles underlying the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh, as amplified and enunciated by ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, the Center of His Covenant with all mankind and the appointed Interpreter and Expounder of His Word.

(World Order, The Goal of a New World Order, p. 35)

March 21, 1930

Ours is the duty to ponder these things in our heart, to strive to widen our vision, and to deepen our comprehension of this Cause, and to arise, resolutely and unreservedly, to play our part, however small, in this greatest drama of the world’s spiritual history.

(World Order, Further Considerations, p. 26)

June 5, 1947

Not ours, however, to unriddle the workings of a distant future, or to dwell upon the promised glories of a God‑impelledd 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.

(Citadel of Faith p. 6)

December 2, 1923

... the ever‑increasing confusion of the world, threatened as never before with disruptive forces, fierce rivalries, fresh commotions and grave disorder ...

(Letters to Australia and New Zealand, p. 1)

And as to the world’s evil plight, we need but recall the writings and sayings of Bahá‘u‘lláh, who, more than fifty years ago, declared in terms prophetic the prime cause of the ills and sufferings of mankind, and set forth their true and divine remedy, “Should the lamp of Religion be hidden”, He declared, “chaos and confusion will ensue.” How admirably fitting and applicable are these words to the present state of mankind!

(Letters to Australia and New Zealand, p. 1)

December 2, 1923

... in these days of world encircling gloom, when the dark forces of nature, of hate, rebellion, anarchy and reaction are threatening the very stability of human society, when the most precious fruits of civilization are undergoing severe and unparalleled tests ...

(Letters to Australia and New Zealand, p. 3)

March 21, 1930

What foes may not in the course of the convulsions that shall seize a dying civilization be brought into existence, who will reinforce the indignities which have already been heaped upon it!

(World Order, Further Considerations, p. l7)

November 28, 1931

Economic distress, since those words were written, together with political confusion, financial upheavals, religious restlessness and racial animosities, seem to have conspired to add immeasurably to the burdens under which an impoverished, a war‑weary world is groaning. Such has bean the cumulative effect of these successive crises, following one another with such bewildering rapidity, that the very foundations of society are trembling. The world, to which ever continent we turn our gaze, to however remote a region our survey may extend, is everywhere assailed by forces it can neither explain nor control.

(World Order, The Goal of a New World Order, p. 30‑31)

November 28, 1931

Never indeed have there been such widespread and basic upheavals, whether in the social, economic or political spheres of human activity as those now going on in different parts of the world. Never have there been so many and varied sources of danger as those that now threaten the structure of society. The following words of Bahá‘u‘lláh are indeed significant as we pause to reflect upon the present state of a strangely disordered world: “How long will humanity persist in its waywardness? How long will injustice continue? How long is chaos and confusion to reign amongst men?

How long will discord agitate the face of society? The winds of despair are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife that divides and afflicts the human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order appears to be lamentably defective.

(World Order, The Gaol of a New World Order, p. 32)

November 28, 1931

Might we not already discern, as we scan the political horizon, the alignment of those forces that are dividing afresh the continent of Europe into camps of potential combatants, determined upon a contest that may mark, unlike the last war, the end of an epoch, a vast epoch, in the history of human evolution? Are we, the privileged custodians of a priceless Faith, called upon to witness a cataclysmical change, politically as fundamental and spiritually as beneficent as that which precipitated the fall of the Roman Empire in the West? Might it not happen ‑ every vigilant adherent of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh might well pause to reflect ‑ that out of this world eruption there may stream forces of such spiritual energy as shall recall, nay eclipse, the splendor of those signs and wonders that accompanied the establishment of the Faith of Jesus Christ? Might there not emerge out of the agony of a shaken world a religious revival of such scope and power as to even transcend the potency of those world‑directing forces with which the Religions of the Past have, at fixed intervals and according to an inscrutable Wisdom, revived the fortunes of declining ages and peoples? Might not the bankruptcy of this present, this highly‑vaunted materialistic civilization, in itself clear away the choking weeds that now hinder the unfoldment and future efflorescence of God’s struggling Faith?

(World Order, The Goal of a New World Order p. 32‑33)

November 28, 1931

Great and far‑reaching as have been those changes in the past, they cannot appear, when viewed in their proper perspective, except as subsidiary adjustments preluding that transformation of unparalleled majesty and scope which humanity is in this age bound to undergo. That the forces of a world catastrophe can alone precipitate such a new phase of human thought is, alas, becoming increasingly apparent. That nothing short of the fire of a severe ordeal, unparalleled in its intensity, can fuse and weld the discordant entities that constitute the elements of present‑day civilization, into the integral components of the world commonwealth of the future, is a truth which future events will increasingly demonstrate.

(World Order, The Goal of a New World Order, p. 46)

February 8, 1934

... the signs of an impending catastrophe, strangely reminiscent of the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West, which threatens to engulf the whole structure of present‑day civilization ...

(World Order, Dispensation p. 156)

Compare these splendid manifestations of the spirit animating this vibrant body of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh with the cries and agony, the follies and vanities, the bitterness and prejudices, the wickedness and divisions of an ailing and chaotic world. Witness the fear that torments its leaders and paralyzes the action of its blind and bewildered statesmen. How fierce the hatred, how false the ambitions, how petty the pursuits, how deep‑rooted the suspicions of its peoples! How disquieting the lawlessness, the corruption, the unbelief that are eating into the vitals of a tottering civilization! Might not this process of steady deterioration which is insidiously invading so many departments of human activity and thought be regarded as a necessary accompaniment to the rise of this almighty Arm of Bahá‘u‘lláh? Might we not look upon the momentous happenings which, in the course of the past twenty years, have so deeply agitated every continent of the earth, as ominous signs simultaneously proclaiming the agonies of a disintegrating civilization and the birthpangs of that World Order ‑ that Ark of human salvation ‑ that must needs arise upon its ruins?

(World Order, Dispensation p. 155)

March 11, 1936

The contrast between the accumulating evidences of steady consolidation that accompany the rise of the Administrative Order of the Faith of God, and the forces of disintegration which batter at the fabric of a travailing society, is as clear as it is arresting.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World civilization p. l61)

March 11, 1936

... a time which may be designated as the period of the incubation of the WorldCommonwealth envisaged by Bahá‘u‘lláh ...

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World civilization p. l68)

March 11, 1936

For the revelation of so great a favor a period of intense turmoil and wide‑spread suffering would seem to be indispensable. Resplendent as has been the Age that has witnessed the inception of the Mission with which Bahá‘u‘lláh has been entrusted, the interval which must elapse ere that Age yields its choicest fruit must, it is becoming increasingly apparent, be overshadowed by such moral and social gloom as can alone prepare an unrepentant humanity for the prize she is destined to inherit. Into such a period we are now steadily and irresistibly moving. Amidst the shadows which are increasingly gathering about as we can faintly discern the glimmerings of Baha’ u’ lláh’s unearthly sovereignty appearing fitfully on the horizon of history. To us, the “generation of the half‑light, ” living at a time which may be designated as the period of the incubation of the WorldCommonwealth envisaged by Bahá‘u‘lláh, has been assigned a task whose high privilege we can never sufficiently appreciate, and the arduousness of which we can as yet but dimly recognize. We may well believe, we who are called upon to experience the operation of the dark forces destined to unloose a flood of agonizing afflictions, that the darkest hour that must precede the dawn of the Golden Age of our Faith has not yet struck. Deep as is the gloom that already encircles the world, the afflictive ordeals which that world is to suffer are still in preparation, nor can their blackness be as yet imagined. We stand on the threshold of an age whose convulsions proclaim alike the death‑pangs of the old order and the birth‑pangs of the new. Through the generating influence of the Faith announced by Bahá‘u‘lláh this New World Order may be said to have bean conceived We can, at the present moment, experience its stirrings in the womb of a travailing age ‑ an age waiting for the appointed hour at which it can cast its burden and yield its fairest fruit.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World civilization p. 169‑169)

March 11, 1936

... this Age of Transition, whose tribulations are the precursors of that Era of blissful felicity which is to incarnate God’s ultimate purpose for all mankind. To the catastrophic fall of mighty kingdoms and empires, on the eve of ‘Abdu’l‑Baha’s departure, Whose passing may be said to have ushered in the opening phase of the Age of Transition in which we now live, I have, in a previous communication, briefly alluded. The dissolution of the German Empire, the humiliating defeat inflicted upon its ruler, the successor and lineal descendant of the Prussian King and Emperor to whom Bahá‘u‘lláh had addressed His solemn and historic warning, together with the extinction of the Austro‑Hungarian Monarchy, the remnant of the once‑great Holy Roman Empire, were both precipitated by a war whose outbreak signalized the opening of the Age of Frustration destined to precede the establishment of the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh. Both of these momentous events may be viewed as the earliest occurrences of that turbulent Age, into the outer fringes of whose darkest phase we are now beginning to enter.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World civilization p. l71)

March 11, 1936

Whatever the present status of the League or the outcome of its historic verdict, whatever the trials and reverses which, in the immediate future, it may have to face and sustain, the fact must be recognized that so important a decision marks one of the most distinctive milestones on the long and arduous road that must lead it to its goal, the stage at which the oneness of the whole body of nations will be made the ruling principle of international life. This historic step, however, is but a faint glimmer in the darkness that envelops an agitated humanity. It may well prove to be no more that a mere flash, a fugitive gleam, in the midst of an ever‑deepening confusion. The process of disintegration must inexorably continue, and its corrosive influence must penetrate deeper and deeper into the very core of a crumbling age. Much suffering will still be required ere the contending nations, creeds, classes and races of mankind are fused in the crucible of universal affliction, and are forged by the fires of a fierce ordeal into one organic commonwealth, one vast, unified, and harmoniously functioning system. Adversities unimaginably appalling, undreamed of crises and upheavals, war, famine, and pestilence, might well combine to engrave in the soul of an unheeding generation those truths and principles which it has disdained to recognize and follow. A paralysis more painful than any it has yet experienced must creep over and further afflict the fabric of a broken society ere it can be rebuilt and regenerated.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World civilization p. 193‑194)

March 11, 1936

Sore‑tried and disillusioned, humanity has no doubt lost its orientation, and would seem to have lost as well its faith and hope. It is hovering, unshepherded and visionless, on the brink of disaster. A sense of fatality seems to pervade it. An ever‑deepening gloom is settling on its fortunes as she recedes further and further from the outer fringes of the darkest zone of its agitated life and penetrates its very heart.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World civilization p. l90)

March 11, 1936

They who preside over the immediate destinies of this troubled world, they who are responsible for its chaotic state, its fears, its doubts, its miseries will do well, in their bewilderment, to fix their gaze and ponder in their hearts upon the evidences of this saving grace of the Almighty that lies within their reach ‑ a grace that can ease their burden, resolve their perplexities, and illuminate their path. The whole of mankind is groaning, is dying to be led to unity, and to terminate its age‑long martyrdom. And yet it stubbornly rebuses to embrace the light and acknowledge the sovereign authority of the one Power that can extricate it from its entanglements, and avert the woeful calamity that threatens to engulf it.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World civilization p. 201)

December 25, 1938

... each of the successive crises in the fortunes of a decadent age exposes more convincingly than the one preceding it the corrosive influences that are fast sapping the vitality and undermining the basis of its declining institutions.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 2)

December 25, 1938

The rumblings of that catastrophic upheaval, which is to proclaim, at one and the same time, the death‑pangs of the old order and the birth‑pangs of the new ...

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 11)

December 25, 1938

A world, dimmed by the steadily dying‑out light of religion, heaving with the explosive forces of a blind and triumphant nationalism; scorched with the fires of pitiless persecution, whether racial or religious; deluded by the false theories and doctrines that threaten to supplant the worship of God and the sanctification of His laws; enervated by a rampant and brutal materialism; disintegrating through the corrosive influence of moral and spiritual decadence; and enmeshed in the coils of economic anarchy and strife ‑ such is the spectacle presented to men’s eyes, as a result of the sweeping changes which this revolutionizing Force, as yet in the initial stage of its operation, is now producing in the life of the entire planet.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 47)

December 25, 1938

Who knows but that these few remaining, fast‑fleeting years, may not be pregnant with events of unimaginable magnitude, with ordeals more severe than any that humanity has as yet experienced, with conflicts more devastating than any which have preceded them. Dangers, however sinister, must, at no time, dim the radiance of their new‑born faith. Strife and confusion, however bewildering, must never before their vision. Tribulations, however afflictive, must never shatter their resolve. Denunciations, however clamorous, must never sap their loyalty. Upheavals, however cataclysmic, must never deflect their course. The present Plan, embodying the budding hopes of a departed Master, must be pursued, relentlessly pursued, whatever may befall them in the future, however distracting the crises that may agitate their country or the world. Far from yielding in their resolve, far from growing oblivious of their task, they should, at no time, however much buffeted by circumstances, forget that the synchronization of such world‑shaking crises with the progressive unfoldment and fruition of their divinely appointed task is itself the work of Providence, the design of an inscrutable Wisdom, and the purpose of an all‑compelling Will, a Will that directs and controls, in its own mysterious way, both the fortunes of the Faith and the destinies of men. Such simultaneous processes of rise and of fall, of integration and of disintegration, of order and chaos, with their continuous and reciprocal reactions on each other, are but aspects of a greater Plan, one and indivisible, whose Source is God, whose author is Bahá‘u‘lláh, the theater of whose operations is the entire planet, and whose ultimate objectives are the unity of the human race and the peace of all mankind.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 72‑73)

December 25, 1938

... undismayed by the prospect of spasmodic convulsions that must sooner or later fatally affect those who have refused to embrace its light, they, and those who will lab or after them, must press forward until the processes now set in motion will have each spent its force and contributed its share towards the birth of the Order now stirring in the womb of a travailing age.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 2)

December 25, 1938

These recurrent crises which, with ominous frequency and resistless force, are afflicting an ever‑increasing portion of the human race must of necessity continue, however impermanently, to exercise, in a certain measure, their baleful influence upon a world community which has spread its ramifications to the uttermost ends of the earth. How can the beginnings of a world upheaval, unleashing forces that are so gravely deranging the social, the religious, the political, and the economic equilibrium of organized society, throwing into chaos and confusion political systems, racial doctrines, social conceptions, cultural standards, religious associations, and trade relationships ‑ how can such agitations, on a scale so vast, so unprecedented, fail to produce any repercussions on the institutions of a Faith of such tender age whose teachings have a direct and vital bearing on each of these spheres of human life and conduct?

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 2‑3)

December 25, 1938

... its right to be acclaimed as the chief creator and champion of the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 11)

March 28, 1941

A tempest, unprecedented in its violence, unpredictable in its course, catastrophic in its immediate effects, unimaginably glorious in its ultimate consequences, is at present sweeping the face of the earth. Its driving power is remorselessly gaining in range and momentum. Its cleansing force, however much undetected, is increasing with every passing day. Humanity, gripped in the clutches of its devastating power, is smitten by the evidences of its resistless fury. It can neither perceive its origin, nor probe its significance, nor discern its outcome. Bewildered, agonized and helpless, it watches this great and mighty wind of God invading the remotest and fairest regions of the earth, rocking its foundations, deranging its equilibrium, sundering its nations, disrupting the homes of its peoples, wasting its cities, driving into exile its kings, pulling down its bulwarks, uprooting its institutions, dimming its light, and harrowing up the souls of its inhabitants.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 3)

March 28, 1941

The powerful operations of this titanic upheaval are comprehensible to none except such as have recognized the claims of both Bahá‘u‘lláh and the Báb. Their followers know full well whence it comes, and what it will ultimately lead to. Though ignorant of how far it will reach, they clearly recognize its genesis, are aware of its direction, acknowledge its necessity, observe confidently its mysterious processes, ardently pray for the mitigation of its severity, intelligently labor to assuage its fury, and anticipate, with undimmed vision, the consummation of the fears and the hopes it must necessarily engender.

(The Promised day Is Come p. 4)

March 28, 1941

Mankind, in these fateful years, which at once signalize the passing of the first century of the Bahá ‘í Era and proclaim the opening of a new one, is, as ordained by Him Who is both the Judge and the Redeemer of the human race, being simultaneously called upon to give account of its past actions, and is being purged and prepared for its future mission. It can neither escape the responsibilities of the past, nor shirk those of the future. God, the Vigilant, the Just, the Loving, the All‑Wise Ordainer, can, in this supreme Dispensation, neither allow the sins of an unregenerate humanity, whether of omission or of commission, to go unpunished, nor will He be willing to abandon His children to their fate, and refuse them that culminating and blissful stage in their long, their slow and painful evolution throughout the ages, which is at once their inalienable right and their true destiny.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 4‑5)

March 28, 1941

How insistently did He foreshadow the impending chaos, the approaching upheavals, the universal conflagration which, in the concluding years of His life, had only begun to reveal the measure of its force and the significance of its impact on human society?

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 15)

March 28, 1941

... experiencing the initial perturbations of the world‑shaking catastrophe in store for an unbelieving humanity; bent with age, and with eyes dimmed by the gathering storm which the reception accorded by a faithless generation to His Father’s Cause was raising, and with a heart bleeding over the immediate destiny of God’s wayward children ‑ He, at last, sank beneath a weight of troubles for which they who had imposed them upon Him, and upon those gone before Him, were soon to be summoned to a dire reckoning.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 15)

March 28, 1941

A world convulsed by the agonies of contending systems, races and nations, entangled in the mesh of its accumulated falsities, receding farther and farther from Him Who is the sole Author of its destinies, and sinking deeper and deeper into a suicidal carnage which its neglect and persecution of Him Who is its Redeemer have precipitated. A Faith, still proscribed, yet bursting through its chrysalis, emerging from the obscurity of a century‑old repression, face to face with the awful evidences of God’s wrathful anger, and destined to arise above the ruins of a smitten civilization. A world spiritually destitute, morally bankrupt, politically disrupted, socially convulsed, economically paralyzed, writhing, bleeding and breaking up beneath the avenging rod of God.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 16)

March 28, 1941

... this world‑afflicting ordeal that has laid its grip upon mankind as primarily a judgment of God pronounced against the paoples of the earth, who, for a century, have refused to recognize the One Whose advent had been promised to all religions, and in Whose Faith all nations can alone, and must eventually, seek their true salvation.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 111)

March 28, 1941

Brimful and bitter indeed is the cup of humanity that has failed to respond to the summons of God as voiced by His Supreme Messenger, that has dimmed the lamp of its faith in its Creator, that has transferred, in so great a measure, the allegiance owed Him to the gods of its own invention, and polluted itself with the evils and vices which such a transference must necessarily engender.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 115)

March 28, 1941

Dear friends! It is in this light that we, the followers of Baha’u’lláh, should regard this visitation of God which, in the concluding years of the first century of the Bahá’í era, afflicts the generality, and has thrown into such a bewildering confusion the affairs, of mankind. It is because of this dual guilt, the things it has done and the things it has left undone, its misdeeds as well as its dismal and signal failure to accomplish its clear and unmistakable duty towards God, His Messenger, and His Faith, that this grievous ordeal, whatever its immediate political and economic causes, has laid its adamantine grip upon it.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 115)

March 28, 1941

Adversity, prolonged, worldwide, afflictive, allied to chaos and universal destruction, must needs convulse the nations, stir the conscience of the world, disillusion the masses, precipitate a radical change in the very conception of society, and coalesce ultimately the disjointed, the bleeding limbs of mankind into one body, single, organically united, and indivisible.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 122‑123)

March 28, 1941

Not ours, the living witnesses of the all‑subduing potency of His Faith, to question, for a moment, and however dark the misery that enshrouds the world, the ability of Bahá‘u‘lláh to forge, with the hammer of His Will, and through the fire of tribulation, upon the anvil of this travailing age, and in the particular shape His mind has envisioned, these scattered and mutually destructive fragments into which a perverse world has fallen, into one single unit, solid and indivisible, able to execute His design for the children of men.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 124)

February 2, 1942

But whatever of trial and affliction the immediate future may hold for them, we know that the destiny of mankind is in the firm grasp of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and that He will guide it to its ultimate and highest goal. This assurance is more precious than life itself, it is our anchor in every difficulty and trial.

(Letters to Australia and New Zealand p. 43)

1944

To what else can the observant eye or the unprejudiced mind, acquainted with the signs and portents heralding the birth, and accompanying the rise, of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh ascribe this dire, this planetary upheaval, with its attendant destruction, misery and fear, if not to the emergence of His embryonic World Order, which, as He Himself has unequivocally proclaimed, has “deranged the equilibrium of the world and revolutionized mankind’s ordered life”?

(God Passes By p. xi)

1944

In the convulsions of contemporary society, in the frenzied, world‑wide ebullitions of men’s thoughts, in the fierce antagonisms inflaming races, creeds and classes, in the shipwreck of nations, in the downfall of kings, in the dismemberment of empires, in the extinction of dynasties, in the collapse of ecclesiastical hierarchies, in the deterioration of time‑honored institutions, in the dissolution of ties, secular as well as religious, that had for so long held together the members of the human race ‑ all manifesting themselves with ever‑increasing gravity since the outbreak of the first World War that immediately preceded the opening years of the Formative Age of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh ‑ in these we can readily recognize the evidences of the travail of an age that has sustained the impact of His Revelation, that has ignored His summons, and is now laboring to be delivered of its burden, as a direct consequence of the impulse communicated to it by the generative, the purifying, the transmuting influence of His Spirit.

