He went on to urge the Faith’s followers to realize the essential difference between the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh, whose Revealed Texts contain detailed provisions for such an authoritative Order, and those preparatory Revelations whose Scriptures had been largely silent on the administration of affairs and on the interpretation of their Founders’ intent. In the words of Bahá’u’lláh: “The Prophetic Cycle hath, verily, ended. The Eternal Truth is now come. He hath lifted up the Ensign of Power....”(69) Unlike the Dispensations of the past, the Revelation of God to this age has given birth, Shoghi Effendi said, to “a living organism”, whose laws and institutions constitute “the essentials of a Divine Economy”, “a pattern for future society”, and “the one agency for the unification of the world, and the proclamation of the reign of righteousness and justice upon the earth”.(70) The friends should strive to appreciate, therefore, the Guardian urged, that the Spiritual Assemblies they were painstakingly establishing throughout the world were the forerunners of the local and national “Houses of Justice” envisioned by Bahá’u’lláh. As such, they were integral parts of an Administrative Order that will, in time, “assert its claim and demonstrate its capacity to be regarded not only as the nucleus but the very pattern of the New World Order destined to embrace in the fullness of time the whole of mankind”.(71) For a few in the young communities of the West, such a departure from traditional conceptions of the nature and role of religion proved too great a test, and Bahá’í communities suffered the distress of seeing valued co-workers drift away in search of spiritual pursuits more congenial to their inclinations. For the vast majority of believers, however, great messages from the Guardian’s pen, such as “The Goal of a New World Order” and “The Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh”, threw brilliant light on precisely the issue that most concerned them, the relationship between spiritual truth and social development, inspiring in them a determination to play their part in laying the foundations of humanity’s future.