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UNCONQUERABLE POWER 49 |
As I survey the activities and accomplishments of the American believers
in recent months, and recall their reaction to the urgent call for service,
embodied in the Seven Year Plan, I feel overwhelmed by a three-fold sense
of gratitude and admiration which I feel prompted to place on record, but
which I cannot adequately express. Future generations can alone appraise
correctly the value of their present services, and the Beloved, whose mandate
they are so valiantly obeying, can alone befittingly reward them for
the manner in which they are discharging their duties.
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The virtual completion of a thirty year old enterprise, which was
initiated in His days and blessed by His Hand, is the first and foremost
accomplishment that must shed imperishable luster not only on the
administrative annals of the Formative Age of the Faith, but on the entire
record of the signal achievements performed in the course of the First Century
of the Bahá’í Era. The steady expansion and consolidation of the world
mission, entrusted by that same Master, to their hands and set in operation
after His passing, constitutes the second object of my undying gratitude to a
community that has abundantly demonstrated its worthiness to shoulder the
superhuman tasks with which it has been entrusted. The spirit with which
that same community has faced and resisted the onslaught of the enemies
of the Faith who, for various reasons and with ever-increasing subtlety and
malice, have persistently striven to disrupt the administrative machinery of
an Order, foreshadowed by the Báb, enunciated by Bahá’u’lláh, and established
by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, is yet another testimony to the unrivalled merits and the
eminent position attained by its privileged members since the ascension of
the Center of the Covenant.
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The extinction of the influence precariously exerted by some of these
enemies, the decline that has set in in the fortunes of others, the sincere
repentance expressed by still others, and their subsequent reinstatement and
effectual participation in the teaching and administrative activities of the
Faith, constitute in themselves sufficient evidence of the unconquerable
power and invincible spirit which animates those who stand identified with
and loyally carry out the provisions and injunctions of the Will and Testament
of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
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And now more particularly concerning the prime mover of this latest
agitation, which, whatever its immediate consequences, will sooner or later
come to be regarded as merely one more of those ugly and abortive attempts
designed to undermine the foundation, and obscure the purpose, of the
Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. Obscure in his origin,
ambitious of leadership, untaught by the lesson of such as have erred before
him, odious in the hopes he nurses, contemptible in the methods he pursues,
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shameless in his deliberate distortions of truths he has long since ceased to
believe in, ludicrous in his present isolation and helplessness, wounded and
exasperated by the downfall which his own folly has precipitated, he, the
latest protagonist of a spurious cause, cannot but in the end be subjected,
as remorselessly as his infamous predecessors, to the fate which they
invariably have suffered.
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Generated by the propelling and purifying forces of a mysterious Faith,
born of delusion or malice, winning a fleeting notoriety derived from the
precarious advantages of wealth, fame or fortune, these movements sponsored
by deluded, self-seeking adventurers find themselves, sooner or later,
enmeshed in the machinations of their authors, are buried in shame, and
sink eventually into complete oblivion.
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The schism which their foolish leaders had contrived so sedulously to
produce within the Faith, will soon, to their utter amazement, come to be
regarded as a process of purification, a cleansing agency, which, far from
decimating the ranks of its followers, reinforces its indestructible unity, and
proclaims anew to a world, skeptical or indifferent, the cohesive strength of
the institutions of that Faith, the incorruptibility of its purposes and
principles, and the recuperative powers inherent in its community life.
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Were anyone to imagine or expect that a Cause, comprising within its
orbit so vast a portion of the globe, so turbulent in its history, so
challenging in its claims, so diversified in the elements it has assimilated
into its administrative structure, should, at all times, be immune to any
divergence of opinion, or any defection on the part of its multitudinous
followers, it would be sheer delusion, wholly unreasonable and unwarranted,
even in the face of the unprecedented evidence of the miraculous power which
its rise and progress have so powerfully exhibited. That such a secession,
however, whether effected by those who apostatize their faith or preach
heretical doctrines, should have failed, after the lapse of a century, to split
in twain the entire body of the adherents of the Faith, or to create a grave, a
permanent and irremediable breach in its organic structure, is a fact too
eloquent for even a casual observer of the internal processes of its
administrative order to either deny or ignore.
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Therein, every loyal and intelligent upholder of Bahá’u’lláh’s
incomparable Covenant—a Covenant designed by Him as the sole refuge against
schism, disruption and anarchy—will readily recognize the hall-mark of
His Faith, and will acclaim it as the supreme gift conferred by Him Who
is the Lord of Revelation upon the present and future generations who are
destined, in this greatest of all Dispensations, to flock, from every creed and
religion, to the banner, and espouse the Cause, of His Most Great Name.
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Dear friends! Manifold, various, and at times extremely perilous, have
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been the tragic crises which the blind hatred, the unfounded presumption,
the incredible folly, the abject perfidy, the vaulting ambition, of the enemy
have intermittently engendered within the pale of the Faith. From some of
its most powerful and renowned votaries, at the hands of its once trusted
and ablest propagators, champions, and administrators, from the ranks of
its most revered and highly-placed trustees whether as companions, amanuenses
or appointed lieutenants of the Herald of the Faith, of its Author,
and of the Center of His Covenant, from even those who were numbered
among the kindred of the Manifestation, not excluding the brother, the
sons and daughters of Bahá’u’lláh, and the nominee of the Báb Himself,
a Faith, of such tender age, and enshrining so priceless a promise, has
sustained blows as dire and treacherous as any recorded in the world’s
religious history.
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From the record of its tumultuous history, almost every page of which
portrays a fresh crisis, is laden with the description of a new calamity,
recounts the tale of a base betrayal, and is stained with the account of
unspeakable atrocities, there emerges, clear and incontrovertible, the supreme
truth that with every fresh outbreak of hostility to the Faith, whether
from within or from without, a corresponding measure of outpouring grace,
sustaining its defenders and confounding its adversaries, has been
providentially released, communicating a fresh impulse to the onward march of
the Faith, while this impetus, in its turn, would through its manifestations,
provoke fresh hostility in quarters heretofore unaware of its challenging
implications—this increased hostility being accompanied by a still more
arresting revelation of Divine Power and a more abundant effusion of celestial
grace, which, by enabling the upholders of that Faith to register still
more brilliant victories, would thereby generate issues of still more vital
import and raise up still more formidable enemies against a Cause that
cannot but, in the end, resolve those issues and crush the resistance of those
enemies, through a still more glorious unfoldment of its inherent power.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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