(God Passes By p. xi‑xii)

1944

Justice He extols as “the light of men” and their “guardian, as “the revealer of the secrets of the world of being, and the standard‑bearer of love and bounty”; declares its radiance to be incomparable; affirms that upon it must depend “the organization of the world and the tranquillity of mankind.” He characterizes its “two pillars” ‑ “reward and punishment” ‑ as “the sources of life” to the human race; warns the peoples of the world to bestir themselves in anticipation of its advent; and prophesies that, after an interval of great turmoil and grievous injustice, its day‑star will shine in its full splendor and glory. ... observes that western civilization has gravely perturbed and alarmed the peoples of the world; and predicts that the day is approaching when the “flame” of a civilization “carried to excess” “will devour the cities.”

(God Passes By p. 218)

1944

Through the warnings He sounded, an unheeding humanity, stooped in materialism and forgetful of its God, had been apprized of the perils threatening to disrupt its ordered life, and made, in consequence of its persistent perversity, to sustain the initial shocks of that world upheaval which continues, until the present day, to rock the foundations of human society.

(God Passes By p. 315)

1944

Humanity itself, perverse and utterly headless, had refused to lend a hearing ear to the insistent appeals and warnings sounded by the twin Founders of the Faith, and later voiced by the Center of the Covenant in His public discourses in the West. It had plunged into two desolating wars of unprecedented magnitude, which have deranged its equilibrium, mown down its youth, and shaken it to its roots.

(God Passes By p. 408‑409)

June 5, 1947

The road leading to its destiny is long, thorny and tortuous. The impact of various forces upon the structure and polity of that nation will be tremendous. Tribulations, on a scale unprecedented in its history, and calculated to purge its institutions, to purify the hearts of its people, to fuse its constituent elements, and to weld it into one entity with its sister nations in both hemispheres, are inevitable. ... however severe the storms which may buffet it in the days to come in either hemisphere, however sweeping the changes which the impact of cataclysmic forces from without, and the stirrings of a Divine embryonic Order from within, will effect in its structure and life, we may, confident in the words uttered by ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, feel assured that that great republic ‑ the shell that enshrines so precious a member of the world community of the followers of His Father ‑ will continue to evolve, undivided and undefeatable ...

(Citadel of Faith p. 37, 38)

October 25, 1947

... the stress and strain associated with the decline and dissolution of time‑honored institutions, with fratricidal strife, economic upheavals, financial crises, outbreaks of epidemics and political revolutions ... the cross‑currents and the tempestuous winds which must of necessity increasingly agitate human society ere the hour of its ultimate redemption approaches.

(Citadel of Faith p. 40)

October 25, 1947

The steadily deepening crisis which mankind is traversing, on the morrow of the severest ordeal it has yet suffered, and the attendant tribulations and commotions which a travailing age must necessarily experience, as a prelude to the birth of the new World Order, destined to rise upon the ruins of a tottering civilization ... the unforeseen ordeals which a heedless and chaotic world may still further experience ...

(Citadel of Faith p. 39, 41)

November 11, 1948

The deepening crisis ominously threatening further to derange the equilibrium of a politically convulsed, economically disrupted, socially subverted, morally decadent and spiritually moribund society ... despite premonitory rumblings of a third ordeal threatening to engulf the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.

The world outlook is steadily darkening. The American Community’s most arduous feats still lie ahead. Disasters overtaking Europe and America, more afflictive than any tribulations yet suffered in either continent, may yet attend still more majestic revelations in the unfoldment of concluding stage of the Second Seven Year Plan ...

The champion builders of Bahá’u’lláh’s rising World Order must scale nobler heights of heroism as humanity plunges into greater depths of despair, degradation, dissension and distress. ... the supreme opportunity for their greatest exploits must coincide with the apocalyptic upheaval marking the lowest ebb in mankind’s fast‑declining fortunes.

(Citadel of Faith p. 56, 57, 58, 58, 58)

November 8, 1948

As the threat of still more violent convulsions assailing a travailing age increases, and the winds of yet another conflict, destined to contribute a distinct, and perhaps a decisive, share to the birth of the new Order which must signalize the advent of the Lesser Peace, darken the international horizon ...

Rumblings of catastrophes yet more dreadful agitate with increasing frequency a sorely stressed and chaotic world, presenting a challenge to grapple with the unfinished tasks, a challenge graver and still more pressing than any hitherto experienced.

(Citadel of Faith p. 58, 60)

July 5, 1950

The world situation is perilous and gloomy. Rumblings from far and near bode evil for the immediate fortunes of a sadly distracted society.

(Citadel of Faith p. 85)

February 1953

... the evils of a gross, a rampant and cancerous materialism undermining the fabric of human society alike in the East and in the West, eating into the vitals of the conflicting peoples and races inhabiting the American, the European and the Asiatic continents, and alas threatening to engulf in one common catastrophic convulsion the generality of mankind.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 136)

July 18, 1954

Moreover, the country of which it forms a part is passing through a crisis which, in its spiritual, moral, social and political aspects, is of extreme seriousness ‑ a seriousness which to a superficial observer is liable to be dangerously underestimated.

The steady and alarming deterioration in the standard of morality as exemplified by the appalling increase of crime, by political corruption in ever widening and ever higher circles, by the loosening of the sacred ties of marriage, by the inordinate craving for pleasure and diversion, and by the marked and progressive slackening of parental control, is no doubt the most arresting and distressing aspect of the decline that has set in, and can be clearly perceived, in the fortunes of the entire nation.

Parallel with this, and pervading all departments of life ‑ an evil which the nation, and indeed all those within the capitalist system, though to a lesser degree, share with that state and its satellites regarded as the sworn enemies of that system ‑ is the crass materialism, which lays excessive and ever‑increasing emphasis on material well‑being, forgetful of those things of the spirit on which alone a sure and stable foundation can be laid for human society. It is this same cancerous materialism, born originally in Europe, carried to excess in the North American continent, contaminating the Asiatic peoples and nations, spreading its ominous tentacles to the borders of Africa, and now invading its very heart, which Bahá‘u‘lláh in unequivocal and emphatic language denounced in His Writings, comparing it to a devouring flame and regarding it as the chief factor in precipitating the dire ordeals and world‑shaking crises that must necessarily involve the burning of cities and the spread of terror and consternation in the hearts of men. Indeed a foretaste of the devastation which this consuming fire will wreak upon the world, and with which it will lay waste the cities of the nations participating in this tragic world‑engulfing contest, has been afforded by the last World War, marking the second stage in the global havoc which humanity, forgetful of its God and heedless of the clear warnings uttered by His appointed Messenger for this day, must, alas, inevitably experience. It is this same all‑pervasive, pernicious materialism against which the voice of the Center of Bahá‘u‘lláh’s Covenant was raised, with pathetic persistence, from platform and pulpit, in His addresses to the heedless multitudes, which, on the morrow of His fateful visit to both Europe and America, found themselves suddenly swept into the vortex of a tempest which in its range and severity was unsurpassed in the world’s history. Collateral with this ominous laxity in morals, and this progressive stress laid on man’s material pursuits and well‑being, is the darkening of the political horizon, as witnessed by the widening of the gulf separating the protagonists of two antagonistic schools of thought which, however, divergent in their ideologies, are to be commonly condemned by the upholders of the standard of the Faith of Bahá u’lláh for their materialistic philosophies and their neglect of those spiritual values and eternal verities on which alone a stable and flourishing civilization can be ultimately established. The multiplication, the diversity and the increasing destructive power of armaments to which both sides, in this world contest, caught in a whirlpool of fear, suspicion and hatred, are rapidly contributing; the outbreak of two successive bloody conflicts, entangling still further the American nation in the affairs of a distracted world, entailing a considerable loss in blood and treasure, swelling the national budget and progressively depreciating the currency of the sate; the confusion, the vacillation, the suspicions besetting the European and Asiatic nations in their attitude to the American nation; the overwhelming accretion of strength to the arch enemy of the system championed by the American Union in consequence of the re‑alignment of the powers in the Asiatic continent and particularly in the Far East ‑ these have, moreover, contributed their share, in recent years, to the deterioration of a situation which, if not remedied, is bound to involve the American nation in a catastrophe of undreamed‑of dimensions and of untold consequences to the social structure, the standard and conception of the American people and government. No less serious is the stress and strain imposed on the fabric of American society through the fundamental and persistent neglect, by the governed and governors alike, of the supreme, the inescapable and urgent duty ‑ so repeatedly and graphically represented and stressed by ‘Abdu l‑Bahá in His arraignment of the basic weaknesses in the social fabric of the nation ‑ of remedying, while there is yet time, through a revolutionary change in the concept and attitude of the average white American toward his Negro fellow citizen, a situation which, if allowed to drift, will, in the words of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, cause the streets of American cities to run with blood, aggravating thereby the havoc which the fearful weapons of destruction, raining from the air, and amassed by a ruthless, a vigilant, a powerful and inveterate enemy, will wreak upon those same cities. The American nation, of which the community of the Most Great Name forms as yet a negligible and infinitesimal part, stands, indeed, from whichever angle one observes its immediate fortunes, in grave peril. The woes and tribulations which threaten it are partly avoidable but mostly inevitable and God‑sent, for by reason of them a government and people clinging tenaciously to the obsolescent doctrine of absolute sovereignty and upholding a political system, manifestly at variance with the needs of a world already contracted into a neighborhood and crying out for unity will find itself purged of its anachronistic conceptions, and prepared to play a preponderating role, as foretold by ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, in the hoisting of the standard of the Lesser Peace, in the unification of mankind, and in the establishment of a world federal government of this planet. These same fiery tribulations will not only firmly weld the American nation to its sister nations in both hemispheres, but will through their cleansing effect, purge it thoroughly of the accumulated dross which ingrained racial prejudice, rampant materialism, widespread ungodliness and moral laxity have combined, in the course of successive generations, to produce, and which have prevented her thus far from assuming the role of world spiritual leadership forecast by ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá’s unerring pen ‑ a role which she is bound to fulfill through travail and sorrow.

(Citadel of Faith p. 124/125/126/127)

April 1957

Indeed, as we gaze in retrospect beyond the immediate past, and survey, in however cursory a manner, the vicissitudes afflicting an increasingly tormented society, and recall the strains and stresses to which the fabric of a dying Order has been increasingly subjected, we cannot but marvel at the sharp contrast presented, on the one hand, by the accumulated evidences of the orderly unfoldment, and the uninterrupted multiplication of the agencies, of an Administrative Order designed to be the harbinger of a world civilization, and, on the other, by the ominous manifestations of acute political conflict, of social unrest, of racial animosity, of class antagonism, of immorality and of irreligion, proclaiming, in no uncertain terms, the corruption and obsolescence of the institutions of a bankrupt Order.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 102‑103)

April 1957

Against the background of these afflictive disturbances ‑ the turmoil and tribulations of a travailing age ‑ we may well ponder the portentous prophecies uttered well‑nigh fourscore years ago, by the Author of our Faith, as well as the dire predictions made by Him Who is the unerring Interpreter of His teachings, all foreshadowing a universal commotion, of a scope and intensity unparalleled in the annals of mankind. The violent derangement of the world’s equilibrium; the trembling that will seize the limbs of mankind; the radial transformation of human society; the rolling up of the present‑day Order; the fundamental changes affecting the structure of government; the weakening of the pillars of religion; the rise of dictatorships; the spread of tyranny; the fall of monarchies; the decline of ecclesiastical institutions; the increase of anarchy and chaos; the extension and consolidation of the Movement of the Left; the fanning into flame of the smoldering fire of racial strife; the development of infernal engines of war; the burning of cities; the contamination of the atmosphere of the earth ‑ these stand out as the signs and portents that must either herald or accompany the retributive calamity which, as decreed by Him Who is the Judge and Redeemer of mankind, must, sooner or later, afflict a society which, for the most part, and for over a century, has turned a deaf ear to the Voice of God’s Messenger in this day ‑ a calamity which must purge the human race of the dross of its age‑long corruptions, and weld its component parts into a firmly‑knit world‑embracing Fellowship ...

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 103)

April 1957

Parallel with this process of progressive deterioration in human affairs, now visibly gathering momentum outside the pale of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and recalling the convulsions which, on a far more restricted scale, seized a declining empire in the opening centuries of the Christian era, far less spectacular in its manifestation, has been the process of integration, as demonstrated by the increasing cohesion, the multiplication, and the reinforcement of the foundations, of the institutions of the embryonic Bahá’í World Order, which, now, under the impact of the forces released by a World Spiritual Crusade, deriving its authority from the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, and launched for the express purpose of executing the Divine Plan bequeathed by Him to His followers in the evening of His life, is contributing, unnoticed by a generation forgetful of its God, and already in the shadow of His Visitation, to the building up. slowly but irresistibly, of that Ark of human salvation, ordained as the ultimate haven of a society destined, for the most part, to be submerged by the tidal wave of the abuses and evils which its own perversity has engendered.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 103‑104)

CALAMITY OF GOD

November 28, 1931

The prophetic voice of Bahá‘u‘lláh warning, in the concluding passages of the Hidden Words, “the peoples of the world” that “an unforeseen calamity is following them and that grievous retribution awaiteth them” throws indeed a lurid light upon the immediate fortunes of sorrowing humanity. Nothing but a fiery ordeal, out of which humanity will emerge, chastened and prepared, can succeed in implanting that sense of responsibility which the leaders of a new‑born age must arise to shoulder. I would again direct your attention to those ominous words of Bahá‘u‘lláh which I have already quoted: “And when the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly appear that which shall cause the limbs of mankind to quake.”

(World Order, The Goal of a New World Order p. 46)

March 28, 1941

This great retributive calamity, for which the world’s supreme leaders, both secular and religious, are to be regarded as primarily answerable, as testified by Bahá‘u‘lláh, should not, if we would correctly appraise it, be regarded solely as a punishment meted out by God to a world that has, for a hundred years, persisted in its refusal to embrace the truth of the redemptive Message proffered to it by the supreme Messenger of God in this day. It should be viewed also, though to a lesser degree, in the light of a divine retribution for the perversity of the human race in general, in casting itself adrift from those elementary principles which must, at all times, govern, and can alone safeguard, the life and progress of mankind. Humanity has, alas, with increasing insistence, preferred, instead of acknowledging and adoring the Spirit of God as embodied in His religion in this day, to worship those false idols, untruths and half‑truths, which are obscuring its religions, corrupting its spiritual life, convulsing its political institutions, corroding its social fabric, and shattering its economic structure.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 112)

March 28, 1941

God, however, ... , does not only punish the wrongdoings of His children. He chastises because He is just, and He chastens because He loves. Having chastened them, He cannot, in His great mercy, leave them to their fate. Indeed, by the very act of chastening them He prepares them for the mission for which He has created them. “My calamity is My providence, ” He, by the mouth of Bahá‘u‘lláh, has assured them, “outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy.” The flames which His Divine justice have kindled cleanse an unregenerate humanity, and fuse its discordant, its warring elements as no other agency can cleanse or fuse them. It is not only a retributory and destructive fire, but a disciplinary and creative process, whose aim is the salvation, through unification, of the entire planet. Mysteriously, slowly, and resistlessly God accomplishes His design, though the sight that meets our eyes in this day be the spectacle of a world hopelessly entangled in its own meshes, utterly careless of the Voice which, for a century, has been calling it to God, and miserably subservient to the siren voices which are attempting to lure it into the vast abyss.

(The promised Day Is Come p. 115‑116)

March 28, 1941

The theories and policies, so unsound, so pernicious, which deify the state and exalt the nation above mankind, which seek to subordinate the sister races of the world to one single race, which discriminate between the black and the white, and which tolerate the dominance of one privileged class over all others ‑these are the dark, the false, and crooked doctrines for which any man or people who believes in them, or acts upon them, must, sooner or later, incur the wrath and chastisement of God.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 113‑114)

THE LESSER PEACE

November 28, 1931

What else could these weighty words signify if they did not point to the inevitable curtailment of unfettered national sovereignty as an indispensable preliminary to the formation of the future Commonwealth of all the nations of the world? Some form of a world super‑state must needs be evolved, in whose favor all the nations of the world will have willingly ceded every claim to make war, certain rights to impose taxation and all rights to maintain armaments, except for purposes of maintaining internal order within their respective dominions. Such a state will have to include within its orbit an international executive adequate to enforce supreme and unchallengeable authority on every recalcitrant member of the commonwealth; a world parliament whose members shall be elected by the people in their respective countries and whose election shall be confirmed by their respective governments; and a supreme tribunal whose judgment will have a binding effect even in such cases where the parties concerned did not voluntarily agree to submit their case to its consideration. A world community in which all economic barriers will have bean permanently demolished and the interdependence of Capital and Labor definitely recognized; in which the clamor of religious fanaticism and strife will have been forever stilled; in which the flame of racial animosity will have been finally extinguished; in which a single code of international law – the product of the considered judgment of the world’s federated representatives ‑ shall have as its sanction the instant and coercive intervention of the combined forces of the federated units; and finally a world community in which the fury of a capricious and militant nationalism will have been transmuted into an abiding consciousness of world citizenship ‑ such indeed, appears, in its broadest outline, the Order anticipated by Bahá‘u‘lláh, an Order that shall come to be regarded as the fairest fruit of a slowly maturing age.

(World Order, The Goal of a New World Order p. 40‑41)

March 11, 1936

No machinery falling short of the standard inculcated by the Bahá’í Revelation, and at variance with the sublime pattern ordained in His teachings, which the collective efforts of mankind may yet devise can ever hope to achieve anything above or beyond that “Lesser Peace” to which the Author of our Faith has Himself alluded in His writings. “Now that ye have refused the Most Great Peace, ” He, admonishing the kings and rulers of the earth, has written, “hold ye fast unto this the Lesser Peace, that haply ye may in some degree better your own condition and that of your dependents.” Expatiating on this Lesser Peace, He thus addresses in that same Tablet the rulers of the earth: “Be reconciled among yourselves, that ye may need no more armaments save in a measure to safeguard your territories and dominions . . . Be united, O kings of the earth, for thereby will the tempest of discord be stilled amongst you, and your peoples find rest, if ye be of them that comprehend. Should any one among you take up arms against another, rise ye all against him, for this is naught but manifest justice.”

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World civilization p. l62)

March 11, 1936

... the stage at which the oneness of the whole body of nations will be made the ruling principle of international life.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World civilization p. 193)

March 28, 1941

... in His Tablet to Queen Victoria Bahá‘u‘lláh thus addresses all the kings of the earth, summoning them to cleave to the Lesser Peace, as distinct from that Most Great Peace which those who are fully conscious of the power of His Revelation and avowedly profess the tenets of His Faith can alone proclaim and must eventually establish: ... “Now that ye have refused the Most Great Peace, hold ye fast unto this, the Lesser Peace, that haply ye may in some degree better your own condition and that of your dependents.”

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 26‑27)

March 28, 1941

... this consummation will, by its very nature, be a gradual process, and must, as Bahá‘u‘lláh has Himself anticipated, lead at first to the establishment of that Lesser Peace which the nations of the earth, as yet unconscious of His Revelation and yet unwittingly enforcing the general principles which He has enunciated, will themselves establish. This momentous and historic step, involving the reconstruction of mankind, as the result of the universal recognition of its oneness and wholeness, will bring in its wake the spiritualization of the masses, consequently to the recognition of the character, and the acknowledgment of the claims, of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh ‑the essential condition to that ultimate fusion of all races, creeds, classes, and nations which must signalize the emergence of His New World Order. Then will the coming of age of the entire human race be proclaimed and celebrated by all the peoples and nations of the earth. Then will the banner of the Most Great Peace be hoisted.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 123)

1944

In His Tablet to Queen Victoria He, moreover, invites these kings to hold fast to “the Lesser Peace, ” since they had refused “the Most Great Peace” ...

