Viewed in the perspective of Bahá'í history, the Seven Year Plan,
associated with the closing years of the First Bahá'í Century, will come to be
regarded as the mightiest instrument yet forged, designed to enable the
trustees of a firmly established, steadily evolving Administrative Order to
complete the initial stage in the prosecution of the world mission confidently
entrusted by the Center of the Covenant to His chosen disciples. The
Divine Plan, thus set in operation, may be said to have derived its inspiration
from, and been dimly foreshadowed in, the injunction so significantly
addressed by Bahá'u'lláh to the Chief Magistrates of the American continent.
It was prompted by the contact established by `Abdu'l-Bahá Himself,
in the course of His historic journey, with the entire body of His followers
throughout the United States and Canada. It was conceived, soon after
that contact was established, in the midst of what was then held to be one
of the most devastating crises in human history. It underwent a period of
incubation, after His ascension, while the machinery of a divinely appointed
Administrative Order was being laboriously devised and its processes set
in motion. Its initial operations were providentially made to synchronize
with the final years of a century that witnessed the birth and rise of a
Faith of which it is the direct consequence. The opening stage in its
execution has been faced by, and will survive, the severe challenge of a crisis
of still greater magnitude than that which baptized its birth. The conclusion
of the first phase of its tremendous and irresistible unfoldment is now
approaching. The hopes and aspirations of a multitude of believers, in both
the East and the West, young and old, whether free or suppressed, hang on
its triumphant consummation. The Temple itself, that fair incarnation of
the soul of an unconquerable Faith, and the first fruit of the Plan now set
in motion, stands in its silent beauty, ready to reinforce the strenuous
endeavors of its prosecutors. Towering in grandeur and resplendent in its
majesty it calls aloud incessantly for a greater, a far greater number of
pioneers who, both at home and in foreign fields, will scatter to sow the
Divine seeds and gather the harvest into its gates. The Author of the Plan
Himself, looking down from His retreats above, and surveying the prodigious
labors of His defeatless disciples, voices, with even greater insistence, the
same call. The time in which to respond to it is relentlessly shortening. Let
men of action seize their chance ere the swiftly passing days place it
irretrievably beyond their reach.
May 26, 1942