Messages to America: Selected Letters and Cablegrams Addressed to the Bahá'í's of North America 1932–1946Shoghi, Effendi
Religion
Messages to America: Selected Letters and Cablegrams Addressed to the Bahá'í's of North America 1932–1946
Shoghi, Effendi
Bahai Faith -- North America; Shoghi, Effendi, 1897-1957 -- Correspondence
The resistless march of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, viewed in this light,
and propelled by the stimulating influences which the unwisdom of its
enemies and the force latent within itself, both engender, resolves itself
into a series of rhythmic pulsations, precipitated, on the one hand,
through the explosive outbursts of its foes, and the vibrations of Divine
Power, on the other, which speed it, with ever-increasing momentum, along
that predestined course traced for it by the Hand of the Almighty.
As opposition to the Faith, from whatever source it may spring, whatever
form it may assume, however violent its outbursts, is admittedly the
motive-power that galvanizes on the one hand, the souls of its valiant
defenders, and taps for them, on the other, fresh springs of that Divine
and inexhaustible Energy, we who are called upon to represent, defend and
promote its interests, should, far from regarding any manifestation of
hostility as an evidence of the weakening of the pillars of the Faith,
acclaim it as both a God-sent gift and a God-sent opportunity which, if we
remain undaunted, we can utilize for the furtherance of His Faith and the
routing and complete elimination of its adversaries.
The Heroic Age of the Faith, born in anguish, nursed in adversity, and
terminating in trials as woeful as those that greeted its birth, has been
succeeded by that Formative Period which is to witness the gradual
crystallization of those creative energies which the Faith has released,
and the consequent emergence of that World Order for which those forces
were made to operate.
Fierce and relentless will be the opposition which this crystallization
and emergence must provoke. The alarm it must and will awaken, the envy it
will certainly arouse, the misrepresentations to which it will
remorselessly be subjected, the setbacks it must, sooner or later,
sustain, the commotions to which it must eventually give rise, the fruits
it must in the end garner, the blessings it must inevitably bestow and the
glorious, the Golden Age, it must irresistibly usher in, are just
beginning to be faintly perceived, and will, as the old order crumbles
beneath the weight of so stupendous a Revelation, become increasingly
apparent and arresting.
Not ours, dear friends, to attempt to survey the distant scene; ours
rather the duty to face the trials of the present hour, to ponder its
meaning, to discharge its obligations, to meet its challenge and utilize
the opportunity it offers to the fullest extent of our ability and power.
August 12, 1941
THE PROCESS OF INTEGRATION AND DISINTEGRATION
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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