(God Passes By p. 206)

1944

the principle of the oneness and wholeness of the human race, which may well be regarded as the hall‑mark of Bahá‘u‘lláh’s Revelation and the pivot of His teachings. Of such cardinal importance is this principle of unity that it is expressly referred to in the Book of His Covenant, and He unreservedly proclaims it as the central purpose of His Faith. “We, verily, ” He declares, “have come to unite and weld together all that dwell on earth.” “So potent is the light of unity, ” He further states, “that it can illuminate the whole earth.” “At one time, ” He has written with reference to this central theme of His Revelation, “We spoke in the language of the lawgiver; at another in that of the truth seeker and the mystic, and yet Our supreme purpose and highest wish hath always bean to disclose the glory and sublimity of this station.” Unity He states, is the goal that “excelleth every goal” and an aspiration which is “the monarch of all aspirations.” “The world, ” He proclaims, “is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” He further affirms that the unification of mankind, the last stage in the evolution of humanity towards maturity is inevitable, that “soon will the present day order be rolled up, and a new one spread out in its stead, ” that “the whole earth is now in a state of pregnancy, ” that “the day is approaching when it will’ have yielded its noblest fruits, when from it will have sprung forth the loftiest trees, the most enchanting blossoms, the most heavenly blessings.” He deplores the defectiveness of the prevailing order, exposes the inadequacy of patriotism as a directing and controlling force in human society, and regards the “love of mankind” and service to its interests as the worthiest and most laudable objects of human endeavor. He, moreover, laments that “the vitality of men s belief in God is dying out in every land, ” that the “face of the world” is turned towards “waywardness and unbelief”; proclaims religion to be “a radiant light and an impregnable stronghold for the protection and welfare of the peoples of the world”; and “the chief instrument for the establishment of order in the world”; affirms its fundamental purpose to be the promotion of unity and concord amongst men; warns lest it be made “a source of dissension, of discord and hatred”; commands that its principles be taught to children in the schools of the world, in a manner that would not be productive of either prejudice or fanaticism; attributes “the waywardness of the ungodly” to the “decline of religion”; and predicts “convulsions” so such severity as to “cause the limbs of mankind to quake.” The principle of collective security He unreservedly urges; recommends the reduction in national armaments; and proclaims as necessary and inevitable the convening of a world gathering at which the kings and rulers of the world will deliberate for the establishment of peace among the nations.

(God Passes By p. 217‑218)

1944

the institution of a world tribunal for the adjudication of disputes between nations ...

(God Passes By p. 281)

1944

the institution of the League of Nations, the precursor of that world Tribunal which, as prophesied by that same “Incomparable Branch, ” the peoples and nations of the earth must needs unitedly establish.

(God Passes By p. 305)

June 5, 1947

During this Formative Age of the Faith, and in the course of present and succeeding epochs, the last and crowning stage in the erection of the framework of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh ‑ the election of the Universal House of Justice ‑ will have been completed, the Kitáb‑i‑Aqdas, the Mother Book of His Revelation, will have been codified and its laws promulgated, the Lesser Peace will have bean established, the unity of mankind will have bean achieved and its maturity attained ...

(Citadel of Faith p. ó)

June 5, 1947

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 Bahá‘u‘lláh and foreshadowed by the Prophet Isaiah.

(Citadel of Faith p. 33)

November 8, 1948

... the birth of the new Order which must signalize the advent of the Lesser Peace.

(Citadel of Faith p. 58)

July 7, 1947

The American nation, of which the community of the Most Great Name forms as yet a negligible and infinitesimal part, stands, indeed, from whichever angle one observes its immediate fortunes, in grave peril. The woes and tribulations which threaten it are partly avoidable but mostly inevitable and God‑sent, for by reason of them a government and people clinging tenaciously to the obsolescent doctrine of absolute sovereignty and upholding a political system, manifestly at variance with the needs of a world already contracted into a neighborhood and crying out for unity will find ... itself purged of its anachronistic conceptions, and prepared to play a preponderating role, as foretold by ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, in the hoisting of the standard of the Lesser Peace, in the unification of mankind, and in the establishment of a world federal government of this planet.

(Citadel of Faith p. 126)

November 11, 1954

This vast and irresistible process, unexampled in the spiritual history of mankind, and which will synchronize with two no less significant developments ‑ the establishment of the Lesser Peace and the evolution of Bahá’í national and local institutions ‑the one outside and the other within the Bahá’í world ‑ will attain its final consummation, in the Golden Age of the Faith ...

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 74)

UNIFICATION

November 28, 1931

Are not these intermittent crises that convulse present‑day society due primarily to the lamentable inability of the world’s recognized leaders to read aright the signs of the times, to rid themselves once for all of their preconceived ideas and fettering creeds, and to reshape the machinery of their respective governments according to those standards that are implicit in Bahá‘u’lláh’s supreme declaration of the Oneness of Mankind ‑ the chief and distinguishing feature of the Faith He proclaimed? For the principle of the Oneness of Mankind, the cornerstone of Bahá‘u’lláh’s world‑embracing dominion, implies nothing more nor less than the enforcement of His scheme for the unification of the world ‑ the scheme to which we have already referred.

(World Order, The Goal of a New World Order p. 36)

November 28, 1931

Let there be no mistake. The principle of the Oneness of Mankind the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá‘u‘lláh revolve ‑is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of ` vague and pious hope. Its appeal is not to be merely identified with a reawakening of the spirit of brotherhood and good‑will among men, nor does it aim solely at the fostering of harmonious cooperation among individual peoples and nations.

(World Order, The Gael of a New World Order p. 42‑43)

November 28, 1931

The proclamation of the Oneness of Mankind ‑ the head corner‑stone of Bahá’ u’ lláh’s all‑embracing dominion ‑ can under no circumstances be compared with such expressions of pious hope as have bean uttered in the past. His is not merely a call which He raised, alone and unaided, in the face of the relentless and combined opposition of two of the most powerful Oriental potentates of His day ‑ while Himself an exile and prisoner in their hands. It implies at once a warning and a promise ‑ a warning that in it lies the sole means for the salvation of a greatly suffering world, a promise that its realization is at hand.

(World Order, The Goal of a New World Order p. 47)

March 11, 1936

This New World Order, whose promise is enshrined in the Revelation of Bahá‘u‘lláh, whose fundamental principles have been enunciated in the writings of the Center of His Covenant, involves no less than the complete unification of the entire human race. This unification should conform to such principles as would directly harmonize with the spirit that animates, and the laws that govern the operation of, the institutions that already constitute the structural basis of the Administrative Order of His Faith.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l62)

March 11, 1936

Though His Voice has been raised, and the ensigns of His Faith have bean lifted up in no less than forty countries of both the East and the West, yet the wholeness of the human race is as yet unrecognized, its unity unproclaimed, and the standard of its Most Great Peace unhoisted.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l68)

THE GREAT AGE TO COME

March 28, 1941

The ages of its infancy and childhood are past, never again to return, while the Great Age, the consummation of all ages, which must signalize the coming of age of the entire human race, is yet to come. The convulsions of this transitional and most turbulent period in the annals of humanity are the essential prerequisites, and herald of the inevitable approach, of that Age of Ages, “the time of the end, ” in which the folly and tumult of strife that has, since the dawn of history, blackened the annals of mankind, will have been finally transmuted into the wisdom and the tranquillity of an undisturbed, a universal, and lasting peace, in which the discord and separation of the children of men will have given way to the worldwide reconciliation, and the complete unification of the divers elements that constitute human society. This will indeed be the fitting climax of that process of integration which, starting with the family, the smallest unit in the scale of human organization, must, after having called successively into being the tribe, the city‑state, and the nation, continue to operate until it culminates in the unification of the whole world, the final object and the crowning glory of human evolution on this planet. It is this stage which humanity, willingly or unwillingly, is resistlessly approaching. It is for this stage that this vast, this fiery ordeal which humanity is experiencing is mysteriously paving the way. It is with this stage that the fortunes and the purpose of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh are indissolubly linked. It is the creative energies which His Revelation has released in the “year sixty”, and later reinforced by the successive effusions of celestial power vouchsafed in the “year nine” and the “year eighty” to all mankind, that have instilled into humanity the capacity to attain this final stage in its organic and collective evolution. It is with the Golden Age of His Dispensation that the consummation of this process will be forever associated. It is the structure of His New World Order, now stirring in the womb of the administrative institutions He Himself has created, that will serve both as a pattern and a nucleus of that world commonwealth which is the sure, the inevitable destiny of the peoples and nations of the earth. Just as the organic evolution of mankind has been slow and gradual, and involved successively the unification of the family, the tribe, the city‑state, and the nation, so has the light vouchsafed by the Revelation of God, at various stages in the evolution of religion, and reflected in the successive Dispensations of the past, bean slow and progressive. Indeed the measure of Divine Revelation, in everyage, has been adapted to, and commensurate with, the degree of social progress achieved in that age by a constantly evolving humanity. “It hath bean decreed by Us, ” explains Bahá‘u‘lláh, “that the Word of God, and all the potentialities thereof, shall be manifested unto men in strict conformity with such conditions as have been foreordained by Him Who is the All‑Knowing, the All‑Wise. . . Should the Word be allowed to release suddenly all the energies latent within it, no man could sustain the weight of so mighty a Revelation.” “All created things, ” ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, elucidating this truth, has affirmed, “have their degree or stage of maturity. The period of maturity in the life of a tree is the time of its fruit‑bearing. . . . The animal attains a stage of full growth and completeness, and in the human kingdom man reaches his maturity when the light of his intelligence attains its greatest power and development. . . . Similarly there are periods and stages in the collective life of humanity. At one time it was passing through its stage of childhood, at another its period of youth, but now it has entered its long‑predicted phase of maturity, the evidences of which are everywhere apparent. . . . That which was applicable to human needs during the early history of the race can neither meet nor satisfy the demands of this day, this period of newness and consummation. Humanity has emerged from its former state of limitation and preliminary training. Man must now become imbued with new virtues and powers, new moral standards, new capacities. New bounties, perfect bestowals, are awaiting and already descending upon him. The gifts and blessings of the period of youth, although timely and sufficient during the adolescence of mankind, are now incapable of meeting the requirements of its maturity.” “In every Dispensation, ” He moreover has written, “the light of Divine Guidance has been focused upon one central theme. .: . In this wondrous Revelation, this glorious century, the foundation of the Faith of God, and the distinguishing feature of His Law, is the consciousness of the oneness of mankind.”

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 117‑118‑119)

March 28, 1941

This is the stage which the world is now approaching, the stage of world unity, which, as ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá assures us, will, in this century, be securely established.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 121)

1944

Of the principles enshrined in these Tablets the most vital of them all is the principle of the oneness and wholeness of the human race, which may well be regarded as the hall‑mark of Bahá‘u‘lláh’s Revelation and the pivot of His teachings. Of such cardinal importance is this principle of unity that it is expressly referred to in the Book of His Covenant, and He unreservedly proclaims it as the central purpose of His Faith. “We, verily, ” He declares, “have come to unite and weld together all that dwell on earth.” “So potent is the light of unity, ” He further states, “that it can illuminate the whole earth.” “At one time, ” He has written with reference to this central theme of His Revelation, “We spoke in the language of the lawgiver; at another in that of the truth seeker and the mystic, and yet Our supreme purpose and highest wish hath always been to disclose the glory and sublimity of this station.” Unity, He states, is the goal that “excelleth every goal” and an aspiration which is “the monarch of all aspirations.” “The world, ” He proclaims, “is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” He further affirms that the unification of mankind, the last stage in the evolution of humanity towards maturity is inevitable, that “soon will the present day order be rolled up, and a new one spread out in its stead, ” that “the whole earth is now in a state of pregnancy, ” that “the day is approaching when it will have yielded its noblest fruits, when from it will have sprung forth the loftiest trees, the most enchanting blossoms, the most heavenly blessings.”

(God Passes By p. 216‑217)

1944

The promise of the unification of the whole human race, of the inauguration of the Most Great Peace, of the unfoldment of a world civilization, had bean incontestably given.

(God Passes By p. 223‑224)

1944

the sum and summit of all, the “hoisting of the standard of God among all nations” and the unification of the entire human race, when “all men will adhere to one religion ... will be blended into one race, and become a single people.”

(God Passes By p. 316)

1944

The Golden Age of the Faith itself that must witness the unification of all the peoples and nations of the world ...

(God Passes By p. 411)

June 5, 1947

During this Formative Age of the Faith, and in the course of present and succeeding epochs, the last and crowning stage in the erection of the framework of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh ‑ the election of the Universal House of Justice ‑ will have been completed, the Kitáb‑i‑Aqdas, the Mother Book of His Revelation, will have bean codified and its laws promulgated, the Lesser Peace will have bean established, the unity of mankind will have been achieved and its maturity attained..

(Citadel of Faith p. 6)

June 5, 1947

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 Bahá‘u‘lláh and foreshadowed by the Prophet Isaiah.

(Citadel of Faith p. 33)

July 4, 1950

The creative energies released at the hour of the birth of His Revelation, endowing mankind with the potentialities of the attainment of maturity are deranging, during the present transition age, the equilibrium of the entire planet as the inevitable prelude to the consummation in world unity of the coming of age of the human race.

(Citadel of Faith p. 81)

April 1957

... a calamity which must purge the human race of the dross of its age‑long corruptions, and weld its component parts into a firmly‑knit world‑embracing Fellowship ‑ a Fellowship destined, in the fullness of time, to be incorporated in the framework, and to be galvanized by the spiritualizing influences, of a mysteriously expanding, divinely appointed Order, and to flower, in the course of future Dispensations, into a Civilization, the like of which mankind has, at no stage in its evolution, witnessed.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 103)

SPIRITUALIZATION

March 11, 1936

The Most Great Peace, ... , a peace that must inevitably follow as the practical consequence of the spiritualization of the world and the fusion of all its races, creeds, classes and nations ...

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l62)

SPIRITUALIZATION AND FUSION

March 28, 1941

This momentous and historic step, involving the reconstruction of mankind, as the result of the universal recognition of its oneness and wholeness, will bring in its wake the spiritualization of the masses, consequently to the recognition of the character, and the acknowledgment of the claims, of the Faith of Bahá‘u’lláh ‑ the essential condition to that ultimate fusion of all races, creeds, classes, and nations which must signalize the emergence of His New World Order.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 123)

July 19, 1956

... a country so vitally affecting the immediate destinies of mankind, singled out to play so predominant a role in the unification and spiritualization of the entire human race ...

(Citadel of Faith p. 149)

April 1957

... a Fellowship destined, in the fullness of time, to be incorporated in the framework, and to be galvanized by the spiritualizing influences, of a mysteriously expanding, divinely appointed Order..

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 103)

WORLD ORDER

March 21, 1930

... that world order as conceived and proclaimed by Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(World Order, Further Considerations p. 16) ... this world‑embracing, divinely‑appointed Order ...

(World Order, Further Considerations p. 18)

March 21, 1930

Few will fail to recognize that the Spirit breathed by Bahá‘u‘lláh upon the world, and which is manifesting itself with varying degrees of intensity through the efforts consciously displayed by His avowed supporters and indirectly through certain humanitarian organizations, can never permeate and exercise an abiding influence upon mankind unless and until it incarnates itself in a visible Order, which would bear His name, wholly identify itself with His principles, and function in conformity with His laws.

(World Order, Further Considerations p. l9)

March 21, 1930

For Bahá‘u‘lláh, we should readily recognize, has not only imbued mankind with a new and regenerating Spirit. He has not merely enunciated certain universal principles, or propounded a particular philosophy, however potent, sound and universal these may be. In addition to these He, as well as ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá after Him, has, unlike the Dispensations of the past, clearly and specifically laid down a set of Laws, established definite institutions, and provided for the essentials of a Divine Economy. These are destined to be a pattern for future society, a supreme instrument for the establishment of the Most Great Peace, and the one agency for the unification of the world, and the proclamation of the reign of righteousness and justice upon the earth. Not only have they revealed all the directions required for the practical realization of those ideals which the Prophets of God have visualized, and which from time immemorial have inflamed the imagination of seers and poets in every age. They have also, in unequivocal and emphatic language, appointed those twin institutions of the House of Justice and of the Guardianship as their chosen Successors, destined to apply the principles, promulgate the laws, protect the institutions, adapt loyally and intelligently the Faith to the requirements of progressive society, and consummate the incorruptible inheritance which the Founders of the Faith have bequeathed to the world.

(World Order, Further Considerations p. 20)

March 21, 1930

... this priceless gem of Divine Revelation, now still in its embryonic state, shall evolve within the shell of His law, and shall forge ahead, undivided and unimpaired, till it embraces the whole of mankind.

Leaders of religion, exponents of political theories, governors of human institutions, who at present are witnessing with perplexity and dismay the bankruptcy of their ideas, and the disintegration of their handiwork, would do well to turn their gaze to the Revelation of Bahá‘u’lláh, and to meditate upon the World Order which, lying enshrined in His teachings, is slowly and imperceptibly rising amid the welter and chaos of present‑day civilization. They need have no doubt or anxiety regarding the nature, the origin or validity of the institutions which the adherents of the Faith are building up throughout the world. For these lie embedded in the teachings themselves, unadulterated and unobscured by unwarrantable inferences, or unauthorized interpretations of His Word.

(World Order, Further Considerations p. 23, 24)

November 28, 1931

What else, might we not confidently affirm, but the unreserved acceptance of the Divine Program enunciated, with such simplicity and force as far back as sixty years ago, by Bahá‘u’lláh, embodying in its essentials God’s divinely appointed scheme for the unification of mankind in this age, coupled with an indomitable conviction in the unfailing efficacy of each and all of its provisions, is eventually capable of withstanding the forces of internal disintegration which, if unchecked, must needs continue to eat into the vitals of a despairing society. It is towards this goal ‑ the goal of a new World Order, Divine in origin, all‑embracing in scope, equitable in principle, challenging in its features ‑ that a harassed humanity must strive.

(World Order, The Goal of a New World Order p. 34)

November 28, 1931

Upon the consummation of this colossal, this unspeakably glorious enterprise ‑ an enterprise that baffled the resources of Roman statesmanship and which Napoleon’s desperate efforts failed to achieve ‑ will depend the ultimate realization of that millennium of which poets of all ages have sung and seers have long dreamed. Upon it will depend the fulfillment of the prophecies uttered by the Prophets of old when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and the lion and the lamb lie down together. It alone can usher in the Kingdom of the Heavenly Father as anticipated by the Faith of Jesus Christ. It alone can lay the foundation for the New World Order visualized by Bahá‘u’lláh ‑ a World Order that shall reflect, however dimly, upon this earthly plane, the ineffable splendors of the ‘AbháKingdom.

(World Order, The Goal of a New World Order p. 46‑47)

March 21, 1932

Does not the very operation of the world‑unifying forces that are at work in this age necessitate that He Who is the Bearer of the Message of God in this day should not only reaffirm that self‑same exalted standard of individual conduct inculcated by the Prophets gone before Him, but embody in His appeal, to all governments and peoples, the essentials of that social code, that Divine Economy, which must guide humanity’s concerted efforts in establishing that all‑embracing federation which is to signalize the advent of the Kingdom of God on this earth?

(World Order, The Golden Age of the Cause p. 61)

February 8, 1934

Anticipating the System which the irresistible power of His Law was destined to unfold in a later age, He writes: “The world’s equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind’s ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System ‑ the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.” “The Hand of Omnipotence hath established His Revelation upon an unassailable, an enduring foundation. Storms of human strife are powerless to undermine its basis, nor will men’s fanciful theories succeed in damaging its structure.”

(World Order, Dispensation p. 109)

February 8, 1934

The creative energies released by the Law of Bahá‘u‘lláh, permeating and evolving within the mind of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, have, by their very impact and close interaction, given birth to an Instrument which may be viewed as the Charter of the New World Order which is at once the glory and the promise of this most great Dispensation.

It will, as its component parts, its organic institutions, begin to function with efficiency and vigor, assert its claim and demonstrate its capacity to be regarded not only as the nucleus but the very pattern of the New World Order destined to embrace in the fullness of time the whole of mankind.

(World Order, Dispensation p. 144)

February 8, 1934

... the birthpangs of that World Order ‑ that Ark of human salvation ‑ that must needs arise upon its ruins?

(World Order, Dispensation p. l55)

March 11, 1936

Both within and outside the Bahá’í world the signs and tokens which, in a mysterious manner, are heralding the birth of that World Order, the establishment of which must signalize the Golden Age of the Cause of God, are growing and multiplying day by day. No fair‑minded observer can any longer fail to discern them.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. 161)

March 11, 1936

... the New World Order which the mind of Bahá‘u‘lláh has visioned, and whose features the pen of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, its perfect Architect, has delineated ...

