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Alone of all the Revelations gone before it this Faith has, through the explicit directions, the repeated warnings, the authenticated safeguards incorporated and elaborated in its teachings, succeeded in raising a structure which the bewildered followers of bankrupt and broken creeds might well approach and critically examine, and seek, ere it is too late, the invulnerable security of its world-embracing shelter. (146:1) No wonder that He Who through the operation of His Will has inaugurated so vast and unique an Order and Who is the Center of so mighty a Covenant should have written these words: "So firm and mighty is this Covenant that from the beginning of time until the present day no religious Dispensation hath produced its like." "Whatsoever is latent in the innermost of this holy cycle," He wrote during the darkest and most dangerous days of His ministry, "shall gradually appear and be made manifest, for now is but the beginning of its growth and the dayspring of the revelation of its signs." "Fear not," are His reassuring words foreshadowing the rise of the Administrative Order established by His Will, "fear not if this Branch be severed from this material world and cast aside its leaves; nay, the leaves thereof shall flourish, for this Branch will grow after it is cut off from this world below, it shall reach the loftiest pinnacles of glory, and it shall bear such fruits as will perfume the world with their fragrance." (146:2) To what else if not to the power and majesty which this Administrative Order - the rudiments of the future all-enfolding Baha'i Commonwealth - destined to manifest, can these utterances of Baha'u'llah allude: "The world's equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind's ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System - the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed." (146:3) The Bab Himself, in the course of His references to "Him Whom God will make manifest" anticipates the System and glorifies the World Order which the Revelation of Baha'u'llah is destined to unfold. "Well is it with him," is His remarkable statement in the third chapter of the Persian Bayan, "who fixeth his gaze upon the Order of Baha'u'llah and rendereth thanks unto his Lord! For He will assuredly be made manifest. God hath indeed irrevocably ordained it in the Bayan."
(146:4)
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