Messages America 1932-46 - Shoghi Effendi
 <<   <<   >   >>
Page 91 of  110

That same impulse was markedly accelerated when the Center of the Covenant Himself, through a series of successive acts, chose to disclose, to an unprecedented extent, the character of the Mission reserved for the followers of Baha'u'llah in that continent, and to delineate the tasks whereby that God-given design was to be fulfilled. No sooner had He mounted the helm of the Faith than He unmistakably revealed to His followers His purpose of making the establishment of that Faith in the West, and particularly in the New World, one of the chief objectives of His ministry. No sooner had that great feat been accomplished than He undertook to visit those centers which His disciples had labored to establish, and, through a number of symbolic acts and weighty pronouncements, to pave the way for the inauguration of the collective undertaking He was preparing those disciples to carry out. In the Tablets of the Divine Plan, revealed at a later stage, and in circumstances almost as critical as those which had accompanied the inception of the Faith in the West, and which may be designated as the Charter of the plan with which He was to entrust them in the evening of His life, He, in a language still more graphic and in terms more definite than those used by either the Bab or Baha'u'llah, revealed the high distinction and the glorious work which America, and particularly the United States and Canada, was to achieve in both the Formative and Golden Ages of the Baha'i Dispensation. (91:1)

His references to the "extraordinary brilliancy" of the light which His Father's Revelation was to shed in the West; His prediction that "the West will have replaced the East" "through the splendor" of that Faith; His specific prophecies regarding the future of the American continent, as the splendors of His light shall be revealed" and "'the mysteries of His Faith shall be unveiled," and which "will lead all nations spiritually"; His even more specific tribute to the Great Republic of the West which He proclaims to be "worthy of being the first to build the Tabernacle of the Most Great Peace and proclaim the oneness of mankind," to be "equipped and empowered to accomplish that which will adorn the pages of history, to become the envy of the world, and be blest in both the East and the West"; His yet more startling words addressed to the followers of the Faith in that Republic, referring to them as "apostles of Baha'u'llah," characterizing their mission as "unspeakably glorious," and assuring them that "should success crown your enterprise... the throne of the Kingdom of God will, in the plenitude of its majesty and glory, be firmly established"; and finally, His soul-stirring assertion that "the moment this Divine Message is carried forward by the American believers from the shores of America, and is propagated through the continents of Europe, of Asia, of Africa and of Australasia, and as far as the islands of the Pacific, this community will find itself securely established upon the throne of an everlasting dominion," and that "the whole earth" will "resound with the praises of its majesty and greatness" - all these, in conjunction with the explicit and detailed instructions embodied in His Tablets, in connection with the execution of their mission, may be regarded as having fixed the pattern, and revealed a measure of the glory, of the Plan itself, which, after His ascension, was to be collectively and formally prosecuted. (91:2)

Get Next Page

  Messages America 1932-46
  Citation Source List
: see