(World Order, The Unfoldment of Divine Civilization p. l61)

March 11, 1936

This New World Order, whose promise is enshrined in the Revelation of Bahá‘u’lláh, whose fundamental principles have been enunciated in the writings of the Center of His Covenant, involves no less than the complete unification of the entire human race.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l62)

March 11, 1936

the Most Great Peace, ... , as conceived by Bahá‘u’lláh ‑ a peace that must inevitably follow as the practical consequence of the spiritualization of the world and the fusion of all its races, creeds, classes and nations ‑ can rest on no other basis, and can preserved through no other agency, except the divinely appointed ordinances that are implicit in the World Order that stands associated with His Holy Name.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. 162‑163)

March 11, 1936

Though the Revelation of Bahá ‘u’ ‘lláh has bean delivered, the World Order which such a Revelation must needs beget is as yet unborn. Though the Heroic Age of His Faith is passed, the creative energies which that Age has released have not as yet crystallized into that world society which, in the fullness of time, is to mirror forth the brightness of His glory. Though the framework of His Administrative Order has been erected, and the Formative Period of the Bahá’í Era has begun, yet the promised Kingdom into which the seed of His institutions must ripen remains as yet uninaugurated.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. 168)

March 11, 1936

Through the generating influence of the Faith announced by Bahá‘u‘lláh this New World Order may be said to have been conceived. We can, at the present moment, experience its stirrings in the womb of a travailing age ‑ an age waiting for the appointed hour at which it can cast its burden and yield its fairest fruit.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. 169)

March 11, 1936

... the Age of Frustration destined to precede the establishment of the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l71)

March 11, 1936

Who else can be the blissful if not the community of the Most Great Name, whose world‑embracing, continually consolidating activities constitute the one integrating process in a world whose institutions, secular as well as religious, are for the most part dissolving? They indeed are “the people of the right, ” whose “noble habitation” is fixed on the foundations of the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh ‑ the Ark of everlasting salvation in this most grievous Day. Of all the kindreds of the earth they alone can recognize, amidst the welter of a tempestuous age, the Hand of the Divine Redeemer that traces its cause and controls its destinies. They alone are aware of the silent growth of that orderly world polity whose fabric they themselves are weaving. Conscious of their high calling, confident in the society‑building power which their Faith possesses, they press forward undeterred and undismayed, in their efforts to fashion and perfect the necessary instruments wherein the embryonic World Order of Baha’u’llah can mature and develop. It is this building process, slow and unobtrusive, to which the life of the world‑wide Bahá’í Community is wholly consecrated, that constitutes the one hope of a stricken society. For this process is actuated by the generating influence of God’s changeless Purpose, and is evolving within the framework of the Administrative Order of His Faith. In a world the structure of whose political and social institutions is impaired, whose vision is befogged, whose conscience is bewildered, whose religious systems have become anemic and lost their virtue, this healing Agency, this leavening Power, this cementing Force, intensely alive and all‑pervasive, has bean taking shape, is crystallizing into institutions, is mobilizing its forces, and is preparing for the spiritual conquest and the complete redemption of mankind. Though the society which incarnates its ideals be small, and its direct and tangible benefits as yet inconsiderable, yet the potentialities with which it has been endowed, and through which it is destined to regenerate the individual and rebuild a broken world, are incalculable.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. 194‑195)

March 11, 1936

Nor are they unmindful of the imperative necessity of upholding and of executing the laws, as distinguished from the principles, ordained by Bahá‘u’lláh, both of which constitute the warp and woof of the institutions upon which the structure of His World Order must ultimately rest.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l99)

December 25, 1938

... this distinguished member of the body of the constantly interacting Bahá’í communities of East and West, bids fair to be universally regarded as the cradle, as well as the stronghold, of that future New World Order, which is at once the promise and the glory of the Dispensation associated with the name of Bahá‘u’lláh.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 6)

December 25, 1938

To what other light can these above‑quoted words possibly allude, if not to the light of the glory of the Golden Age of the Faith of Bahá‘u’lláh? What mysteries could Abdu l‑Bahá have contemplated except the mysteries of that embryonic World Order now evolving within the matrix of His Administration? What righteousness if not the righteousness whose reign that Age and that Order can alone establish? What freedom but the freedom which the proclamation of His sovereignty in the fullness of time must bestow?

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 7)

December 25, 1938

... that promised World Order, the shell ordained to enshrine that priceless jewel, the world civilization, of which the Faith itself is the sole begetter.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 7)

December 25, 1938

... those administrative institutions that constitute the vanguard of the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh?

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 8)

December 25, 1938

It is precisely by reason of the patent evils which notwithstanding its other admittedly great characteristics and achievements, an excessive and binding materialism has unfortunately engendered within it that the Author of their Faith and the Center of His Covenant have singled it out to become the standard‑bearer of the New World Order envisioned in their writings. ... the preponderating share they will have in calling into being that World Order and that World Civilization of which their country, no less than the entire human race, stands in desperate need. ... the champion‑builders of that New World Order of which that House is to be the nucleus and forerunner ...

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. l9, 19‑20, 20)

December 25, 1938

Nor must they overlook the fact that the World Order, whose basis they, as the advance‑guard of the future Bahá’í generations of their countrymen, are now laboring to establish, can never be reared unless and until the generality of the people to which they belong has bean already purged from the divers ills, whether social or political, that now so severely afflict it.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 21)

December 25, 1938

... the Universal House of Justice, and then as the champion‑builders of that New World Order of which that House is to be the nucleus and forerunner, to inculcate, demonstrate, and apply those twin and sorely needed principles of Divine justice and order..

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 20)

December 25, 1938

... when the Hand of Destiny will have directed them to assist in creating and in bringing into operation that World Order which is now incubating within the worldwide administrative institutions of their Faith.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 41)

March 28, 1941

Whose rising Order ‑ the sole refuge of a civilization in the embrace of doom ‑ has been spurned and challenged ...

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 17)

March 28, 1941

... the Kitáb‑i‑Aqdas (The Most Holy Book) ... the Charter of His World Order ...

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 25)

March 28, 1941

... that ultimate fusion of all races, creeds, classes, and nations which must signalize the emergence of His New World Order.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 123)

1944

The promulgation of His Will and Testament, inaugurating the Formative Age of the Bahá’í era, the Charter delineating the features of an Order ...

(God Passes By p. 406)

1944

To what else can the observant eye or the unprejudiced mind, acquainted with the signs and portents heralding the birth, and accompanying the rise, of the Faith of Bahá‘u’lláh ascribe this dire, this planetary upheaval, with its attendant destruction, misery and fear, if not to the emergence of His embryonic World Order, which, as He Himself has unequivocally proclaimed, has “deranged the equilibrium of the world and revolutionized mankind’s ordered life”? To what agency, if not to the irresistible diffusion of that world‑shaking, world‑energizing, world‑redeeming spirit, which the Báb has affirmed is “vibrating in the innermost realities of all created things” can the origins of this portentous crisis, incomprehensible to man, and admittedly unprecedented in the annals of the human race, be attributed?

(God Passes By p. xi)

1944

the century that has seen this Spirit burst forth upon the world, as well as the initial stages of its subsequent incarnation in a System that must evolve into an Order designed to embrace the whole of mankind, and capable of fulfilling the high destiny that awaits man on this planet.

(God Passes By p. xii)

1944

its administrative institutions ‑ institutions which must be regarded as the nucleus and herald of that World Order that must incarnate the soul, execute the laws, and fulfill the purpose of the Faith of God in this day.

(God Passes by p. xiii)

1944

The fourth period (1921‑1944) is motivated by the forces radiating from the Will and Testament of Abdu l‑Bahá, that Charter of Bahá u lláh’s New World Order ...

(God Passes By p. xv)

1944

We observe how the Báb, the Forerunner, announced the impending inception of a divinely‑conceived Order, how Bahá‘u‘lláh, the Promised One, formulated its laws and ordinances, how ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, the appointed Center, delineated its features, and how the present generation of their followers have commenced to erect the framework of its institutions.

(God Passes By p. xvi)

1944

It should be noted, in this connection, that in the third Váhid of this Book there occurs a passage which, alike in its explicit reference to the name of the Promised One, and in its anticipation of the Order which, in a later age, was to be identified with His Revelation, deserves to rank as one of the most significant statements recorded in any of the Bab’s writings. “Well is it with him, ” is His prophetic announcement, “who fixeth his gaze upon the Order of Bahá‘u’lláh, and rendereth thanks unto his Lord. For He will assuredly be made manifest. God hath indeed irrevocably ordained it in the Bayán.” It is with that self‑same Order that the Founder of the promised Revelation, twenty years later ‑ incorporating that same term in His Kitáb‑i‑Aqdas ‑ identified the System envisaged in that Book, affirming that “this most great Order” had deranged the world’s equilibrium, and revolutionized mankind’s ordered life. It is the features of that self‑same Order which, at a later stage in the evolution of the Faith, the Center of Bahá‘u’lláh’s Covenant and the appointed Interpreter of His teachings, delineated through the provisions of‑His Will and Testament. It is the structural basis of that self‑same Order which, in the Formative Age of that same Faith, the stewards of that same Covenant, the elected representatives of the world‑wide Bahá’í community, are now laboriously and unitedly establishing. It is the superstructure of that self‑same Order, attaining its full stature through the emergence of the Bahá’í WorldCommonwealth‑theKingdom of God on earth ‑ which the Golden Age of that same Dispensation must, in the fullness of time, ultimately witness.

(God Passes By p. 25‑26)

1944

Its outcome was a heinous betrayal ending in an orgy of slaughter, staining with everlasting infamy its perpetrators, investing its victims with a halo of imperishable glory, and generating the very seeds which, in a later age, were to blossom into world‑wide administrative institutions, and which must, in the fullness of time, yield their golden fruit in the shape of a world‑redeeming, earth‑encircling Order.

(God Passes By p. 38)

1944

The “Order, ” whose foundation the Promised One was to establish in the Kitáb‑i‑Iqan, and the features of which the Center of the Covenant was to delineate in His Testament, and whose administrative framework the entire body of His followers are now erecting, had been categorically announced in the Persian Bayán. The laus which were designed, on the one hand, to abolish at a stroke the privileges and ceremonials, the ordinances and institutions of a superannuated Dispensation, and to bridge, on the other, the gap between an obsolete system and the institutions of a world‑encompassing Order destined to supersede it, had bean clearly

formulated and proclaimed.

(God Passes By p. 59)

1944

And, lastly, the seed, endowed by the Hand of Omnipotence with such vast potentialities, though rudely trampled under foot and seemingly perished from the face of the earth, had, through this very process, been vouchsafed the opportunity to germinate and remanifest itself, in the shape of a still more compelling Revelation ‑ a Revelation destined to blossom forth, in a later period into the flourishing institutions of a world‑wide administrative System, and to ripen, in the Golden Age, as yet unborn, into mighty agencies functioning in consonance with the principles of a world‑unifying, world‑redeeming Order.

(God Passes By p. 59‑60)

1944

The torrents of blood that poured out during those crowded and calamitous years may be regarded as constituting the fertile seeds of that World Order which a swiftly succeeding and still greater Revelation was to proclaim and establish.

(God Passes By p. 79)

1944

(Bahá‘u’lláh) ... the Judge, ... , the Lawgiver and Redeemer of all mankind, as the Organizer of the entire planet, as the Unifier of the children of men, as the Inaugurator of the long‑awaited millennium ... as the Originator of a new “Universal Cycle, ” as the Establisher of the Most Great Peace, as the Fountain of the Most Great Justice, as the Proclaimer of the coming of age of the entire human race, as the Creator of a new World Order ...

(God Passes By p. 94)

1944

this “Most Holy Book, ” whose provisions must remain inviolate for no less than a thousand years, and whose system will embrace the entire planet, may well be regarded as the brightest emanation of the mind of Bahá‘u’lláh, as the Mother Book of His Dispensation, and the Charter of His New World Order.

(God Passes By p. 213)

1944

the Kitáb‑i‑Aqdas, ... , not only preserves for posterity the basic laws and ordinances on which the fabric of His future World Order must rest ...

(God Passes By p. 213)

1944

bears witness to the revolutionizing effect of His World

(God Passes By p. 214)

1944

Its fundamental laws and cardinal principles, the warp and woof of the fabric of its future World Order, had been clearly enunciated. Its organic relation to, and its attitude towards, the religious systems which preceded it had been unmistakably defined. The primary institutions, within which an embryonic World Order was destined to mature, had been unassailably established.

(God Passes By p. 223)

1944

its Administrative Order, the Child of the Covenant, and the Harbinger of that World Order whose establishment must needs signalize the advent of the Golden Age of the Bahá í Dispensation.

(God Passes By p. 243)

1944

The blood which was to fertilize the soil out of which the institutions of His World Order were destined to spring had been profusely shed.

(God Passes By p. 244)

1944

His own beloved Son Abdu l‑Bahá], ... , the Architect of His World Order, ... , the Ensign of His Most Great Peace ...

(God Passes By p. 245)

1944

To this community belongs the distinction of having evolved the pattern, and of having bean the first to erect the framework, of the administrative institutions that herald the advent of the World Order of Bahá u’ lláh. ... the MotherTemple of the West, the Harbinger of that Order ...

(God Passes By p. 255)

1944

His Will and Testament, that immortal Document wherein He delineated the features of the Administrative Order which would arise after His passing, and would herald the establishment of that World Order, the advent of which the Báb had announced, and the laws and principles of which Bahá‘u‘lláh had already formulated.

(God Passes By p. 268)

1944

Behind the walls of the prison‑fortress of ‘AKA the Bearer of God’s newborn Revelation had ordained the laws and formulated the principles that were to constitute the warp and woof of His World Order.

(God Passes By p. 323)

1944

the Golden Age destined to witness the emergence of a world‑embracing Order enshrining the ultimate fruit of God’s latest Revelation to mankind, a fruit whose maturity must signalize the establishment of a world civilization and the formal inauguration of the Kingdom of the Father upon earth as promised by Jesus Christ Himself. To this World Order the Báb Himself had, whilst a prisoner in the mountain fastnesses of Adhirbáyján, explicitly referred in His Persian Bayán, the Mother‑Book of the Bábi Dispensation, had announced its advent, and associated it with the name of Bahá‘u‘lláh, Whose Mission He Himself had heralded. “Well is it with Him, ” is His remarkable statement in the sixteenth chapter of the third Váhid, “who fixeth his gaze upon the Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and rendereth thanks unto his Lord! For He will assuredly be made manifest ... ” To this same Order Bahá‘u‘lláh Who, in a later period, revealed the laws and principles that must govern the operation of that Order, had thus referred in the Kitáb‑i‑Aqdas, the Mother‑Book of His Dispensation ...

(God Passes By p. 324‑325)

1944

that world‑embracing Administrative system designed to evolve into a World Order which posterity must acclaim as the promise and crowning glory of all the Dispensations of the past.

(God Passes By p. 329)

1944

The promulgation of His Will and Testament, inaugurating the Formative Age of the Bahá’í era, the Charter delineating the features of an Order ...

(God Passes By p. 329)

1944

The full emancipation of the Faith itself from the fetters of religious orthodoxy, the essential prerequisite of its universal recognition and of the emergence of its World Order, is still unachieved.

(God Passes By p. 411)

1944

The Golden Age of the Faith itself that must witness the unification of all the peoples and nations of the world, the establishment of the Most Great Peace, the inauguration of the Kingdom of the Father upon earth, the coming of age of the entire human race and the birth of a world civilization, inspired and directed by the creative energies released by Bahá‘u‘lláh’s World Order, shining in its meridian splendor, is still unborn and its glories unsuspected.

(God Passes By p. 411‑412)

June 5, 1947

... that embryonic World Order whose advent was announced by the Báb in the Bayán, whose laws were revealed by Bahá‘u‘lláh in the Kitáb‑i‑Aqdas, and whose features were delineated by ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá in His Will and Testament.

(Citadel of Faith p. 5)

June 5, 1947

... ‑uch a continent is now experiencing, at the hands of the little as yet unnoticed hand of pioneers sent forth by the enviable, the privileged, the dynamic American Bahá’í Community, the first stirrings of that spiritual revolution which must culminate, in the Golden Age that is as yet unborn, in the permanent establishment of Bahá‘u‘lláh’s Order throughout that continent.

(Citadel of Faith p. 27)

October 25, 1947

... the attendant tribulations and commotions which a travailing age must necessarily experience, as a prelude to the birth of the new World Order, destined to rise upon the ruins of a tottering civilization

(Citadel of Faith p. 39)

April 4, 1949

... the champion builders of the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and the torch‑bearers of the civilization which that Order must eventually establish.

(Citadel of Faith p. 70)

August 27, 1949

... and contribute, to a degree unsuspected as yet by its members, its full share to the World‑wide establishment of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh, the emancipation of its Oriental followers, the

recognition of its independence, the birth of its World Order and the emergence of that world civilization which that Order is destined to create.

(Letters to Australia and New Zealand p. 81)

January 17, 1951

... inauguration of crusade linking administrative machinery of four national assemblies of East and West within four continents and birth of first International Council at World Center of Faith, twin evidences of resistless unfoldment of embryonic, divinely appointed World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(Citadel of Faith p. 90)

June 30, 1952

... around whose most holy shrines the supreme organs of its unfolding Order, are, in their embryonic form, unfolding ...

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 33)

October 8, 1952

... the eternal glory of His embryonic, majestically unfolding World Order ...

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 41)

July 18, 1953

... this community has abundantly merited, by the quality of its deeds and the magnitude of its exploits, the distinctive titles of the cradle of the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh, of the vanguard of His world‑conquering host ...

(Citadel of Faith p. l11)

April 6, 1954

... presaging the emergence of the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh which must pave the way for the establishment of the World Civilization destined to attain maturity in the course of successive Dispensations in the Five Thousand Century Bahá’í Cycle.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 60)

November 27, 1954

This vast and irresistible process, unexampled in the spiritual history of mankind, and which will synchronize with two no less significant developments ‑ the establishment of the Lesser Peace and the evolution of Bahá’í national and local institutions ‑the one outside and the other within the Bahá’í world ‑ will attain its

final consummation, in the Golden Age of the Faith ...

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 74‑753

April 1955

... an Administrative Order that must needs slowly evolve into the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and which in turn will give birth, in the fullness of time, to a world spiritual civilization, which posterity will hail as the fairest fruit of His Revelation.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 84)

April 1957

... a Fellowship destined, in the fullness of time, to be incorporated in the framework, and to be galvanized by the spiritualizing influences, of a mysteriously expanding, divinely appointed Order ...

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 103)

July 19, 1957

The bones of the skeleton of the World Order are growing strong, but only the teaching work can clothe them with flesh.

(Letters to Australia and New Zealand p. l370

July 19, 1957

... in hastening the establishment, and in ensuring the gradual efflorescence and ultimate fruition, of its divinely appointed embryonic World Order.

(Letters to Australia and New Zealand p. 140)

THE MOST GREAT PEACE

March 21, 1930

He, as well as ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá after Him, has, unlike the Dispensations of the past, clearly and specifically laid down a set of Laws, established definite institutions, and provided for the essentials of a Divine Economy. These are destined to be a pattern for future society, a supreme instrument for the establishment of the Most Great Peace, and the one agency for the unification of the world, and the proclamation of the reign of righteousness and justice upon the earth.

(World Order, Further Considerations p. l9)

March 21, 1930

He, as well as ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá after Him, has, unlike the Dispensations of the past, clearly and specifically laid down a set of Laws, established definite institutions, and provided for the essentials of a Divine Economy. These are destined to be a pattern for future society, a supreme instrument for the establishment of the Most Great Peace, and the one agency for the unification of the world, and the proclamation of the reign of righteousness and justice upon the earth.

(World Order, Further Considerations p. l9)

March 11, 1936

The Most Great Peace, on the other hand, as conceived by Bahá‘u‘lláh ‑ a peace that must inevitably follow as the practical consequence of the spiritualization of the world and the fusion of all its races, creeds, classes and nations ‑ can rest on no other basis, and can be preserved through no other agency, except the divinely appointed ordinances that are implicit in the World Order that stands associated with His Holy Name. In His Tablet, revealed almost seventy years ago to Queen Victoria, Bahá‘u‘lláh, alluding to this Most Great Peace, has declared: “That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith. This can in no wise be achieved except through the power of a skilled, an all‑powerful and inspired Physician. This, verily, is the truth, and all else naught but error . . . Consider these days in which the Ancient Beauty, He Who is the Most Great Name, hath bean sent down to regenerate and unify mankind. Behold how with drawn swords they rose against Him, and committed that which caused the Faithful Spirit to tremble.

And whenever We said unto them: ‘Lo, the World Reformer is come, ’ they made reply: ‘He, in truth, is one of the stirrers of mischief.”’ “It beseemeth all men in this Day, ” He, in another

Tablet, asserts, “to take firm hold on the Most Great Name, and to establish the unity of all mankind. There is no place to flee to, no refuge that any one can seek, except Him.”

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l62‑163)

March 11, 1936

... a World Religion, destined to attain, in the fullness of time, the status of a world‑embracingCommonwealth, which would be at once the instrument and the guardian of the Most Great Peace announced by its Author.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. 196)

December 25, 1938

Small wonder, therefore, that the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation should have chosen to associate the name and title of that House, which is to be the crowning glory of His administrative institutions, not with forgiveness but with justice, to have made justice the only basis and the permanent foundation of His Most Great Peace, and to have proclaimed it in His Hidden Words as “the best beloved of all things” in His sight.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 28‑29)

December 25, 1938

The ideals that fired the imagination of America’s tragically unappreciated President, whose high endeavors, however much nullified by a visionless generation, ‘Abdu 1‑Bahá, through His own pen, acclaimed as signalizing the dawn of the Most Great Peace, though now lying in the dust, bitterly reproach a heedless generation for having so cruelly abandoned them.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 88)

March 28, 1941

This Most Great Justice is indeed the Justice upon which the structure of the Most Great Peace can alone, and must eventually, rest, while the Most Great Peace will, in turn, usher in that Most Great, that World Civilization which shall remain forever associated with Him Who beareth the Most Great Name.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 5‑6)

March 28, 1941

... in His Tablet to Queen Victoria Bahá‘u‘lláh thus addresses all the kings of the earth, summoning them to cleave to the Lesser Peace, as distinct from that Most Great Peace which those who are fully conscious of the power of His Revelation and avowedly profess the tenets of His Faith can alone proclaim and must eventually establish ... “Now that ye have refused the Most Great Peace, hold ye fast unto this, the Lesser Peace, that haply ye may in some degree better your own condition and that of your dependents ... ”

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 26‑27)

March 28, 1941

... that ultimate fusion of all races, creeds, classes, and nations which must signalize the emergence of His New World Order. Then will the coming of age of the entire human race be proclaimed and celebrated by all the peoples and nations of the earth. Then will the banner of the Most Great Peace be hoisted.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 123)

1944

(Bahá‘u‘lláh), the Establisher of the Most Great Peace ...

