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The subsequent quarter of a century, constituting the first Epoch of the Formative Age of the Baha'i Dispensation, witnessed the planting of the banner of the Faith in over forty territories of the globe, raising the number of countries included within its pale, on the eve of the Centenary Celebrations of the Declaration of the Bab's Mission to seventy-eight. The nine-year interval separating the first from the second Baha'i Jubilee was signalized by the spiritual conquest of no less than fifty countries of the globe, whilst the first year of the Ten Year Plan has been immortalized by the opening of one hundred countries, swelling the number of the sovereign states and dependencies enlisted under the standard of the Cause of God to two hundred and twenty-eight. All territories in North, Central and South America; all sovereign states and principalities on the continent of Europe, excluding the Russian Republics and Satellites; all territories on the Asiatic continent, with the exception of Tibet, of Bhutan and of the Soviet Republics; all the islands of the Mediterranean; all the islands of the North Sea, with the exception of Spitzbergen; all African territories with the exception of Spanish Guinea; all the islands of the North and South Atlantic Ocean except Anticosti and St. Thomas; all the islands of the Pacific Ocean except Comoro Islands, Cocos Island, Nicobar Islands, Hainan Island, Portuguese Timor, Chagos Archipelago, Loyalty Islands, Marshall Islands, Admiralty Islands, Mariana Islands, are now included within the orbit of an irresistibly unfolding, rapidly consolidating, world-girdling Administrative Order. (61:2) The number of the European, the African, the Asiatic, and the American-Indian languages, including seven supplementary languages, into which Baha'i literature has been, and is being translated, is over forty-two, raising the total number of the translations undertaken since the inception of the Faith to one hundred and thirty.
(61:3)
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