Before the eyes of the warriors enlisting under its banner stretch fields of exploration and consolidation of such vastness as might well dazzle the eyes and strike awe into the heart of any soul less robust than those who have arisen to identify themselves with its Cause. The heights its champions must scale are indeed formidable. The pitfalls that bestrew their path are still numerous. The road leading to ultimate and total victory is tortuous, stony and narrow. Theirs, however, is the emphatic assurance, revealed by the Pen of the Most High—the Prime Mover of the forces unleashed by this world-girdling Crusade—that “Whosoever ariseth to aid our Cause God will render him victorious over ten times ten thousand souls, and, should he wax in his love for Me, him will We cause to triumph over all that is in heaven and all that is on earth.” Putting on the armor of His love, firmly buckling on the shield of His mighty Covenant, mounted on the steed of steadfastness, holding aloft the lance of the Word of the Lord of Hosts, and with unquestioning reliance on His promises as the best provision for their journey, let them set their faces towards those fields that still remain unexplored and direct their steps to those goals that are as yet unattained, assured that He Who has led them to achieve such triumphs, and to store up such prizes in His Kingdom, will continue to assist them in enriching their spiritual birthright to a degree that no finite mind can imagine or human heart perceive. —Shoghi [April, 1956] Evidences of the Resistless March of the World Crusade At this auspicious hour, marking yet another milestone in the progress of the divinely-guided, world-embracing, steadily consolidating Community of the followers of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, I feel once again impelled to share with the elected representatives of the vast majority of its avowed supporters, assembled on the occasion of the convocation of the twenty-four Bahá’í Conventions being held simultaneously in the American, the European, the Asiatic, the African, and the Australian continents, the latest evidences of its resistless march along the path traced for it by both its Founder and the appointed Center of His Covenant. The year that has just expired, signalized, at the hour of its birth, by the emergence of three regional spiritual assemblies, on the northern fringes, in the heart, and at the southern extremity of the long dormant African continent, and ushering in the third phase of a decade-long, world-encompassing Spiritual Crusade, has, as we look back on the triumphs and trials that have marked its course, accelerated, to a notable extent, the two parallel processes of integration and disintegration associated respectively with the rising fortunes of God’s infant Faith and the sinking fortunes of the institutions of a declining civilization.