(God Passes By p. 93)

1944

In His Tablet to Queen Victoria He, moreover, invites these kings to hold fast to “the Lesser Peace, ” since they had refused “the Most Great Peace” ...

(God Passes By p. 206)

1944

The promise of the unification of the whole human race, of the inauguration of the Most Great Peace, of the unfoldment of a world civilization, had been incontestably given.

(God Passes By p. 223‑224)

1944

His own beloved Son ... the Architect of His World Order, the Ensign of His Most Great Peace ...

(God Passes By p. 245)

1944

“The American people, ” ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, even more distinctly, singling out for His special favor the Great Republic of the West, the leading nation of the American continent, has revealed, “are indeed worthy of being the first to build the Tabernacle of the Most Great Peace, and proclaim the oneness of mankind.”

(God Passes By p. 254)

1944

solemnly pledged to follow, under all conditions, the dictates of the “Most Great Justice” that can alone usher in the reign of the “Most Great Peace” which Bahá‘u‘lláh has proclaimed and must ultimately establish ...

(God Passes By p. 331)

1944

He had singled out the GreatRepublic of the West, the leading nation of that continent, declaring that its people were “indeed worthy of being the first to build the Tabernacle of the Most Great Peace and proclaim the oneness of mankind ...

(God Passes By p. 396)

1944

He had, furthermore, acclaimed one of their most celebrated presidents as one who, through the ideals he had expounded and the institutions he had inaugurated, had caused the “dawn” of the Peace anticipated by Bahá‘u‘lláh to break ...

(God Passes By p. 397)

1944

The Golden Age of the Faith itself that must witness the unification of all the peoples and nations of the world, the establishment of the Most Great Peace, the inauguration of the Kingdom of the Father upon earth ...

(God Passes By p. 411)

1944

The last twenty‑three years of the first Bahá’í century may thus be regarded as the initial stage of the Formative Period of the Faith, an Age of Transition to be identified with the rise and establishment of the Administrative Order, upon which the institutions of the future Bahá’í World Commonwealth must needs be ultimately erected in the Golden Age that must witness the consummation of the Bahá’í Dispensation. The Charter which called into being, outlined the features and set in motion the processes of, this Administrative Order is none other than the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, His greatest legacy to posterity, the brightest emanation of His mind and the mightiest instrument forged to insure the continuity of the three ages which constitute the component parts of His Father’s Dispensation. The Covenant of Bahá‘u‘lláh had bean instituted solely through the direct operation of His Will and purpose. The Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, on the other hand, may be regarded as the offspring resulting from that mystic intercourse between Him Who had generated the forces of a God‑given Faith and the One Who had bean made its sole Interpreter and was recognized as its perfect Exemplar. The creative energies unleashed by the Originator of the Law of God in this age gave birth, through their impact upon the mind of Him Who had been chosen as its unerring Expounder, to that Instrument, the vast implications of which the present generation, even after the lapse of twenty‑three years, is still incapable of fully apprehending. This Instrument can, if we would correctly appraise it, no more be divorced from the One Who provided the motivating impulse for its creation than from Him Who directly conceived it. The purpose of the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation had, as already observed, been so thoroughly infused into the mind of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá and His Spirit had so profoundly impregnated His being, and their aims and motives bean so completely blended, that to dissociate the doctrine laid down by the former from the supreme act associated with the mission of the latter would be tantamount to a repudiation of one of the most fundamental verities of the Faith. The Administrative Order which this historic Document has established, it should be noted, is, by virtue of its origin and character, unique in the annals of the world’s religious systems. No Prophet before Bahá‘u‘lláh, it can be confidently asserted, not even Muhammad Whose Book clearly lays down the laws and ordinances of the Islamic Dispensation, has established, authoritatively and in writing, anything comparable to the Administrative Order which the authorized Interpreter of Bahá‘u‘lláh’s teachings has instituted, an Order which, by virtue of the administrative principles which its Author has formulated, the institutions He has established, and the right of interpretation with which He has invested its Guardian, must and will, in a manner unparalleled in any previous religion, safeguard from schism the Faith from which it has sprung. Nor is the principle governing its operation similar to that which underlies any system, whether theocratic or otherwise, which the minds of men have devised for the government of human institutions. Neither in theory nor in practice can the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh be said to conform to any type of democratic government, to any system of autocracy, to any purely aristocratic order, or to any of the various theocracies, whether Jewish, Christian or Islamic which mankind has witnessed in the past. It incorporates within its structure certain elements which are to be found in each of the three recognized forms of secular government, is devoid of the defects which each of them inherently possesses, and blends the salutary truths which each undoubtedly contains without vitiating in any way the integrity of the Divine verities on which it is essentially founded. The hereditary authority which the Guardian of the Administrative Order is called upon to exercise, and the right of the interpretation of the Holy Writ solely conferred upon him; the powers and prerogatives of the Universal House of Justice, possessing the exclusive right to legislate on matters not explicitly revealed in the Most Holy Book; the ordinance exempting its members from any responsibility to those whom they represent, and from the obligation to conform to their views, convictions or sentiments; the specific provisions requiring the free and democratic election by the mass of the faithful of the Body that constitutes the sole legislative organ in the world‑wide Bahá’í community ‑ these are among the features which combine to set apart the Order identified with the Revelation of Bahá‘u‘lláh from any of the existing systems of human government. Nor have the enemies who, at the hour of the inception of this Administrative Order, and in the course of its twenty‑three year existence, both in the East and in the West, from within and from without, misrepresented its character, or derided and vilified it, or striven to arrest its march, or contrived to create a breach in the ranks of it supporters, succeeded in achieving their malevolent purpose. The strenuous exertions of an ambitious Armenian, who, in the course of the first years of its establishment in Egypt, endeavored to supplant it by the “Scientific Society” which in his sbort‑sightedness he had conceived and was sponsoring, failed utterly in its purpose. The agitation provoked by a deluded woman who strove diligently both in the United States and in England to demonstrate the unauthenticity of the Charter responsible for its

creation, and even to induce the civil authorities of Palestine to take legal action in the matter, ‑ a request which to her great chagrin was curtly refused ‑ as well as the defection of one of the earliest pioneers and founders of the Faith in Germany, whom that same woman had so tragically misled, produced no effect whatsoever. The volumes which a shameless apostate composed and disseminated, during that same period in Persia, in his brazen efforts not only to disrupt that Order but to undermine the very Faith which had conceived it, proved similarly abortive. The schemes devised by the remnants of the Covenant‑breakers, who immediately the alms and purposes of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá’s Will became known arose, headed by Mirzá Badì’u’lláh, to wrest the custodianship of the holiest shrine in the Bahá’í world from its appointed guardian, likewise came to naught and brought further discredit upon them. The subsequent attacks launched by certain exponents of Christian orthodoxy, in both Christian and non‑Christian lands, with the object of subverting the foundations, and distorting the features, of this same Order were powerless to sap the loyalty of its upholders or to deflect them from their high purpose. Not even the infamous and insidious machinations of a former secretary of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, who, untaught by the retribution that befell Bahá‘u‘lláh’s amanuensis, as well as by the fate that overtook several other secretaries and interpreters of His Master, in both the East and the West, has arisen, and is still exerting himself, to pervert the purpose and nullify the essential provisions of the immortal Document from which that Order derives its authority, have been able to stay even momentarily the march of its institutions along the course set for it by its Author, or to create anything that might.

(God Passes By p. 325‑326‑327)

June 5, 1947

... whilst in the course of the Golden Age, destined to consummate the Dispensation itself, the banner of the Most Great Peace, promised by its Author, will have been unfurled, the World Bahá’í Commonwealth will have emerged in the plenitude of its power and splendor, and the birth and efflorescence of a world civilization, the child of that Peace, will have conferred its inestimable blessings upon all mankind. ... 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.

(Citadel of Faith p. ó, 7)

June 5, 1947

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 Bahá‘u‘lláh 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 Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(Citadel of Faith p. 33)

June 5, 1947

It is for this same American democracy that He expressed His fervent hope that it might be “the first nation to establish the foundation of international agreement, ” “to proclaim the unity of mankind, ” and “to unfurl the Standard of the Most Great Peace, ” that it might become “the distributing center of spiritual enlightenment, and all the world receive this heavenly blessing, ” and that its inhabitants might “rise from their present material attainments to such a height that heavenly illumination may stream from this center to all the peoples of the world.” It is in connection with its people that He has affirmed that they are “indeed worthy of being the first to build the Tabernacle of the Great Peace and proclaim the oneness of mankind.”

(Citadel of Faith p. 35)

June 5, 1947

To her President, the immortal Woodrow Wilson, must be ascribed the unique honor, among the statesmen of any nation, whether of the East or of the West, of having voiced sentiments so akin to the principles animating the Cause of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and of having more than any other world leader, contributed to the creation of the League of Nations ‑ achievements which the pen of the Center of God’s Covenant acclaimed as signalizing the dawn of the Most Great Peace, whose sun, according to that same pen, must needs arise as the direct consequence of the enforcement of the laws of the Dispensation of Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(Citadel of Faith p. 36)

June 5, 1947

... that great republic ... will continue to evolve, undivided and undefeatable, until the sum total of its contributions to the birth, the rise and the fruition of that world civilization, the child of the Most Great Peace and hallmark of the Golden Age of the Dispensation of Bahá‘u‘lláh, will have bean made, and its last task discharged.

(Citadel of Faith p. 38)

November 27, 1954

This vast and irresistible process, ... ‑ will attain its final consummation, in the Golden Age of the Faith, through the raising of the standard of the Most Great Peace, and the emergence, in the plenitude of its power and glory, o£ the focal Center of the agencies constituting the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 74‑75)

BAHA‘I WORLD COMMONWEALTH

February 27, 1929

And as the Bahá’í Faith permeates the masses of the peoples of East and West, and its truth is embraced by the majority of the peoples of a number of the Sovereign States of the world, will the Universal House of Justice attain the plenitude of its power, and exercise, as the supreme organ of the Bahá’í Commonwealth, all the rights, the duties, and responsibilities incumbent upon the world s future super‑state.

(World Order p. 7)

October 25, 1929

For as the authority with which Bahá‘u‘lláh has invested the future Bahá’í Commonwealth becomes more and more apparent, the fiercer shall be the challenge which from every quarter will be thrown at the verities it enshrines.

(World Order, Further Considerations p. 18)

March 21, 1930

That Bahá‘u‘lláh in His Book of Aqdas, and later ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá in His Will ‑ a document which confirms, supplements, and correlates the provisions of the Aqdas ‑ have set forth in their entirety those essential elements for the constitution of the world Bahá’í Commonwealth, no one who has read them will deny.

(World Order, Further Considerations p. l9)

March 21, 1930

What else could these weighty words signify if they did not point to the inevitable curtailment of unfettered national sovereignty as an indispensable preliminary to the formation of the future Commonwealth of all the nations of the world? Some form of a world super‑state must needs be evolved, in whose favor all the nations of the world will have willingly ceded every claim to make war!

(World Order, p. 40)

February 8, 1934

For upon our present‑day efforts, and above all upon the extent to which we strive to remodel our lives after the pattern of sublime heroism associated with those gone before us, must depend the efficacy of the instruments we now fashion ‑instruments that must erect the structure of that blissful Commonwealth which must signalize the Golden Age of our Faith.

(World Order, Dispensation p. 98)

February 8, 1934

The Bahá’í Commonwealth of the future, of which this vast Administrative Order is the sole framework, is, both in theory and practice, not only unique in the entire history of political institutions, but can find no parallel in the annals of any of the world s recognized religious systems. No form of democratic government; no system of autocracy or of dictatorship, whether monarchical or republican; no intermediary scheme of a purely aristocratic order; nor even any of the recognized types of theocracy, whether it be the Hebrew Commonwealth, or the various Christian ecclesiastical organizations, or the Imamate or the Caliphate in Islam ‑ none of these can be identified or be said to conform with the Administrative Order which the master‑hand of its perfect Architect has fashioned.

((World Order, Dispensation p. l52)

March 11, 1936

To us, the “generation of the half‑light, ” living at a time which may be designated as the period of the incubation of the WorldCommonwealth envisaged by Bahá‘u‘lláh, has bean assigned a task whose high privilege we can never sufficiently appreciate, and the arduousness of which we can as yet but dimly recognize.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of Divine Civilization p. l68‑169)

March 11, 1936

... the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh is now visibly succeeding in demonstrating its claim and title to be regarded as a World Religion, destined to attain, in the fullness of time, the status of a world‑embracingCommonwealth, which would be at once the instrument and the guardian of the Most Great Peace announced by its Author.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l96)

December 25, 1938

... followed by its establishment and recognition as a State religion, which in turn must give way to its assumption of the rights and prerogatives associated with the Bahá’í state, functioning in the plenitude of its powers, a stage which must ultimately culminate in the emergence of the worldwide Bahá ‘i Commonwealth, animated wholly by the spirit, and operating solely in direct conformity with the laws and principles of Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 15)

March 28, 1941

It is the structure of His New World Order, now stirring in the womb of the administrative institutions He Himself has created, that will serve both as a pattern and a nucleus of that world commonwealth which is the sure, the inevitable destiny of the peoples and nations

of the earth.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 118)

March 28, 1941

... this world commonwealth, destined to emerge, sooner or later, out of the carnage, agony, and havoc of this great world convulsion ...

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 123)

March 28, 1941

It is the structure of His New World Order, now stirring in the womb of the administrative institutions He Himself has created, that will serve both as a pattern and a nucleus of that world commonwealth which is the sure, the inevitable destiny of the peoples and nations of the earth.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 118)

1944

We can, at the same time, recognize, through the haze of an ever‑widening hostility, the progress, painful yet persistent, of certain communities within its pale through the stages of obscurity, of proscription, of emancipation, and of recognition ‑stages that must needs culminate in the course of succeeding centuries, in the establishment of the Faith, and the founding, in the plenitude of its power and authority, of the world‑embracing Bahá’í Commonwealth.

(God Passes By p. xviii)

1944

the emergence of the Bahá’í WorldCommonwealth ‑ the Kingdom of God on earth ‑ which the Golden Age of that same Dispensation must, in the fullness of time, ultimately witness.

(God Passes By p. 26)

1944

Nor will it, as the years go by, and the institutions revolving around the WorldAdministrativeCenter of the future Bahá’í Commonwealth are gradually established, cease to manifest the latent potentialities with which that same immutable purpose has endowed it.

(God Passes By p. 277)

1944

the splendor of the institutions which that triumphant Faith must erect on the slopes of a mountain, destined to be so linked with the city of ‘Akká that a single grand metropolis will be formed to enshrine the spiritual as well as the administrative seats of the

future Bahá’í Commonwealth ...

(God Passes By p. 315‑316)

1944

an Age of Transition to be identified with the rise and establishment of the Administrative Order, upon which the institutions of the future Bahá’í WorldCommonwealth must needs be ultimately erected in the Golden Age that must witness the consummation of the Bahá’í Dispensation.

(God Passes By 325)

1944

The conjunction of these three resting‑places, ... reinforces, ... the spiritual potencies of a spot, designated by Bahá‘u‘lláh Himself the seat of God’s throne. It marks, too, a further milestone in the road leading eventually to the establishment of that permanent world Administrative Center of the future Bahá ‘i Commonwealth, destined never to be separated from, and to function in the proximity of, the Spiritual Center of that Faith, in a land already revered and held sacred alike by the adherents of three of the world’s outstanding religious systems.

(God Passes By p. 348)

1944

the evolution of the Faith itself, an evolution which, carrying it through the successive stages of repression, of emancipation, of recognition as an independent Revelation, and as a state religion, must lead to the establishment of the Bahá’í state and culminate in the emergence of the Bahá’í WorldCommonwealth.

(God Passes By p. 364)

June 5, 1947

in the course of present and succeeding epochs, the last and crowning stage in the erection of the framework of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh ‑ the election of the Universal House of Justice ‑ will have been completed, the Kitáb‑i‑Aqdas, the Mother Book of His Revelation, will have bean codified and its laws promulgated, the Lesser Peace will have bean established, the unity of mankind will have been achieved and its maturity attained, the Plan conceived by ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá will have bean executed, the emancipation of the Faith from the fetters of religious orthodoxy will have been effected, and its independent religious status will have been universally recognized, whilst in the course of the Golden Age, destined to consummate the Dispensation itself, the banner of the Most Great Peace, promised by its Author, will have been unfurled, the World Bahá’í Commonwealth will have emerged in the plenitude of its power and splendor ...

(Citadel of Faith p. 6)

June 5, 1947

One of these processes is associated with the mission of the American Bahá’í Community, the other with the destiny of the American nation. The one serves directly the interests of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh, 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‑Bahá’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.

June 5, 1947

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 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‑Bahá with the world triumph of the Faith of His Father. It will be consummated through the emergence of the Bahá’í WorldCommonwealth in the Golden Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation.

(Citadel of Faith p. 32)

July 1947

“ ... it can be regarded in no other light than a world religion, destined to evolve in the course of time into a world‑embracing commonwealth, whose advent must signalize the Golden Age of mankind ... ”

(Statement to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine)

March 4, 1953

... the Universal House of Justice, the supreme legislative body of the future Bahá’í Commonwealth ...

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. l49)

May 4, 1953

... the stage at which the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh will be recognized by the civil authorities as the state religion, similar to that which Christianity entered in the years following the death of the Emperor Constantine, a stage which must later be followed by the emergence of the Bahá’í state itself, functioning, in all religious and civil matters, in strict accordance with the laws and ordinances of the Kitáb‑i‑Aqdas, the Most Holy, the Mother‑Book of the Bahá’í Revelation, a stage which, in the fullness o£ time,

will culminate in the establishment of the World Bahá’í Commonwealth, functioning in the plenitude of its powers, and which will signalize the long‑awaited advent of the Christ‑promised Kingdom of God on earth ‑ the Kingdom of Bahá‘u’lláh ‑mirroring however faintly upon this humble handful of dust the glories of the Abhá Kingdom.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 155)

November 27, 1954

The final establishment of this seat of the future Bahá’í World Commonwealth will signalize at once the proclamation of the sovereignty of the Founder of our Faith and the advent of the Kingdom of the Father repeatedly lauded and promised by Jesus Christ.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 75)

April 1955

... the future extension of the arc around which the edifices, destined to serve as the seat of the future Bahá ‘i WorldCommonwealth, are to be erected.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 79)

April 1957

... the Hands of the Cause of God, ... the Chief Stewards of Bahá‘u‘lláh’s embryonic WorldCommonwealth ...

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 127)

SOVEREIGNTY

5 July 1912

Talk at 309 West Seventy‑eighth Street. New York

Notes by Howard MacNutt

Question: You have stated that we are living in a universal cycle, the first Manifestation of which was Adam and the universal Manifestation of which is Bahá‘u‘lláh. Does this imply that other universal cycles preceded this one and that all traces of them have bean effaced, cycles in which the ultimate purpose was the divine spiritualization of man just as it is the creative intention in this one?

The divine sovereignty is an ancient sovereignty, not an accidental sovereignty. If we imagine this world of existence has a beginning, we can say the divine sovereignty is accidental-that is, there was a time when it did not exist. A king without a kingdom is impossible. He cannot be without a country, without subjects, without an army, without dominion, or he would be without kingship. All these exigencies or requirements of sovereignty must exist for a king. When they do exist, we can apply the word sovereignty to him. Otherwise, his sovereignty is imperfect, incomplete. If none of these conditions exists, sovereignty does not exist.

If we acknowledge there is a beginning for this world of creation, we acknowledge that the sovereignty of God is accidental‑that is, we admit a time when the reality of Divinity has been without dominion (lit. “defeated”). The names and attributes of Divinity are requirements of this world. The names the Powerful, the Living, the Provider, the Creator require and necessitate the existence of creatures. If there were no creatures, Creator would be meaningless. If there were none to provide for, we could not think of the Provider. If there were no life, the Living would be beyond the power of conception. Therefore, all the names and attributes of God require the existence of objects or creatures upon which they have bean bestowed and in which they have become manifest. If there was a time when no creation existed, when there was none to provide for, it would imply a time when there was no existent One, no Trainer, and the attributes and qualities of God would have been meaningless and without significance. Therefore, the requirements of the attributes of God do not admit of cessation or interruption, for the names of God are actually and forever existing and not potential. Because they convey life, they are called Life‑giving; because they provide, they are called Bountiful, the Provider; because they create, they are called Creator; because they educate and govern, the name Lord God is applied. That is to say, the divine names emanate from the eternal attributes of Divinity. Therefore, it is proved that the divine names presuppose the existence of objects or beings.

