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Let them ponder the honor Which the Author of the Revelation Himself has chosen to confer upon their countries, the obligations which that honor automatically brings in its Wake, the opportunities it offers, the power it releases for the removal of all obstacles, however formidable, which may be encountered in their path, and the promise of guidance it implies for the attainment Of the objectives alluded to in these memorable passages. (19:1) To the eager, the warm-hearted, the spiritually minded and staunch members of these Latin American Baha'i communities who, among the followers of Baha'u'llah, already constitute the most considerable body of recruits from the ranks of the most deeply entrenched and powerful Church of Christendom; whose motherlands have been chosen as the scene of the earliest victories won by the prosecutors of 'Abdu'l-Baha's Divine Plan; launched on their crusade for the spiritual conquest of the whole planet; the establishment of whose projected national spiritual assemblies must constitute a notable landmark in the second epoch of the Formative Age of the Baha'i Dispensation; whose leading spiritual assemblies are now establishing direct contact with the World Center of the Faith of Baha'u'llah in the Holy Land; the photographs of whose elected representatives, at their chief centers, will soon adorn the walls of His Mansion at Bahji; a few of whose members have already arisen to carry back the torch of divine guidance entrusted to their care to the peoples and races from which they have sprung - to this privileged, this youngest, this dynamic and highly promising member of the Organic Baha'i World Community, I feel moved, before I dismiss this aspect of my theme, to direct this general appeal to rise to the heights of the glorious opportunity Which destiny is unfolding before its members. Theirs is the opportunity, if they but seize it, to adorn the opening pages of the annals of the second Baha'i century with a tale of deeds approaching in valor those with which their Persian brethren have illuminated the opening years of the first, and comparable with the exploits more recently achieved by their North American fellow. believers and which have shed such luster on the closing decade of that same century.
(19:2)
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