Messages to America

The most great convulsion envisaged by the Prophets from Isaiah to Bahá’u’lláh, cataclysmic in violence, planetary in range, is assailing, at long last, the predominating nations of the Asiatic and American continents. The leading Power of the Western Hemisphere which, together with sister republics, Bahá’u’lláh’s ringing call significantly summoned in His Most Holy Book, the object of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s tender solicitude and ardent prayers, the center of His hopes, the recipient of His promises and the beneficiary of His blessings, has been suddenly though not unexpectedly plunged into the crucible of world conflagration. Purged, tested, galvanized, coalescing with its sorely-tried sister nations the world over, the great Republic of the New World, the enviable parent of System heralding the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, must assume through adversity its preponderating share of responsibility to lay down, once for all, broad, worldwide, unassailable foundations of that discredited yet immortal System. Though the immediate future be dark, critical and fraught with anguish, I feel it my bounden duty to appeal in this hour as never before to the Trustees of Bahá’u’lláh’s priceless Revelation whether teachers or administrators, individuals or Assemblies, 54 North or South, white or colored, young or old, to refuse at all costs to surrender their solemn spiritual responsibilities, refrain from relaxing their teaching efforts, determine never to slacken their sacred task of building the institutions whose progress destiny has indissolubly linked with the fortunes of the most disastrous, most challenging, most pregnant period of human history.

Cablegram December 13, 1941