How then is a time conceivable when this sovereignty has not been existent? This divine sovereignty is not to be measured by six thousand years. This interminable, illimitable universe is not the result of that measured period. This stupendous laboratory and workshop has not been limited in its production to six thousand revolutions of the earth about the sun. With the slightest reflection man can be assured that this calculation and announcement is childish, especially in view of the fact that it is scientifically proved the terrestrial globe has been the habitation of man long prior to such a limited estimate As to the record in the Bible concerning Adam’s entering paradise, His eating from the tree and His expulsion through the temptation of Satan: These are all symbols beneath which there are wonderful and divine meanings not to be calculated in years, dates and measurement of time. Likewise, the statement that God created the heaven and the earth in six days is symbolic. We will not explain this further today. The texts of the Holy Books are all symbolical, needing authoritative interpretation. When man casts even a cursory glance of reflection upon the question of the universe, he discovers it is very ancient. A Persian philosopher was looking up in the heavens, lost in wonder. He said, “I have written a book containing seventy proofs of the accidental appearance of the universe, but I still find it very ancient.” Bahá‘u‘lláh says, “The universe hath neither beginning nor ending.” He has set aside the elaborate theories and exhaustive opinions of scientists and material philosophers by the simple statement, “There is no beginning, no ending.” The theologians and religionists advance plausible proofs that the creation of the universe dates back six thousand years; the scientists bring forth indisputable facts and say. “No! These evidences indicate ten, twenty, fifty thousand years ago, ” etc. There are endless discussions pro and con. Bahá u’ lláh sets aside these discussions by one word and statement. He says, “The divine sovereignty hath no beginning and no ending.” By this announcement and its demonstration He has established a standard of agreement among those who reflect upon this question of divine sovereignty; He has brought reconciliation and peace in this war of opinion and discussion. Briefly, there were many universal cycles preceding this one in which we are living. They were consummated, completed and their traces obliterated. The divine and creative purpose in them was the evolution of spiritual man, just as it is in this cycle. The circle of existence is the same circle; it returns. The tree of life has ever borne the same heavenly fruit.

(Promulgation of Universal Peace p. 218‑219‑220)

March 21, 1930

I consider it my duty to warn every beginner in the Faith that the promised glories of the Sovereignty which the Bahá’í teachings foreshadow, can be revealed only in the fullness of time, that the implications of the Aqdas and the Will of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, as the twin repositories of the constituent elements of that Sovereignty, are too far‑reaching for this generation to grasp and fully appreciate.

(World Order, Further Considerations p. 16)

March 11, 1936

Amidst the shadows which are increasingly gathering about as we can faintly discern the glimmerings of Bahá‘u‘lláh’s unearthly sovereignty appearing fitfully on the horizon of history.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l68)

December 25, 1938

What freedom but the freedom which the proclamation of His sovereignty in the fullness of time must bestow?

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 7)

March 28, 1941

Then will the banner of the Most Great Peace be hoisted. Then will the worldwide sovereignty of Bahá‘u‘lláh ‑ the Establisher of the Kingdom of the Father foretold by the Son, and anticipated by the Prophets of God before Him and after Him ‑ be recognized, acclaimed, and firmly established.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 123)

April 1955

May they hasten, by their present exertions, the advent of that blissful consummation when the shackles hampering the growth of their beloved Faith will have been finally burst asunder, when its independent status will have been officially and universally recognized, when it will have ascended the throne and wielded the scepter of spiritual and temporal authority, when the brightness of its glory will have illuminated the whole earth, and its dominion will have been established over the entire planet.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 84‑85)

PEACE ‑ SUPREME TRIBUNAL

For example, the question of Universal Peace, about which Bahá‘u‘lláh says that the Supreme Tribunal must be established: although the League of Nations has been brought into existence, yet it is incapable of establishing Universal Peace. But the Supreme Tribunal which Bahá‘u‘lláh has described will fulfill this sacred task with the utmost might and power. And His plan is this: that the national assemblies of each country and nation ‑ that is to say parliaments ‑ should elect two or three persons who are the choicest men of that nation, and are well informed concerning international laws and the relations between governments and aware of the essential needs of the world of humanity in this day. The number of these representatives should be in proportion to the number of inhabitants of that country. The election of these souls who are chosen by the national assembly, that is, the parliament, must be confirmed by the upper house, the congress and the cabinet and also by the president or monarch so these persons may be the elected ones of all the nation and the government. From among these people the members of the Supreme Tribunal will be elected, and all mankind will thus have a share therein, for every one of these delegates is fully representative of his nation. When the Supreme Tribunal gives a ruling on any international question, either unanimously or by majority rule, there will no longer be any pretext for the plaintiff or ground of objection for the defendant. In case any of the governments or nations, in the execution of the irrefutable decision of the Supreme Tribunal, be negligent or dilatory, the rest of the nations will rise up against it, because all the governments and nations of the world are the supporters of this Supreme Tribunal. Consider what a firm foundation this is! But by a limited and restricted League the purpose will not be realized as it ought and should. This is the truth about the situation, which has bean stated ... .

(‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, Tablet to the Hague p. 8‑9. see also Selection from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá p. 306‑307)

“ So long as these prejudices survive, there will be continuous and fearsome wars. To remedy this condition there must be universal peace. To bring this about, a Supreme Tribunal must be established, representative of all governments and peoples; questions both national and international must be referred thereto, and all must carry out the decrees of this Tribunal. Should any government or people disobey, let the whole world arise against that government or people.”

(‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, Selections from the Writings of, p. 249)

“ This, the House of Justice, will be not only a body for the legislation of laws according to the spirit and requirement of the time, but a board of arbitration for the settlement of disputes arising between peoples. When the Universal House of Justice is organized the members will do their utmost for the realization of greater cordiality and comity amongst the nations ... ”

(Abdu’l‑Bahá, extract from a Tablet cited, Star of the West, Vol. VII, N.15, p. 139)

WORLD CIVILIZATION

February 1929

... the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, which, together with the Kitáb‑i‑Aqdas, constitutes the chief depository wherein are enshrined those priceless elements of that Divine Civilization, the establishment of which is the primary mission of the Bahá’í Faith.

(World Order p. 3‑4)

March 21, 1930

I strongly feel the urge to elucidate certain facts, which would at once reveal to every fair‑minded observer the unique character of that Divine Civilization the foundations of which the unerring hand of Bahá‘u‘lláh has laid, and the essential elements of which the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá has disclosed.

(World Order, Further Considerations p. lóó

February 8, 1934

It would be utterly misleading to attempt a comparison between this unique, this divinely‑conceived Order and any of the diverse systems which the minds of men, at various periods of their history, have contrived for the government of human institutions. Such an attempt would in itself betray a lack of complete appreciation of the excellence of the handiwork of its great Author. How could it be otherwise when we remember that this Order constitutes the very pattern of that divine civilization which the almighty Law of Bahá‘u‘lláh is designed to establish upon earth?

(World Order, Dispensation p. 152)

March 11, 1936

He cannot be misled by the painful slowness characterizing the unfoldment of the civilization which the followers of Bahá‘u‘lláh are laboring to establish. Nor can he be deluded by the ephemeral manifestations of returning prosperity which at times appear to be capable of checking the disruptive influence of the chronic ills afflicting the institutions of a decaying age. The signs of the times are too numerous and compelling to allow him to mistake their character or to belittle their significance.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l61)

March 11, 1936

Who can doubt that such a consummation ‑ the coming of age of the human race ‑ must signalize, in its turn, the inauguration of a world civilization such as no mortal eye hath ever beheld or human mind conceived? Who is it that can imagine the lofty standard which such a civilization, as it unfolds itself, is destined to attain? Who can measure the heights to which human intelligence, liberated from its shackles, will soar? Who can visualize the realms which the human spirit, vitalized by the outpouring light of Bahá‘u‘lláh, shining in the plenitude of its glory, will discover? What more fitting conclusion to this theme than these words of Bahá‘u‘lláh, written in anticipation of the golden age of His Faith ‑ the age in which the face of the earth, from pole to pole, will mirror the ineffable splendors of the Abhá Paradise? “This is the Day whereon naught can be seen except the splendors of the Light that shineth from the face of the Lord, the Gracious, the Most Bountiful. Verily, We have caused every soul to expire by virtue of Our irresistible and all‑subduing sovereignty. We have then called into being a new creation, as a token of Our grace unto men. I am, verily, the All‑Bountiful, the Ancient of Days. This is the Day whereon the unseen world crieth out: ‘Great is thy blessedness, O earth, for thou hast been made the foot‑stool of thy God, and been chosen as the seat of His mighty throne!’ The realm of glory exclaimech: ‘Would that my life could be sacrificed for thee, for He Who is the Beloved of the All‑Merciful hath established His sovereignty upon thee, through the power of His name that hath been promised unto all things, whether of the past or of the future.”

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. 206)

December 25, 1938

... that promised World Order, the shell ordained to enshrine that priceless jewel, the world civilization, of which the Faith itself is the sole begetter.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 7)

December 25, 1938

... that world civilization, which is the direct offspring of their Faith, imagine for a moment that for some mysterious purpose or by any reason of inherent excellence or special merit Bahá‘u‘lláh has chosen to confer upon their country and people so great and lasting a distinction. It is precisely by reason of the patent evils which notwithstanding its other admittedly great characteristics and achievements, an excessive and binding materialism has unfortunately engendered within it that the Author of their Faith and the Center of His Covenant have singled it out to become the standard‑bearer of the New World Order envisioned in their writings. It is by such means as this that Bahá‘u‘lláh can best demonstrate to a heedless generation His almighty power to raise up from the very midst of a people immersed in a sea of materialism, a prey to one of the most virulent and long‑standing forms of racial prejudice, and notorious for its political corruption, lawlessness and laxity in moral standards, men and women who, as time goes by, will increasingly exemplify those essential virtues of self‑renunciation, of moral rectitude, of chastity, of undiscriminating fellowship, of holy discipline, and of spiritual insight that will fit them for the preponderating share they will have in calling into being that World Order and that World Civilization of which their country, no less than the entire human race, stands in desperate need.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 19‑20)

March 28, 1941

This Most Great Justice is indeed the Justice upon which the structure of the Most Great Peace can alone, and must eventually, rest, while the Most Great Peace will, in turn, usher in that Most Great, that World Civilization which shall remain forever associated with Him Who beareth the Most Great Name.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 5‑ó)

March 28, 1941

Then will the coming of age of the entire human race be proclaimed and celebrated by all the peoples and nations of the earth. Then will the banner of the Most Great Peace be hoisted. Then will the worldwide sovereignty of Bahá‘u‘lláh ‑ the Establisher of the Kingdom of the Father foretold by the Son, and anticipated by the Prophets of God before Him and after Him ‑be recognized’ acclaimed, and firmly established. Then will a world civilization be born, flourish, and perpetuate itself, a civilization with a fullness of life such as the world has never seen nor can as yet conceive. Then will the Everlasting Covenant be fulfilled in its completeness. Then will the promise enshrined in all the Books of God be redeemed, and all the prophecies uttered by the Prophets of old come to pass, and the vision of seers and poets be realized. Then will the planet, galvanized through the universal belief of its dwellers in one God, and their allegiance to one common Revelation, mirror, within the limitations imposed upon it, the effulgent glories of the sovereignty of Bahá‘u‘lláh, shining in the plenitude of its splendor in the Abhá Paradise, and be made the foorstool of His Throne on high, and acclaimed as the earthly heaven, capable of fulfilling that ineffable destiny fixed for it, from time immemorial, by the love and wisdom of its Creator.

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 123‑124) ... the rise in the heart of the North

1944

American continent of the MotherTemple of the West, the fore‑runner of a divine, a slowly

maturing civilization.

(God Passes By p. xvii) ... In this Charter of the future World Civilization..

1944

(Bahá‘u‘lláh) ... the Inspirer and Founder of a world civilization.

(God Passes By p. 94, 214)

1944

The promise of the unification of the whole human race, of the inauguration of the Most Great Peace, of the unfoldment of a world

civilization, had been incontestably given.

(God Passes By p. 223‑224)

1944

the third, the last, the Golden Age destined to witness the emergence of a world‑embracing Order enshrining the ultimate fruit of God’s latest Revelation to mankind, a fruit whose maturity must signalize the establishment of a world civilization and the formal inauguration of the Kingdom of the Father upon earth as promised by Jesus Christ Himself.

(God Passes By p. 324)

1944

The Document establishing that Order, the Charter of a future world civilization, which may be regarded in some of its features as supplementary to no less weighty a Book than the Kitáb‑i‑Aqdas ...

(God Passes By p. 328)

1944

This unique edifice, the first of a slowly maturing Administrative Order, the noblest structure reared in the first Bahá’í century, and the symbol and precursor of a future world civilization ...

(God Passes By p. 350)

1944

The Golden Age of the Faith itself that must witness the unification of all the peoples and nations of the world, the establishment of the Most Great Peace, the inauguration of the Kingdom of the Father upon earth, the coming of age of the entire human race and the birth of a world civilization, inspired and directed by the creative energies released by Bahá‘u‘lláh’s World Order, shining in its meridian splendor ...

(God Passes By p. 411‑412)

June 5, 1947

... whilst in the course of the Golden Age, destined to consummate the Dispensation itself, the banner of the Most Great Peace, promised by its Author, will have bean unfurled, the World Bahá’í Commonwealth will have emerged in the plenitude of its power and splendor, and the birth and efflorescence of a world civilization, the child of that Peace, will have conferred its inestimable blessings upon all mankind. ... 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.

(Citadel of Faith p. ó, 7)

June 5, 1947

... that great republic ... ‑ will continue to evolve, undivided and undefeatable, until the sum total of its contributions to the birth, the rise and the fruition of that world civilization, the child of the Most Great Peace and hallmark of the Golden Age of the Dispensation of Bahá‘u‘lláh, will have been made, and its last task discharged.

(Citadel of Faith p. 38)

July 1947

“ ... the age in which he unity of the human race will have been unassailably established, its maturity attained, and its glorious destiny unfolded through the birth and efflorescence of a world-encompassing civilization.”

(Statement to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine)

April 11, 1949

... the champion builders of the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and the torch‑bearers of the civilization which that Order must eventually establish. ... this holy edifice, symbol and harbinger of a world civilization as yet unborn ...

(Citadel of Faith p. 70, 70)

August 27, 1949

... the birth of its World Order and the emergence of that world civilization which that Order is destined to create.

(Letters to Australia and New Zealand p. 81)

April 23, 1952

... the impending world crusade, which a world community, utilizing the agencies of a divinely‑appointed world administrative order, is preparing to launch, amidst the deepening shadows of a world crisis for the execution of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá’s world‑encircling plan and the subsequent unfoldment of a world civilization, and the ultimate attainment of the supreme objective, the illumination and redemption of a whole world.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 28)

April 29, 1953

... the torchbearers of a future divinely inspired world civilization ...

(Citadel of Faith p. 109)

May 4, 1953

This final and crowning stage in the evolution of the plan wrought by God Himself for humanity will, in turn, prove to be the signal for the birth of a world civilization, incomparable in its range, its character and potency, in the history of mankind ‑ a civilization which posterity will, with one voice, acclaim as the fairest fruit of the Golden Age of the Dispensation of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and whose rich harvest will be garnered during future dispensations destined to succeed one another in the course of the five thousand century Bahá’í Cycle.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. l55‑156)

April 6, 1954

... presaging the emergence of the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh which must pave the way for the establishment of the World Civilization destined to attain maturity in the course of successive Dispensations in the Five Thousand Century Bahá’í Cycle.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 60)

July 28, 1954

... the consolidation of the institutions of the embryonic World Order, the child of that same Covenant and the harbinger of a still unborn world civilization ...

(Citadel of Faith p. l23)

July 28, 1954

... the champion‑builders of an Order which posterity will hail as the harbinger of a civilization to be regarded as the fairest fruit of the Revelation proclaimed by Bahá‘u’lláh ...

(Citadel of Faith p. l30)

November 27, 1954

This World Order will, in turn, in the course of successive Dispensations of the Bahá’í Cycle, yield its fairest fruit through the birth and flowering of a civilization, divinely inspired, unique in its features, world‑embracing in its scope, and fundamentally spiritual in its character ‑ a civilization destined as it unfolds to derive its initial impulse from the spirit animating the very institutions which, in their embryonic state, are now stirring in the womb of the present Formative Age of the Faith.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 75)

April 1955

... the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and which in turn will give birth, in the fullness of time, to a world spiritual civilization, which posterity will hail as the fairest fruit of His Revelation.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 84)

April 1957

... an Administrative Order designed to be the harbinger of a world civilization ... a Fellowship destined, in the fullness of time, to be incorporated in the framework, and to be galvanized by the spiritualizing influences, of a mysteriously expanding, divinely appointed Order, and to flower, in the course of future Dispensations, into a Civilization, the like of which mankind has, at no stage in its evolution, witnessed.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 103, 103)

BAHA’I CYCLE

February 8, 1934

The Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh should indeed be regarded, if we wish to be faithful to the tremendous implications of its message, as the culmination of a cycle, the final stage in a series of successive, of preliminary and progressive revelations. These, beginning with Adam and ending with the Báb, have paved the way and anticipated with an ever‑increasing emphasis the advent of that Day of Days in which He Who is the Promise of All Ages should be made manifest.

(World Order, Dispensation p. 103)

November 14, 1935

“Concerning your question relative to the duration of the Bahá’í Dispensation. There is no contradiction between Bahá‘u‘lláh’s statement in the Iqan about the renewal of the City of God once every thousand years, and that of the Guardian in the Dispensation to the effect that the Bahá’í Cycle will extend over a period of at least 500, 000 years. The apparent contradiction is due to the confusion of the terms cycle and dispensation. For while the Dispensation of Bahá‘u‘lláh will last for at least one thousand years, His Cycle will extend still farther, to at least 500, 000 years.

“The Bahá’í Cycle is, indeed, incomparable in its greatness. It includes not only the Prophets that will appear after Bahá‘u‘lláh, but all those who have preceded Him ever since Adam. These should, indeed, be viewed as constituting but preliminary stages leading gradually to the appearance of this supreme Manifestation of God.”

“After Bahá‘u‘lláh many Prophets will, no doubt, appear but they will be under His Shadow. Although they may abrogate the laws of this Dispensation in accordance with the needs and requirements of the age in which they appear, they nevertheless draw their spiritual force from this mighty Revelation. The Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh constitutes, indeed, the stage of maturity in the development of mankind. His appearance has released such spiritual forces which will continue to animate, for many long years to come, the world in its development. Whatever progress may be achieved, in later ages, after the unification of the whole human race is achieved, will be but improvement in the machinery of the world. For the machinery itself has been already created by Bahá‘u‘lláh. The task of continually improving and perfecting this machinery is one which later Prophets will be called upon to achieve. They will thus move and work within the Bahá’í Cycle.”

(Shoghi Effendi, through His secretary to Leroy Ioas)

December 26, 1941

There are no Prophets, so far, in the same category as Bahá‘u’lláh, as He culminates a great cycle begun with Adam.

(Letters to Australia and New Zealand p. 41)

1944

It will commemorate at once the hundredth anniversary of the inception of the Bábi Dispensation, of the inauguration of the Bahá’í Era, of the commencement of the Bahá’í Cycle, and of the birth of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá. The weight of the potentialities with which this Faith, possessing no peer or equal in the world’s spiritual history, and marking the culmination of a universal prophetic cycle, has been endowed, staggers our imagination. The brightness of the millennial glory which it must shed in the fullness of time dazzles our eyes. The magnitude of the shadow which its Author will continue to cast on successive Prophets destined to be raised up after Him eludes our calculation.

(God Passes By p. xi)

1944

the Heroic Age of the Bahá’í Era, an age which marks the opening of the most glorious epoch in the greatest cycle which the spiritual history of mankind has yet witnessed.

(God Passes By p. 3)

1944

Thus ended a life which posterity will recognize as standing at the confluence of two universal prophetic cycles, the Adamic Cycle stretching back as far as the first dawnings of the world’s recorded religious history and the Bahá’í Cycle destined to propel itself across the unborn reaches of time for a period of no less than five thousand centuries.

(God Passes By p. 54‑55)

1944

(Bahá‘u’lláh) ... the Originator of a new “Universal Cycle, ” ...

(God Passes By p. 93)

1944

A Revelation, hailed as the promise and crowning glory of past ages and centuries, as the consummation of all the Dispensations within the Adamic Cycle, inaugurating an era of at least a thousand hears’ duration, and a cycle destined to last no less than five thousand centuries, signalizing the end of the Prophetic Era and the beginning of the Era of Fulfillment, unsurpassed alike in the duration of its Author’s ministry and the fecundity and splendor of His mission ‑ . . .

(God Passes By p. 100)

1944

the centenary of the birth of the Bábi Dispensation, of the inauguration of the Bahá’í era, of the inception of the Bahá’í Cycle ...

