|
While this goal is being vigorously pursued, close attention must be directed to the preliminary measures for the establishment of the first dependency of the Mother Temple of the West, as well as to the completion of the landscaping of its grounds, a double task that will, on the one hand, mark the termination of the fifty-year-old process of the construction of the central Baha'i House of Worship, and proclaim, on the other, the commencement of another designed to culminate in the establishment in its plenitude of the institution of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkar as conceived by Baha'u'llah and envisaged by 'Abdu'l-Baha. Moreover, immediate consideration should be given to two other issues of prime importance, namely the purchase of land, which need not exceed for the present one acre, in anticipation of the construction of the first Mashriqu'l-Adhkar of South Africa, and the prompt translation of a suitable Baha'i pamphlet into the American and European languages allocated to your assembly, and its publication and wide dissemination among the peoples and tribes for whom it has been primarily designed. (118:1) The followers of the Most Great Name, citizens of the great republic of the West; constituting the majority and the oldest followers of His Faith in a continent wherein, in the words of 'Abdu'l-Baha, "the splendors of His (Baha'u'llah's) Light shall be revealed" and "the mysteries of His Faith shall be unveiled," addressed by Him in His Tablets of the Divine Plan as the "Apostles" of His Father; the recipients of the overwhelming majority of these same Tablets constituting the Charter of that Plan; conquerors of most of the territories, whether sovereign states or dependencies, already included within the pale of the Faith; the champion-builders of a world administrative system which posterity will regard as the harbinger of the World Order of Baha'u'llah, must, if they wish to retain their primacy and enrich their heritage, insure that, ere the opening of the second phase of this World Crusade, the names of the first American Baha'i conquerors to settle in virgin territories and islands will, as befits their primacy, be inscribed on the Scroll of Honor, now in Process of preparation, and designed to be permanently deposited at the entrance door of the Inner Sanctuary of Baha'u'llah's Most Holy Tomb, that the limited area of land required for the erection of four future Baha'i Temples, in Rome, Stockholm, Panama City and Johannesburg, will be bought, that the landscaping of the grounds of the Temple in Wilmette will be completed, and that the translation and the publication of the aforementioned pamphlet in the specified languages will be accomplished.
(118:2)
|