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No lesser tribute can be paid the memory of the glorious Bab, the immortal Quddus, the lion-hearted Mulla Husayn, the erudite Vahid, the audacious Hujjat, the illustrious seven martyrs of Tihran and a host of unnumbered heroes whose lifeblood flowed so copiously in the course of the opening decade of the first Baha'i century, by the privileged champion-builders of the World Order of Baha'u'llah during the present critical stage in the unfoldment of the Formative Age of His Dispensation, than a parallel outpouring of their substance by the builders of the most holy House of Worship laboring in the corresponding decade of the succeeding century. (66:3) The American Baha'i Community, exalted, singled out among sister communities of East and West through revelation of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, is unavoidably approaching a testing period, crucial, prolonged, potent, purifying, clearly envisaged by 'Abdu'l-Baha, different from but recalling in its severity the ordeals which afflicted the dawn-breakers in a former Age.
(66:4)
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