Bahai Faith -- North America; Shoghi, Effendi, 1897-1957 -- Correspondence
While this colossal task, which in its magnitude and potentialities
transcends any previous collective enterprise launched in the course of
American Bahá’í history, is being energetically carried out, it should be
constantly borne in mind—and this applies to all communities without
exception participating in this World Crusade—that the twofold task of
extension and consolidation must be supplemented by continuous and
strenuous efforts to increase speedily not only the number of the avowed
followers of the Faith in both the virgin and opened territories and
islands included within the scope of the Ten Year Plan, but also to swell
the ranks of its active supporters who will consecrate their time,
resources and energy to the effectual spread of its teachings and the
multiplication and consolidation of its administrative institutions.
The movement of pioneers, the opening of virgin territories, the
initiation of Houses of Worship and of administrative headquarters, the
incorporation of local and national elective bodies, the multiplication of
assemblies, groups and isolated centers, the increase in the number of
races represented in the world Bahá’í fellowship, the translation,
publication and dissemination of Bahá’í literature, the consolidation of
administrative agencies and the creation of auxiliary bodies designed to
support them, however valuable, essential and meritorious, will in the
long run amount to little and fail to achieve their supreme purpose if not
supplemented by the equally vital task—which is one that primarily
concerns continually and challenges each single individual believer
whatever his rank, capacity or origin—of winning to the Faith fresh
recruits to the slowly yet steadily advancing army of the Lord of Hosts,
whose reinforcing strength is so essential to the safeguarding of the
victories which the band of heroic Bahá’í conquerors are winning in the
course of their several campaigns in all the continents of the globe.
Such a steady flow of reinforcements is absolutely vital and is of extreme
urgency, for nothing short of the vitalizing influx of new blood that will
reanimate the world Bahá’í community can safeguard the prizes which, at so
great a sacrifice involving the expenditure of so much time, effort and
treasure, are now being won in virgin territories by Bahá’u’lláh’s valiant
Knights, whose privilege is to constitute the spearhead of the onrushing
battalions which, in diverse theaters and in circumstances often adverse
and extremely challenging, are vying with each other for the spiritual
conquest of the unsurrendered territories and islands on the surface of
the globe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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