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The establishment of world peace will take place in two stages: the "Lesser Peace" which, based on international agreements, will banish and abolish war, and has as a spiritual motive the people's fear of war; and the "Most Great Peace", which will come about as the result of Baha'u'llah's revelation, and means the complete harmony of the peoples, races and religions of the world, spiritual unity and establishment of a just and universal order. The Lesser Peace will be preceded by violent confusion and terrible chaos: "The time for the destruction of the world and its people hath arrived." "The hour is approaching when the most great convulsion will have appeared." "The promised day is come, the day when tormenting trials will have surged above your heads, and beneath your feet, saying: 'Taste ye what your hands have wrought!'" "The day will soon come whereupon they will cry out for help and receive no answer"... "When the wrathful anger of the Almighty will have taken hold of them... He shall cleanse the earth from the defilement of their corruption, and shall give it for an heritage unto such of his servants as are nigh unto Him." "The world is in travail, and its agitation waxeth day by day. Its face is turned towards waywardness and unbelief. Such shall be its plight, that to disclose it now would not be meet and seemly. Its perversity will long continue. And when the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly appear that which shall cause the limbs of mankind to quake. Then, and only then, will the Divine Standard be unfurled, and the Nightingale of Paradise warble its melody." (131:1) From this world catastrophe mankind will emerge chastised and purified; through the vivifying forces of the new revelation, it will experience a spiritual rebirth. The kingdom of peace promised and sung by the prophets, when the swords will be beaten into ploughshares-- God's kingdom on earth as promised by Jesus Christ-- will appear on earth through the power of the Holy Spirit and through the world order revealed by Baha'u'llah. Its model is the legal structure of the Baha'i community and the functional role played by its parts. It is not a transcendental but rather an immanent kingdom, not a Utopian anarchy of love, as Tolstoy understood it, but rather a "world federal system, ruling the whole earth,... blending and embodying the ideals of both the East and the West, liberated from the curse of war and its miseries,... a system in which Force is made the servant of Justice, whose life is sustained by its universal recognition of one God and by its allegiance to one common Revelation." The promise that God himself will rule his people, that there will be "one fold and one shepherd" will then be fulfilled: "This is the Day whereon the unseen world crieth out: 'Great is thy blessedness, O earth, for thou hast been made the foot-stool of they God, and been chosen as the seat of His mighty throne!'"
(132:1)
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