Messages to America

The task regarded as an essential preliminary to the crusade destined to embrace the whole of Latin America is now in full swing and is being rapidly carried out. A further step, designed to hasten the conclusion of the final phase of the ornamentation of the Temple, has also been taken. As the days roll by, as the perturbations of an imperiled civilization are more alarmingly manifested, the potentialities of God’s creative Plan correspondingly unfold, and the valor and heroism of its intrepid supporters are more widely and convincingly demonstrated. With every successful effort to muster its young and scattered forces, to perfect its methods, to extend the range of its operations, to deepen its spiritual life and to scale loftier heights of individual heroism, there will, I cannot but feel confident, be granted to this community a greater opportunity to prove its worth, and a fuller measure of celestial strength to enable it to reenact, on the soil of the United States and Canada and throughout the entire Western Hemisphere, those stirring exploits that have shed such lustre on the apostolic age of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. Though much has thus far been achieved, yet the processes now set in motion through the evolution of the Plan are still far too rudimentary to permit even a faint glimpse of the brilliancy of the epoch in which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s own Plan must come to fruition. Not ours to attempt, at the present moment, a survey of the distant scene, or to seek to visualize its glories, or to dwell on the consequences of the eventual attainment of an as yet far-off goal. Ours is the solemn, the inescapable duty to labor faithfully and unremittingly to insure that no opportunity is being missed, that no avenues are left unexplored, that might, however indirectly, contribute to the furtherance of those tasks that claim so insistently our immediate attention. That those into whose hands this dynamic Plan has been entrusted are aware of the essential character of their obligations and will discharge worthily their duties, no one, viewing the range and quality of their achievements, can entertain the slightest doubt.

February 8, 1939