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Fulfillment of National Teaching Plans- Recall with feelings of profound emotion, as mid-August approaches, the distressing circumstances attending the dastardly act which, one hundred years ago, precipitated the chain of calamitous events, unparalleled in scope and severity in the annals of the Faith of Baha'u'llah and constituting, next to the martyrdom of its Herald, the darkest, bloodiest and most tragic episode of the Heroic Age of the Baha'i Dispensation. Invite members of all communities of the Baha'i World, standing at the threshold of the Holy Year to call to mind the manifold tribulations afflicting God's infant Faith immediately preceding, accompanying and following the imprisonment of the Author of the Baha'i Revelation in the Siyah-Chal in Tihran, the somber scene of the birth of His glorious mission. Urge them to remember the multitude of barbarous acts in which king, government, people and ecclesiastics participated; to ponder the ferocious character of the persecutions; and to meditate upon the vastness of their range as well as their far-reaching consequences. Request them to dwell particularly upon the seeming helplessness of God's struggling Faith and direct special attention to the ordeals undergone by Baha'u'llah, its sole surviving pillar, subsequent to the birth of His Mission, His ultimate banishment, and culminating in His incarceration in the Holy Land and in the fulfillment of age-long prophecies.
(39:1)
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