(God Passes By p. 400‑401)

June 5, 1947

... the Bahá’í Dispensation, a Dispensation which posterity will recognize as the most glorious and momentous in the greatest cycle in the world’s religious history. ... 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 Bahá’í Revelation, and destined to last, in their aggregate, no less than five thousand centuries.

(Citadel of Faith p. 4, 5)

April 11, 1949

... the most holy House of Worship whose fairest fruits will be garnered in the Age that is to come, the last, the Golden Age of the initial and brightest Dispensation of the five‑thousand‑century Bahá’í Cycle.

(Citadel of Faith p. 69)

July 4, 1950

... the Blessed Báb, Prophet and Herald of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh, Founder of the Dispensation marking the culmination of the six thousand year old Adamic Cycle, Inaugurator of the five thousand century Bahá’í Cycle.

(Citadel of Faith p. 80)

January 9, 1951

... most glorious Dispensation of the five thousand centurY Bahá ‘i Cycle.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 83)

October 8, 1951

... the rise of the Orb of Bahá‘u‘lláh’s most sublime Revelation marking the consummation of the six thousand year cycle ushered in by Adam, glorified by all past prophets and sealed with the blood of the Author of the Bábi Dispensation.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 40)

May 5, 1953

... a civilization which posterity will, with one voice, acclaim as the fairest fruit of the Golden Age of the Dispensation of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and whose rich harvest will be garnered during future dispensations destined to succeed one another in the course of the five thousand century Bahá’í Cycle.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 155‑156)

April 6, 1954

... the establishment of the World Civilization destined to attain maturity in the course of successive Dispensations in the Five Thousand Century Bahá’í Cycle.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 60)

November 27, 1954

This World Order will, in turn, in the course of successive Dispensations of the Bahá’í Cycle, yield its fairest fruit through the birth and flowering of a civilization, divinely inspired, unique in its features, world‑embracing in its scope, and fundamentally spiritual in its character ‑ a civilization destined as it unfolds to derive its initial impulse from the spirit animating the very institutions which, in their embryonic state, are now stirring in the womb of the present Formative Age of the Faith.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 75)

April 1957

... ‑ a Fellowship destined, in the fullness of time, to be incorporated in the framework, and to be galvanized by the spiritualizing influences, of a mysteriously expanding, divinely appointed Order, and to flower, in the course of future Dispensations, into a Civilization, the like of which mankind has, at no stage in its evolution, witnessed.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 103)

FUTURE PROPHETS

1944

The magnitude of the shadow which its Author will continue to cast on successive Prophets destined to be raised up after Him eludes our calculation.

(God Passes By p. xi)

June 5, 1947

... the first stage in a series of Dispensations, to be established by future Manifestations, all deriving their inspiration from the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation, and destined to last, in their aggregate, no less than five thousand centuries.

(Citadel of Faith p. 5)

EVOLUTION OF HUMANITY: COMING OF AGE

“No sooner had mankind attained the stage of maturity, than the Word revealed to men’s eyes the latent energies with which it had been endowed ‑ energies which manifested themselves in the plenitude of their glory when the Ancient Beauty appeared, in the year sixty, in the person of ‘Ali‑Muhammad, the Báb.”

(Bahá‘u‘lláh cited in World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l64)

March 11, 1936

The Revelation of Bahá‘u‘lláh, whose supreme mission is none other but the achievement of this organic and spiritual unity of the whole body of nations, should, if we be faithful to its implications, be regarded as signalizing through its advent the coming of age of the entire human race.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l63)

March 11, 1936

The Revelation entrusted by the Almighty Ordainer to Bahá‘u‘lláh, His followers firmly believe, has been endowed with such potentialities as are commensurate with the maturity of the human race ‑ the crowning and most momentous stage in its evolution from infancy to manhood.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. 166)

March 11, 1936

The long ages of infancy and childhood, through which the human race had to pass, have receded into the background. Humanity is now experiencing the commotions invariably associated with the most turbulent stage of its evolution, the stage of adolescence, when the impetuosity of youth and its vehemence reach their climax, and must gradually be superseded by the calmness, the wisdom, and the maturity that characterize the stage of manhood. Then will the human race reach that stature of ripeness which will enable it to acquire all the powers and capacities upon which its ultimate developments must depend.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. 202)

March 11, 1936

... World unity is the goal towards which a harassed humanity is striving. Nation‑building has come to an end. The anarchy inherent in state sovereignty is moving towards a climax. A world, growing to maturity, must abandon this fetish, recognize the oneness ...

EVOLUTION OF THE FAITH

Process of the seven stages of development of the Faith

The Advent of Divine Justice p. 15

God Passes By p. 364

Citadel of Faith p. 141

The World Order of Bahá u’ lláh p. ó/7

see also Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 80, 90

God Passes By p. 411

SEVEN STAGES OF BAHA’I DEVELOPMENT

1) OBSCURITY

2) REPRESSION

3) EMANCIPATION

4) RECOGNITION

5) ESTABLISHMENT

6) SOVEREIGNTY

7) COMMONWEALTH

wholeness of human relationships, and establish once for all the machinery that can best incarnate this fundamental principle of its life.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. 202) ... ”One of the signs of the maturity of the world is that no one will accept to bear the weight of kingship. Kingship will remain with none willing to bear alone its weight. That day will be the day whereon wisdom will be manifested among mankind. Only in order to proclaim the Cause of God and spread abroad His Faith will anyone be willing to bear this grievous weight.”

(Bahá‘u‘lláh, cited in The Promised Day Is Come p. 71)

1944

The “Man Child”, mentioned in the Book of Revelation, were to instill into the entire human race the capacity to achieve its organic unification, attain maturity and thereby reach the final stage in its age‑long evolution.

(God Passes By p. 58)

1944

He, moreover, in His Most Holy Book, has enjoined the selection of a single language and the adoption of a common script for all on earth to use, an injunction which, when carried out, would, as He Himself affirms in that Book, be one of the signs of the “coming of age of the human race.”

(God Passes By p. 211)

June 15, 1946

The first century of the Bahá’í Era witnessed in darkest Persia the birth of the Faith, as well as the establishment of the Administrative Order ...

(Messages to America p. 96‑97)

BABI DISPENSATION

1944

For it was during these intensely dramatic, fate‑laden years that the full implications of the station of the Báb were disclosed to His disciples, and formally announced by Him in the capital of ‘Adhirbáyján, in the presence of the Heir to the Throne; that the Persian Bayán, the repository of the laws ordained by the Báb, was revealed; that the time and character of the Dispensation of “the

One Whom God will make manifest” were unmistakably determined ...

(God Passes By p. 17)

1944

.. His short‑lived yet momentous Dispensation ...

(God Passes By p. 22)

1944

What, we may well inquire at this juncture, were the nature and implications of that Revelation which, manifesting itself so soon after the Declaration of the Báb, abolished, at one stroke, the Dispensation which that Faith had so newly proclaimed, and upheld, with such vehemence and force, the Divine authority of its Author?

(God Passes By p. 93)

1944

The Bábi Dispensation was being brought to its close (not prematurely but in its own appointed time), and was yielding its destined fruit and revealing its ultimate purpose ‑ the birth of the Mission of Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(God Passes by p. 92)

1944

The light of the Faith which during the nine years of the Bábi Dispensation had irradiated Persia, and been reflected on the adjoining territory of ‘Iráq ...

(God Passes By p. 378)

1944

the centenary of the “Year Nine, ” the year which alike marked the termination of the Bábi dispensation, and signalized the birth of Bahá‘u‘lláh’s prophetic Mission ...

(Messages to America p. 99)

BAHA'I ERA

“This holy Dispensation, ” He, alluding to the Revelation of Bahá‘u‘lláh, explains, “is illumined with the light of the Sun of Truth shining from its most exalted station, and in the plenitude of its resplendency, its heat and glory.”

(‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, cited in World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l67‑168)

A GRADUAL PROCESS

... lead at first to:

1) the establishment of that Lesser Peace

a) which the nations of the earth, as yet unconscious of His Revelation and yet unwittingly enforcing the general principles which He has enunciated will themselves establish.

b) momentous and historic step

c) involving the reconstruction of mankind as the result of the universal recognition of its oneness and wholeness. will bring in its wake:

2) the spiritualization of the masses Consequent to

a) the recognition of the character, and

b) the acknowledgment of the claims, of the faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh the essential condition to:

3) that ultimate fusion of all races, creeds, classes, and nations which must signalize

4) the emergence of His New World Order

(based on Promised Day Is Come p. 123 )

THREE AGES

February 8, 1934

With ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá’s ascension, and more particularly with the passing of His well‑beloved and illustrious sister the Most Exalted Leaf ‑ the last survivor of a glorious and heroic age ‑there draws to a close the first and most moving chapter of Bahá’í history, marking the conclusion of the Primitive, the Apostolic Age of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(World Order, Dispensation p. 98)

February 8, 1934

The passing of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, on the other hand, marks the closing of the Heroic and Apostolic Age of this same Dispensation ‑ that primitive period of our Faith the splendors of which can never be rivaled, much less be eclipsed, by the magnificence that must needs distinguish the future victories of Bahá‘u‘lláh’s Revelation. For neither the achievements of the champion‑builders of the present‑day institutions of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh, nor the tumultuous triumphs which the heroes of its Golden Age will in the coming days succeed in winning, can measure with, or be included within the same category as, the wondrous works associated with the names of those who have generated its very life and laid its pristine foundations. That first and creative age of the Bahá’í era must, by its very nature, stand above and apart from the formative period into which we have entered and the golden age destined to succeed it. ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, Who incarnates an institution for which we can find no parallel whatsoever in any of the world’s recognized religious systems, may be said to have closed the Age to which He Himself belonged and opened the one in which we are now laboring. His Will and Testament should thus be regarded as the perpetual, the indissoluble link which the mind of Him Who is the Mystery of God has conceived in order to insure the continuity of the three ages that constitute the component parts of the Bahá’í Dispensation. The period in which the seed of the Faith had been slowly germinating is thus intertwined both with the one which must witness its efflorescence and the subsequent age in which that seed will have finally yielded its golden fruit.

(World Order, Dispensation p. l43‑144)

March 11, 1936

To us, the “generation of the half‑light, ” living at a time which may be designated as the period of the incubation of the WorldCommonwealth envisaged by Bahá‘u‘lláh ...

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. 168)

GOLDEN AGE

March 11, 1936

The emergence of a world community, the consciousness of world citizenship, the founding of a world civilization and culture ‑all of which must synchronize with the initial stages in the unfoldment of the Golden Age of the Bahá’í Era ‑ should, by their very nature, be regarded, as far as this planetary life is concerned, as the furthermost limits in the organization of human society, though man, as an individual, will, nay must indeed as a result of such a consummation, continue indefinitely to progress and develop.

(World Order, The unfoldment of World Civilization p. 163)

March 11, 1936

Resplendent as has been the Age that has witnessed the inception of the Mission with which Bahá‘u‘lláh has been entrusted, the interval which must elapse ere that Age yields its choicest fruit must, it is becoming increasingly apparent, be overshadowed by such moral and social gloom as can alone prepare an unrepentant humanity for the prize she is destined to inherit.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization, p. 1680)

March 11, 1936

My chief concern is not with the happenings that have distinguished the First, the Apostolic Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation, but rather with the outstanding events that are transpiring in, and the tendencies which characterize, the formative period of its development, this Age of Transition, whose tribulations are the precursors of that Era of blissful felicity which is to incarnate God’s ultimate purpose for all mankind.

(World Order, The Unfoldment of World Civilization p. l71)

December 25, 1938

... those institutions which are to herald the approach of the Age destined to witness the birth and rise of the World Order o£ Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 7)

1944

The Golden Age of the Faith itself that must witness the unification of all the peoples and nations of the world, the establishment of the Most Great Peace, the inauguration of the Kingdom of the Father upon earth, the coming of age of the entire human race and the birth of a world civilization, inspired and directed by the creative energies released by Bahá‘u‘lláh’s World Order, shining in its meridian splendor, is still unborn and its glories unsuspected.

(God Passes By p. 411‑412)

November 11, 1951

... advent of Golden Age destined witness world recognition, universal proclamation, ultimate triumph of the Cause of Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. l8)

June 16, 1957

... the Administrative Order of His Faith in that vast area ‑ is an achievement which I heartily welcome and for which I feel deeply grateful. This remarkable accomplishment will, in conjunction with the establishment a decade ago of the National Haziratu’l‑Quds in that same city, accelerate the progress, and immensely reinforce the foundations, of the administrative institutions inaugurated on the morrow of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá’s ascension, and which are destined to yield their fairest fruit in the Golden Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation.

(Letters to Australia and New Zealand p. 121)

AGE OF TRANSITION

March 28, 1941

The tumult of this age of transition is characteristic of the impetuosity and irrational instincts of youth, its follies, its prodigality, its pride, its self‑assurance, its rebelliousness, and contempt of discipline.

(The Promised day Is Come p. 117)

1944

In its broadest outline the first century of the Bahá’í Era may be said to comprise the Heroic, the Primitive, the Apostolic Age of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and also the initial stages of the Formative, the Transitional, the Iron Age which is to witness the crystallization and shaping of the creative energies released by His Revelation. The first eighty years of this century may roughly be said to have covered the entire period of the first age, while the last two decades may be regarded as having witnessed the beginnings of the second. The former commences with the Declaration of the Báb, includes the mission of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and terminates with the passing of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá. The latter is ushered in by His Will and Testament, which defines its character and establishes its foundations.

(God Passes By p. xiii‑xiv)

THREE AGES OF THE BAHA’I DISPENSATION

August 12, 1941

The Heroic Age of the Faith, born in anguish, nursed in adversity, and terminating in trials as woeful as those that greeted its birth, has been succeeded by that Formative Period which is to witness the gradual crystallization of those creative energies which the Faith has released, and the consequent emergence of that World Order for which those forces were made to operate. Fierce and relentless will be the opposition which this crystallization and emergence must provoke. The alarm it must and will awaken, the envy it will certainly arouse, the misrepresentations to which it will remorselessly be subjected, the setbacks it must, sooner or later sustain, the commotions to which it must eventually give rise, the fruits it must in the end garner, the blessings it must inevitably bestow and the glorious, the Golden Age it must irresistibly usher in, are just beginning to be faintly perceived, and will, as the old Order crumbles beneath the weight of so stupendous a Revelation, become increasingly apparent and arresting.

(Messages to America p. 52)

HEROIC AGE

1944

May 23, 1844, signalizes the commencement of the most turbulent period of the Heroic Age of the Bahá’í Era, an age which marks the opening of the most glorious epoch in the greatest cycle which the spiritual history of mankind has yet witnessed.

(God Passes By p. 3)

1944

Thus was brought to a close the ministry of One Who was the incarnation, by virtue of the rank bestowed upon Him by His Father, of an institution that has no parallel in the entire field of religious history, a ministry that marks the final stage in the Apostolic, the Heroic and most glorious Age of the Dispensation of Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(God Passes By p. 314)

1944

The Heroic, the Apostolic Age of the Dispensation of Bahá‘u‘lláh, that primitive period in which its Founders had lived, in which its life had been generated, in which its greatest heroes had struggled and quaffed the cup of martyrdom, and its pristine foundations been established ‑ a period whose splendors no victories in this or any future age, however brilliant, can rival ‑ had now terminated with

the passing of One Whose mission may be regarded as the link binding the Age in which the seed of the newborn Message had bean incubating and those which are destined to witness its efflorescence and ultimate fruition. The Formative Period, the Iron Age, of that Dispensation was not beginning, the Age in which the institutions, local, national and international, of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh were to take shape, develop and become fully consolidated, in anticipation of the third, the last, the Golden Age destined to witness the emergence of a world‑embracing Order enshrining the ultimate fruit of God’s latest Revelation to mankind, a fruit whose maturity must signalize the establishment of a world civilization and the formal inauguration of the Kingdom of the Father upon earth as promised by Jesus Christ Himself.

(God Passes By p. 324)

June 5, 1947

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 Bábi Dispensation and the ministries of Bahá‘u‘lláh and of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá. This Primitive Age of the Bahá’í 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.

(Citadel of Faith p. 5)

June 5, 1947

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 Bahá‘u‘lláh ‑ the first of a series 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 Bahá’í Revelation, and destined to last, in their aggregate, no less than five thousand centuries.

(Citadel of Faith p. 5)

June 5, 1947

During this Formative Age of the Faith, and in the course of present and succeeding epochs, the last and crowning stage in the erection of the framework of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh ‑ the election of the Universal House of Justice ‑ will have been completed, the Kitáb‑i‑Aqdas, the Mother Book of His Revelation, will have been codified and its laws promulgated, the Lesser Peace will have been established, the unity of mankind will have bean achieved and its maturity attained, the Plan conceived by ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá will have bean executed, the emancipation of the Faith from the fetters of religious orthodoxy will have bean effected, and its independent religious status will have been universally recognized, whilst in the course of the Golden Age, destined to consummate the Dispensation itself, the banner of the Most Great Peace, promised by its Author, will have been unfurled, the World Bahá’í Commonwealth will have emerged in the plenitude of its power and splendor, and the birth and efflorescence of a world civilization, the child of that Peace, will have conferred its inestimable blessings upon all mankind.

(Citadel of Faith p. ó)

June 5, 1947

... this [Divine] Plan, ... , will be increasingly regarded as an agency designed not only for the enlargement of the limits of the Faith and the multiplication’s of its institutions over the face of the planet, but for the acceleration of the construction and completion of the administrative framework of Bahá‘u‘lláh’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.

(Citadel of Faith p. 7)

July 1947

“ ... a world‑embracing commonwealth, whose advent must signalize the Golden Age of mankind, the age in which the unity of the human race will have been unassailably established, its maturity attained, and its glorious destiny unfolded through the efflorescence of a world‑encompassing civilization.”

(Statement to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine)

July 1947

“His mission is to proclaim that the ages of the infancy and of the childhood of the human race are past, that the convulsions associated with the present stage of its adolescence are slowly and painfully preparing it to attain the stage of manhood, and are heralding the approach of that Age of Ages when swords will be beaten into plowshares, when the Kingdom promised by Jesus Christ will have been established, and the peace of the planet definitely and permanently ensured.”

(Statement to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine)

‑ May 23, 1844 signifies the commencement of the most turbulent period of the Heroic Age (G.P.B.3).

‑ an age which marks the opening of the most glorious epoch in the greatest cycle which the spiritual history of mankind has yet witnessed (G.P.B.3).

‑ no more than a span of nine short years marks the duration of this most spectacular, this most tragic, this most eventful period of the first Bahá’í century (G.P.B.3).

‑ this nine‑year period (1844‑1853) may well rank as unique in the whole range of man’s religious experience (G.P.B.3).

‑ the three years of the Báb’s Ministry: this brief but most turbulent period may be rightly regarded as the bloodiest and most dramatic of the Heroic Age (G.P.B.35).

‑ The most turbulent period of the Heroic Age of the new Dispensation was rapidly attaining its culmination (G.P.B.50).

‑ martyrdom of the Báb: the culmination of the most heroic phase of the Heroic Age (G.P.B.55).

‑ birth of Bahá‘u‘lláh’s Mission: as a result of what was in fact an evolving, ripening process, the most momentous if not the most spectacular stage in the Heroic Age of the Faith was now about to open (G.P.B.92).

‑ The most Momentous years of the Heroic Age of His Dispensation were at hand‑arrival of Bahá‘u‘lláh at Constantinople (G.P.B.157)

‑ The most momentous, though not the most spectacular phase of the Heroic Age had ended (G.P.B.223).

‑ ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá’s ministry: a ministry that marks the final stage in the Apostolic, the Heroic and most glorious Age of the Dispensation of Bahá‘u‘lláh (G.P.B.314).

THE HEROIC AGE (77 years: 1844‑1921 )

First epoch or period (9 years: 1844‑1853 )

The Babi Dispensation

1. Centers around the Báb

2. Begins with the Declaration of His Mission

3. Culminates in His Martyrdom (July 9, 1850)

4. Ends in an orgy of religious massacre

5. Characterized by nine years of fierce and relentless contest

Second epoch or period (39 years: 1853‑1892 )

Ministry of Bahá‘u’lláh

1. Derives its inspiration from the August Figure of Bahá‘u’lláh
2. Opens with the first stirrings, in the soul of Bahá‘u’lláh and of His Revelation (October 1852)
3. Attains its plenitude in His Proclamation to the Kings and ecclesiastical leaders of the earth (1867‑683
4. Terminates in the Ascension of Bahá‘u’lláh in the prison‑city of Akka (May 29, 1892)

Third epoch or period

(29 years: 1892‑1921 )

Ministry of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá

1. Revolves around the vibrant personality of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá
2. Commences with the announcement of the Covenant of Bahá‘u’lláh
3. Attains its climax in the emphatic assertion by ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá of the unique character and far‑reaching implications of the Covenant in New York City (1912)
4. Closes with His passing and interment on Mt.Carmel (November 28, 1921)

THE FORMATIVE AGE (1921 ‑ ?)

