The Tablets which were subsequently revealed by the untiring pen of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, embodying in passionate and unequivocal language His
instructions and counsels, His appeals and comments, His hopes and wishes,
His fears and warnings, soon began to be translated, published and
circulated throughout the length and breadth of the North American
continent, providing the ever-widening circle of the first believers with
that spiritual sustenance which could alone enable them to survive the
severe trials they were soon to experience.
The hour of an unprecedented crisis was, however, inexorably approaching.
Evidences of dissension, actuated by pride and ambition, were beginning to
obscure the radiance and retard the growth of the newly-born community
which the apostolic teachers of that continent had labored to establish.
He who had been instrumental in inaugurating so splendid an era in the
history of the Faith, on whom the Center of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant had
conferred the titles of “Bahá’s Peter,” of the “Shepherd of God’s Flocks,”
of the “Conqueror of America,” upon whom had been bestowed the unique
privilege of helping ‘Abdu’l-Bahá lay the foundation-stone of the Báb’s
Mausoleum on Mt. Carmel—such a man, blinded by his extraordinary success
and aspiring after an uncontrolled domination over the beliefs and
activities of his fellow-disciples, insolently raised the standard of
revolt. Seceding from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and allying himself with the Arch-Enemy
of the Faith of God, this deluded apostate sought, by perverting the
teachings and directing a campaign of unrelenting vilification against the
person of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, to undermine the faith of those believers whom he
had during no less than eight years, so strenuously toiled to convert. By
the tracts he published, through the active collaboration of the
emissaries of his chief Ally, and reinforced by the efforts which the
Christian ecclesiastical enemies of the Bahá’í Revelation were beginning
to exert, he succeeded in dealing the nascent Faith of God a blow from
which it could only slowly and painfully recover.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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