First epoch (25 years: 1921 ‑ 1946 )

1. Characterized by a dual process:

‑ consolidation of the administrative framework of the Faith and the extension in the sphere of action of its institutions

‑ rise and establishment of the foundation of the embryonic World Order

2. Witnessed the launching in the western hemisphere of the first stage in the unfoldment of the Divine Plan: the first Seven Year Plan (1937‑1944)

Second epoch (17 years: 1946 ‑ 1963 )

1. Consisted of the unfoldment of further stages in the evolution of the Divine Plan beyond the limits of the western hemisphere to Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific

2. Culminated through the consummation of the framework of the laborious erection of the framework of the world administrative Order through the election of the first Universal House of Justice (1963)

Third epoch (1963 ‑ ? ) and successive epochs

1. Opened with the execution of a Nine Year Global Plan (1964‑1973) followed by a Five Year Plan (1974‑1979) and the present Seven Year Plan (1979‑1986)

2. Will consist of successive epochs reaching to the fringes of the Golden Age to come and witnessing:

‑ the codification and promulgation of the Kitab‑i‑Aqdas

‑ the establishment of the Lesser Peace

‑ the emancipation of the Faith from the fetters of religious orthodoxy

‑ universal recognition of the independent status of the Cause

‑ complete execution of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá’s Divine Plan

THE GOLDEN AGE (? ‑ to at least 2853 A.D.)

A series of epochs

. . . the Age destined to witness the birth and rise of the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh. (A.D.J. 7) The Golden Age of the Faith itself that must witness the unification of all the peoples and nations of the world, the establishment of the Most Great Peace, the inauguration of the Kingdom of the Father upon earth, the coming of age of the entire human race and the birth of a world civilization, inspired and directed by the creative energies released by Bahá‘u‘lláh’s World Order, shining in its meridian splendor, is still unborn and its glories unsuspected. (G.P.B.411)

. . . whilst in the course of the Golden Age, destined to consummate the Dispensation itself, the banner of the Most Great Peace, promised by its Author, will have been unfurled, the World Bahá’í Commonwealth will have emerged in the plenitude of its power and splendor, and the birth and efflorescence of a world civilization, the child of that Peace, will have conferred its inestimable blessings upon all mankind.(C.F.ó)

. . . 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. (C.F.7)

. . . Golden Age destined witness world recognition, universal proclamation, ultimate triumph of the Cause of Bahá‘u‘lláh. (M.B.W.18)

SEVEN STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

June 15, 1935

As this movement gains momentum, as it receives added impetus from the attitude and future action of the civil authorities in Persia, it will inevitably manifest its repercussions in the West and will rouse the leaders of the Church and finally the civil authorities to challenge the claims and eventually to recognize the independent status of the Religion of Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(Messages to America p. 4)

February 27, 1929

Not only will the present‑day Spiritual Assemblies be styled differently in future, but they will be enabled also to add to their present functions those powers, duties, and prerogatives necessitated by the recognition of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh, not merely as one of the recognized religious systems of the world, but as the State Religion of an independent and Sovereign Power.

(World Order, The World Order p. ó‑7)

February 27, 1929

... we can rest assured that the guiding Hand that has released these forces will, in His inscrutable wisdom and by His omnipotent power, continue to shape and direct their course for the glory, the ultimate emancipation, and the unqualified recognition of His Faith.

(World Order, The World Order p. ó‑7)

December 25, 1938

... a sore‑tried Faith to pass through the successive stages of unmitigated obscurity, of active repression, and of complete emancipation, leading in turn to its being acknowledged as an independent Faith, enjoying the status of full equality with its sister religions, to be followed by its establishment and recognition as a State religion, which in turn must give way to its assumption of the rights and prerogatives associated with the Bahá’í state, functioning in the plenitude of its powers, a stage which must ultimately culminate in the emergence of the worldwide Bahá’í Commonwealth, animated wholly by the spirit, and operating solely in direct conformity with the laws and principles of Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 15)

1944

Indeed, the sequel to this assault may be said to have opened a new chapter in the evolution of the Faith itself, an evolution which, carrying it through the successive stages of repression, of emancipation, of recognition as an independent Revelation, and as a state religion, must lead to the establishment of the Bahá’í state and culminate in the emergence of the Bahá’í WorldCommonwealth.

(God Passes By p. 364)

1944

In the brief space of the first hundred years of its existence it has succeeded in diffusing its light over five continents, in erecting its outposts in the furthermost corners of the earth, in establishing, on an impregnable basis its Covenant with all mankind, in rearing the fabric of its world‑encompa Administrative Order, in s casting off many of the shackles hindering its total emancipation and world‑wide recognition ...

The full emancipation of the Faith itself from the fetters of religious orthodoxy, the essential prerequisite of its universal recognition and of the emergence of its World Order, is still unachieved.

(God Passes By p. 410‑411)

May 4, 1953

This present Crusade, on the threshold of which we now stand, will, moreover, by virtue of the dynamic forces it will release and its wide repercussions over the entire surface of the globe, contribute effectually to the acceleration of yet another process of tremendous significance which will carry the steadily evolving Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh through its present stages of obscurity, of repression, of emancipation and of recognition ‑stages one or another of which Bahá’í national communities in various parts of the world now find themselves in ‑ to the stage of the establishment, the stage at which the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh will be recognized by the civil authorities as the state religion, similar to that which Christianity entered in the years following the death of the Emperor Constantine, a stage which must later be followed by the emergence of the Bahá’í state itself, functioning, in all religious and civil matters, in strict accordance with the laws and ordinances of the Kitáb‑i‑Aqdas, the Most Holy, the Mother‑Book of the Bahá’í Revelation, a stage which, in the fullness of time, will culminate in the establishment of the World Bahá’í Commonwealth, functioning in the plenitude of its powers, and which will signalize the long‑awaited advent of the Christ‑promised Kingdom of God on earth ‑ the Kingdom of Bahá‘u‘lláh ‑ mirroring however faintly upon this humble handful of dust the glories of the Abhá Kingdom. This final and crowning stage in the evolution of the plan wrought by God Himself for humanity will, in turn, prove to be the signal for the birth of a world civilization, incomparable in its range, its character and potency, in the history of mankind ‑ a civilization which posterity will, with one voice, acclaim as the fairest fruit of the Golden Age of the Dispensation of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and whose rich harvest will be garnered during future dispensations destined to succeed one another in the curse of the five thousand century Bahá’í Cycle.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 155)

INTEGRATION AND DISINTEGRATION

November 22, 1941

AS FURY DESTRUCTIVENESS TREMENDOUS WORLD ORDEAL ATTAINS MOST INTENSIVE PITCH SO MISSION CONFERRED TWENTY YEARS AGO BY ‘ABDU’L‑BAHÁ’S SACRED WILL ON WORLD WIDE INDIVISIBLE INCORRUPTIBLE BODY HIS FOLLOWERS UNFOLDS ITS FULLEST POTENTIALITIES. SECURELY ABIDING CONFIDENTLY BATTLING WITHIN IMPREGNABLE STRUCTURE THAT WILL HAS DIVINELY ESTABLISHED DWELLERS ARK DIVINE COVENANT WORLD OVER WATCH WITH AWE PRIDE DELIGHT EVIDENCES MOUNTING MOMENTUM ETERNAL PROCESS INTEGRATION DISINTEGRATION HURRYING FAITH ALONG PREDESTINED COURSE.

(Messages to America p. 52‑53)

December 25, 1938

... the synchronization of such world‑shaking crises with the progressive unfoldment and fruition of their divinely appointed task is itself the work of Providence, the design of an inscrutable Wisdom, and the purpose of an all‑compelling Will, a Will that directs and controls, in its own mysterious way, both the fortunes of the Faith and the destinies of men: Such simultaneous processes of rise and of fall, of integration and of disintegration, of order and chaos, with their continuous and reciprocal reactions on each other, are but aspects of a greater Plan, one and indivisible, whose Source is God, whose author is Bahá‘u‘lláh, the theater of whose operations is the entire planet, and whose ultimate objectives are the unity of the human race and the peace of all mankind.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 72‑73)

DIVINE PLAN

May 1, 1936

... APPEAL ASSEMBLED DELEGATES PONDER HISTORIC APPEAL VOICED BY ‘ABDU’L‑BAHÁ TABLETS DIVINE PLAN.

(Messages to America p. ó)

July 28, 1936

The Tablets of the Divine Plan invest your assembly with unique and grave responsibilities, and confer upon it privileges which your sister assemblies might well envy and admire.

(Messages to America p. 7)

May 27, 1943

... DIVINE PLAN FOR WHOSE EXECUTION ENTIRE MACHINERY ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER WAS FOR NO LESS THAN SIXTEEN YEARS PATIENTLY LABORIOUSLY ERECTED.

(Messages to America p. 64)

March 29, 1945

The Divine Plan conceived by ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá for the American Bahá’í Community, in the midst of one of the darkest periods in human history, and with which the destinies of the followers of Bahá‘u‘lláh in the North American Continent must for generations to come remain ...

(Messages to America p. 78)

March 29, 1945

... a Divine and worldwide Plan ...

(Messages to America p. 77)

March 29, 1945

The sooner they who labor for the recognition and triumph of His Faith in the new world arise to carry out these inescapable duties, the sooner will the hopes, the aims and objectives of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá as enshrined in His own Plan, be translated from the realm of vision to the plane of actuality and manifest the full force of the potentialities with which they have bean endued.

(Messages to America p. 79)

April 25, 1946

... the Plan with which He was to entrust them in the evening of his life, He, in a language still more graphic and in terms more definite than those used by either the Báb or Bahá‘u‘lláh ...

(Messages to America p. 89)

June 5, 1946

STILL VASTER ENTERPRISES ASSOCIATED FUTURE STAGES DIVINELY IMPELLED EVER UNFOLDING WORLD ENCIRCLING PLAN.

(Messages to America p. 89)

June 15, 1946

The creation of the administrative machinery of the Faith, according to the precepts laid down in ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá’s Will and Testament, and on which, during the opening years of its Formative Age, the resources and attention of the trustees of the Plan were chiefly concentrated, provided, after several years of assiduous labor, the agencies for its proper and systematic execution. The first stage of that enterprise, which had been held in abeyance, for well nigh twenty years, while the administrative institutions of the Faith were slowly taking shape and were being perfected, was finally launched during the last decade of that same century whose opening years will be associated with the earliest though veiled intimation of the phenomenal destiny which the followers of the Faith of Bahá‘u‘lláh in the New World are to fulfill.

(Messages to America p. 92)

June 15, 1946

Dearly‑beloved friends! It is not for us, at this crucial hour, to delve into the future, to speculate on the possibilities of the Plan and its orientation, to conjecture on its impact on the unfoldment of an embryonic World Order, or to dwell on the glories and triumphs which it may hold in store, or to seek to delineate the mysterious course which a God given Mission, impelled by forces beyond our power to predict or appraise, may pursue. To try to obtain a clear view of the shape of things to come would be premature inasmuch as the glittering prizes to be won are directly dependent on the measure of success which the combined efforts that are now being exerted must yield.

(Messages to America p. 101)

DIFFUSION OF THE LIGHT OF GOD

1944

light which, throughout successive periods, was to propagate itself gradually from its cradle as far as Vancouver in the West and the China Sea in the East, and to diffuse its radiance ...

(God Passes By p. 59)

1944

... proclaimed the impending rise of that Incomparable Orb Whose radiance was to envelop the whole of mankind.

(God Passes By p. 57)

ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER

March 21, 1932

In the blood of the unnumbered martyrs of Persia lay the seed of the Divinely‑appointed Administration which, though transplanted from its native soil, is now budding out, under your loving care, into a new order, destined to overshadow all mankind.

(World Order p. 52)

March 21, 1933

... His will be the task of tracing, in the work which these deputies of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá were commissioned to undertake, the beginnings of that vast Administration, the corner‑stone of which these messengers were instructed to lay ‑ an Administration whose symbolic Edifice He, at a later time, was to found in person and whose basis and scope the provisions of His Will were destined to widen.

(World Order p. 83)

March 21, 1933

Out of the pangs of anguish which His bereaved followers have suffered, amid the heat and dust which the attacks launched by a sleepless enemy had precipitated, the Administration of Bahá‘u’lláh’s invincible Faith was born. The potent energies released through the ascension of the Center of His Covenant crystallized into this supreme, this infallible Organ for the accomplishment of a Divine Purpose. The Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá unveiled its character, reaffirmed its basis, supplemented its principles, asserted its indispensability, and enumerated its chief institutions.

(World Order p. 89)

February 8, 1934

This Administrative Order, as it expands and consolidates itself, will no doubt manifest the potentialities and reveal the full implications of this momentous Document ‑ this most remarkable expression of the Will of One of the most remarkable Figures of the Dispensation of Bahá‘u‘lláh. It will, as its component parts, its organic institutions, begin to function with efficiency and vigor, assert its claim and demonstrate its capacity to be regarded not only as the nucleus but the very pattern of the New World Order destined to embrace in the fullness of time the whole of mankind.

(World Order, Dispensation p. 144)

February 8, 1934

The central, the underlying aim which animates it is the establishment of the New World Order as adumbrated by Bahá‘u’lláh. The methods it employs, the standard it inculcates, incline it to neither East nor West, neither Jew nor Gentile, neither rich nor poor, neither white nor colored. Its watchword is the unification of the human race; its standard the “Most Great Peace”; its consummation the advent of that golden millennium ‑the Day when the kingdoms of this world shall have become the Kingdom of God Himself, the Kingdom of Bahá‘u‘lláh.

(World Order, Dispensation p. l57)

December 25, 1938

The creative energies, mysteriously generated by the first stirrings of the embryonic World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh, have, as soon as released within a nation destined to become its cradle and champion, endowed that nation with the worthiness, and invested it with the powers and capacities, and equipped it spiritually, to play the part foreshadowed in these prophetic words.

(The Advent of Divine Justice p. 86)

March 28, 1941

... Whose rising Order ‑ the sole refuge of a civilization in the embrace of doom ‑ has been spurned and challenged ...

(The Promised Day Is Come p. 17)

1944

Itself undergoing a period of incubation during its primitive age, it has, through the emergence of its slowly‑crystallizing system, induced a fermentation in the general life of mankind designed to shake the very foundations of a disordered society, to purify its life‑blood, to reorientate and reconstruct its institutions, and shape its final destiny.

(God Passes By p. xi)

1944

the birth of a System which is the child sprung from both the Author of the Covenant and its appointed Center.

(God Passes By p. xvi)

1944

the rise, in the Formative Age of that Faith, of its Administrative Order, the harbinger of its Golden Age and future glory.

(God Passes By p. 158)

1944

its Administrative Order, the Child of the Covenant, and the Harbinger of that World Order whose establishment must needs signalize the advent of the Golden Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation.

(God Passes By p. 243)

1944

His Will and Testament, that immortal Document wherein He delineated the features of the Administrative Order which would arise after His passing, and would herald the establishment of that World Order, the advent of which the Báb had announced, and the laws and principles of which Bahá‘u‘lláh had already formulated.

(God Passes By p. 268)

1944

the initiation of activities and enterprises which may be said to signalize the beginnings of a future Administrative Order ...

(God Passes By p. 296)

1944

it began, after His ascension, under the unerring guidance, and as a result of the unfailing solicitude, of a wise, a vigilant and loving Master, to gather its forces, and gradually to erect the embryonic institutions which were to pave the way for the establishment, at a later period, of its Administrative Order.

(God Passes By p. 299)

1944

In pursuance of His instructions, and in conformity with the principles enunciated and the laws ordained by His Father, the rudimentary institutions, heralding the formal inauguration of the Administrative Order to be founded after His passing, had taken shape and bean established.

(God Passes By p. 314)

1944

the immortal Document from which that Order derives its authority ...

(God Passes By p. 327)

1944

’Abdu’l‑Bahá ... the Architect of the Administrative Order ...

Indeed so preponderating has been the influence of its members in both the initiation and the consolidation of Bahá ‘i administrative institutions that their country may well deserve to be recognized as the cradle of the Administrative Order which Bahá‘u’lláh Himself had envisaged and which the Will of the Center of His Covenant had called into being.

It should be borne in mind in this connection that the preliminary steps aiming at the disclosure of the scope and working of this Administrative Order, which was now to be formally established after ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá’s passing, had already bean taken by Him, and even by Bahá‘u‘lláh in the years preceding His ascension.

(God Passes By p. 329, 329, 329)

1944

that Divine Chart, delineating the features of the Administrative Order ...

(God Passes By p. 330)

1944

the Holy Land, the heart and nerve‑center of that Administrative Order ...

(God Passes By p. 345)

1944

this enterprise ‑ the crowning achievement of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá‘u’lláh in the first Bahá’í century ...

(God Passes By p. 349)

1944

This unique edifice, the first of a slowly maturing Administrative Order ...

(God Passes By p. 350)

1944

... the Faith itself, the progenitor of that Order ...

1944

... organically united through the machinery of a divinely appointed Administrative Order ...

(God Passes By p. 354, 354)

1944

... this indestructible world‑embracing Order ...

(God Passes By p. 355)

1944

... a nascent Administrative Order, whose very roots have sucked their strength from such heroic sacrifice.

(God Passes By p. 363)

1944

... the influence of the new Administrative Order in fostering and rendering effective an eager spirit of cooperation ...

(God Passes By p. 398)

1944

... organically united through an Administrative Order, divinely ordained and unique in its features ...

(God Passes By p. 403)

1944

The formulation of the laws and ordinances of a new‑born Dispensation and the enunciation and reaffirmation of its fundamental principles ‑ the warp and woof of a future Administrative Order ‑ had, however, enabled a slowly maturing Revelation, in spite of this tide of tribulations, to advance a stage further and yield its fairest fruit.

(God Passes By p. 404) ... a world‑embracing Administrative Order.

1944

... the fabric of its world‑encompassing Administrative Order ...

(God Passes By p. 410, 410)

March 13, 1945

... the teaching work ‑ the promotion of which is the ultimate object of the entire machinery of the Administrative Order and its subsidiary institutions and agencies.

(Letters to Australia and New Zealand p. 54)

August 8, 1949

Theirs is the privilege, no less meritorious and perhaps as epoch‑making to preside, in their own homeland and its neighbouring continents, over, and direct the forces generated by, the birth of an order that posterity will acclaim as both the offspring of that Faith, and the precursor of the Golden Age in which that same Faith must, in the fullness of time, find its fullest expression and most glorious consummation.

(Citadel of Faith p. 77)

April 25, 1951

The triumphant, resistlessly expanding Bahá’í Administrative Order ...

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 11)

April 25, 1951

Process of the unfoldment of the ever‑advancing Administrative Order accelerated by the formation of the International Bahá’í Council ...

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 13)

May 4, 1953

And finally the tenth part of this mighty process must be the penetration of that light, in the course of numerous crusades and of successive epochs of both the Formative and Golden Ages of the Faith, into all the remaining territories of the globe through the erection of the entire machinery of Bahá‘u’lláh’s Administrative Order in all territories, both East and West, the stage at which the light of God’s triumphant Faith shining in all its power and glory will have suffused and enveloped the entire planet.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. l55)

July 18, 1953

It must prove itself to be, as it develops, a force so pervasive and revolutionary in its character as to leave a lasting imprint not only on the destinies of the American Bahá’í Community but on the fortunes of the American nation as well. It must, even as a baptismal fire, so purge its members from self as to enable them to scale heights never as yet attained. It must, in its initial stages, witness a dispersal, combined with a consecration, reminiscent of the dawn of the Heroic Age in Bahá‘u‘lláh’s native land. It must, as it gathers momentum, awaken the select and gather the spiritually hungry amongst the peoples of the world, as well as create an awareness of the Faith not only among the political leaders of present‑day society but also among the thoughtful, the erudite in other spheres of human activity. It must, as it approaches its conclusion, pave the way for the laying, on an unassailable foundation, of the structural basis of an Administrative Order, whose fabric must, in the course of successive crusades, be laboriously erected throughout the entire globe and which must assemble beneath its sheltering shadow peoples of every race, tongue, creed, color and nation.

(Citadel of Faith p. 114)

July 18, 1953

... the champion‑builders of a world administrative system which posterity will regard as the harbinger of the World Order of Bahá u lláh ...

(Citadel of Faith p. 119)

July 28, 1954

... foremost in its decisive contribution to the creation of the pattern, the erection of the fabric, the enlargement of the limits, and the consolidation of the institutions of the embryonic World Order, the child of that same Covenant and the harbinger of a still unborn world civilization ...

(Citadel of Faith p. 123)

April 1955

... the last phase in the gradual establishment of the structure of an Administrative Order that must needs slowly evolve into the World Order of Bahá‘u‘lláh, and which in turn will give birth, in the fullness of time, to a world spiritual civilization, which posterity will hail as the fairest fruit of His Revelation.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 84)

June 3, 1955

... evidences of the rise and establishment in all continents of the globe of the administrative order, child of the divinely‑appointed Covenant and harbinger of the world‑encircling order.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 88)

April 1957

... an Administrative Order designed to be the harbinger of a world civilization.

(Messages to the Bahá’í World p. 103)